Women Tragic Protagonists in Jacobean Drama

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Women Tragic Protagonists in Jacobean Drama CHALLENGING CULTURAL STEREOTYPES: WOMEN TRAGIC PROTAGONISTS IN JACOBEAN DRAMA by JOHN ERIC MARRIOTT BEd., The University of Saskatchewan, 1954 B.A., The University of Saskatchewan, 1955 B.Th., Wycliffe College, Toronto, 1959 M.A., The University of Saskatchewan, 1975 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUiREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNWERS1TY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September 1994 © John Eric Marriott, 1994 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of English The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date October 11, 1994 DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT Written against a background of intellectual and social ferment over woman’s na ture and role, the eight plays discussed implicitly criticize Renaissance society’s refusal to recognize woman’s full humanity by presenting strong, intelligent heroines seeking personal fulfilment in a hostile culture. For Shakespeare’s Desdemona and Cleopatra, sexuality is an integral part of the love they offer Othello and Antony who, however, stereotypically see women’s sexuality as wantonness and temptation. lago easily per suades Othello that Desdemona’s independent spirit is a sign of lust. For Antony, Cleopatra’s love is a temptation to political and military indolence. Because her broth ers see her remarriage as a taint on family honour, Webster’s Duchess of Malfi must act clandestinely to obtain a sexually and personally fulfilling marriage for which, on its dis covery, the brothers take a horrible revenge. Socially ambitious, Vittoria Corombona too seeks sexual fulfilment and resorts to murder to escape an unfulfilling marriage and gain status. For both women, the resort to deception or to evil seems necessary in an evil, corrupt and hostile world which takes its revenge on both. Beaumont’s Evadne uses her sexual power to become the King’s mistress, hoping thereby to escape the so cial forces that victimize women. She finds herself, however, caught between conflicting codes of honour whose adherents all reject her as a kind of social pariah. Middleton’s Bianca Capello, Isabella and Beatrice-Joanna attempt to escape the tyranny of enforced marriage by elopement, adultery, or murder in a corrupt society, which paying lip ser vice to, but not itself observing conventional morality, passes harsh judgement on them for their breaches of convention. Acceptance of, rather than rebellion against, enforced marriage leads Ford’s Penthea to a pathological brooding which results in her own death and the deaths of the chief characters. Though the five playwrights offer no solu tions to their society’s tyranny over women, they strongly imply the need to adopt a more natural and comprehensive paradigm of woman. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS 11 Table of Contents iii Acknow1edement iv Dedication v Chapter One Introduction: Historical, Social and Conceptual Background 1 End Notes 22 Chapter Two Shakespeare: Desdemona and Cleopatra 27 End Notes 70 Chapter Three John Webster: Vittoria Corombona and The Duchess of Malfi 73 End Notes 117 Chapter Four Beaumont and Fletcher: Evadne 124 End Notes 153 Chapter Five Thomas Middleton: Bianca Capello, Isabella and Beatrice-Joanna 156 End Notes 207 Chapter Six John Ford and the Closing of the Debate, and Conclusion 212 End Notes 235 Bibliography 237 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The author acknowledges with gratitude the invaluable advice, direction and criticism of his supervisor Dr. Kay Stockholder of the Department of English, University of British Columbia, as well as the valuable help of the other members of his committee, Dr. Anthony B. Dawson and Dr. Kate Sirluck, also of the English Department, University of British Columbia. He is also grateful for the practical advice and assistance of the successive Chairpersons of the Graduate Committee during his time as a graduate student, Dr. Laurie Ricou, Dr. Paul Stanwood and Dr. Ira Nadel, and especially to Ms. Rosemary Leech, the Graduate Secretary. He also thanks the English Department for the five graduate teaching assistantships granted him during his time with the Department which provided both a means of financial support and the opportunity to teach. iv To the Memory of Barbara Ruth St. John, 1942-1994 V CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND The highest development of the English Renaissance drama, it is generally agreed, occurred during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the first two of the seventeenth, the age of Shakespeare and his younger contemporaries and immediate successors. This high point was itself contemporary with the most intense period in a controversy over the nature of woman and of her role in society. This controversy, arising out of social change, was accompanied and fueled by the humanist affirmation of the dignity of man which, in some circles at least, raised the question whether man was to be taken as a sexual word meaning only male or as a generic word including in its meaningfemale. Although strong willed, strong minded women of the privileged classes had probably always been able to carve out for themselves places of power and influence, the lives of women in general in Western European society had been severely circumscribed. By the end of the Renaissance that circumscription appears to have become even stricter and narrower, but during the intervening period, for a number of reasons, women were, in the words of Bridenthall and Koonz, “becoming visible”; notice was being taken of them, and a lively debate developed about them. Women themselves were, in fact, beginning to assert their own claim to at least a sort of equality. Some men, accustomed by centuries of tradition to a dominant role, expressed outrage at the new prominence women seemed to be achieving, while women found defenders and new champions in the more liberal minded of the humanists. At the same time women characters receive a new prominence on the stage. Although the Jacobean dramatists who make women major tragic figures in their plays probably should not be considered protofeminists, they were, nevertheless, keen observers of the world around them, men who recognized that the traditional 1 2 stereotyping of women as either chaste virgin goddesses or as intemperately lustful whores did not accord with or account for the complexity and variety that they observed. Whether by intent or not, by portraying women on stage in a more realistic manner, as neither angels nor devils, but as human beings, they challenged the traditional attitudes and views. Those traditional views and attitudes were often expressed by characters on stage, but they are frequently undercut by the portrayal of the women characters themselves. They are not always portrayed as good, but their wickedness is not attributed exclusively, if at all, to their sexuality and lust, though some of them, certainly, do use their sexuality to gain their ends or to achieve their ambitions. Following Roland de Sousa, Noel Carroll, in his article “The Image of Women in Film: A Defense of a Paradigm”, calls these stereotypes, or images of women “paradigm scenarios”. Because the modern motion picture plays a very similar role in our culture to that of the drama in Elizabethan-Jacobean culture as popular entertainment, da Sousa’s and Carroll’s views are of relevance to the present study. Carroll quotes da Sousa’s explanation of paradigm scenarios: We are made familiar with the vocabulary of emotion by association with paradigm scenarios. These are drawn first from our daily life as small children and later reinforced by the stories, art and culture to which we are exposed. Later still, in literate cultures, they are supplemented and refined by literature. Paradigm scenarios involve two aspects: first a situation type providing the characteristic objects of the specific emotional type, and second, a set of characteristic or “normal” responses to the situation, where normality is first a biological matter and then very quickly becomes a cultural one. (The Rationality ofEmotions, 182, quoted by Carroll, 356. Original emphasis.) Carroll himself states, “Given a situation, an encultured individual attempts, generally intuitively, to fit a paradigm scenario from her repertoire to it” (356). He states a little later that “Male emotional responses to women...will be shaped by the paradigm scenarios that they bring to those situations.” (356-357) Carroll does not see these 3 paradigms as necessarily defective representations, but he does note that a “pattern of emotional attention, if made operational in specific cases, can be oppressive to women...” (357). This chapter will examine that cultural response and its development, the development of “paradigm scenarios”, up to the time of Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights. The basic thesis of the succeeding chapters will be that the dramatists of the late Elizabethan and the Jacobean eras knew the paradigm scenarios by which their society tended to judge women, and though they portrayed many characters, particularly men, who held those paradigms and judged women by them, they portrayed women themselves in such a manner as to undercut1and call into question the adequacy of those paradigms and to challenge their “normality”. Those traditional attitudes were the product of a long history reaching back into antiquity. At early stages of the Middle Ages, high born women, at least, enjoyed a degree of freedom, autonomy, and power.
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