Anna Fitzgerald
Highly Recommended
Department of English Undergraduate Awards (3rd Year)
Abstract
I decided to explore the topic of female rebellion in Renaissance drama after having spent three years of my undergraduate degree focusing on the depiction of femininity in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. This academic experience informed my understanding that female divergency is the defining narrative characteristic of Thomas Middleton & Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, John Lyly’s Galatea, and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and that the 16th and 17th century cultural context of regressive gender ideology is prevalent throughout all of these texts. This theological misogyny creates a culture of shame which prevents female desire being fully realised. These underlying themes of shame and desire are present in all three works involving female characters struggling to attain their political, sexual, and romantic emancipation whilst engaging in ideologically disruptive activities within the context of their shared Elizabethan and Jacobean time period. Whilst Moll’s narrative “containment” practically neutralises her initial political potency, the virgin couple of Galatea subtly transcend their narrative confinement through obfuscation of intention and conclusion. We interpret the Duchess’ achievement of political and narrative sovereignty in death to be an ambiguous fate. This in essence is neither aspirational nor reductive, as although her character consistently rejects the shame projected upon her gender, her ambitions remain unattainable. Ultimately the social construct of shame inhibits these female character’s abilities to fully explore and embrace desire, somewhat containing the spirit of female rebellion.
Female divergency is the defining narrative characteristic of Thomas Middleton & Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, John Lyly’s Galatea, and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. The 16th and 17th century cultural context of regressive gender ideology is prevalent through all of these texts, yet this drawback does not automatically preclude the titular female protagonists from subverting their fictional patriarchies, although some conformities may compromise a degree of their insurgency.
In The Roaring Girl we are initially presented with a heroine who chafes at the social gender boundaries and appears to outright reject the concept of the gender binary altogether. Identified by the male characters as a “bold masculine ramp” (5.2.14) who physically and metaphorically threatens their patriarchal world order, Moll is initially portrayed as the consummate feminist literary figure. We are encouraged to read her vociferous “roaring girl” persona as the exception to the patriarchal rule, a conduit of pure uninhibitedness. She asserts her personal agency by seeking fulfilment in assumed masculinity: walking the streets unaccompanied, visiting alehouses, smoking cigars, and dressing in male attire. Moll’s assertion that she is “Man enough for a woman” (2.2.44-45) authentically challenges the Jacobean period gender ideology, whilst simultaneously serving as an ambiguous inference upon her textually obfuscated sexuality. Most intriguingly, her declaration that marriage is “but a chopping and changing” (2.2.45) of female autonomy infers that she views the ceremonial social contract as inherently harmful to women. The provision of a metaphorical “maiden loses one head and has a worse i'th'place” (2.2.42-4) is both sexually and philosophically explicit, portraying virginal brides as victims of legal and socially acceptable prostitution, as marriage is a patriarchal institution that innately benefits its male participants, especially in the context of the 17th century. In a sense, therefore, Moll embodies a specific brand of traditional feminism, seeming to abhor the policing of female enjoyment and nonsexual pleasure. Moll’s denigration of “all men, their worst hates/And their best flatteries, all their golden witchcraft” (3.1.92-93) infers her awareness of the patriarchal proclivity of preying upon the weaknesses and social disenfranchisement of women. Miller identifies “the exchange of women as commodities operating at all levels of social ‘intercourse’” (14), and we must acknowledge that the very existence of the play commodifies the biography of Mary Frith. This conditional aspect of Moll’s potency as a figure of professed female rebellion complexifies her significance and suggests that, whilst her initial introduction into the literary canon was legitimately revolutionary, closer interrogation into the background of her origin and the motivations of her character may date her as a rather antiquated and underqualified feminist literary figure.
Moll’s legitimate criticism of the marriage economy is textually undermined by her direct enabling of the union between Mary and Sebastian, operating as a decoy fiancée in consciously accepting his “counterfeit passion” (1.2.105) whilst simultaneously displaying a contempt for the shopkeeper matrons who attain political and social security through the marital contract and romantic desire in thinly disguised extramarital dalliances. Dollimore notes that such a neutralisation of potential female insurgency is inevitable, and even posits that this “containment isn't the reaction of power after, and in response to, the event of subversion. It's intrinsic to the process of literary representation” (71). Whilst this sentiment is not without merit, its applicability to this specific “roaring girl” is dubious considering the political significance of Moll’s corporeal inspiration, Mary Frith, and the play’s insidious attempt to depoliticise her history through fictional misrepresentation. Baston perceives this “recuperation” (320) of Moll’s reputability as an intentional disintegration of the feminist ideals she ostensibly represents, declaring that “They institutionalise her; they reduce her to stereotype; they subtly undercut her political potency” (326). Crucially, the male playwrights; Middleton and Dekker, provide their female protagonist with sufficient rope to proverbially hang her rebellious ideals, weaponizing internalised misogyny to compromise an example of potential radical feminism. This materialises in Moll’s observation that “there are more queans in this town of their own making than of any man’s provoking” (2.1.333-4) when considered in conjunction with her Jacobean-approved commitment to chastity guised as self-determining to “please myself, and care not else who loves me” (2.2.361). Whilst the latter confession may read as evidence of female asexuality, a radical Renaissance identity that does not negate emancipated femininity, the running intertextual theme of the three plays is repressed female sexuality. This social restriction in particular casts Moll as an agent of feminine conformity, as within the context of the play, true masculinity is contingent on the ability to engage in promiscuity without moral condemnation and social alienation. In this area of her transgressive “both man and woman” (2.1.190-91) identity she emerges as somewhat adrift, inhabiting a combined image of virginal masculinity, aligning her closer to a “model woman, embodying the traditional traits of femininity-modesty and chastity” (Baston 327) than a standard Renaissance male. In an attempt to dissolve her subjectivity, the playwrights appear to depict Moll as self-infantilizing, and therefore incapable of truly inhabiting a masculine essence, her assertion that “a wife [...] ought to be obedient, but I fear me I am too head-strong to obey” (2.2.39-40), insinuates that her immaturity informs her virginity, signalling an eternal occupation of suspended girlhood and undermining her decision to remain independent on her own terms. Her real-life counterpart, Mary Frith, reportedly a pimping “bawde” who was “dishonest of her body” (Court Record of Mary Frith), challenged the patriarchy in a way that the male-penned Moll is narratively restricted from accomplishing, seemingly by virtue of imaginative origination through masculine hands.
In opposition, John Lyly’s Galatea positions quiet feminine rebellion against the status quo as the most effective means of achieving female liberation. In this play, female protagonists Galatea and Phillida initially engage in crossdressing and gender fluidity under the orders of their respective paternal figures. This is specifically addressed within the text, with Phillida swearing to her father Melibeus that “whatsoever [he] command [she] will not refuse” (1.3.12), inhabiting “man’s apparel” (1.3.15) whilst vowing that such garments would not “become [her] body nor [her] mind” (1.3.16). Lyly’s utilisation of the word “become” is especially significant, as it essentially operates as a double entendre. The idea that a masculine identity extinguishes Phillida’s beauty is swiftly proven false upon her interactions with Galatea. Therefore, we infer that there is a certain sense of erotica in rebelling against the gender binary. Another interpretation is that, unlike Moll, Phillida does not perceive masculinity as aspirational, valuing feminine attributes in favour of maleness, an intrinsically subversive stance in both the Renaissance era and Greek mythology. We may also consider that female characters transgressing from the status quo in the effort of self-preservation, rather than instantly submitting to a masculine godly power, is definitively an act of feminist rebellion. Their eventual commitment to their homoerotic relationship may be interpreted as the ultimate act of feminine power and autonomy, as the fate of their respective gender-determination lies in ambiguity upon the conclusion of the text, insinuating that it may be possible to forgo the performance of masculinity in order to attain agency in favour of transcendent femininity. However, this eventuality is also dependent on female virtue, as it is inferred that female love is only legitimised in chastity, and therefore, “for one virgin to dote on another” (5.3.139-40). In this sense, the protagonists of Galatea may be perceived as an inversion of The Roaring Girl’s Moll. Although Moll’s adoption of masculinity is voluntary, her commitment to chastity undermines the authenticity of her ambitions, whereas Galatea and Phillida’s experience with maleness is initially exclusively performative, it is their subversive lesbian passions, and therefore outsized femininity which require a masculine transformation to restore a semblance of female societal conformity.
Female rebelliousness in The Duchess of Malfi resides within the play’s titular character and her thwarted attempt to secure and maintain political power despite insidious familial treachery. As a widow, the Duchess inhabits a unique and precarious position of female power and patriarchal target. Her insistence on her rank and status despite imprisonment solidifies the character as a formidable force, the assertion that she is “Duchess of Malfi still” (4.2.102) serving as a direct opposition to her brothers’ agenda of male-dominated authoritative monarchy. Her ability to exhibit confidence and dignity under duress is notable, her request that her murderers “Dispose my breath how please you; but my body/Bestow upon my women” (4.2.172) indicates both her courage in the face of death and the vulnerabilities of her feminine physique. Therefore, it is obvious that her textual social context is inhospitable and practically uninhabitable to her considerable degree of feminine ambition and agency. Indeed, the scene of her murder reminds us of the impossibility of a Duchess-reigned matriarchy. As clinically stated in an aside, “They strangle her” (4.2.183) effectively severing her feminine weapon of speech, the only artillery she as a female agent is permitted to access. Mahler considers the brothers’ consistent undermining of their sister’s authority to be a “frenzied attempt at ‘sovereign’ domestication” (Mahler 358). Unlike “all the other princes of the world” (3.2.135-137), the Duchess is urged to ascribe to “‘discretion’ and to (female) ‘honour’” (Mahler 359), her power and agency dependent on the traditional female virtues of “chastity, silence, and obedience” (Abu Shihab, Al-Shra’a & Shihab 933). However, although her living form of female agency is neutralised, spirit brutally removed from her corporeal body, this separation from a gendered state paradoxically instils her with a less abstract power to influence the play’s remaining narrative. The Duchess’ disembodied voice or “echo” (5.3.24) resurges devoid of physical embodiment, and for the first time in the text, actively utilises her power in a useful and effective manner. As a genderless spirit, she attempts to reiterate Antonio’s speech patterns in such a format as to warn him of his impending doom, echoing urgently that her husband “Be mindful of thy safety” (5.3.42). Although the warning itself proves unsuccessful, the remnant of the Duchess nevertheless is presented as a more active participant in the concluding carnage, escaping her designated intertwined status of sacrificial lamb and imperious ruler in death, her body finally divorced from her mind.
In contrast, Lyly’s Galatea depicts subversive femininity as crucial to women’s very survival within a political system which views them as either extraneous or exploitable. We may interpret Neptune as a masculine coded deity, and his predation on beautiful virgins as allegorical to the Renaissance patriarchal society and its commodification of the social construct of virginity through the marital contract. His profession that he “hath dealt well with Beauty and Chastity” (5.3.85-86) reinforces that although the play is partially centred on the civil war between femininities, this social order thrives due to its male adjudicator. Within this context, the concepts of marriage and death are rendered practically synonymous, as the former effectively both compromises female sexual virtuosity that the Elizabethan era idealised whilst also demanding the performance of submission and domesticity from its female participants. Meyer suggests that “in Neoplatonic poetic theology, love was commonly defined as the desire aroused by the perception of beauty” and that “archetypal classical examples” of god-mortal romantic entanglements were “universally viewed by Renaissance mythographers as emblematic [...] of the death which is inherent in love” (201). Therefore, the imagery of female sacrifice is imbued with distinctly sexual undertones of patriarchal consumption. Unlike in The Roaring Girl, where the shopkeepers’ wives gain a degree of sexual freedom and social capital from this arrangement, Galatea’s enigmatic conclusion implies that female political emancipation is contingent on solidarity and connection between women. Galatea and Phillida’s initial deference to their fathers is rewarded by the text, and they benefit from eluding their duty as sacrificial objects, whilst their relationship is legitimised under the provision that one of the girls undergo a sex change so as to not explicitly endorse homoeroticism. Meyer recognises this caveat as a metaphorical textual remuneration for the averted literal sacrifice, stating that the “impending sex-change” functions as an intrinsic personal cost, insinuating that for a virgin to “lose her identity” and abandon femininity represents a spiritual death (202). However, we may interpret that the inconclusiveness and ambiguity inherent to the plays’ final scenes suggest that our female protagonists’ most notable transgressive action may be their willingness to embrace an uncertain fate which they actively choose, especially considering there is little textual evidence to determine the specific gender and sexuality of Galatea and Phillida’s future relationship. Intriguingly, Galatea’s closing words in the play’s epilogue appear to encourage fellow maidens to prioritise female pleasure over duty, using the dubious logic that feminine lust is “unpossible to resist” (Epilogue, 11). However, should we investigate the intricacies of her speech pattern, we may infer that this internalised misogyny conceals an admission of political influence, as she notes that women “conquereth [...] all hearts but their own” (Epilogue, 12-13), perhaps subtly communicating that the couple successfully and intentionally persuaded their godly overlords to reconsider their fatal destiny and therefore indirectly achieved self-determination despite an inhospitable environment. Therefore, in this instance, the textual “containment” of the maidens’ relationship may actually prove “intrinsic to the process of [its] literary representation” (Dollimore 71), due to the extremity of its subversive homoromantic implications, not least in light of Renaissance drama’s history of utilising young males to portray female characters.
Similarly, female sexual agency in The Duchess of Malfi is predicated on prior submission to patriarchal doctrine and gender roles, as the titular character is a widow who benefits from her late husband’s demise. This financial and political power is also visited upon her male relatives, namely her brothers, specifically her twin brother Ferdinand, who simultaneously harbours a perverse sexual interest in his sister and desires to exploit the power bequeathed to her by her husband. These incestuous emotions are evinced by his voyeuristic expressions of fraternal concern, from the nauseating “imagination” that “will carry me to see her in the shameful act of sin” to the transparent and misogynistic comparison of his sister to an “Excellent hyena” (2.5.39-41) drawing upon the Elizabethan and Jacobean tradition of employing animalistic imagery to oppress and demean feminine sexuality. Her refusal to embody the reductive qualities of idealised widowhood may be considered proto-feminist considering Renaissance expectations of grieving women to resemble “a palm-tree, that thrives not after supplanting of her husband” (Keeble 253), her insistence on being “flesh and blood” resisting the patriarchy’s insidious attempt to render her a “figure cut in alabaster” (1.1.445-47). This steadfast assurance of her own self-image does not falter despite the aspersions cast on her moral character due to her sexual and romantic independence. Therefore, whilst her reputation may be defamed in the eyes of her male oppressors, the rampant sexism is not internalised and the verbal assaults of encompassing the projected degeneracy of a “lusty widow” (1.3.47) do not prevent the Duchess from remaining a transgressive figure, in life or death. In that sense Mahler’s inference that the “Duchess [...] sees herself as an ungendered sovereign” (361) is partially correct, insofar as she resists the patriarchy’s attempts to delegitimise her identity as a regent due to Renaissance gender ideology. However, we may elucidate that the deceptive nature of her personal relationship destabilises her position as a ruler and compromises the overall wellbeing of her duchy. The Duchess’ truest display of female rebelliousness stems from her desire to exist as both a political and sexual figure whilst retaining her inherent femininity. Therefore, to an extent, her often repeated refrain of being “the Duchess” is slightly reductive, as it contains her three-dimensional selfhood in an impersonal title, and therefore, similar to Moll, she upkeeps her own policing of unbridled personhood.
The intricacies of Antonio and the Duchess’ relationship also offer an engrossing insight into the latter’s perspective on feminine power and rebellious disposition. Notably, her view on the marital contract is not idealistic, as she has experienced both the positives and negatives of the unvarnished reality. However, her viewpoint does not align with Moll’s perspective on the institution of marriage, or even the Cardinal’s assertion that “The marriage night is the entrance into some prison” (1.3.32-33), believing instead that the success of the sacrament, and committed romantic relationships in general, lies in the extent of freedom a woman enjoys within the social construct. Therefore, her acceptance of a potentially oppositional reaction to her subversive attempt to achieve romantic self-determination is evident as she vows to “Let old wives report I winked and chose a husband” (1.3.55-6). The intentional assurance of this premeditated decision contradicts Galatea’s defence that female lust is an innate and uncontrollable gendered condition. In addition, the gender roles transitorily inhabited by the doomed couple are advanced and possess a fluidity that quietly threaten the fixed absolutism of the play’s textual context. The declaration of being “man and wife, and ‘tis the Church that must echo this” (1.3.191-2) is revolutionary and may be defined as the Duchess’ primary success in physically defying patriarchal restrictions on her romantic and sexual agency. Furthermore, within the private sphere of the relationship, the Duchess does not assume the traditional submissive role of a typical Renaissance wife, indeed, initially, we perceive Antonio to exhibit the majority of such characteristics as he professes to “remain the constant sanctuary of [her] good name” (1.3.163-4), the precise duty that the Duchess herself abdicated in favour of emotional and sexual enrichment. Crucially, however, the Duchess uses her political power and superior status to elevate Antonio literally and metaphorically to position him closer to her level of social significance and power, rather than seeking the submissiveness her brother requires of her. Identifying that his “goodly roof” is “too low built” and that this inequality is a threat to a healthy relationship, she commits to “raise it higher” (1.3.120-22). Therefore, on an interpersonal and intertextual level, the Duchess is an example of a feminine agent who partly succeeds in battle against her patriarchal oppressors. We may perceive her demise as not entirely a cautionary tale of female rebellion, but a logical inevitability in conversation with the fates of the majority of Renaissance era tragic heroes. Her textual “containment” is complex and difficult to ascertain, considering that the extinguishing of her physical lifeforce is both a generic trope of Renaissance tragedies, regardless of gender, and the irrefutably “intrinsic” value of her “echo” (5.3.24) to the “literary representation” of feminine perseverance (Dollimore 71).
In conclusion, Middleton & Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, Lyly’s Galatea, and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi present female characters engaging in ideologically disruptive activities within the context of their shared Elizabethan and Jacobean time period. Whilst Moll’s narrative “containment” practically neutralises her initial political potency, the virgin couple of Galatea subtly transcend their narrative confinement through obfuscation of intention and conclusion. We interpret the Duchess to achieve political and narrative sovereignty in death, however her personhood is the true sacrifice of the Renaissance tragedy’s generic conventions, as she is never designated a forename, and only attains agency as a literal echo of her former self. We may observe, then, according to the textual evidence provided in the three plays, that female emancipation in Renaissance era drama thrives primarily in comedic and non-dramatic texts that are wholly fictional, as this dearth of realism provides the necessary ambiguous safe space for transgressive artistic output to survive the period’s oppressive moralistic gender doctrine.
Works Cited
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Consistory Court Record, 27 January 1612. Cited in Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl, edited by Paul A. Mulholland. Manchester UP, 1987, pp.262-263.
Dollimore, Jonathan. “Subjectivity, Sexuality, and Transgression: The Jacobean Connection.” Renaissance Drama. The University of Chicago Press, 1986. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41917213. Accessed 4 Dec. 2022.
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Lyly, John. Galatea. Edited by Leah Scragg. Malone Society by Oxford University Press, 1998.
Mahler, Andreas. “States of Exception on the Shakespearean Stage: Political and Aesthetic Sovereignty in ‘King Lear,’ ‘Hamlet’ and ‘The Duchess of Malfi.’” Poetica. Brill, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26600441. Accessed 6 Dec. 2022.
Meyer, Robert J. “‘Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue’: The Mystery of Love in Lyly’s Gallathea.” Studies in English Literature. Rice University, 1981. https://doi.org/10.2307/450144. Accessed 2 Dec. 2022
Middleton, Thomas & Dekker, Thomas. Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. Edited by Gary Taylor. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Shihab, Ibrahim & Al-Shra’a, Mahmoud & Abushihab, Esraa. “The Status of Women in Renaissance Drama: An Analytical and Critical Study of Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612)”. Journal of Language Teaching and Research. 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346412734 Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.
Webster, John. “The Duchess of Malfi.” The Northern Anthology of English Literature tenth edition: The Sixteenth Century and The Early Seventeenth Century. Norton & Company, 2018.
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