DoM More Critics Flashcards
Ellen Caldwell
‘although she is not literally dissected, the pregnancy of the Duchess marks her […] as an object of both reverent fascination and disgust.’
LUCKYJ on why the duchess remains unconventional
‘The Duchess remains unconventional: partly because her marriage remains secret, she retains her ‘masculine’ authority as widow and ruler and continues both to issue commands and to generate the action’
LUCKYJ on the ekphrasis
“It is Ferdinand who uses horror-mongering forms such as the ‘spectacle’ of the wax corpses and the severed hand; the Duchess, by contrast, often reaches for analogies from the natural world, likening herself to ‘robin redbreast and the nightingale’
Callaghan
‘Webster gives two ‘twin’ shows of madness, the Duchess’s and Ferdinand’s, and directs two opposing responses, one charitable, one mocking’
Brennan
‘Malfi (…) constantly suggests a series of contrasts and parallels: between light and darkness; health and sickness; sanity and insanity; life and death.’
Ekeblad
‘the dance of the madmen chart[s] the Duchess’s fate by turning the marriage masque into a masque of death.
Clifford Leech
Criticises the Duchess for her “irresponsible ‘overturning of a social code’,”
suggesting that her defiance of societal norms contributes to the tragic outcome.
Elizabeth Oaks
notes that
“at the end she is, she says, the Duchess of Malfi still, and with that title she negates her relationship with Antonio: she becomes the woman carved in stone that Ferdinand wanted her to be,”
suggesting that her self-deception lies in her adherence to her title and identity despite her personal desires
Lisa Hopkins on the Duchess
“The Duchess is complicit in her own confinement; she chose secrecy”
Lisa Hopkins on the men
“the men in The Duchess of Malfi confine themselves by attempting to confine the Duchess”
william kerwin
“Nowhere in this play does anyone create a successful performance; the good physician is as absent as the virtuous prince.”
