Madness Flashcards
Introduction
In the Duchess of Malfi and A Streetcar Named Desire, madness is not merely a psychological condition suffered by flawed individuals, but the inevitable consequence of inhabiting societies built on repression, corruption and patriarchy. While characters like Blanche and Ferdinand do exhibit personal delusions, their descent into madness is catalysed by a world that denies emotional honesty, moral integrity and human vulnerability. Through dramatic devices such as Webster’s grotesque anti-masque and William’s expressionist Plastic Theatre, both playwrights embed madness within social frameworks- making it not only visible but structural. Crucially, the plays differ in tone: Malfi renders madness absurd and satirical, while Streetcar treats it with psychological depth and tragic tenderness, reflecting not only their distinct historical contexts but their differing views on whether society is capable of redemption
1: Emotional violence as the seed of madness
Topic sentence
Emotional violence in both plays functions as the primary means through which male figures exert control and induce psychological torment in women, laying the groundwork for madness. These tactics reflect patriarchal anxieties about female autonomy
Their emotional abuse functions less as personal cruelty and more as a structured mechanism to reassert gendered dominance, laying the groundwork for madness as a socially manufactured outcome
1: emotional violence as the seed of madness
Comparison
Ferdinand’s violence is theatrical and symbolic, Blanche’s degradation more psychological and cumulative. Yet both expose how patriarchal society uses emotional cruelty to dismantle women who step beyond their prescribed roles- through sexuality (Blanche), or political autonomy (the Duchess). Both are driven toward madness by being made to feel they no longer belong in the world they inhabit.
Though separated by centuries, both plays depict emotional violence as a calculated response to female transgression. Ferdinand enacts cruelty under the guise of aristocratic honour; stanley cloaks it in realism and masculine logic. In both cases, emotional abuse precedes madness nor as cause and effect, but as strategy and outcome. These men do not lose control- they weaponise it. Their violence is a form of authorship; they rewrite the women around them until madness becomes the only narrative left
1: emotional violence as the seed of madness
Ferdinand’s psychological cruelty (The Duchess of Malfi)
-”i will leave this ring with you for a love token, and the hand as sure as the ring” (Act 4.1). A grotesque parody of romantic gesture- perverting symbols of love into tools of psychological torture. This scene is not simply sadistic but crafted to break the Duchess’s spirit before her physical death. Ferdinand’s emotional violence is not a private obsession- it is institutional misogyny cloaked in the language of duty.
-”let her have lights enough”. On a literal level, he ensures she sees the horror clearly- but symbolically, he invades her mental and spiritual space, using “light” as a weapon. The duchess’s breakdown into a vision of hell- that’s the greatest torture souls feel in hell, that they must live and cannot die”- marks the internalisation of his torment
-this emotional sadism is legitimised by the court culture that surrounds him. His torment of the Duchess is never publicly challenged- indeed, it is facilitated by agents like Bosola, who operate within the framework of courtly obedience.
-in the 2018 RSC production, this was staged with disturbing intimacy; Ferdinand whispered threats into the Duchess’s ear while caressing her face, weaponising proximity and silence to dominate the scene. The choice to forgo overt violence in favour of calculated stillness made the psychological power dynamics explicit, revealing how the most terrifying violence can be almost invisible.
1: emotional violence as the seed of madness
Stanley’s emotional erosion of Blanche
-”remember what Huey Long said- “every man is a king!”” (scene 8). A direct assertion of patriarchal hierarchy, this line frames Stanley’s domination as socially sanctioned. His cruelty stems not just from personal resentment but from a society that values masculine control. Stanley is not merely Blanche’s antagonist- he is the embodiment of the society that sees her fragility as a threat to its rationalist ideals. The violence is epistemic: his emotional cruelty becomes a performance of masculine authority in a postwar society that celebrates rationality, working-class pride and the containment of emotional instability
-”Ticket! Back to Laurel”. A symbol of Blanche’s dismissal from society. She is physically returned to the site of her disgrace, but the real violence is emotional- he reduces her to her past and invalidates her entire present identity.
-theatrical interpretation- Young Vic (2014)- Varsouviana polka plays as Blanche clutches her throat, creating a physical and auditory representation of trauma. The use of green lighting- eerie and sickly- mirrors Blanche’s psychological fragility. Some critics praised this for immersing the audience in her delusion; others felt it robbed her of dignity by over-aestheticising her pain.
1: emotional violence as the seed of madness
CRITICS and CONTEXT
CRITIC: Dympna Callaghan ”Female madness in Renaissance tragedy is almost never the expression of inherent instability- it is a cultural reaction to the destabilising threat posed by women who transgress male authority”. Callaghan’s view helps frame Ferdinand’s emotional violence as a patriarchal response to the Duchess’s refusal to conform to gendered expectations. However, the Duchess’s composed defiance (”i am Duchess of Malfi still”) complicates this by showing a woman who refuses to internalise the madness imposed upon her.
CONTEXT: Webster’s court is a microcosm of political corruption, where surveillance and emotional cruelty are institutional rather than incidental. Antonio’s poisoned fountain metaphor reveals how Ferdinand’s madness stems from- and perpetuates- the diseased hierarchy of power.
CONTEXT: stanley’s emotional violence reflects 1940s ideals of masculine dominance reasserted in the domestic sphere after WWII. Both personal vengeance and cultural enforcement.
1: emotional violence as the seed of madness
While the Duchess and Stella respond to patriarchal violence in different ways- resistance vs complicity- both are ultimately silenced by the social structures that condition their choices.
-**”but there are things that happen between a man and woman in the dark […]” (Scene 4). Stella’s justification of Stanley’s violence reveals emotional compartmentalisation. Her madness is quieter- denial rather than breakdown- but nonetheless a psychic cost of survival.
-”he smashed all the lightbulbs with the heel of my slipper”. Symbolically, Stanley extinguishes all illumination- both literal and metaphorical- after their reunion. Stella’s compliance is conditioned by desire, but also by a society that teaches women to conflate abuse with passion.
-Stella’s silence at the end of the play as a form of socially-enforced madness- internalising the need to survive rather than acknowledge the truth.
-the Duchess embraces her suffering with nobility and clarity; Stella denies her suffering to preserve stability. Yet both women are crushed by the same system- one by literal death, the other by symbolic erasure. Neither fully escapes the violence of a patriarchal society that frames their madness as either noble of necessary
-Elia Kazan director of the 1951 film controversially rewrote the ending so Stella leaves Stanley, offering a moral resolution that the original deliberately withholds. This alteration arguably neuters the play’s critique, offering false redemption rather than exposing the cost of emotional truth in a patriarchal world
2: Madness as moral judgement vs Tragic Victimhood
Topic sentence
The treatment of madness at the end of each play reflects sharply contrasting moral and cultural perspectives. In the Duchess of Malfi, madness is depicted as just punishment for corruption and sexual repression, while in A Streetcar Named Desire, it is presented as the final, unjust cost of emotional vulnerability in an indifferent world. These different framings expose how social structures define who is mad and whether madness is a moral betrayal or a societal betrayal
2: Madness as moral judgement vs Tragic Victimhood
Ferdinand- madness as moral consequences of tyranny and repression
-ferdinand’s descent into lycanthropy ”he seems to have grown a wolf’s skin” (5.2) is a grotesque physicalisation of the violent instincts that have defined his rule. The metaphor draws on early associations of madness with animalistic regression, echoing cultural beliefs in melancholia and humoral imbalance, while also suggesting that beneath aristocratic control lies a latent savagery released by his inability to control female sexuality.
-his line ”ill throttle it” spoken as he attempts to strangle his own shadow, becomes darkly comic- an image of madness as self-annihilation and poetic justice. Webster stages this not with pathos but absurdity, framing Ferdinand’s madness as the final exposure of his dehumanisation.
-Critic Frank Whigham argues that Ferdinand’s collapse is “the externalisation of inner contradictions bred by absolutist patriarchy” suggesting that his madness is not merely personal, but structural and product of a courtly culture that both enables and punishes emotional repression
-yet while his death functions as cathartic justice, Webster refuses to offer clean moral resolution. Delio’s closing call ”nobly-born” heirs to inherit ”noble cause” may appear redemptive, but the sheer number of corpses and the carnage left behind suggest that the rot runs deep. Ferdinand is both agent and victim of systemic disease: his madness is symptomatic not only of his inner turmoil but of a world that equates honour with violence and masculinity with domination
2: Madness as moral judgement vs Tragic Victimhood
Blanche: Madness as Tragic Social Exile
-blanche’s removal from society is not the outcome of moral corruption but the culmination of years of personal trauma, societal neglect and emotional erasure.
-her line **”i dont tell the truth, i tell what ought to be truth” (scene 9) captures the tragic idealism at the heart of the character” she seeks refuge in illusion not to manipulate, but to survive in a world that punishes fragility
-her final line ”i have always depended on the kindness of strangers” (scene 11) is deeply ironic. Spoken as she escorted away by a doctor and a matron, the phrase both exposes the failure of social compassion and reveals the vulnerability society exploits
-Philip Kolin observes “blanche is not mad because she is deluded, but because her delusions are the only form of protection society leaves her”. Her madness is a diagnosis given not to a danger to others, but to a woman who disrupts the myth of domestic harmony and male authority.
-william underscores this tragedy through staging. The return of the poker game- ”this game is seven-card stud” immediately after Blanche’s removal reflects society’s emotional amnesia. The cyclical rhythm of the game replaces any moral reckoning, suggesting that Stanley’s world remains intact and unchallenged
-Elia Kazan director of 1951 film controversially rewrote the ending so Stella leaves Stanley, offering a moral resolution that the original deliberately withholds. This alteration arguably neuters the play’s critique, offering false redemption rather than exposing the cost of emotional truth in a patriarchal world
2: Madness as moral judgement vs Tragic Victimhood
Contextual comparison
-in the Duchess of malfi, madness is framed by early modern beliefs in divine justice and Renaissance stoicism. Audiences of the time would interpret Ferdinand’s breakdown as the exposure of sinful corruption- madness as retribution, a classical tragic motif that reinforced moral order
-streetcar shaped by 20th century concerns with psychiatry, trauma and gender conformity. Postwar-america prized rational masculinity and domestic containment.; Blanche’s inability to embody these ideals marks her as “mad” in a clinical, institutional sense. Her removal reflects broader mid-century patterns of female institutionalisation, in which women who resisted or failed to conform were pathologised and not protected.
2: Madness as moral judgement vs Tragic Victimhood
Comparative evaluation
Ferdinand’s madness is grotesque, violent and deserved; Blanche’s is tender, tragic and socially imposed. Yet both are expelled from their respective worlds, not because of inherent instability, but because their continued presence exposes the fragility of the systems they threaten. In this way, both plays ultimately critique the societies that define and dispose of madness- whether through the absurd theatre of a corrupt court, or the clinical indifference of a postwar apartment in New Orleans
The comic tone may blunt the emotional resonance of his downfall- unlike Blanche, whose madness evokes audience pity, Ferdinand’s descent is made a moral punchline
3: Madness as framed by theatrical form- political theatre vs psychological immersion
Topic sentence
Theatre does not simply present madness; it constructs the audience’s experience of it. In the Duchess of Malfi, madness is meditated through stylised performance- satiricalm symbolic and public- whereas in A Streetcar named desire, madness is an immersive, internal descent shaped by williams’ “Plastic theatre”. Each playwright uses form to interrogate how madness is viewed, judged and legitimised- turning theatre into both a mirror and an accomplice of societal dysfunction.
3: Madness as framed by theatrical form- political theatre vs psychological immersion
Webster- Madness as Grotesque Spectacle and Institutional Satire
-in the Duchess of Malfi, madness is theatricalised through the deployment of the madmen in Act 4.2, who perform a distorted anti-masque filled with parody, grotesquery, and institutional satire. Their “ditty” about professions- ”a lawyer will not plead… a gentleman ushering that never goes without his cudgel” reduces the supposedly rational figures to babbling caricatures, suggesting that madness is not deviation from society but a reflection of it
-theatrically, the madmen disrupt the order but also reinforce it- functioning as an anti-masque that reflects the court’s degeneracy before order is nominally restored.
-in the Sam Wanamaker 2024, the madmen wore masks of political figures like Trump and Kim jong un, explicitly linking modern tyranny to jacobean corruption. Their unmasking to reveal Ferdinand’s courtiers underscored that madness is embedded in institutional power- those who seem mad are merely those who speak the truth too openly.
-yet critics are divided. Michael Neil argues that the madmen “form a comic chorus to tragedy” reinforcing the court’s rottenness. However, one might reject this reading: the use of parody distances the audience from the genuine empathy with the Duchess making her torment stylised spectacle rather than a psychological experience. Webster’s dramatic mode- satire and symbolism- frames madness as systemic, but risks erasing the personal dimensions of suffering.
3: Madness as framed by theatrical form- political theatre vs psychological immersion
Williams- madness as immersive subjectivity through plastic theatre
-in contrast, streetcar constructs madness from within, embedding the audience in Blanche’s consciousness via William’s expressionist Plastic Theatre. Sound motifs, lighting shifts and symbolic objects collapse the boundary between the real and the imagined. The Varsouviana polka- triggered by references to Allan Grey- begins as non-diegetic but is revealed in scene 9 to be in Blanche’s mind” ”the music is in her mind; she is drinking to escape it”. The audience thus hears what she hears, her madness becomes a shared auditory space.
-Blanche’s hallucinations are not absurdist, but tragic. When she claims ”that music again […] its in my head”. Williams dismantles the audience’s sense of objective reality. The theatre becomes a fractured mindcape.
-Elin Diamond argues that the Plastic theatre ”materialises the invisible wounds of patriarchy” turning the abstract into something theatrically tangible. This allows Blanche’s madness to be read both as deviation from reason but as a reason crushed by trauma.
-in her final scene, Blanche’s madness is rendered through visual symbols that echo her vulnerability. The paper lantern torn away by stanley is a recurring emblem of her delusions: a fragile aesthetic veil cast over brutality.
-her plea ”dont turn the light on” becomes the last defence of mind refusing to accept an unkind reality
-in the 2023 Frecknell production, the doctor who escorts Blanche was the same actor who played the drummer underscoring her psychological moments. His reappearance physically links madness theatrical rhythm and memory, suggesting Blanche’s breakdown is a product of accumulated trauma. Her exit through the auditorium, not the stage, literalised her removal from a society that made her madness necessary.
3: Madness as framed by theatrical form- political theatre vs psychological immersion
Contextual comparison
Jacobean theatre often externalised madness as political metaphor- linked to divine punishment, imbalance of humours or decay of the state. Madness was understood as something to be looked at, controlled or punished. The anti-masque gave licence to chaos before reaffirming order
In contrast, Williams writes in a post-freudian, post-war cultural climate, where madness is increasingly internal, medicalised and feminised. Female breakdowns were pathologised and institutionalised. Williams drama thus reflects the brutal containment of women who challenge domestic stability- Blanche is not mad in a Jacobean sense; she is unliveable in a modern one.
3: Madness as framed by theatrical form- political theatre vs psychological immersion
Comparative Evaluation
Webster’s use of spectacle and satire alienates the audience from madness using it as a tool of societal critique. Williams uses immersive theatrical devices to engender empathy and collapse emotional distance. While Webster exposes madness as systemic through stylisation, Williams invites the audience to feel it- transforming madness from grotesque pageant to tragic intimacy. In both plays, madness remains socially constructed, but the form through which it is represented deeply alters how we understand and respond to it
