Masculinity & Casual Misogyny Flashcards
DOM: ‘Diamonds are of most value, they say, that have passed through most jewellers’ hands’
Ferd: whores, by that rule, are precious.
AO1/2: Ferdinand acts as a mouthpiece for Renaissance casual misogynistic attitudes. He essentially undermines the DOM’s feminist argument.
Ferd’s devaluing of the female & female body - hypercritical of female expression if sexuality
Ferd: ‘toss her…root up her goodly forests…blast her…lay her general territory as waste’
Use of sexually explicit, violent and often intrusive verbs suggest a male entitlement to the possession and desecration of the female body.
AO5: from an eco-crit. perspective = Ferdinand’s desire to ultimately destroy the DOMs ecological territory is a metaphor for his desire to encroach onto her physical, human body.
‘This was my father’s poniard, I’d loath to see it rusty’ - MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST FEMALE & MASC. AUTHORITY (GENERATIONAL)
A01/2: generational passage of masculine authority
phallic imagery of ‘poniard’ reinforces male domination of the Duchess and her body politic & private.
Violent potential of the dagger = male & the patriarchy’s propensity for violence to quell the subversive woman.
AO3: Authority in renaissance families passed down through MALE generations, male family members had ultimate authority over females.
‘Hell is a mere glass house…devils are blowing up women’s souls on hollow irons.’
AO1/2: Glasshouse metaphor - malleable quality of glass perhaps a suggestion that women are easily manipulated.
‘devils blowing up women’s souls’ - sense of the pure & chaste image of women is eradicated here, women portrayed as intrinsically immoral as they are the progeny of Satan.
AO5: Perhaps these ‘devils blowing up women’s souls’ is a comment on the nature of renaissance society in which a woman’s reputation can be easily tainted or moulded to fit a certain narrative - usually something that is perpetrated by a man for his own self gain.
‘Tis not the whore’s milk that will quench my wildfire, but the whore’s blood’
AO1/AO2:
Ferd’s perverse obsession with revenge illustrated through the desire for ‘whore’s blood’ to quench his ‘wildfire’.
- Wildfire - utter spiralling destruction that Ferd. wishes to cause, encapsulates sheer extent of his outrage.
“Damn her! That body of hers, While that my blood ran pure in’t, was more worth Than that which thou wouldst comfort, called a soul.”
Ferdinand to Bosola in Act 4 Scene 1. Policing of women, keeping blood pure - class and incestuous desire.
