Social Class Flashcards
What is the general attitude towards social class in the Duchess of Malfi?
The Cardinal’s reference to the Duchess’s ‘high blood’ smacks of class insecurity: he is afraid that she will fall into the arms of a lower-class man. Later in the play, when the brothers learn that their sister has indeed remarried, they leap to the conclusion that her second husband is of humble birth. So the Cardinal cries ‘Shall our blood, / The royal blood of Aragon and Castile, / Be thus attainted?’, confirming his belief that a cross-class marriage constitutes a tainting or corruption of the family’s pure noble blood. The fact that at this stage they do not even know the identity of their sister’s new husband demonstrates just how insecure and under threat they feel, as though the privileges and power they inherited by virtue of their exalted birth are now being put under pressure by interlopers from lower down the social scale.
How is social mobility presented in the play?
The brothers’ jitteriness about rank reflects the unprecedented levels of social mobility that characterised early modern England. Those in power were fond of claiming that a fixed and rigid social hierarchy was divinely ordained, but the reality was restless movement up and down the social scale, as land and wealth flowed away from old, established families into the hands of ‘new’ men – lawyers, merchants, administrators, yeomen – who were eager to step into their predecessors’ shoes.
How can you relate the transgression of social conventions in the play to the debate about whether noble blood or personal merit is more deserving of honour?
Not surprisingly, this erosion of the social hierarchy was accompanied by a heated debate about whether noble blood or personal merit was more deserving of honour. Webster, the son of a wealthy coach-maker, contributed to this debate throughout his theatrical career. According to literary critic Elli Abraham Shellist, it is ‘the source of cultural conflict that is most frequently and intensely enacted’ in his plays. In The Duchess of Malfi, Webster signals that the play’s dominant aristocratic order is in a state of crisis, threatened by men like Antonio, an able administrator who, as we will soon learn, captures the heart of a high-born woman more impressed by merit than rank.
How is marriage presented in the play compared with the context of the play?
So the brothers’ attitude to the Duchess’s marrying again is determined not just by their ideas about women but also by their ideas about class boundaries and the nature of marriage. They share misogynistic views of the sexuality of widows and the patriarchal assumption that they have the right to dictate their sister’s sexual destiny. But these attitudes are all bound up with their belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman which should be chosen not by the individual but by the family, and not for reasons of love but with a view to enhancing family power and maintaining elite exclusivity. By the time Webster wrote The Duchess, this conception of marriage was very much associated with the upper classes. It is important to recognise that there was an alternative view available, often called the companionate ideal of marriage, which (as its name suggests) placed love and compatibility above the demands of family honour. This very different notion of marriage derived from the Protestant belief that marriage was an essential ingredient of human happiness and, as such, had to be built on a foundation of mutual love and respect.
How does the Chain of Being relate to the concept of social class?
The Great Chain of Being organised the world into a fixed order, with God at the top, descending successively through angels, men, women (!), animals, birds, fishes, insects, trees and plants to stones. There were seven orders of angels, with archangels at the top. Men were organised in a fixed order from king down to serf. Such domains within the greater hierarchy meant that the structure of each class reflected the structure of creation as a whole. Therefore, the transgression of these hierarchical values was to defy God himself.
