Subversion Subverted Exploring Women's Roles in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy

Monica Tedder

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Myhill, Nova

Keywords

Renaissance Literature, Early Modern Drama, Domestic Tragedy, Gender

Area of Concentration

English

Abstract

This thesis explores the agency of women in the domestic tragedy of early modern England, focusing on plays about witchcraft and mariticide, the murder of one's husband. This thesis deals with four plays and their sources. Two are anonymous Elizabethan mariticide plays: A Warning for Fair Women and Arden of Faversham, and two are Jacobean witchcraft plays: Brome and Heywood's The Late Lancashire Witches and Dekker, Ford, and Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton. The sources for these plays are recounted in Golding's �A Briefe Discourse,� Holinshed's Chronicles, and Goodcole's �The Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer.� The first chapter discusses the witchcraft plays in terms of the social mobility of the main female characters. The way the other members of the community perceive of these women affects the agency each woman has as a witch. The second chapter discusses the way in which the mariticide plays combine two different types of narrative readings found within the sources: a narrative of providence and divine will and a narrative of crime and punishment.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS