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Summary Malfi themes
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Summary of 3 pages for the course AS Unit 1 - Prose and Drama at WJEC (.)
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MALFI THEMESTragedy
> Malfi incorporates comedy and death in a significant comi-tragic relationship ofa
play where tragedy marches with and overcomes the humour of comic satire, where
a corrupt society reflects the tragic goodness of the heroine and purposefully
misunderstands that goodness, reject those values for itself and prefers to adopt a
lie. Such a standpoint leads inexorably to darkness, confusion and exhaustion:
Ferdinand’s ‘sleep’.
> Duchess is the personification of tragedy : Duchess encompasses melodramatic
tragic flaws: unattractive characteristics: lust, disregard for her princely duties,
deviousness, false accusation of her inferiors, greed, a questionable judgement (in
her choice of Antonio), blasphemy and passive abuse in the possible neglect of her
oldest son.
Unorthodox marriage
> Unconventional and improper to the point of attracting moral censure in at least 3
ways: it is unequal, it is secret, it is her second. Webster's lawyer view presents both
sides of the argument in an unbiased view.
> Out of class – social misdemeanour for Elizabethans/Jacobeans – seem more
acceptable a man marrying below himself, drawing his wife up to his own level of
social status. A woman marrying a servant meant her husband was ennobled to her
status, causing envy and confusion.
Position of women
> Assertive women provoked much controversy – Webster had a recent and poignant
example in the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth, who kept her throne intact by
remaining single, the opposite of the Duchess.
Incest and fornication
> The vehemence of Ferdinand’s outrage at his sister’s marriage surprises and then
alarms even the Cardinal – who’s words ‘to see her in the shameful act of sin’ his lust
for blood that leads him to offer the familial and phallic poniard all seem to point to
his carnal and unfulfilled and ultimately insane desire for his sister.
> Julia and the Cardinal – Webster’s cardinal is not at liberty to marry. Even in their
tenderer moments Julia and the Cardinal’s affair is shown as shallow, brilliant and
brittle. He is cynical and she is fickle – he mocks her with satire ‘Why do you weep?
Are tears your justification?’ is Webster discrediting of the Cardinal in a disguised
attempt to discredit the Catholic church?
> Webster uses contorted deviations of desire to ameliorate audience disapproval
already settling on the Duchess for her disregard of social, sexual and religious
convention.
Hell on earth
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