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Dutchess and Malfi - Structure and analysis
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Lecture notes of 2 pages for the course AS Unit 1 - Prose and Drama at WJEC (.)
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DUCHESS AND MALFI – STRUCTURE AND ANALYSISAO4 - DOUBLE MARKS
TIMING:
Introduction: 3 mins
Paragraph 1: 16 minutes
Paragraph 2: 16 minutes
Paragraph 3: 16 minutes
Paragraph 4: 16 minutes
SYMBOLISM
Light and Darkness
- Streetcar – Blanche avoids harsh light to conceal her signs of ageing as well as being
able to live in her fantasy world without harsh interruptions. Light is truth, exposure,
revelation. Scene with Mitch where he shines the light in her face. She buys a lantern
to cover the truth, Stanley strips it at the end of the play – reflects the rape of him
taking her dignity away, making her insecure and scared. Pink lantern, rose tinted
coloured vision on life, altering and changing the meaning of life to make it more
palatable.
- Streetcar – Blanche is likened to a ‘moth’ they are attracted to light, although it is a
danger, but they love the dark.
- Streetcar – Stella and Stanley with their ‘flashing lights’ wild sexuality and
excitement of sexual encounters ‘narcotized tranquillity’
- Poker scene at night, fight at night, rape at night
- Malfi – brothers torture the Duchess in the dark
- Duchess associated with light as she ‘stains the timed past, lights the time to come’
marking with beauty, whereas Blanche is constantly seeking the dark.
- Light is the truth in Streetcar, but in Malfi light is shown to show the lit fake figures,
manipulation of light, an untruth.
- Confusion of the night – play ends at night in darkness, Cardinal says ‘don’t come
down in the night even if I scream’
- Duchess: Echo of her voice comes back, in the dark, they cannot see around them
- Ferdinand ‘go hunt the badger by owl light….tis a deed of darkness’ in his madness
during his wolf episode
- Scene in her dressing room at night where Ferdinand appears – disturbing sexual
drives that disrupt the world, sexual violence, violence itself.
- Blanche – ‘I wont be looked at in this merciless glare’ – pressive and glare is
personification of the light
CLOTHES AND APPEARANCE
- Blanch is incongruent in her setting as she is all in white a virginal colour surrounded
by the diverse and turbulent atmosphere of New Orleans.
- Cardinal uses clothes of deception and false identity by dressing as a religious figure.
At one point he changes and puts on armour to arm himself, transition into a more
truthful identity.
- Clothes of Blanche’s apparent wealth and luxury related to the fantasy of Shep
Huntleigh, fake and an aspiration.
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