This is an A grade A level English literature essay that has come with some teacher feedback. It is a good guide to how you can write your essays in order to achieve top marks!
“Good writing about sexual relationships is invariably moral”
Teacher feedback:
Overall, a very good essay with excellent reference to critical interpretations and
context.
What to improve:
To get full marks focus on how critical interpretations have changed over time. For
example mention 19th century thinkers and compare to perhaps 21st century thinkers
for a better critical analysis of text.
John Webster’s the ‘Duchess of Malfi’ and Christina Rossetti in her canon of poetry
approach the morality of sexual relationships in different ways. While webster suggests that
sexual relationships are ‘invariably moral’ as many stem from a desire for happiness.
Contrastingly while Rossetti does not refute this in her poetry she does not however
subscribe to this view, viewing sexual relationships not to be ‘invariably moral’ but at times’
moral’ as they prevent an individual from leading a spiritual life with god. Yet both highlight
that female sexual relationships incite scandal and are castigated by society whereas male
sexual relationships are seen to be inherently ‘moral’ and as such both writers seek to
expose the blatant hypocrisy within their society. Therefore, through exploring the morality of
sexual relationships, both writers seek to expose the hypocrisy that lies within social
institutions of both Jacobean and Victorian society.
The clearest similarity between both texts is that both writers explore the morality of sexual
relationships through their characters engaging in sanctioned and justified ones for their own
happiness. Yet By doing so both writers underline the blatant hypocrisy that lies within
society that deems male sexual relationships to be ‘moral’ and oppose female ones, even if
they are morally justified. This is best embodied by the eponymous character of the duchess
who Webster highlights is morally entitled to happiness which for her, is in the form of a
husband. Although her sexual relationship is invariably moral and permitted with legal
foundations as ‘she slips the ring upon his finger’ which would satiate Elizabethan canon
law. As a protestant, Webster draws upon the religious context of Jacobean society where
the idea of a ‘compassionate marriage’ in Protestantism permitted a man and woman to wed
with the simple declaration of marriage. Although her sexual relationship is morally and
legally justified, Webster underlines how society and indeed her brothers ‘practised their
tyranny’ by declaring her a ‘notorious strumpet’ who is ‘loose in’the hills’ after she disobeys
their ‘terrible good counsel’ of ‘not to marry again’. The character of the duchess resonates
with King James’s cousin Lady Arabella Stuart who in 1610 was imprisoned in the tower for
engaging in a sexual and clandestine affair with William Seymour until her demise in 1615.
This serves as the epitome of the corrupt attitude that Jacobean social and indeed
monarchical institutions had towards female sexual relationships where they clearly labelled
them to be immoral. Webster clearly criticises both the cardinal and Ferdinand and indirectly
criticises the inherent corruption within the Jacobean court. Dympna Callaghan suggests that
‘the court of Amalfi presents in miniature the court of Whitehall’ and as such Webster seeks
to explore the morality of sexual relationships as a means to criticise the Jacobean social
order and its attitude towards sexual relationships. This is echoed by Sean McEvoy who
highlights that the duchess’s tragedy is ‘the fault of those who run the society around her’ as
she is punished quite innocently, for a morally justified reaction. In many ways this would
justify the proposition that “Good writing about sexual relationships is invariably moral’ as
Webster would agree to inform his Jacobean audience that attitudes towards female sexual
relationships just like men’s, are moral.
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