Dilemma of a Window as a Ruler in The Duchess of Malfi

Abstract

The Duchess of Malfi is a revenge tragedy, but Webster has used the form for much more than just its entertaining value. He has utilized it as a vehicle for the exploration of some themes relevant to the society of his time. Women and questions concerning feminine nature are used to signify troubling social and political issues of the day. The play deals, in different ways, with issues of political instability and constructs a rhetoric of femininity and feminine nature which complements the political aspects of the drama. It moves around a female protagonist, and her predicament shows how the themes of the play are constructed by Webster's thinking about social issues of his day. Ironically, he was making pints about women's rights at a time when only men were allowed to act on the stage. This article tries to analyses the relationship between Jacobean society and a window, the norms surrounding marriage, the freedom of women, and the state of patriarchy in England