The Duchess of Malfi ~ the Duchess vs. the Virgin Queen

At the beginning of our discussion with this text, our professor stressed that The Duchess of Malfi was written in a less optimistic time, the Jacobian period. She referenced the poet John Donne, who said of this time, "tis all in pieces, all coherence gone." For this text I want to highlight the many cultural ideas and attitudes that are clashing within this text, and the characters that are attempting to piece together some form of coherence about their lives and identity.

A woman in a position of authority, thus far in British history, could only survive by fitting into the extremely particular set of rules that would make her presence not threatening to the men in her life. For example, Queen Elizabeth I, or, "the virgin queen" succeeded as a ruler because she adopted the ready-made, already accepted and loved image of the virgin Mary. She appeared to be married to the throne, god, and her people.

The Duchess was the furthest thing from "the virgin queen." She was a woman who embraced her desires, sexuality, and womanhood at the expense of her reputation and public opinion.

Cariola says of the Duchess,

whether the spirit of greatness or woman reigns most in her, I know not, but it shows a fearful madness. I owe her much of pity.

Cariola, taken aback by the boldness of the Duchess, struggles to make sense of the type of woman she is. Cariola seems to recognize that there is something valiant in the Duchess's defiance of the restrictions imposed upon her by Ferdinand. She admits in the above excerpt that the Duchess's choices and actions may be heroic, but that they may also be a product of her inherently fickle and sinful woman-ness. Either way, Cariola knows that the Duchess is stepping much too far outside the bounds of how it is permitted for a woman to behave, and therefore calls it "madness."

The reader, too, struggles throughout the text to define the Duchess. Is she a hero? Her defiance towards her role as a leader for the sake of fulfilling her desires of the heart could be interpreted as heroic. She unabashedly pursues what she wants and finds it - a husband, children, companionship, sex. However her motives for her actions often seem childish - the way she breaks her promise to Ferdinand about marrying again directly after he leaves is almost comical - and so she doesn't seem to quite fit the role of a tragic hero.

The complexity and ambiguity of the Duchess's character served to make her more accessible and human to the reader. As the Duchess struggles to assert herself throughout the play, the reader resonates with her yearing towards human desires - and it comes as a gross shock that the Duchess must pay with her life for taking actions that give purpose and meaning to life. This point solidified for me in the most resounding line of the play,

I am Duchess of Malfi still.

In the middle of her death scene, the Duchess asserts herself, asserts her identity and presence to Bosola, and perhaps more importantly, to herself. She does not beg for her life and she does not repent her life either. I am Duchess of Malfi still. The modern reader is reminded of Walt Whitman's,
"Song of Myself," and that this line is the Duchess's "barbaric yawp" over the rooftops of her world.

This is a picture of the Duchess (center), Ferdinand (left), and the Cardinal (right), taken at a production of The Duchess of Malfi at Columbia University. In this picture you can see the Duchess open defiance of the men around her, sharply contrasting with the austere portrait of Queen Elizabeth I shown below. 

Queen Elizabeth I