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Duchess of Malfi critics - Coggle Diagram
Duchess of Malfi critics
The Duchess
The Duchess represents the emerging bourgeois, while her brothers represent aristocratic values of decadent self-display. - Henderson
The conflict between enlightenment and feudalism is fairly prevalent in the play especially highlighting Bosola's fights against feudalism however it is more Marxism that is emphasised.
The strangulation of the Duchess is a way of Webster condemning the destructive manipulations of the society around her. - Whitman
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Despite her political sovereignty, her brothers assume a patriarchal control over her body and sexuality, an assumption which extends over her political state. - Aughterson
Webster develops the Duchess' character while simultaneously utilising and resisting the polarised discourses around women at the time, which presented women as either chaste paragons or lascivious whores". - Callaghan
She take autonomy over herself and melds those images by chooding a husband and having children whilst maintaining her status until the very end when she says 'i am duchess of Malfi still'. Clearly she is painted as auotonomous and fairly modern.
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Play
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Webster's characters die superbly, asserting their selfhood to the very end - Tyan
The final act is designed to show that the way of the Arragonian brothers is that of madness and damnation, the complete descent of man into beast symbolised by the lycanthropia of Ferdinand. - Ribner
Webster ends D of M and 'The White devil' with young boys. They are symbols of rebirth and hope. - Aughterson
Could also show that the future, no matter the sacrifice of the Duchess, is still dominated by patriarchal forces, when hope is in the form of a man then the future will forget the sacrifices of the feminine past.
Bosola
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With all his many roles, Bosola is never permitted the luxury of being a self - Bradbrook
He shapes himself into so many roles and is restricted by those who seek to mould hi into their own tool, he becomes the tool for the state to corrupt their society, and it is dangerous for that tool to become a self, as is seen at the end of the play, for his morality urges him to use himself as a tool and a 'murderer' to cleanse society.
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