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FREE WILL PL DOM & PL - Coggle Diagram
FREE WILL PL DOM & PL
1🐍PL: abuse/misuse of power: Satan exercises free will which is rebellion. Eve chooses to eat - she's influenced but still responsible.
Satan:“In meditated fraud and malice, bent / On man’s destruction”→ Deliberate abuse of power → manipulation and calculated evil
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Eve: “What is faith, love, virtue unassayed”
→ Justifies transgression → intellectualising misuse of freedom
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3🐍Milton: free will and gender: Eve exercises independence, yet is framed as weaker as her free will is questioned.
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Eve: “Law to ourselves, our reason is our law”→ Radical assertion of autonomy → rejects external (male/divine) authority
Eve: “Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love / Can by his fraud be shaken”
→ Eve resists idea of female weakness → asserts strength
Adam: “Reason is free, and reason he made right”
→ Free will linked to reason → masculine-coded rational authority
CONTEXT:
💥Webster: Jacobean society - female autonomy = social disorder - Webster critiques this oppression.
🐍Milton - reflects patriarchal theology - women are seen as more susceptible to temptation
AO5:
Jankowski: "She challenges Jacobean society's views regarding the representation of the female body and female sexuality."
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3💥DOM: consequences of free will: Duchess's choices lead to death and tragedy - no redemption as justice is unclear
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Duchess: “I know not which is best…”→ Emotional turmoil → psychological consequence of her earlier decisions
Duchess: “Come, violent death.”→ Ultimate consequence → free will leads to martyr-like acceptance of death
2💥DOM: Duchess uses free will to choose love & sexuality, but is punished for transgression - her autonomy seen as threatening
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Duchess (resisting brothers’ control)→ Her actions (secret marriage) = defiance of patriarchal system
suppression of female free will:
Duchess: “Antonio… mercy”
→ Moment of vulnerability → power stripped away
Duchess: “I had a very strange dream…”
→ Foreshadowing → sense of inevitable fate overriding agency
CONTEXT:
💥Webster - court politics = manipulation and control - reflects distrust in authority under James I
🐍Milton - reflects belief that evil arises from misused freedom, not God. Reinforces moral accountability
AO5:
Jankowski: "The boundaries of the Duchess's two bodies are indistinct and perpetually slipping."
CONTEXT: 💥Webster - 🐍Milton - AO5: Leonard: "Adam makes the right moral choice when he chooses to die for love."