Miller 1

Dara Miller
Dr. Royster
ENG 428
14 May 2012
The Dismembered Duchess: Androgynous Politics in The Duchess of Malfi
Eileen Allman establishes The Duchess of Malfi as a highly metadramatic play, where
the contest for authority is a struggle for authorship of the text (147) and she defines this contest
not in terms of authorship, but in terms of gender. In her analysis, Allman explores the
dichotomy between male and female gender roles in Jacobean society, and examines the threat
which a politically and socially androgynous woman could pose to a tyrannical patriarchy. The
Duchess is a woman and a princea sexually experienced woman, a financially independent
inheritor of patriarchal wealth, and a female regent, (Allman 147) and as such serves as a
dangerous threat to her brothers misogynistic claims on her wealth, position, and body.
According to Allmans thesis, the Duchess murder, designed by her brothers to prove their
absoluteness, serves not only to refute it but also to dismantle the analogy between maleness and
the authority on which it is based[although] Ferdinand and the Cardinal determine the plays
actionthe duchess determines its meaning (148). While Allman convincingly interprets this
dismantling of gender roles in relation to the question of authority and authorship, she does not
thoroughly explore the trope of dismemberment that further emphasizes her point.
In Allmans first section of her analysis, she discusses The Fratriarchy, establishing the
roles of the brothers within the play and providing insight into their violent actions towards the
Miller 2

duchess. She initially claims that much of the work seeking to analyze the plays flimsy, after-
the-fact rationalization of the Cardinals malevolence has been merely compensatory
explanation, (148) and fails to satisfactorily explicate the reasoning behind the brothers
tyranny. Although she acknowledges both psychoanalytic and political readings, she ascertains
that the root of the brothers violence lies in their determination to preserve their masculinity
through the power of authorship (149). She maintains that the Cardinal styles himself the sui
generis author of his own authority, and that Ferdinand ignores the irrelevant, insubstantial
matter of the spirit and establishes the material conditions that grant him the right to own and
name others (150), and that both men seek revenge ultimately to protect their perceptions of
manhood. In contrast to the brothers, Allman establishes Bosola and Antonio as androgynous
men who can be swayed by both male and female polarities. Finally, she examines the duchess,
who assume[s] her brothers sex in authoring her life, (152) yet still remains ensnared by the
brothers authorship; although her tenacious adherence to the full-range of her humanity
eventually serves to explode their small world of tyrant-gods and subject-creatures, (155) it
only does so in her death.
Allmans next section, focused on Bosola and Antonio, almost entirely forgoes the
element of authorship from her thesis in favor of her interpretation of these two characters as
androgynous figures. According to her analysis, these two share a potentially feminizing role
because of their respective subordinate positions that creates an intimate bond between them
despite the enmity of their opposing sides (158). In drawing comparison between these
apparently unlike characters, she claims that they both count themselves men because they are
virtuous, (159) unlike the brothers, who base their manhood off of their social standing and
ability to control others.
Miller 3

In her discussion of masculinity of these two virtuous men, however, Allmans
digresses almost complete from her theme of authorship in the text. Her few attempts at
including it into this section, such as her claim that Bosola helps ease the Duchess death by
seizing partial theatrical control from Ferdinand by authoring disguises (162), seem
disconnected, and even locating the tears he sheds for the Duchess second death within a
discourse and dialogue does not convincingly tie the two strands of her analysis back
together.
In the concluding section of the chapter, Allman finally addresses the Duchess as more
than merely her brothers nemesis, Bosolas angel of innocence, and Antonios fateful echo
(175). As a woman who is double gendered and ambiguously ranked, the Duchess becomes an
ideologically unstable and destabilizing figure who eras[es] the division between her political
maleness and her life as a woman by choosing her own husband and establishing the conditions
of her obedience (176). She usurps what her brothers see as the masculine power by attempting
to write her own unsanctioned story, and thus her interactions with them are punctuated by
scenes of the marriage she authors and although they attempt to confine her within their
narrative, she wrests control of the narratives meaning both within the play and outside it in
the widening circle of her theatrical audiences (177).
Although valiantly attempting to reaffirm the Duchess ultimate power by ascribing final
control over the meaning of the text to her, Allmans analysis neglects one key component of the
text itself: The Duchess of Malfi is, at the core, a tragedy. The Duchess does indeed survive in
the hearts of the audience as a valiant heroine who struggles to reclaim her right to individuality
and self-authorship; however, in the end she still dies, her authorial voice strangled. She may
find some mutualityin her final relationship with her author, (188) but the tale as a whole is
Miller 4

not one of unity, but of dismemberment. Allman concludes by stating that absolute authority, if
it exists at all, resides with those who write the meaning of their own stories, (189) yet at the
end of the play the meaning of each characters story is unclear. The brothers are unmanned by
their own treacheries; Ferdinand, shattered by the finality of his own violence, loses his mind;
the Cardinal, faced with retribution for his evil, loses all the power he treasured; Bosola, even in
enacting justice to atone for his guilt over killing the Duchess, cannot resist also seeking
retribution for his own humiliation. While these collapses appear as just consequences for the
evil these characters have caused or committed, the effects of revenge also extend to the
innocent. Antonio, as Allman notes, is trapped between worlds (174); even though within the
private sphere of his marriage he flourishes as a lover, husband, and father, in the public
sphere he is stripped of authority, subjected to both his wife and to the tyrants who clearly
govern the world (175). Even before his accidental death, he is figuratively dismembered
through his inability to effectually impact the action of the narrative, he becomes as impotent as
Castruccio.
Finally, the Duchess herself faces gradual dismemberment throughout the progression of
the tragedy, primarily through her interactions with her brother Ferdinand. Already faced with a
divided identity as both female and prince, the Duchess, in trying to attain unity through
choosing her own husband and creating a new family, only continues to divide her identity
further. Her identity as a wife and mother stands at odds with her identity as the head of state,
and all three of these roles stand in opposition to her brothers. As the Duchess becomes further
embroiled in the furtive narrative of freedom she is attempting to write, those around her
increasingly speak of her in pieces rather than as a whole. Ferdinand, on hearing of her supposed
Miller 5

loss of honor, immediately begins a violent tirade of verbal dismemberment, vowing to see her
bleeding heart when he has hewed her to pieces (Webster 2.5.15,30).
As a dismembered character himself Antonio observes early on that he divides out his
villainy, and speaks with others tongues, and hears mens suits / With others ears (1.1.164-
65) Ferdinand is aptly suited to begin the process of dismembering his sister. He begins by
attacking at the most basic level of her authority, demanding to know if she is not a bare name /
And no essential thing? (Webster 3.2.71-2). The essential thing, or her royal authority, is
further mutilated when he instructs her to cut out [her] own tongue, (Webster 3.2.108) if she
wishes to protect her husband. She is then forced to see (she thinks) the mutilated bodies of her
husband and children, and from there Ferdinand makes it clear that he wishes to butcher her
mind as well, sending in madmen to shatter her sanity. Despite his best efforts, however,
Ferdinand cannot completely destroy his sister; rather, when Bosola enters to kill her, she
welcomes death, even as she is being reduced to down to a mere groan in his final song to her.
In death, Ferdinand appears to finally see her as a unified individual, and laments the loss of his
dearest friend (4.2.272) too late. The Duchess, although she dies intact, is in her death still
further deconstructed, remaining only as a disembodied voice futilely attempting to keep her
husband from a similar fate. Although as her corporeal voice fades her effect on the audience
perhaps strengthens and magnifies, (Allman 188) it remains a disembodied voice; a tragic
reminder of the struggle for a womans right to independent life in a misogynistic society.