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Dara Miller
Dr. Royster
ENG 428
15 April 2012
The gnawing vultures of feminine revenge
In her article The gnawing vulture: Revenge, Trauma Theory, and Titus Andronicus,
Deborah Willis offers an interpretation of Titus Andronicus that addresses the psychological
effects of the violent revenge that defines the play through the lens of modern Trauma theory.
Additionally, she pays special attention to the role of women throughout the play, reexamining
the traditional interpretation of the female characters as either victims or monsters and instead
restoring to Lavinia and Tamora the destructive power and control that accompanies revenge.
She claims that in Elizabethan dramas, women are sometimes active participants in revenge
plots[that] actively engage in honor-driven quarrels or exhort others to do so and that in Titus
Andronicus, revenge has a leveling aspect[and offers] to members of both sexesa perverse
therapy for traumatic experience (25). Throughout her analysis, she attempts to reclaim some
of the blind spots in recent feminist criticism that imply a recognition of the plays
embeddedness in patriarchal structure require[s] a disavowal of womens complicity in revenges
excess (26). In her thesis, she sets out to prove that the perverse therapy of revenge eventually
consumes the self it tries to save[it] acts as a container for traumatic emotion, enabling
characters to bypass or transmute major PTSD symptomswhile also helping them recover a
sense of agency, cohesion, and meaningful action (32).
After her initial introduction of the play and her centralizing ideas, Willis introduces the
idea of Trauma Theory, relying heavily on the American Psychiatric Associations definition and
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symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Although some information on Trauma Theory is
necessary to her argument, Willis primarily discusses the causes and symptoms of PTSD only to
later clarify that It will not be the thesis of this essay that Titus, Lucius, Tamora, Aaron, or even
Lavinia are suffering from PTSDno character in the play has flashbacks, intrusive memories,
or nightmares, the key symptoms for a diagnosis of PTSD (31-32).
Much more convincing than her discussion of PTSD is her inclusion of Ulman and
Brothers self-psychological model. Within this model, Self-image was family-based, part of a
larger group identity, fashioned through identification with the father and with idealized
ancestors but also projected into the future through ones children, (30) and this background
provides solid evidence for the close bonds she identifies between the family members in Titus
Andronicus, and supports her claim that the children of Titus and Tamora are anchors of
identity for the parentsvitally connected to [their] own social status, self-image, and emotional
stabilityWhen the child is wounded or killed, a part of the parents self dies, too (31). This
familial structure, wherein a childs safety is tied to the parents own narcissism, creates a deadly
cycle in which the revenger seeks out additional targets for destruction[that] exceed rather
than equal the original wrong (32). Thus, the parents need to reciprocate and better the crimes
extends to the entire family circle that is then involved in an ever-widening sphere of revenge.
In her subsequent analysis, Willis divides her work into two shorter sections, Titus and
the Ghosts of War, and Tamoras Revenge, then concludes with her longer analysis of After
Lavinias Rape. In the first section, Willis claims that the ghosts of Titus sons slain in battle
are full of unsatisfied anger and require an extra death that is extravagantly bloody,
recapitulating through the lopping of limbs and hewing of flesh the condition of death on the
battlefield, in order to be satisfied and at peace (35). Willis implies that the ghosts of Titus sons
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would wreak havoc on the remaining Andronici if the living members failed to adequately
acknowledge their deaths, thus creating these unseen ghosts as effectively the plays first
revengers (35). This analysis is supported by Lucius insistence on the necessity of human
sacrifice in the first scene of the play; he requires the proudest prisoner of the Goths as the
only worthy offering to Ad manes fratum the shades of his brothers (Shakespeare 1.1.96).
This act of violence, which Willis claims is the first example of trauma therapy for the
characters, allows the family to grieve in peace and safeguards them from being disturbd with
prodigies on earth (Shakespeare 1.1.100).
Willis also makes a convincing argument about the stimulus of Tamoras revenge;
drawing particularly on the parallels between her loss and Titus, Willis claims Tamora reacted
to the death of Alarbus as any Roman family would, viewing it as a wrong that blood relatives
have a duty to revenge (36). She then aptly turns the critical conversation away from a focus on
Tamoras lust and instead describes her descent into violence and revenge as a reaction to the
horror of her sons death by torture, dismemberment, and firefiltered through a powerful sense
of humiliation (37). This attention to Tamoras humiliation creates one of her most convincing
arguments; in her view, Tamora, unlike Titus, does not have access to rites that can help
survivors retain a connection to the dead; thus, her memory of her son is tainted and absorbed
into her own identity, which feels then doubly humiliated.
Although Willis analysis of Tamoras motivations for revenge and the subsequent power
she derives from her own violence is intriguing, she only briefly addresses the other Lavinia as a
character of revenge. While Lavinia is often characterized as a victim or even as the mute
symbol of her familys humiliation and trauma, relatively little work seems to address Lavinias
role as revenger both before and after her rape and mutilation. Willis does recognize Lavinias
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role in the revenge of the family unit, as she is repaid by seeing Chiron and Demetrius drained
of blood and butchered like animals; (48) however, this analysis of Lavinia is still primarily
built around the other characters perceptions of her. Although she is silent throughout the
majority of the play, her silence does not negate her participation in the revenge plot; it only
highlights the role as a foil to Tamora, as her most significant instances of communication occur
either in communication either with or about her. In order to examine Lavinias role as a more
active participant in her own revenge, one must return to her original entrance into the play.
In Act I, Lavinias role depends on a vague background of her life prior to her fathers
return to Rome. In his absence (and potentially even before he left for war, given the fact that her
brothers are aware of the relationship), she apparently is courted by and betrothed to Bassianus.
Why this relationship was kept from Titus is unclear; as one of the princes of Rome, Bassianus
should have been a more than acceptable suitor. Despite her secrecy, however, Lavinia appears
to have made an active and independent choice in her match. Saturninus spontaneous proposal
to make her Romes royal mistress (Shakespeare 1.1.241) and Titus equally spontaneous
acceptance of this marriage arrangement stands at sharp odds with the freedom of choice the play
implies she previously enjoyed, and the suddenness of her loss of control silences her response.
Her silence in this scene is only broken once; as Saturninus pointedly asks Lavinia, you are not
displeased by this? she answers only in regards to his treatment of the Goths, tacitly ignoring
his implications towards their sudden marriage. Perhaps inadvertently, this first instance of
Lavinias interaction with Tamora foreshadows the role revenge will play between them;
although she speaks of Tamora, Lavinias words are aimed at Saturninus as she uses the other
woman as a veil for her insult to him.
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Lavinias next encounter with Tamora marks her most verbal interaction in the entire
play, and this time her words are more pointed. Upon discovering Tamoras tryst with Aaron,
Lavinia scornfully stresses her greeting to the gentle Empress and proceeds to mock Tamora in
revenge for Saturninus humiliation of her. Where he had called Lavinia a changing piece
(1.1.309), she now remarks on his Queens gift at horning (2.3.67); as he declared her a
churl (1.1.486), she now declares him a cuckold, thus exercising her own cruelty at Tamoras
expense to be vicariously revenged on her husband. At the entrance of Chiron and Demetrius,
and her subsequent loss of Bassiano and her own impending rape, however, Lavinias focus
shifts. Before, her interest in and spite towards Tamora stemmed from a desire to revenge herself
and her family on Saturninus for his dismissive treatment; however, her energy now shifts to
Tamora herself. After Tamoras harsh rejection of Lavinias appeals to her as a woman, Lavinia
abruptly shifts from self-preserving supplication to violent curses; her last spoken words
condemn Tamora as a beastly creature and declare her the blot and enemy to our general
name! (2.3.182-3). This declaration, along with her final strangled curse to let Confusion
fall (2.3.184) marks her as a character who will carry her grudge beyond her grief and
foreshadows her role in the revenge plot.
Although her personal and familial pain initially suspends Lavinias active movement
towards revenge, by the time she witnesses the violently farcical rejection of her fathers
desperate act to save his two sons, she is ready to take her place as one of the heavy people
who gather around Titus to pledge their lives to revenge (3.2.276). By accepting the severed
hand in her mouth, Lavinia actively accepts her role as a fellow avenger, and lives, as Lucius
observes, in oblivion and hateful griefs (3.2.295) that can only be absolved by revenge. This
oath also prompts Lavinia out of her misery and into active plotting; directly following the oath,
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she works to identify her rapists through young Lucius books and the myth of Philomel. Her
desire for revenge, then, serves as the catalyst for regaining her will to communicate and creates
her as an equal partner in the revenge scheme.
Although it is Titus who tortures and murders Chiron and Demetrius, it is significant to
note that Lavinia enters this scene with him; as he has a knife, so she has a basin. Both enter on
equal terms and with respective tools for revenge. Although Titus knife is the weapon that will
kill Tamoras sons, Lavinias basin is an equal form of mental torture as they are forced to
silently hear how it will collect their blood and feed their mother. Titus speech echoes the words
of Chiron and Demetruis as they described their plans for Lavinia to Tamora, but Titus is even
more specific and brutal in his preview of their fate, describing with relish how he planned to
grind [their] bones into dust, / And with [their] blood and itmake a pasteand bid that
strumpet, your unhallowed dam / Like to the earth swallow her own increase (5.2.190). Willis
aptly condenses this moment into an image of revenge by asserting that this forced ingestion will
constitute an oral rape of Tamora (49), and as coconspirator Lavinia serves in her revenge as a
parallel rapist.
Much has been debated about Lavinias role in the end scene and her death by Titus
hands. However, this final act of revenge does not leave Lavinia as a helpless victim or
necessarily reveal Titus inability to cope with the shame on his family. Willis interestingly
suggests that this fatal point of the revenge scheme is Titus critiquing the ideology of rape in
staging the murder of Lavinia for Saturninus and Tamora as another merry jest, carried out at
his audiences expense in order to mock them, (49) and while this depiction of the murders
staging appears apt, it eliminates Lavinias role as a co-avenger. However, if considered in the
light of the preceding scene, Lavinias position in this final act of revenge appears to equal
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Titus. Like in scene two, Lavinia enters with Titus, again each with their respective props; if
Titus attire serves to disorient the banquet attendees, then Lavinias veil shrouds her from their
attention, saving her reveal for the grand moment of violence that commences the revenge. Her
death, when she is considered as an equal partner in the revenge, becomes a necessary and
voluntary sacrifice that releases the violence of revenge and finally satisfies the gnawing
vulture that Willis references.

















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Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. The Riverside Shakespeare, Second Edition. Ed.
G. Blakemore Evans and J.J.M. Tobin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. Print.
Willis, Deborah. The gnawing vulture: Revenge, Trauma Theory, and Titus
Andronicus. Shakespeare Quarterly. 53.1 (Spring 2002): 21-52.