The Duchess of Malfi is the Tragic Tale of a Woman's Struggle Against Patriarchy
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman... It is civilization as a whole that produces this creature...which is described as feminine.” – Simone De Beauvoir : The Second Sex (330) John Webster’s masterpiece The Duchess of Malfi is in many ways a remarkable pioneer to the adulterous and tragic heroines found in landmark 19th century novels. The Duchess, the protagonist of the tragedy, is completely an extraordinary figure from the typical Jacobean Era. Webster’s Duchess exercises transgressive, independent sexual agency in defiance of social conventions not through infidelity but through marriage, or more accurately, remarriage. Remarriage in the 17th century was not inevitably a recipe for tragedy. In this play, the Duchess defies social and sexual orthodoxies in ways that are not dissimilar to those of comic widows. Many of the famous critics agree that Webster's second tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, is a more coherent play than The White Devil. T...