Women and witchcraft in selected Jacobean plays : a feminist study /
This dissertation entitled Women and Witchcraft in Selected Jacobean Plays: A Feminist Study discusses four English Jacobean plays: William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), Thomas Middleton's The Witch (1609), Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton (1621), an...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Gombak, Selangor :
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia,
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://studentrepo.iium.edu.my/handle/123456789/7243 |
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| Summary: | This dissertation entitled Women and Witchcraft in Selected Jacobean Plays: A Feminist Study discusses four English Jacobean plays: William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), Thomas Middleton's The Witch (1609), Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton (1621), and Ben Jonson's The Masque of Queens (1609). As the title suggests, the thrust of the argument of this thesis centres on the representation of women in the respective plays and offers comparative study of the plays, two of which, Macbeth by Shakespeare and The Witch by Middleton, are claimed to be misogynistic in their portrayal of women, whereas the other two, The Masque of Queens by Jonson and The Witch of Edmonton by Dekker, Ford and Rowley actively promote gender-equality and give voice and presence to women. Special attention is given to the phenomenon of witchcraft because it plays a crucial role in each play. One of the aims of this research is to show how some dramatists of the Jacobean period contributed to the feminisation of witchcraft and made it almost exclusively a feminine crime. It is argued that Shakespeare's and Middleton's works uphold misogynistic views of King James and thus significantly contribute to the construction and saturation of the witch image. The research also espouses that Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley expressed scepticism with regard to witchcraft and refused to endorse the persecution of women although their stand involved a considerable risk of being penalised for disagreeing with the official viewpoint on the matter. Despite the widespread opinion that women in Jacobean England were oppressed and mistreated, this study puts forward an argument that not everything was so gloomy and hopeless for the women of that era. The contextualised analysis of the play-texts bears out that female voices had begun to emerge and question the established gender ideology in early modern England. Some male playwrights had captured that shift and came out in favour of gender-equality. The female characters they create often resist masculine, ideological constructs and expose the injustices of male dominance. Thomas Dekker and his collaborators openly challenged the established patriarchal system and advocated gender-justice. Ben Jonson, who has traditionally been described as a misogynist, demonstrates through his writings that he is free from anti-feminine bias. His masques, especially The Masque of Queens, provide ample evidence in support of this claim. Since some preconceptions about women are strongly linked to the concept of the Original Sin in Christian theosophy, the research briefly examines the influence of the Biblical texts on the plays in question. Such examination intends to reveal the anxieties of patriarchal society and the Jacobean preoccupation with the 'wayward women'. |
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| Physical Description: | x, 211 leaves : ill. ; 30cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-211). |