“Vengeance rot you all!”: Attaining Female Agency in Early Modern Revenge Tragedies
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2023-06-15
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en
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This thesis investigates the struggle of female characters, such as the Duchess, Bel-imperia,
and Tamora, of attaining female agency in authoritative positions in The Duchess of Malfi, The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, respectively. Current research on revenge tragedies fails to acknowledge this struggle and focuses primarily on male characters and their role in taking vengeance. To fill this gap, this thesis investigates to what extent female characters attained female agency after they challenged the ruling patriarchy. The theoretical framework of Feminist Theory, specifically Kristeva’s notion of maternity, and Foucault’s power theory will be used to analyse gender relations. This thesis demonstrates that female
characters are, in fact, successful in attaining female agency to some extent but are severely
countered by male characters that feel threatened by female power.
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