SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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115 The mental burden of incestuous desire and murder prove too much for his psyche. The wolf counters the blind man with the compulsion to shed light on what has happened by digging up the corpse that the man would have kept buried. By preferring blindness and animalism, Ferdinand is surely losing his touch with reality and with his own human nature; he manifests beastly, primal urges and is lost to reason. The horrific plot of this play is more violent and gruesome than A King, and No King, in which events resolve themselves into a restoration of traditional social values. Ferdinand’s madness results in destruction of his family and the lineage of the ruling class in Amalfi; the heir to the throne is the son of Antonio, not the son of an aristocrat, and this ruling family is no more. The shock value of the bloody events may serve to inflame the fears of those in the audience who fear the very encroachment of lower classes into the upper classes that they have just witnessed, and the lesson is clear—defenses around existing social structures must be strengthened. The Duchess’s murder “exploit[s] the age-old association between eros and thanatos, coupling, and killing” (McCabe 253). Freud speculated that this is “part of a fundamental need in all organic life, which was to return to an earlier condition, and ultimately to the original inanimate state which corresponds to homeostasis, the complete absence of tension in the organism. The erotic impulse therefore contains within it the desire for a kind of homeostatic death for, in seeking sexual union with the other, it represents an attempt to return to a primordial genderless state” 9 (Panagopoulos 138). This association may also explain the metaphor of climax as death, and the symbolism of 9 See Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. 1930. NY: W.W. Norton, 1989.
116 knife as phallus. Eros (Cupid) is famously portrayed as being blind and is sometimes accompanied by his brother, Anteros, whose task it was to seek revenge for unrequited love (Eros). His sister is forbidden to the Duke as a sexual partner but the attraction remains, causing a psychomachic struggle that leads to madness. He internalizes the incest taboo. Unable to couple with her, he seeks revenge by wishing to obliterate her. Jankowski finds that the phallic poniard given to the Duchess by her brother is a “technique of asserting his power over his sister by symbolically dismembering her body . . . Ferdinand’s implication that all a woman can enjoy of a man is his tongue/penis [which] suggests that all she is a mouth//vagina, a container for these objects. . . . The boundaries of the Duchess’s two bodies are indistinct and perpetually slipping” (229). The fact of the Duchess’s female-ness confuses her role as monarch and her actions as a sovereign, as does the conflict between the “conflicting claims of the Duchess’s bodies natural and politic” (Jankowski 223). Frank Whigham conceives Ferdinand as a “threatened aristocrat, frightened by the contamination of his ascriptive social rank and obsessively preoccupied with its defense” (169). Try as he might, he is unable to control the boundaries of the Duchess’s “two bodies” or the boundaries around his own identity. This led to “friction between the dominant social order and the emergent pressures toward social change” (167) and fears of a “gradual contamination of the ruling elite by contamination from below” (ibid.). Men such as Antonio and Bosola, notes Whigham, are part of a new class of royal administrators that began to rise in the social hierarchy during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and James. Ferdinand perceives a threat that may mean the end of his own
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SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading
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READING INCEST: TYRANNY, SUBVERSION
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APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. R
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2 of it, despite its familiarity to
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4 about incest was influenced by th
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6 clarification. Pope Gregory II ad
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8 sibling, and mother-son. 2 She no
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10 is viewed by both. Incest in eig
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12 subverts both the social and the
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14 CHAPTER II ‘SWICHE UNKYNDE ABH
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16 a book to each of the seven dead
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18 Richard” (111). The dedication
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20 an idea familiar to Gower’s me
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22 laboring-folk and Piers, in retu
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24 introduction of Amans, the unsuc
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26 learns. Augustine takes up the i
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28 of the king, whose primary duty
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30 bribed two priests to convince P
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32 story of incest implied, averted
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34 Again, her response impassions h
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36 in the most extreme sense. When
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38 in the first book, and relates t
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40 benign, sympathetic interpretati
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42 and Machaire, and at the same ti
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44 To finish the turn in the narrat
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46 oghne prest” (V.1382-3). Geniu
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48 incestuous. When she vows to tel
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50 epilogue that acts as a prayer f
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52 Of wommen were absent as thanne;
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54 speak at length and discover the
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56 Biblical incest, mostly unjudged
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58 of a king and the function of la
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60 country. But the incest—the wo
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62 As chivalry is a controlling the
Page 71 and 72: 64 conflicting demands of love and
Page 73 and 74: 66 material for adaptation or trans
Page 75 and 76: 68 four sons, Gawain, Gaheris, Agra
Page 77 and 78: 70 can not be ameliorated, at least
Page 79 and 80: 72 killed save Mordred, who was fou
Page 81 and 82: 74 surrogate son-knights. Cherewatu
Page 83 and 84: 76 Lo ye all Englysshemen, se ye ha
Page 85 and 86: 78 demonstrated to all present on t
Page 87 and 88: 80 corruption that plagues the Pend
Page 89 and 90: 82 CHAPTER III ‘INCEST IS IN ME
Page 91 and 92: 84 wished to rid himself of Anne Bo
Page 93 and 94: 86 societal forces. The plays focus
Page 95 and 96: 88 in the family and on a national
Page 97 and 98: 90 reputation shifted such that vie
Page 99 and 100: 92 comes not from an instinctive ap
Page 101 and 102: 94 virtue, resists and is made whol
Page 103 and 104: 96 willingness to sacrifice the liv
Page 105 and 106: 98 Rejection of God and divine orde
Page 107 and 108: 100 is as an “ungodly sickness”
Page 109 and 110: 102 exercise her own agency. Though
Page 111 and 112: 104 potential problem of having a f
Page 113 and 114: 106 The plots of these three plays
Page 115 and 116: 108 play, the Duchess will have bee
Page 117 and 118: 110 As we have seen, the Duchess us
Page 119 and 120: 112 BOSOLA. It seems you would crea
Page 121: 114 But as Ferdinand’s outrages i
Page 125 and 126: 118 posed by his slide into unreaso
Page 127 and 128: 120 and, as Kenneth Graham notes, i
Page 129 and 130: 122 Castle of Otranto displays the
Page 131 and 132: 124 Theodore is killed a group of k
Page 133 and 134: 126 memory, and regard your highnes
Page 135 and 136: 128 first Gothic playwright, publis
Page 137 and 138: 130 the castle is there primarily t
Page 139 and 140: 132 strength, and the men enter the
Page 141 and 142: 134 God bless me; and pass’d on.
Page 143 and 144: 136 familiar. It is more usual for
Page 145 and 146: 138 sensation of horror in the audi
Page 147 and 148: 140 foil to the Countess, with her
Page 149 and 150: 142 And when he knelt, weeping, to
Page 151 and 152: 144 Castle of Otranto, the knife is
Page 153 and 154: 146 and political realities during
Page 155 and 156: 149 destruction and disaster. One o
Page 157 and 158: 151 subvert both patriarchy and mon
Page 159 and 160: 153 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aers, David,ed. Me
Page 161 and 162: 155 Classen, Albrecht, ed. Violence
Page 163 and 164: 157 Ford, Jane M. Patriarchy and In
Page 165 and 166: 159 Lenz, Joseph. The Promised End:
Page 167 and 168: 161 Riddy, Felicity. Sir Thomas Mal
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