Title

The Duchess' Privy Chamber: Early Modern Marriage Law and the Eviction of Women from the Public Sphere in John Webster's "Duchess of Malfi"

Abstract

The Duchess’ Privy Chamber: Early Modern Marriage Law and the Eviction of Women from the Public Sphere in The Duchess of Malfi (argues that the symbolism in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi systemically undoes the iconography of Elizabethan power; that images taken from the legal descriptions of marriage work in the play to replace the image of woman as political ruler in the public sphere with woman as wife sequestered in the private sphere).

Disciplines

Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law | Law and Gender

Date of this Version

August 2004