The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi

“And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Do you think that Hobbes’s formulation of the “natural condition of mankind” is applicable to Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi.

According to Thomas Hobbes, in his book Leviathan, Chapter XIII (Of the natural condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery), the “natural condition of mankind” is what would exist if there were no government; no civilisation; no laws; no common power to restrain human nature. The state of nature is ‘war of man against every man’ in which humans constantly seek to annihilate each other in a ceaseless quest of power. In the nature of man there are “three principle causes of quarrel”: Competition, diffidence and glory. The first makes men work for gain; the second for safety and the last for their reputation. To achieve gain from competing with others, violence is used so that they may become Masters of other “men’s persons, wives, children and cattle”; distrustfulness used for safety to defend oneself, and the third- glory for reputation for matters of little importance or significance such as  “a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.”

The first principal of quarrel i.e. competition is seen in abundance in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Ferdinand, the Duchess’s twin brother, can be viewed as almost unknowingly competing for her desire and knowingly for her financial strength and independence. The Duchess being a widow was considered as threatening to the social setting as she was neither under the government of a father or a husband, and since she had inherited wealth and property, she remained outside the rule and control of patriarchy. According to Dympna Callaghan, “As a widow the Duchess has a potential which she did not possess as a wife to wield power independently of a husband and severe allegiances to other male kin.. The Duchess of Malfi combines one of the most threatening forms of domestic female power namely widowhood, with the most threatening manifestation of all- sovereignty”. This is one of the major reasons that Ferdinand did not want the Duchess to remarry and tries to control her by saying, “You are a widow/you already know what man is; and therefore/ let not youth, high promotion, eloquence” sway her. Also it is the purity of royal bloodlines that ostensibly impels Ferdinand’s outrageous response to the Duchess’ marriage (Tyranny and spectacle in Jacobean Drama: Karin S. Coddon).  As long as the Duchess remains unmarried, it would be suitable for both her brothers as she would always be under their control and assertion. By emphasising his sister’s femininity, Ferdinand seeks to deprive her not only of her life and political title, but of her very identity (Rhetoric of the Woman Controversy: Christy Desmet). As a widow she was only expected to live a life of chastity and in memory of her dead husband. She has been stereotyped as the “lusty woman”. Even the Cardinal, a member of the clergy, described by Antonio as “a melancholy churchman, where he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them than ever was imposed on Hercules”, rebukes the Duchess and tells her, “wisdom begins at the end” that is there should be greater astuteness in her to be able to foretell the consequences of her actions. This is a statement underlying with threat so that the Duchess according to them never breaks her word. He also considers the widows who remarry as not far removed from being “whores”. But as the Duchess suggested at the end of Act 1 Scene 1, the speech between them was “studied”; she was never really given a chance to complete her statement and her words were rejected. Despite having a legal claim to power, the Duchess is unable to freely exercise it courtesy her brothers. The Cardinal has in mind “dynastic sway” while Ferdinand is also deranged by incestuous desire to control his sister’s sexuality. This is one of the reasons Daniel de Bosola had been brought under the brother’s service, so that he could seek information on the Duchess and gain access to her private chambers. Thus under these extraordinary circumstances, the Duchess was compelled to marry her steward, Antonio, in secrecy. For the brothers, the second principal causes of quarrel, diffidence is also brought under use. They both wish to be in command of her sexuality and in turn her financial assets which would assure their safety in the financial and social world. “In the scheme of things a woman’s chastity was not merely an abstract construct but a means of securing dynastic integrity: ‘it was the foundation upon which patriarchy rested’”. But the birth of the Antonio’s child does not endanger the brothers proprietary rights over her wealth as unknown to them she is married and accordingly an illegitimate child would pose no threats.

To let the Duchess remarry would also have meant a loss of reputation for both the brothers. Since she already knew the pleasures of a man’s bed and was relatively unchaste, the task given to Bosola was “more than a little voyeuristic, as it involves the visual penetration of the private, female space”. As according to Hobbes’s essay, there is a war of man against each man, the Duchess fights her brother’s imposition on her. She describes herself as “flesh and blood/ ’tis not the figure cut in alabaster/ Kneels at my husband’s tomb” which being a widow, she refuses to fit into the social construct of how a widow should behave and she is determined not to surrender the pleasures of life and physical urges of the youth. The Duchess is a woman who rebels against patriarchal despotism and is to be admired for her strength and courage for defying both her brothers and the social norms and codes of the society in which she lives. She is disgruntles at her brothers imposition and wonders “Why might I not marry” (III.ii.109) and adds, “Why should I/ Of all the other princes of the world,/ Be cas’d up like a holy relic? I have youth/ And a little beauty” (III.ii.137-9).

In Hobbes’s essay, he also talks about “continual fear and danger of violent death”. It is the fear of being caught and in spite of his lifelong service he is weak. He cannot take decisions and at every crisis it is the Duchess who had to tell him how to work out the next plan of action. When his nose bleeds on the night the Duchess gives birth to their first child, his superstitions get the better of his judgment and in his nervousness he drops horoscope which details the “short and violent death” of his son. According to Karin S. Coddon, like political power, madness is as fragmented itself as it is fragmenting, dispersed among the dramatis personae. The Cardinal who is nothing but cold and calculating in his manner, fears retribution and has some sort of a primal sense of wrongdoing and malevolence. His words as he soliloquises to himself over the nature of hell fire indicate his “guilty conscience” and self loathing, and there is something terrifying in his evasion of the word ‘devil’ or ‘Satan’ as he says, “How tedious is a guilty conscience/ When I look into the fish pond in my garden/ Methinks I see a thing arm’d with a rake/ That seems to strike at me.” (V.v.4-7).Ferdinand too, a man of great and ungovernable fervour, is incapable of self control. He is almost like a predatory animal, but falls short to his own dark passions. It is his own wish to protect his sister’s body and physical beauty (an indicator of incestuous desire) and only desires to devastate her mind. But after he sees her strangles body, he realises he has in the end, not destroyed her mind but mutilated her incomparable beauty. It is ultimately his paranoid fascination for her beauty and grace, his frustrated and never to be satisfied desire to possess her body and the realisation that he destroyed the beauty which he had intended to safeguard that drives him to madness of lycanthropia where he imagines himself to be a prowling wolf, which he had been all his life. Even Cariola, the Duchess’ waiting woman, questions her sanity when the Duchess married Antonio in private, “Whether the spirit of greatness or of woman/Reign most in her, I know not, but it shows/ A fearful madness; I owe her much of pity.” (I.ii.509-11). Cariola wonders whether the Duchess’ independent spirit to follow her own desires regardless of the danger comes from her “greatness” or her confidence in her aristocratic lineage. This could also be the supposed weakness the Duchess (and in general all the woman were considered to have in that period) as a woman had, to be led more by passion than reason. Thus, we see in Hobbes’s philosophies even though published much later than the Duchess of Malfi stand strong in its regard.