The Duchess of Malfi

According to Freytag’s Pyramid, Act II contains the play’s “rising movement.” Since the eponymous Duchess is absent from this Act in every scene but the first, the rising movement in Act II mainly establishes the forces working against her: particularly the overwhelming misogyny from Bosola, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand. The rising movement of these intangible forces will eventually result in the climactic separation of the Duchess’s family and her eventual “fall,” or death.

Bosola’s interaction with the Old Lady in Scene 1 is characterized by ingrained misogyny. He takes issue with her “face-physic” (II.1.27)—the way she has painted her face to hide her age. He compares her to a woman who “flayed the skin off her face” to flatten her smallpox scars (II.1.30), turning her appearance from that of a “nutmeg-grater” to an “abortive hedgehog” (II.1.31-32). These cruel, dehumanizing comparisons continue as he compares scraping off her makeup to “careening”: the process of cleaning and repairing a ship’s hull below the waterline, where barnacles and algae collect. Anti-cosmetic arguments directed at women proliferated in the 16th and 17th centuries and are reflected in Bosola’s rant. He compares the Old Lady’s closet to a witch’s shop that contains “the fat of serpents, spawn of snakes, Jews’ spittle, and / their young children’s ordure—and all these for the face. I would sooner eat a dead pigeon […] than kiss one of you” (II.1.39-40). Of course, the Old Lady has not propositioned him, and Bosola’s sexist and antisemitic tirade is unprovoked. Anxiety over cosmetics boiled down to the idea that a woman could potentially be hiding something, be it a motive or secret personality—something a man cannot see, identify, and therefore control.

This is deeply ironic, considering that the Cardinal and Ferdinand are both characterized by being outwardly noble and secretly corrupt. Each of them has their own misogynist speeches inflected with anxieties about female sexuality. The Cardinal’s is about his mistress Julia and Ferdinand’s is about the Duchess. When Julia visits the Cardinal, he says her inconstancy is indicative of all women: “We had need go borrow that fantastic glass / Invented by Galileo the Florentine, / To view another spacious world i’th’ moon / And look to find a constant woman there” (II.3.16-20). The Cardinal’s accusations toward Julia are not fair; he has great social power over her and belittles and demeans her. He defends himself against participating in infidelity and blames her, extrapolating her supposed infidelity to all women. He believes Julia should be thankful to him for taking her off her “melancholy perch,” bearing her on his fist, showing her game and letting her fly (II.3.28-30). He uses the language of hawking to reinscribe his control over Julia and dehumanize her.

Ferdinand similarly uses comparisons both to living and non-living, non-human things to dehumanize the Duchess and threaten violence against her. When he and the Cardinal learn of the Duchess’s marriage, he says he wants to “toss her palace about her ears / Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads, / And lay her general territory to waste” (II.5.18-20). Ferdinand uses violent, physical, and increasingly explicit language to describe what he wants to do to the Duchess. This language is inflected with the threat of sexual violence, implied by verbiage such as tossing her, rooting her up, blasting her, and laying her to waste. The sexual nature of his anger is clear when he says, “‘Tis not your whore’s milk that shall quench my wildfire, / But your whore’s blood” (II.5.47-48). His use of a sexist slur makes it clear that her sexuality is at the heart of his anger. Though he has only the Cardinal for company, Ferdinand begins addressing the absent Duchess by the direct second-person “you,” showing the full state of his all-consuming, sexist anger.

The extent of such misogyny shows how patriarchal power pervades this society: a woman is subjected to patriarchal abuse be she old or young, lawfully married, or engaged in an affair. None of the three men who perpetuate this abuse are sympathetic characters; sympathy lies instead with the women. In an extremely unusual moment in early modern drama, the Old Lady defends herself from Bosola: “I will hear no more of this glass house—you are still abusing women!” (II.2.11) Sympathy also lies with the Duchess, who anticipated the abuse and anger she would face when she told Cariola, “I am going into a wilderness / Where I shall find nor path nor friendly clew / To be my guide” (I.1.359-61). Going into Act III, the reader fully sees the individual and societal forces working against the Duchess, her marriage, and her family as a result of her Transcending Societal Boundaries.