Rebellion, Identity, and the Panopticon in The Duchess of Malfi

Webster's Duchess of Malfi insistently disrupts and mirrors Early-Modern identity structures. Using the Duchess' character, Webster shows how the oppression of patriarchy, class, and the scripted identity of her widowhood deconstructs the Duchess' sexuality, autonomy, and gender. Foucault's Panopticon models the ways in which these forces insinuate themselves into the Duchess's world, forcing her private life into public visibility and creating a framework for understanding her destruction at the hands of the state. Forced visibility in the play becomes an allegory for the play's actual performance; a world that at once watches the Duchess and enacts the system of social controls the play presents. In performance, the play becomes a crucible that systematically explores and rejects these social forces, causing anxiety and questioning of the state's power and influence over the individual.

The ways in which the Duchess' brothers manipulate her, her constant surveillance by Bosola, and her eventual destruction for defying Ferdinand's will, all present a model that mirrors Foucault's theory of the Panopticon. In the Panopticon "prisoners learn to internalize their supervisors' inspecting gaze" (Burston, 19). Forces that govern societal norms act as "supervisors," who make certain that the population under guard obeys the norms and punishes those who do not. Prisoners eventually internalize the norms to avoid punishment, and tend to punish themselves when they disobey. Thus Foucault notes that the "major effect of the Panopticon" is to "induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power" (Foucault, 201). At this stage, "supervisors" who control social norms no longer need to stand perpetual guard, because their inmates have internalized their social regulations. The power of the state functions automatically, making it less necessary to enforce norms widely.

When applied to social forces, the Panopticon can help to describe the oppression and minoritization of social goups. For example, Burston argues that women "experience more social surveillance and objectification then men," in a world where men have the monopoly on social power (20). The same stands true of the Jacobean era, and in the Duchess of Malfi, her brothers seek to constrain the Duchess in the norms of a Panopticon even in her most private moments, at which point she is punished for her deeply held desires.

Malfi's strictly regulated hierarchy of social norms reflects the socially oppressive atmosphere of early-modern England. Power in the play, and in early-modern England, vested itself in strict hierarchies and social behaviors internalized by the populace under their sway. English law of the period subscribed ascriptive roles for each member of society and these roles defined every aspect of social function for the various classes. Sumptuary laws represent a perfect example of these ever-present dictums. The specificity of the laws themselves can be said to represent a kind of oppressive social control. As noted in a law passed on the 6^th of May 1562,

And for the reformation of the use of the monstrous and outrageous greatness of hose, crept alate into the realm to the great slander thereof, and the undoing of a number using the same, being driven for the maintenance thereof to seek unlawful ways as by their own confession have brought them to destruction: it is ordained as abovesaid that no tailor, hosier, or other person, whosoever he shall be, after the day of the publication hereof, shall put any more cloth in any one pair of hose for the outside than one yard and a half, or at the most one yard and three-quarters of a yard of kersey or of any kind of cloth, leather, or any other kind of stuff above the quantity; and in the same hose to be put only one kind of lining besides linen cloth next to the leg if any shall be so disposed; the said lining not to lie loose or bolstered, but to lie just unto their legs, as in some ancient time was accustomed; sarcanet, muckender, or any other like thing used to be worn, and to be plucked out for the furniture of the hose, not to be taken in the name of the said lining. Neither any man under the degree of a baron to wear within his hose any velvet, satin, or other stuff above the estimation or sarcanet or taffeta. (Ruffs, Hose, Swords)

The specificity of these edicts shows the important intersection between public performance, social rank, and clothing, and reads like the notes to a script, where the playwright has already decided how each detail must exist in performance. Social worth, material goods, and social performance become inextricably intertwined to the extent that no man "under the degree of a baron" may wear certain materials, and those materials are listed scrupulously. Not only that, but the materials themselves have a hierarchy, where "velvet" and "satin" are "above the estimation" of "sarcanet" and "taffeta." Duchess therefore becomes infinitely more disturbing for an early-modern audience who sees a noblewoman, but cannot reconcile her actions to her exterior artifice. At the same time, the actor, who would have been a male below the Duchess' social worth, provides yet another layer of discontinuity for an audience used to the premise that "what you see is what you get" when it comes to class.

However, a discussion of sumptuary laws only scratches the surface of behavioral control in the Early Modern era. Works like The Book of the Courtier mapped further "suggestions" about the perfect ways for nobles to act, clothe oneself, and speak The implication being that those failing to mold their identity to reflect this "perfection" would be cast out of the "Courts of Christendome" As Castiglione writes in the introduction to Courtier:

the trade and maner of Courtyers, whyche is most fyttynge for a Gentilman that lyveth in the Court of Princes, by the whiche he maye have the knoweleage howe to serve them perfectlye in everye reasonable matter, and obtaine thereby favour of them and prayse of other men...I woulde have ryd my handes of this laboure, for feare leaste I shoulde bee counted rashe of all such as knowe, what a harde matter it is, emonge suche diversitye of maners, that are used in the Courtes of Christendome, to picke out the perfectest trade and way, and (as it were) the floure of this Courtiership. Because use maketh us manye times to delite in, and to set litle by the self same thinges: wherby somtime it proceadeth that maners, garmentes, customes, and facions whiche at sometyme have beene in price, becumme not regarded, and contrarywyse the not regarded, becumme of price. (Castiglione)

The issue of the courtier must be to obey social law, but also to strive for perfection under it via "maners, garmentes, customes, and facions." "Perfection," in this case, not only governs clothing, but the very words and movements, the actions, of public showing. Clothing represents the beginning of the courtier's identity, not the end. Instead of just clothing oneself correctly, the courtier must abide by a complex and inherently restrictive system of norms or be shunted to the fringes of public discourse. Public identity becomes theatrical practice, and thus calls into question the nature of theatrical performance as a socially disruptive practice. In performance Duchess becomes more than a play, it becomes a microcosm of the panoptic network of early-modernism; a public deconstruction of state influence, authority, and class structures.

With an understanding of this theatrical subversion, one can imagine how an audience might feel when the Duchess finds herself in this world of scripted identity and instead chooses to improvise. In Bosola's own sarcastic monologue, she makes "her private nuptial bed / the humble and fair seminary of peace" and speaks of her as an inspiration to "The virgins of your land / that have no dowries, shall hope your example / will raise them to rich husbands" (3.2.276-90). Though Bosola speaks through his teeth, he adequately interprets the Duchess's attempt to break through the controls and traditions that condemn her to a loveless and asexual existence. Knowing her place in the network of the courtier, she desires to escape its dictates upon every small detail of personal and public life, to the extent that it can put a man in prison over the length of his hose.

These documents shed new light on the extent of the Duchess's rebellion. In her case, the wrongs she commits become twofold where 1) she defies the state with a marriage against its wishes and where her brothers represent the state, and 2) she also marries outside her class, which defies the class superstructure upon which both of these documents are based. In effect, the Duchess flouts fundamental conventions through her secret marriage, and for that she must be punished. The Duchess seeks not only to undermine the state, but also to undermine the very concept of nobility that supports it. This does not simply represent the difference between scripting and improvisation, but the difference between the interpellative illusion of her authority, and the real authority she seeks to claim. In her darkest hour, this profound will to rebel still burns as she says, "I am the Duchess of Malfi still." (4.2.134). In that statement she reaffirms her authority and identity, even as Ferdinand rips it away.

Ferdinand becomes emblematic of patriarchal rule in the Duchess' world and provides a theatrical window into the marginalization and oppression of women in the period. In early-modern England, men held control of public discourse, property, and women who were treated as property. To explain this relationship, Sid Ray notes that "in early modern marriages...the dynamic of the wedding ceremony...enacts rituals of exchange rather than mutuality, and that "the bride's father, who owned his daughter during premarital existence transfer[s] possession of her to the bridegroom (108). In short, female identities of the Early-Modern world were constantly beholden to a restrictive patriarchal culture.

However, the Duchess has inherited property and sovereignty, which places her in a special class of women, those who were "the only women in a socially legitimate position to control their sexual and economic lives" (Bevington, 1749). These particularly highborn women still cannot fully escape the patriarchy, but instead represent "the objects of male fantasies of upward social mobility...and were often regarded as threatening" (1749). Even as a propertied heiress then, the Duchess represents an easy target for her brothers' whims, for though they exist in the same class she still must contend with her femininity as a weakness. Her sexuality and ability to procreate becomes a liability that threatens to take away her autonomy, an autonomy that she zealously seeks to protect by taking a lower-class husband and hiding her pregnancy.

The patriarchy also problematizes the Duchess's authority, and leaves her vulnerable to the whim of the male estate. While women lived on the outskirts of the class structure, dependent on men for their way of life, the hierarchy of birth controlled the Early-Modern population overall. That structure of bloodlines helps to raise the Duchess's authority as a problem, because a woman born high enough to gain sovereignty after her husband's death confused the issues of patriarchy and bloodline. As Ray notes in Holy Estates, Elizabeth's reign serves as a logically equivalent problem in that it was never completely reconciled in the social order, and "forced England to confront the incompatibility of Protestant marriage ideals with female governance" (132). The anxieties caused by Elizabeth's problems with class structure and authority, political and private power, help to frame the Duchess's conflict in the play, and help explain the severity of Ferdinand's attack on the Duchess's identity. Where gaps in authority linger between class, political power, and women, Webster fills them with Ferdinand's rabid patriarchy. This becomes another case where early-modern anxiety seeks to play itself on stage, and Duchess at once reifies that patriarchy and defies it. While the Duchess does die, her performance of that death undermines Ferdinand's righteousness. While the controversy over Elizabeth may frame the play, Webster seeks only to complicate matters further by multiplying and exaggerating that controversy on the public stage.

Whether or not the Duchess reifies patriarchy, her fragile grip on authority does force her to move between male/female gender roles in order to become truly autonomous. To negotiate the difficulties of the path towards marriage with Antonio or rather "leave the path of simple virtue", the Duchess must fuse the strength of the early-modern male identity with the maternal role of a woman (1.1.438-40). This again mirrors Elizabeth, who genders herself as a man in public, while still retaining her femininity in private (Ray,132). Her identity must become more flexible than that which has been proscribed to her. Ray's essay compellingly illustrates how the Duchess shifts her identity to become both "paternalistic woman ruler and wife" especially through the hand-fasting between herself and Antonio in the bedroom (132). Zimmerman also sees the Duchess as being "doubly gendered" (146). Proposing to Antonio and giving him the ring, she says that he should "Raise [him]self, / Or if you please, my hand to help you: so" (1.1.410-11). Here the Duchess plays the part of the ruler, and by her authority brings Antonio to stand with her on mutual ground. The moment retains even more power when thought of as a rejection of marriage as the simple joining or redistribution of property. The Duchess has chosen love over these economic significations or class distinctions: a choice that also reifies her womanliness, especially in contrast to Ferdinand, who wishes to lay claim to "an infinite mass of treasure" by his sister's abstention. The Duchess also "laments that she has to dissimulate like a tyrant" in her speech at (1.1. 433-51) because of her station. While having to use her authority to get what she wants, she quickly attempts to disidentify with this masculinity to maintain the mutual bond she has just achieved with such grace and frankness. Without the scripting of the panoptic world, the Duchess finds it difficult to mold an alternative gender identity. This instability again mirrors Elizabeth's difficulty, where no social solution could be posited to explain her combination of power and femininity.

The Duchess's disidentificatory acknowledgement that she must play two roles returns to the Panopticon, where clear deviations to the norm create cognitive dissonance for the one who breaks them. Her apology to Antonio shows how the language of constraint has fundamentally imposed itself on her psyche, an imposition that serves as the "automatic functioning" of the power wielded by the state (Foucault, 201). The apology also reads as a power imbalance in an otherwise mutualistic marriage. The Duchess must justify her use of authority/femininity in such an unusual, non-normative way to a man who does not have power over her, but who is nonetheless, a man. There are gaps of meaning between the two identities the Duchess fuses together, but they eventually lead her to a period of peace, where her autonomy remains unchecked.

However, at the same time that the Duchess rebels against the gender norms that constrain her wish to remarry, she has also internalized them and seeks punishment for breaking them, as described by the Panopticon. The Duchess exposes her marriage to Bosola despite her own expressed need to keep it secret. The Duchess's brothers, who represent the "supervisors" of the Panopticon, warn the Duchess to obey their wishes, and she consistently ignores those warnings, even when these come at the point of a knife. (1.1.305-10) However, the Duchess confesses to Bosola, whom she does not have any reason to trust. The Duchess's desire to trust Bosola with the knowledge that she has had "three children by

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