Duchess of Malfi (Part 2)

So I need to come up with more interesting titles for my entries. I will work on that. So far I have read through act 3 of the Duchess of Malfi. I enjoy this play better than I enjoyed Hamlet and I really don't know why. I think it might be because it feels like there is more drama that is real. In Hamlet there was the ghost and his father murder, but those incidents seemed to be farther from reality than the drama in Duchess. The Duchess has to deal with her feelings for someone of a lower class, her brothers not wanting her to re-marry, and her brother Ferdinand's sexual and violent threats. She has a lot to deal with besides trying to rule her dukedom.

Antonio is the man she loves, yet he is her servant. In one scene the Duchess vows that she will never marry and then turns around the marries Antonio. I think that she said she would never marry so that her brothers would leave her alone because they were basically attacking her. I also believe that she had already planned to marry Antonio before she told her brothers she would not marry. I don't think that she would have simply turned to the first man see saw and marry him just to spite her brothers. She seems like a better person than that, although I could see one of her brothers simply marrying someone out of spite. It is obvious that Antonio really does love her, although it takes a while for him to realize that the Duchess is asking him to marry her. Antonio probably thought that his love would never be reciprocated because he is not on the same social level as the Duchess and normally she would not have married into a lower social class. Another reason, besides love, that I think she might have married Antonio is because he would not boss her around as her brothers do. The Duchess seems to be a pretty independent woman who would not like having a man boss her around simply because he was a man. Although I so think she loves Antonio, I also think she loves the thought that he will not try and lord over her.

At the end of the third act the Duchess, Antonio, and there children are banished. As I understand it her brother, the Cardinal, went to the Pope and said that she was living in sin and that the Church should repossess her dukedom for the sake of the people. So the Pope takes away her dukedom and then her brother banishes her from another land. The Duchess then asks Antonio to take their oldest boy and go to Milan separately because she fears that they will be attacked and she doesn't want the entire family to be killed if they are attacked. I think that this shows that the Duchess can think rationally even in times of danger and that she also fears for their lives. Because this play is a tragedy I know that everyone will probably end up dead, yet I feel bad for the Duchess and her family because they know that they will more than likely be killed and that they will be killed by family. The Cardinal and Ferdinand will most likely not kill them themselves, yet they will be behind the murders. The Duchess's brothers are not good people, yet they are also men of power and so they will most likely get away with whatever they do. They seem to parallel to Hamlet's uncle, in that they are supposed to be the men that enforce justice, and because they are supposed to enforce it, they will get away anything they choose to do because no one will challenge them.

There are two more acts in The Duchess of Malfi so I will probably post about them sometime soon. If I don't then I will post about witches in early Modern England because my presentation is coming up and I am starting to research them.