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Gendered Class In The Duchess Of Malfi

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Gendered Class: The (In) significance of Gender, Class and Space in the Tragedy of Mariam and the Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi (1612) and The Tragedy of Mariam The Fair Queen of Jewry (1613), both embody the intersectionality and the complications of gender, class, and the space of experience. The women in these texts, the Duchess and Mariam, face challenges that blur the line between their gender and their social class. Gender in this context is not just biological, it is also social. The Renaissance society sees these women’s relationships and spaces of experience as insignificant. However, it is within these insignificant spaces that women’s voices are nurtured as seen in Mariam. Also, in Malfi, an insignificantly significant relationship is the relationship between the Duchess and Cariola. The particularity of this relationship, and it’s seeming insignificance to family politics or gender ideologies, calls into question the politics of class in relation to gender. This paper therefore engages with the gender issues in these works as class problem and vice versa.
One author notes that “The Duchess of Malfi is a play that is clearly concerned with questions of gender ideology, but its employment of various, often contradictory, literary and social discourses regarding gender relationsmakes it difficult to analyze” (Jankowski 224). Also, in The Tragedy of Mariam, there is the issue of a woman’s voice and authority, and the valorization of the feminine virtue of

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