Through out the entire play, I’ve gravitated towards Ford’s need to reinforce character’s actions with the material or physical. We spoke about this in class a bit, but blood was a constantly repeated, tears were. But also non-bodily physical expressions of emotion are used throughout, such as swords, and the letter- which appears in Act 5. The tangibility of these objects and substances counteract the invisibility or intangibility of love and incest, so I wonder if Ford implemented the physical material embodiments of their emotions, to balance out what can’t be seen or touched. There is almost a sense of evidentiary support or justification that Ford provides to the reader, through these objects, as if he is self aware or suspecting that readers/audience member might not believe the presence of incest or buy into their love.

While I don’t think Ford’s aim is to condone incest, I do think Annabella and Giovanni are in somewhat of a unique position because of the society in which they live. All of the characters seem to ignore the potential consequences of their actions and behave in completely selfish ways. I think that we must consider Annabella and Giovanni’s incestuous relationship within this context. Their relationship is a result of a dangerous society that simultaneously lacks rule and asserts immoral laws because the leaders themselves, such as the cardinal, are immoral. I think that Ford is more making a statement about the nature of society than incestuous relationships in general.

In reading ‘Tis Pity, I found Ford’s use of the word ‘whore’ to describe Annabella interesting when put in comparison with the other characters in the play. It is the Cardinal, arguably the most corrupt character, who uses it, and when Annabella’s actions are put in comparison to the other male roles, Giovanni, the Cardinal, Soranzo, it almost seems that Ford is calling Annabella’s condemnation as a whore into question, since her transgressions seem entirely trivial compared to the male corruption rampant in the play.

1. The Qulligan text begins with a claim about marriage, that instead of it being an exchange between a man and a woman, it is an exchange between two men, using the woman as an object. Her feeings about her place in this structure are ignored, as it is ultimately a fixed structure. I had never thought of marriage from this view, but it makes complete sense, espeacially when Sedgewick calls it a homosocial connection. I found that especially interesting that a homosocial connection has exsisted and uncovered in each of our sections of study. This reveals more largely that sexuality is rooted in men and the transfer of power between men.

In Act 4 Scene 1, I was reminded of many of Donne’s poems, particularly A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. The idea that love lives on despite physical distance and death is one that both Webster and Donne explore. Bosola cruelly tricks the Duchess into believing Antonio and their children are dead:  “That, now you know directly they are dead, Hereafter you may wisely cease to grieve For that which cannot be recovered” (1479). Although Bosola states that they “cannot be recovered,” the Duchess seems to take a different stance, for she believes, like Donne, that souls never really cease to exist. Rather, her love for Antonio will live on forever through their souls and cannot die even in death: “That’s the greatest torture souls feel in hell, In hell: that they must live, and cannot die.”

Hi Rachel and Jae-Yeon,

I agree with both of your points. I’m wondering where the Duchess fits into all of this. Should we consider the Duchess someone who already has a position of social power? She is a widow and a duchess, after all. During the character study last class, we talked about how the Duchess seems to have a least some power to manipulate the play (at least in the beginning), but how do we read the ending of the play in light of the Quilligan reading in relation to the Duchess’ overall agency?

I was particularly struck by the repetition of the use of “poison” and “devil” throughout the first act. There seems to be an inherent fear of sin and how sin transports. The characters treat sin as a disease to be caught. More specifically I am interested in the many forms that sin and evil, that the text presumes, can occupy. They cite it as both a force, a spirit, a figure, and a physical embodiment. I assume that the  malleability of evil and sin was reinforced in order to impose fear, constrain freedoms and maintain  social order. In addition, the first act spends a lot of time focusing on the subject of the Duchess’ widowship. Ferdinand explicitly conveys this concern, while Antonio spend over three pages discussing it as well. I know that once a woman’s husband dies she is granted the freedom to remarry and own property (unsure about that one). I am interested in the lines that the male characters draw, to constrain the duchess’s  new found social and sexual flexibility.

Traub notes, “critics have also demonstrated Phillips’s indebtedness to a discourse of male amicitia, to the genre of pastoral, and to the conventions of heterosexual love poetry, particularly the metaphysical conceits of John Donne” (248-49). I read Phillips’s poems before Traub’s essay, and immediately noticed her adherence to the ideas of John Donne’s “The Ecstasy.” She speaks of “our twin souls in one shall grow” (49) and “That if each would resume their own…That each is in the union lost” (15, 18). While Traub claims that Phillips’s poetry exhibits chaste female-female friendship, I would question that claim given the similarities to Donne’s philosophical ideas and alternative lens of sexual climax.

Henry Vaughn’s poetry, especially “Unprofitableness” and “The Night,” remind me very much of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry, particularly “Pied Beauty” and “God’s Grandeur”. More than two hundred years before the Victorian poet Hopkins, Vaughn professes wonder and awe, an unironic appreciation of divine beauty, and gratitude for a god for bestows him with all this spiritual and aesthetic pleasure. Vaughn does not engage the contest between Protestantism and Catholicism. Is it possible that he writes to transcend this political debate? Is his apolitical poetry actually kind of political in its insistence on what really matters?

I find it interesting that “His Prayer to Ben Jonson” seems to serve two purposes. Herrick simultaneously honors his mentor, poet Ben Jonson, and expresses his political and religious beliefs. By referring to Jonson as a saint, Herrick also appears to mock Protestants and Puritans.