Synopsis "Women and Revenge in Shakespeare: Gender, Genre, and Ethics"
Can there be a virtue in vengeance? Can revenge do ethical work? Can revenge be the obligation of women? Women and Revenge in Shakespeare: Gender, Genre, and Ethics looks at Shakespeare's women and finds bold answers to questions such as these. A surprising number of Shakespeare's female characters respond to moral outrages by expressing a desire for vengeance. This book's careful, sometimes moving, analysis of these characters and their social circumstances offers incisive critical perceptions of feminine anger, ethics, and agency and challenges conventional wisdom about the role of gender in revenge. Marguerite A. Tassi counters longstanding critical opinions on revenge: that it is the sole province of men in Western literature and culture; that it is a barbaric, morally depraved, irrational instinct; and that it is antithetical to justice. Tassi offers countless persuasive examples from Shakespeare's plays that reveal women's profound concerns with revenge and justice, honor and shame, crime and punishment. In placing the critical focus on avenging women, this book significantly redresses a gender imbalance in scholarly treatments of revenge, particularly in early modern drama. Drawing upon literary prototypes from ancient and medieval sources, the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics, and ethnographic studies, Tassi uncovers morally purposeful, even heroic, functions in women's vengeance, showing in many cases how a passion for justice underlies the motive of revenge.In pursuit of a just revenge, Shakespeare's women take on a rich array of expressive roles: they become pedagogues, moral physicians, lamenters, inciters, scourges, and vindicators of women's honor. Marguerite A. Tassi shows how these roles confer authority upon women as they bring injustices to light. By focusing in a sensitive manner on the nuanced ethical responses and complex gendering of avenging women, Tassi brings a new urgency to our contemporary discussion of revenge. Furthermore, in crossing genre boundaries, Tassi shows how vengeance lies deeply embedded in the dramatic structures and cultural worlds not only of the traditional revenge tragedy, but of all of the genres represented in Shakespeare's dramaturgy. Chapters include substantial discussions of Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale.
