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학위논문 동서

John Webster의 悲劇에 나타난 女性

황영희

부산: 동아대학교 1996. -

105p; 27cm. -

학위논문(박사)- 동아대학교 대학원 영어영문학과 `96년8월

E768448 법학부 김효전교수 기증도서 / 영문초록 : This study is to examine the theme of the individual and authority in John Webster's tragedies by assessing the self-assertive female characters who defy the male-dominated society. In terms of Renaissance conception of authority. God has authority over all his creation, the sovereign over his subjects, master over servant, parent over child, man over woman, It was natural to believe in the sanctity of the traditional order because it was ordained by God. However, in an era of increasing corruption of power it became easier for dramatists to concentrate on the failure of human authority to live up to God's expectations. The paradox that resulted from this ambivalence was that man's duty to God required him both to obey and to disobey human authority. It is not surprising, then, that this conflict became a theme of late Renaissance tragedy, at a time when men were being forced to confront the realities of a disintegrating world view. What is so remarkable is that those dramatists projected this contemporary conflict through the defiance of women who had been ignored by the structure of authority. The Renaissance attitude toward women, which stemmed from the medieval Christian understanding of the hierarchical order of the created universe and was expressed in terms of temporal obedience, divides the possibilities of female nature into the morally and psychologically simple types of temptresses(whores) and chaste women(patient Griselda)/ These types, exhibited in the homiletic and domestic drama of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, appear frequently in the tragedies of John Webster. Webster, however, rendered women characters psychologically and morally complex, and presented them in situations which raised doubt about the traditional exercise of male authority over them. As the dramatist rendered more and more ambiguous the godhead of man over woman, he inevitably called into question all hierarchy, including the relationship of God and man. Corruption of authority in society was dangerous, and had to be opposed, but in opposition to corruption one had to be careful no to become contaminated by it. In terms of dramatic conventions, Vittoria in the White Devil is recognizably a whore in the sense that Eve was a temptress. In a sense, her opposition to authority we would recognize as evil and her successful exposure of its corruption in the trial might be admirable. Nevertheless, we cannot leave the salvation of a sick society to a social-climbing liar like her because she fails to live up to a higher standard of behavior. As it becomes harder to depend on corrupt male-dominated structures, it becomes easier to accept that women as individuals, rather than society, might have the sanction of God to take control into their own hands. In The Duchess of Malfi, even though the Duchess is basically a type of patient Griselda as a Virgin Mary Figure, she married beneath herself, defying the authority of her family in the process of maintaining "integrity of life." The Duchess' behavior might not strictly adhere to the old order of hierarchy of place, but it is certainly justified by an individual vision of order. It becomes therefore very difficult to condemn someone like her, who created her own little world through the dictates of her conscience. It is impossible to reconstruct with any finality the minds of Renaissance people who experienced the trust in an assertive woman like Queen Elizabeth I as well as Stuart misogyny in an era of both Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomies. Because of such a transition period, however, Webster was able to represent in his tragedies the idea that woman is essentially the same as man, which would not have been acceptable to established society. In the process of raising the "woman question" through the theme of authority and the individual, he eventually contributed to heightening the status and understanding of women. Accordingly, it is his original achievement in English tragedy that he depicts the individual beyond the limited double paradigms.

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