This study explores the problem of female defense in relation to the constitution of women as disempowered speaking subjects within the dominant rhetorical structures of early Stuart literature. The discourse of male rhetoricians defines a subordinate place for women in the order of language. The English formal controversy arguments over the nature of women in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries similarly deploy tropes of male precedence and female subordination to restrain women in the symbolic order and to inhibit any form of female discourse. In order to construct an effective defense a female apologist must reconstitute herself by working within and subverting these constraints. Early Stuart drama provides numerous instances in which women confront and contest the pre-established limits for female speech in their efforts to defend themselves and/or their sex. However, in the dramas selected for this scrutiny, despite the forceful defense strategies that female characters use in their attempts to negotiate their negative positions in language, they are ultimately marginalized. My final chapter therefore examines the rhetorical strategies whereby in her life and writing one woman author, Elizabeth Cary, successfully appropriated and transformed the gendered tropes into compelling female defenses.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.39756 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Slowe, Martha |
| Contributors | Lieblein, Leonore (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001326827, proquestno: NN87544, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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