The religious and social injunctions during the eras when æTis Pity SheÆs A Whore, A Woman Killed By Kindness, and The Duchess of Malfi were ones that greatly restricted female expression and clearly and rigidly defined roles for them deemed ôappropriateö by Church and social institutions. During Elizabethan England, patriarchy reached its pinnacle. Men maintained enormous control over women due to religious and social injunctions that permitted such control. In each of these plays, we see that English Drama evolved to portray women in ways that went outside the boundaries of such religious and social injunctions. Women were to be chaste, loyal and obedient to Church and husband in this era, though we see that the women portrayed in all three of these works are not such women. Such portrayals of women were common in the evolution of drama during this era, to show the dangers of transgressing against religious and social injunctions.
In æTis Pity SheÆs A Whore, John Ford provides us with a severe lesson in the causes and consequences of sexual transgression. The female in this play, Annabella, is carrying her brother GiovanniÆs child. The drama is designed to show the dangers of lustful or sinful behavior, like incest, and its impact on relationships and society. Annabella conspires to marry Soranzo, who is completely unaware of her condition. She fools him into marriage, but he immediately learns she is pregnant and treats her to physical and verbal abuse. Soranzo is incensed over AnnabellaÆs lie and ôruinedö condition. In this era, drama showed that women were the property of men. Soranzo is irate that his purchase of a ômost precious jewelö is a jewel that shines with the luster of another manÆs lust, (Ford, IV.i.10).
We see the English drama also portrayed domestic relations as fraught with turmoil and chaos when the women refuses to be the kind of wife she is supposed to be, i.e., loyal to her husba...