The part with ne'er a bone in't: Webster's women and the politics of speech

Abstract

This paper works from a close reading of selected scenes between men and women in Webster's two tragedies to argue that he depicts speech and subject positions when speaking as profoundly influenced by gender. Women's language is disbelieved, prone to interruption, and valued less even by members of their own sex. To attempt to circumvent these disadvantages, women adopt male modes of speech, even to the extent of aping the actual words used by their male partners; but this also fails to succeed, leading to further disbelief, misinterpretation, and ultimately to death. By contrast, Vittoria Corombona, the one woman in the plays who resolutely clings to female speaking modes even in a conspicuously male‐dominated area, is represented as at least partially triumphant, suggesting a valorisation of women's language unusual to find in Jacobean drama.