Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

"Proper" Men And "Fallen" Women: The Unprotectedness Of Wives In Othello, Ruth Vanita

Global Humanities and Religions Faculty Publications

A surprisingly large number of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays represent or culminate in the murder of a wife, the reason cited almost always being her infidelity.' The plays construct these murders, often led up to by beating and torture of the wife, as tragedy, yet endorse them as a form of justice. These tragedies have come to be known as "domestic tragedies," suggesting that the events are private, springing from a familial relationship, unlike tragedies which involve political murders and take place in the public sphere. An unresolved contradiction is evident in the titles of these plays which signal the …