Academic Writing (PGP8101) – PGIE

Ms. Sachini Seneviratne

2018
The Return of the Domestic in Coriolanus – Ann C. Christensen
Critical responses to Coriolanus tend to concentrate on two dominant issues: the political and the
maternal. Approaches to the former typically address the play's representation of the polis, the
conflicts between patricians and plebeians, and draw on Shakespeare's historical sources of
Plutarch, Livy, and Machiavelli as well as contemporary contexts such as the food shortages and
Midlands enclosure uprisings of the early seventeenth century. Understandably, maternal issues
– from milk to mildness – dominate psychoanalytic and gender studies of the play and focus on
Volumnia – her curious attitude towards nurture, her role in forming her son, his responses to
"feeding and dependency" (Adelman, 1980, p. 129). Of course, neither approach wholly neglects
the other. Stanley Cavell neatly summarizes the two critical strains while noting that both
recognize the play's central concern with nurture:

… the play lends itself equally, or anyway naturally, to psychological and to political
readings: both perspectives are, for example, interested in who produces food and in how
food is distributed and paid for. From a psychological perspective . . . the play directs us
to an interest in the development of Coriolanus's character. From a political perspective
the play directs us to an interest in whether the patricians or the plebeians are right in
their conflict. (1985, pp. 246-7)

The present study poses a third term, the domestic, to encompass both the political and maternal
issues raised by the play, along with feeding and nurture. In Coriolanus, home is a place and an
idea which localizes the diffuse conflicts in family and state. A category at once more narrow
than "politics" and "gender" and more general than "maternal," the domestic accounts for the
complex interplay of gender, power, nurture, family, and state by addressing the play's
convoluted estimations of "home" and not home. The Shakespearean household houses the
family, while serving as a metaphor for the early modern state. By domestic I mean both literal
households and the people, objects, and activities associated with the place where one lives; for
the purposes of this essay, the category covers both home and homeland, "[t]he country, our dear
nurse" (V.iii.110). Because it conveys a sense of location, "domestic" is especially suited to
address this play so rich in architectural metaphors and so dependent upon the physical
boundaries – city gates and thresholds – of homes, Rome, and Corioli/Antium.

References

Janet Adelman. (1980). 'Anger's my meat': Feeding, dependency, and aggression in Coriolanus. In
Murray M. Schwartz and Coppelia Kahn (Eds.), Representing Shakespeare: New psychoanalytic essays
(pp. 129-49). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

Cavell, Stanley. 'Who does the wolf love?': Coriolanus and the interpretations of politics. In Patricia
Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (Eds.), Shakespeare and the question of theory (pp. 245-72). New York:
Methuen.
 Academic Writing (PGP8101) – PGIE
Ms. Sachini Seneviratne
2018
Theatrical Colours: Cosmetics, Rhetoric and Theatre in Webster’s The White Devil –
Natascha Wanninger
No Renaissance play title has drawn such attention to the importance of colour as John
Webster’s The White Devil (1612). Surprisingly, however, most interpretations of this play have
limited themselves to explaining the seeming paradox between “white” and “devil” and
identifying one or more of the play’s characters as the titular “devil”. It is thus often pointed out
that “white devil” was a fixed phrase in Renaissance England denoting a person who completely
hides his or her evil character from society. This was also replicated in the Renaissance proverb
that “a white devil is worse than a black” (Bovilsky, 2003, p. 628). Of all the potential satanic
candidates in the play, Vittoria is generally the favourite because of her highly controversial role
and powerful influence. Thus, Vittoria and her opponent Monticelso are two of the few
characters whose struggle with colour in the play (especially in her arraignment) is often
examined. Even though Armelle Sabatier calls this “a highly chromatic play” (2012, p. 135) and
sets herself the precise task of exploring the role of colour in the entire play, she rarely looks
beyond these two characters’ legal confrontation. What is more, even though she occasionally
mentions some important connections of colour with cosmetics, rhetoric and the theatre, its
historic roots and Renaissance conversion often more hinted at than explained.

What has been missing so far is an attempt to recognise the rich cultural background of colour,
which manifests itself in Webster’s play in the form of cosmetics, rhetoric and theatre. It is only
on the stage that we can see how optical and rhetorical colours combine as theatrical colours. It is
because of this threefold use of colour that the stage found itself at the centre of accusations of
hypocrisy in the Renaissance, but also utilised these forms of colour to demonstrate its power.
The theatre is also a space which allows the presence of people of different colours whose
importance has, as explained, been largely marginalised. The three main female characters of the
play, Isabella, Zanche and Vittoria, are here analysed to explore the great differences in their use
of colour in terms of cosmetics, rhetoric and acting. A historical overview provides an insight
into the historic roots and background on which their different forms of female agency with
regard to colour are based.

References

Bovilsky, Lara. (2003). Black beauties, white devils: the English Italian in Milton and Webster. ELH
70(3), 625-51.

Sabatier, Armelle. (2012). White or/and red?: Defining and re-defining the colour of corruption in John
Webster’s The White Devil. Interfaces 33, 135-48.
 Academic Writing (PGP8101) – PGIE
Ms. Sachini Seneviratne
2018
1. Extract – ‘The Rape of the Lock’, Alexander Pope
And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,
Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.
First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores,
With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs.
A heav'nly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.
Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here
The various off'rings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.
Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair,
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown:
And Betty's prais'd for labours not her own. (Pope, 1996, 1.121-148)
 Academic Writing (PGP8101) – PGIE
Ms. Sachini Seneviratne
2018
2. Extract – ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the
summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of
romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition,
and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is
dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhapsthat is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see, he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there
is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical
tendency—what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and
exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so
sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—
but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always
makes me feel bad. (Gilman, 1993, p. 78-9)
 Academic Writing (PGP8101) – PGIE
Ms. Sachini Seneviratne
2018
3. Extract – Hamlet, William Shakespeare
HAMLET
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub [impediment, disincentive];
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely [insolence],
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns [rejections]
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus [death] make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels [burdens] bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn [boundary]
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action… (Shakespeare, 2016, 3.1.55-87)
 Academic Writing (PGP8101) – PGIE
Ms. Sachini Seneviratne
2018
References
Christensen, Ann C. (1997). The return of the domestic in Coriolanus. Studies in English
Literature, 1500-1900, 37(2), 295-316.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. (1993). In Mike Hamlin, Christine Hall, and Jane Browne (Eds.), The
New Windmill Book of Nineteenth Century Short Stories (pp. 78-95). Oxford: Heinemann
Educational Publishers.
Pope, Alexander. (1996). ‘The rape of the lock’. In Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon
Stallworthy (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed., pp. 604-621). New York, NY: W.W.
Norton.
Shakespeare, William. (2016). Hamlet. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (eds.). London: Arden
Shakespeare.
Wanninger, Natascha. (2015). Theatrical colours: Cosmetics, rhetoric and theatre in Webster’s
The White Devil. E-rea 12(2). doi: 10.4000/erea.4475.