Open Access'[N]or bear I in this breast / So much cold spirit to be called a woman': The Queerness of Female Revenge in <i>The Maid’s Tragedy</i>
Author(s) -
Katherine M. Graham
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
early theatre
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2293-7609
pISSN - 1206-9078
DOI - 10.12745/et.21.1.3257
Subject(s) - tragedy (event) , nexus (standard) , rhetoric , art , performance art , sociology , psychoanalysis , art history , philosophy , literature , psychology , theology , computer science , embedded system
In Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, we find Evadne, a female revenger who violently acts, avenging herself and the men around her. This article argues that the representational strategies of the play trouble our understanding of Evadne's gender, showing it as constructed via a nexus of sometimes contradictory fixations, fixations which are articulated through a rhetoric of bodies. Throughout this consideration, I connect this nexus with Evadne's proximity to, and enacting of, revenge.