This article analyses female silence, speech and authorial identity in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. I argue that Cary’s distancing Mariam’s speech from lasciviousness and her association of Salome’s private speech and silence with sexual looseness challenge the conventional association of speech with licentiousness and silence with chastity, obedience and submission in early modern England. Cary overturns the dominant discourse by using the discourses of domesticity, motherhood, marriage and death to legitimise her heroine’s voice and her authorial identity. Writing and sacrifice are means through which Cary creates her legitimate authorial identity, for writing and sacrifice involve silencing women’s voices and eliminating their sexual bodies.

العنوان

Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra

الناشر

Routledge

بلد الناشر

المملكة المتحدة

Indexing

Scopus

معامل التأثير

None

نوع المنشور

إلكتروني فقط

المجلد

31

السنة

2018

الصفحات

1-9