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.

Title

Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra

Publisher

Routledge

Publisher Country

United Kingdom

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

None

Publication Type

Online only

Volume

31

Year

2018

Pages

1-9