In addition to the methodology of new historicism, this article
deploys feminism, performance studies and presentism to discuss
the effects of the masculine practice of enforced marriage and
turning a deaf ear to the female voice in Thomas
Middleton’sWomen Beware Women and contemporary Palestine. I
explain that Middleton’s Women Beware Women criminalises the
absolute right of the monarch to command through a critique of
Renaissance practice of enforced marriage and of male figures’
deafness to the female voice. I argue that Middleton’s tragedy
questions and interrogates the dominant patriarchal discourse by
locating subversion within the dominant discourse. While
Middleton shows that women are complicit with male figures’
voices, male figures show no recognition of the inadequacy of
their voices. The eclectic range of critics I am using in this article
opens up gender-based readings in the teaching context of An-
Najah University where I teach Renaissance Drama. This article
seeks to modify the feminist view that tragedy merely suggests
that female characters face verbal and physical circumscription.
Rather, tragedy ensues because male figures are deaf to female
figures’ voices and such deafness breeds female figures’ subversive
plots.

Title

Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Publisher Country

United States of America

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

0.0

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

25

Year

2018

Pages

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