For me, what has inspired my thinking about this play has been the persistent linkage of death with sex and desire. It would, perhaps, seem logical to locate the intersection of these three themes primarily in De Flores, at least to begin with. He is, as we have already discussed, a profoundly creepy figure in this play and one for whom desire often includes some aspect of violence or death: the image of him “thrust[ing]” his fingers into the “sockets” of Beatrice-Joanna’s gloves though he knows that “She had rather wear [his] pelt tanned in a pair / Of dancing shoes” than have him do so comes to mind, as well as his arousal as a result of murdering Alonzo (1.1.235-36, 234-35). Indeed, the central instances I would like to think of in light of this connection between sexuality, murder, and sexual appetite arise at least in part out of De Flores’s desire. But to locate the source of this intersection of death, sex, and desire in De Flores alone is, I think, too easy. And The Changeling is anything but easy.
We discussed the violent policing of female sexuality in our last class and, as I have been thinking through the play in more detail, it seems possible that the violence in protecting (or upholding) female chastity leads to or at least directly contributes to the conditions I have been describing, in which sex and desire are bound up with death. Certainly, violence arising from suspicions of unchaste behavior figures prominently in the play, not least in the martial challenges to friends and brothers who dare suspect Beatrice-Joanna of masking her true affections, but most obviously in Alsemero’s rather violent treatment and rejection of her in the moments before her death at De Flores’s hands.
As we have already discussed in class, Beatrice-Joanna’s recourse, in light of this environment of violent enforcement of chastity (at one point, she worries that if Alsemero suspects her sexual experience, he “cannot but in justice strangle me” 4.1.14), is remarkably circumscribed and, thus, her turn to murder as the only option for ridding herself of an unwanted lover and a potentially tale-spreading maid is made more comprehensible. This situation seems to arise directly out the strictly and violently enforced policy of female chastity and appropriately channeled desire.
In my presentation, I’d like to raise the issue of the persistent connection that the play draws between sex, desire, and death as a jumping off point that can go in any number of directions. My own interests are particularly in the intersections of these issues in Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores’s relationship and in the three crucial scenes around which the play seems to center – Alonzo’s murder, De Flores’s rape of Beatrice-Joanna, and the murder-suicide of the last scene, the first and last of which I see as acting as staged stand-ins for the rape of Beatrice-Joanna which cannot be performed (my own argument differs from, though it is indebted to, Christine Varnado’s reading of the murder of Alonzo, which I would be curious to hear from others about tomorrow in class).
Additionally, I’m curious about what the relationship between death and sex in this play does for the generative possibilities of the characters (or, potentially, of the environment and patriarchal system in which they live). Notably, future children are almost wholly absent from consideration in this play. The two mentions of them – by Tomazo when advising Alonzo against a wife whose affections have left him and by Beatrice-Joanna when inspecting the contents of Alsemero’s closet – are in a context in which the children would be completely undesirable: either half conceived by the man whom the wife actually loves (2.2.135-38) or the product of an unwanted union between Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores (4.1.26-27). Certainly, the final scene of the play, after Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores have died, is full of characters for whom generation seems at best unlikely and at worst impossible, with its only potential offspring arising from Isabella and Alibius’s troubled relationship. Though Alsemero offers his “son’s duty” to Vermandero and steps in to fill the child’s place that Beatrice-Joanna’s death has left open, one cannot help but to recognize the sterility and lack of tenability for future offspring that this resolution provides (5.3.216).
So, some questions that I would like for you to consider before tomorrow’s class:
Where do you see this intersection of death, sex, and desire being played out in this play? How might you connect up the violence associated with virginity with these themes?
What is the effect of having sex and death so crucially bound up with each other in this environment?
What about the resolution of the play and seeming removal of the troublesome “bad blood” that Beatrice-Joanna’s actions wrought in her family? What are we to make of this ending that offers no real hope for the future and no clear answer to the problem of the violence involved in protecting and upholding female chastity?
As I’m sure this blog post is making clear, these themes pervade the play and really any thoughts that you have about their effects on the play (or challenges or alternate readings to counter mine) are most welcome.
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