Tropes of blood, body and the ground of the law: Becoming, being and beyond wife on the early modern stage

This project focuses on the representation of women on the early modern stage in three exemplary texts: the anonymous domestic tragedy, Arden of Faversham and two city comedies, Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday and Dekker and Thomas Middleton's The Roaring Girl. Whether playing the role of adulterous wife, performing the role socially striving wife, or resisting the role of laboring wife, these women characters were on stage for not only entertainment, but also examination and scrutiny by an early modern audience. Playwrights used characterizations of women and wives and their relationship to the economy as vehicles through which to discuss concerns regarding autonomous behavior within and outside of marriage. I read beside these representations other social fictions such as conduct manuals and the law that define and shape the boundaries for appropriate behavior for women. In each play, women characters' behaviors in and toward marriage mediate the strict legal and social order with the expressed behavior in practice. The stage representations offer a space where women gain autonomy while offering new representations for the role of wife to a consuming audience. I am interested in how these characters work to redefine the work of 'wife' as part of this larger shifting economy.;Chapter one discusses the relationship between women's work, the institution of marriage and the ways these two intersect with the instability of the protocapitalist economy of early modern England. Chapter two examines the anonymous Arden of Faversham as Alice challenges her role as protector of 'blood law' and creates space for discourse about female autonomy. Chapter three looks at Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday and examines wifely social striving and the reimagining of the role of wife. Chapter four contrasts Moll's autonomy outside of marriage against the shopkeepers' wives autonomy within marriage in The Roaring Girl and argues that women influence and hold economic power outside the grasp of male authority. I conclude that women's central occupation is that of 'wife' and we see, set against the shifting social and economic background that women participated in reshaping the definition and understanding of the role and expectations of 'wife' in the larger context of the political economy.