Comparative Character Studies

Character comparison reveals how Webster and Williams use individual figures to explore larger themes of power, gender, violence, and resistance. Both playwrights create psychologically complex protagonists whose autonomy threatens patriarchal order, violent antagonists whose brutality is culturally sanctioned, and complicit supporting characters who enable or resist injustice. Yet the characterization methods differ: Webster's Jacobean tragedy uses partly emblematic figures who represent moral positions and speak in elevated verse, while Williams's modern realism creates purely psychological characters speaking naturalistically. Comparing characters across these different dramatic modes illuminates both enduring human types (the autonomous woman destroyed by patriarchy, the violent man claiming righteousness) and historically specific constructions (how gender, class, and power operate differently in 1613 vs. 1947).

This section provides detailed comparative analysis of major characters, examining their functions, motivations, relationships, and symbolic significance. Each comparison explores similarities (how characters fill parallel dramatic roles), differences (how historical context shapes characterization), and critical interpretations (how scholars read these figures through feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and other lenses). Understanding characters comparatively deepens analysis: the Duchess and Blanche illuminate each other—their shared autonomy and shared destruction reveal patriarchy's transhistorical violence, while their different relationships to sexuality, madness, and death reveal changing cultural frameworks. Similarly, Ferdinand and Stanley's parallel brutality exposes male violence's continuity, while their different power mechanisms (sovereign vs. economic) show how patriarchy adapts across centuries.