Comparative Context
Continuities and changes across 334 years (1613-1947)
Comparing The Duchess of Malfi (1613) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) requires understanding both what endures and what transforms across the three centuries separating them. Some patriarchal structures persist with striking continuity: sexual double standards punishing women's autonomy while excusing male violence; economic systems making women dependent and vulnerable; societies weaponizing concepts like "honor" (Webster) or "honesty" (Williams) to justify controlling women. Yet the mechanisms of power shift fundamentally: from spectacular sovereign power (Ferdinand ordering visible executions) to disciplinary power (Stanley using economic leverage and psychiatric institutionalization); from religious worldviews providing cosmic meaning to secular modernity's existential meaninglessness; from fixed aristocratic hierarchies to capitalist class mobility. This section explores these continuities and ruptures, showing how comparing across historical contexts illuminates both the stubborn persistence of patriarchal violence and the changing forms it takes as societies transform.
Sexual Double Standards
PersistentBoth plays expose identical sexual hypocrisy across centuries: men judge women's sexuality harshly while exempting themselves from the same standards. Ferdinand obsesses over the Duchess's remarriage while keeping mistresses; the Cardinal condemns her "ignominious match" while maintaining Julia as lover; both brothers murder her for exercising sexual autonomy they claim as natural male right. Three centuries later, Mitch tells Blanche "You're not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother" after discovering her sexual history, though he pursued her sexually himself; Stanley's aggression, adultery, and rape are normalized while Blanche's consensual sexual encounters damn her. The Madonna/whore binary operates identically: women must be virginal/chaste or they're worthless, while male sexuality remains invisible or celebrated. This continuity suggests sexual double standards aren't accidents of particular historical moments but structural features of patriarchy that persist across radically different societies -- early modern Catholic Italy and post-war Protestant America maintain identical sexual hypocrisy serving male power.
Male Violence Against Autonomous Women
PersistentBoth plays climax with patriarchal violence eliminating women who assert autonomy. The Duchess chooses her own husband, exercises sexual and marital autonomy -- her brothers murder her. Blanche criticizes Stanley's authority, represents alternative values threatening his dominance -- he rapes her. Both women's autonomy is intolerable to patriarchal order; both are destroyed through male violence justified as righteous (Ferdinand claims to defend honor; Stanley claims Blanche is crazy and seduced him). The specific mechanisms differ (execution vs. rape), but the underlying pattern is identical: autonomous women threaten male control and must be eliminated. This suggests patriarchy's fundamental investment across centuries is controlling women's autonomy -- any assertion of female self-determination triggers violent response designed to reassert male dominance and warn other women against similar resistance.
Economic Dependence Creating Vulnerability
PersistentBoth heroines' economic dependence makes them vulnerable to male violence. The Duchess is a wealthy widow, but her brothers control her wealth and inheritance rights -- economic power enables them to imprison and execute her. Blanche is impoverished (Belle Reve lost, teaching job lost), forcing dependence on Stella/Stanley's charity -- economic powerlessness traps her in Stanley's apartment where he can assault her without consequence. Neither can escape male control because neither has economic independence. This continuity reveals how patriarchy uses economic structures across centuries to control women: whether through aristocratic inheritance law (early modern) or capitalist wage labor and property ownership (modern), economic systems are designed to make women dependent on men, creating vulnerability that enables violence. Economic independence would allow resistance; economic dependence eliminates options.
Women's Sexuality as Family/Male Property
PersistentBoth societies treat women's sexuality as belonging to male family members or husbands, not to women themselves. The Duchess's remarriage is treated as theft -- she's taken sexual autonomy that belongs to her brothers (who should arrange her marriage for family advantage). Her body is family property she's stolen by marrying without permission. Similarly, Blanche's sexual history before arriving in New Orleans is treated as Stanley's business because she's staying in his home -- her past sexuality affects his household's reputation and Mitch's marriage plans, giving Stanley proprietary interest in controlling information about it. Both plays show women's bodies, sexuality, and reproductive capacity treated as male property to be controlled, exchanged, or regulated for male/family benefit. This commodification of female sexuality persists across centuries despite massive social changes, suggesting it's fundamental to patriarchal organization of kinship, inheritance, and power.