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Title: | ‘Of counsel with [m]y mistress’: The mistress–servant alliance in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling (1622) |
Authors: | Sheeha, I |
Keywords: | The Changeling;Thomas Middleton;William Rowley;servants;household mistresses;domesticity;domestiques;maîtresses de maison;domesticité |
Issue Date: | 29-Dec-2021 |
Publisher: | SAGE Publishers on behalf of Cahiers Élisabéthain |
Citation: | Sheeha, I. (2022) ‘'Of counsel with [m]y mistress’: The mistress–servant alliance in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling (1622)’, Cahiers Élisabéthains: late medieval and renaissance English studies, 0 (in press), pp. 1-20. doi: 10.1177/01847678211069467. |
Abstract: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Analyses of service in The Changeling have focused on De Flores as an embodiment of contemporary fears about servants, neglecting his mistress's agency and the play's engagement with anxieties about women's authority, especially their power over servants. They also ignore two other servants, Diaphanta and Lollio, whose relationships with their mistresses are equally revealing of those anxieties. This article argues that The Changeling stages alliances between mistresses and servants as threatening to patriarchal authority. It revises the dominant critical reading of the play, showing that while the castle plot dissolves the mistress–servant alliance, the hospital plot is less straightforward. -- Résumé Les études sur la domesticité dans The Changeling ont porté sur De Flores comme incarnant les peurs contemporaines concernant les serviteurs, laissant de côté l’autonomie de sa maîtresse et l’exploration dans la pièce des anxiétés que suscitaient l’autorité des femmes et, notamment, leur pouvoir sur les domestiques. Ces approches se désintéressent aussi des deux autres domestiques, Diaphanta et Lollio, dont les relations avec leurs maîtresses mettent également en lumière ces craintes. Cet article avance que The Changeling met en scène des alliances entre les maîtresses et leurs domestiques qui menacent l’autorité patriarcale. Il revisite la principale lecture critique de la pièce, en démontrant que tandis que l’intrigue du château dissout l’alliance entre maîtresse et domestique, l’intrigue de l’hôpital est plus ambivalente. |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/23888 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/01847678211069467 |
ISSN: | 0184-7678 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Arts and Humanities Research Papers |
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