The Containment of Female Linguistic, Spatial, and Sexual Transgression in Arden of Faversham: A Contemporary Palestinian Reading

Abstract

Arden of Faversham (1592) endorses the association between female speech and lasciviousness and dislocates the link between silence and chastity in the figure of Alice. This domestic tragedy shows that the subversion of the patriarchal authority enacted by Alice and her accomplices are contained as an ultimate manifestation of the masculine status quo. Following the critical line of presentism, I argue that Alice’s appropriation of the domestic sphere as a subjective space of murder and adultery undermines the Palestinian representation of the house as a nurturing place of order and harmony and complicates the Palestinian, nationalist discourse that figures out the domestic sphere as a sacred nationhood. In both the fictional world of Arden and contemporary Palestine, gossip renders the household subject to the gaze, tongue, and judgment of the public. The containment of Alice’s transgression eclipses the possibility of a feminist emancipation from patriarchal authority in contemporary Palestine.