SOURCE: Bartels, Emily C. “Strategies of Submission: Desdemona, the Duchess, and the Assertion of Desire.” Studies in English Literature 36, no. 3 (1996): 417-33.
In the following essay, Bartels suggests that Shakespeare and Webster give their female characters real voices by making their speech acceptable through a cover of submissiveness or compliance. Contrasting the seeming meekness of Desdemona with the assertiveness of the Duchess, Bartels maintains that the characters share in representing on stage the possibility of female self-assertion.
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