Marguerite A. Tassi presents two main arguments in Women and Revenge in Shakespeare: that revenge, at least as depicted in Shakespeare’s plays, may be a moral activity, determined by a “love of justice” (12); and that women often play major roles in Shakespeare’s dramatic representations of revenge. (Full disclosure: I am among the many earlier commentators on revenge whom Tassi generously praises.)
Tassi establishes that the figure of the female revenger has ancient roots, including, among many other figures, Gaia, the Erinyes, Nemesis, Medea, Hecuba, Clytemnestra, Phaedra, Procne, and Philomel. She also discusses Norse and Germanic female revengers and the language and iconography that frequently represented Revenge as female.
Turning to Shakespeare, Tassi discusses Lady Capulet as an “inciter” to revenge: a woman who uses language and emotional display to get a man or men to accomplish vengeance for her. The suggestion that Macbeth is “a submerged feminine vengeance tale” (58) is less persuasive, given that (as Tassi acknowledges) Shakespeare eliminated the revenge elements he found in his sources, leaving a woman who is as fierce and persuasive as any inciter to revenge, but who has no wrongs requiring revenge. Tassi considers Ophelia and Gertrude as mourning women who cannot be placated, Lavinia as a woman who incites men to revenge by the sight of her maimed body, and Beatrice as a woman who incites to just though deadly revenge in a comedy much concerned with women’s honor and reputation.
Chapter 4 deals with female vengeance and maternity through an investigation of the characters of Tamora and Queen Margaret, who pursue or wish for revenge against the families responsible for their sons’ deaths; while Tamora certainly pursues revenge and Margaret curses the Yorkists incessantly, neither woman, as Tassi admits, is driven solely by revenge for her dead son. Chapter 5, which interprets King Lear as a revenge play, is even harder to accept, because, although there is certainly plenty of revenge in the play, it is hard to see Goneril and Regan as driven by revenge, rather than ambition, greed, and envy.
The remainder of the book concentrates on female revengers in the comedies, and this is perhaps the strongest and most interesting section. Tassi points out that Twelfth Night’s Maria, ringleader of the play’s revenge plot, has in recent decades been denigrated as critics and directors have empathized ever more strongly with Malvolio. Chapter 7, which deals with The Merry Wives of Windsor as feminine vindication, also serves as a vindication of the play against critics who have condemned it as cruel and badly written; Tassi maintains that the play is carefully designed to depict the wives moving “from private theater to public communal spectacle” (208), earning respect for their wit and virtue while also involving the larger community in their attempt to cure both Falstaff and Ford of their faults. Chapter 8 contrasts Shylock and Portia as revengers, with the latter not only more skilled, but more constructive; chapter 9 presents Paulina and Emilia as women who avenge other women, specifically Hermione and Desdemona, but also women in general.
Although the final section of the book is entitled “Conclusion,” it is almost exclusively devoted to discussion of the vengefully titled Measure for Measure, in which, Tassi asserts, the female characters are not merely the Duke’s instruments, but seekers after a “justice that is poetic and retributive” (284). Perhaps because she has examined such varied vindictive women, she makes little attempt at a summary.
Nevertheless, one of the strengths of Tassi’s argument is that she does not try to force all of Shakespeare’s female revengers into the same theoretical box, recognizing that no single pattern is capacious or complex enough to explain such varied characters. Her examinations of mythology and of economic metaphors for justice in various plays are engaging. She also comments insightfully on recent productions of the plays. Alas, as is often the case these days, rhetorical questions come not as single spies, but in battalions, and, as usual, they do little to support fair judgment. Nevertheless, this is otherwise a well-written book, intelligent and thoroughly researched. Overall, Tassi has made a significant contribution to our understanding of an important subject.
