Rebellion, Identity, and the Panopticon in The Duchess of Malfi

Webster's Duchess of Malfi insistently disrupts and mirrors Early-Modern identity structures. Using the Duchess' character, Webster shows how the oppression of patriarchy, class, and the scripted identity of her widowhood deconstructs the Duchess' sexuality, autonomy, and gender. Foucault's Panopticon models the ways in which these forces insinuate themselves into the Duchess's world, forcing her private life into public visibility and creating a framework for understanding her destruction at the hands of the state. Forced visibility in the play becomes an allegory for the play's actual performance; a world that at once watches the Duchess and enacts the system of social controls the play presents. In performance, the play becomes a crucible that systematically explores and rejects these social forces, causing anxiety and questioning of the state's power and influence over the individual.

The ways in which the Duchess' brothers manipulate her, her constant surveillance by Bosola, and her eventual destruction for defying Ferdinand's will, all present a model that mirrors Foucault's theory of the Panopticon. In the Panopticon "prisoners learn to internalize their supervisors' inspecting gaze" (Burston, 19). Forces that govern societal norms act as "supervisors," who make certain that the population under guard obeys the norms and punishes those who do not. Prisoners eventually internalize the norms to avoid punishment, and tend to punish themselves when they disobey. Thus Foucault notes that the "major effect of the Panopticon" is to "induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power" (Foucault, 201). At this stage, "supervisors" who control social norms no longer need to stand perpetual guard, because their inmates have internalized their social regulations. The power of the state functions automatically, making it less necessary to enforce norms widely.