Reassessing The Whiny Women of Richard III: Complaint and Morality

Kelsey Bhatia            998244458

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Matthew Sergei

February 17^th 2014

Reassessing The Whiny Women of Richard III: Complaint and Morality

            In the article “Voicing the Nation’s Conscience in Female Complaint in Richard III, King John, and Henry VIII”, Alison Thorne covers a very broad subject through multiple subheadings in an attempt to paint the female leads of each play as more consequential. For Richard III, there is particular attention paid to the way Queen Margaret, Elizabeth of York, and the Duchess of York speak for their nation, but I was struck by the emphasis on their morality. Thorne demonstrates quite well how these female characters become a “moral compass for theatre audiences and readers adrift in the plays’ murky and unpredictable waters” (5), but her focus is not solely on their ethics. It is easy to see these characters as the voice of the nation, or the voice of the people, but the humanity in their speeches is what Thorne seems to highlight in her reassessment of their complaints. We are so often surrounded by deceit and dark ambitions in Richard III, and the female voice tends to speak for what is just or unjust while other characters merely play along. Thorne’s analysis of feminine complaint turns the wailing queens of Richard III into wielders of what she calls a “linguistic weapon” (5), fighting in the only way they can with a surprising amount of freedom. Essentially, this paper will agree with as well as broaden Thorne’s arguments on female complaint and morality, keeping in the context of the play Richard III, showing how these woman are moral leaders as opposed to mewling secondary players.

            “An honest tale speeds best when it is plainly told” (Shakespeare, 4.4.358), explains Elizabeth of York to a manipulative Richard, and honesty is one of the most dominant traits of the women in this play. Thorne’s first subheading, titled “The Politics of Truth-Telling”, analyzes the importance of honesty in the context of Richard III, showing that it is mainly women who speak the blunt truth. Their complaints not only come across as determined and emotional, but also extraordinarily valid in a world of political chaos. A prime example of this would be a comparison of Richard and Queen Margaret. Though the other female characters in the play tend to be truth-tellers, Margaret is perhaps the most blunt about it, and Thorne recognizes this by referencing her bitter curses and her comments “on the illegitimacy of [The Yorkists] claims to the moral high ground” (8). However, we can also see her honesty come through in her asides throughout her first scene (Shakespeare 3.1), which call out the lies or inaccuracies of the other characters. Richard himself is very duplicitous in his speech, allowing the audience to view his two sides while very few characters within the play see him as a threat. Richard lies to Anne about his love for her at the start of the play (Shakespeare, 1.2); he lies to the young Prince Edward while sarcastically commenting on his inevitable demise (3.1); he even goes so far as to lie about his own personality, claiming that he is “too childish-foolish for this world” (1.3.142), acting the innocent. Not surprisingly, it is the female leads that begin to see Richard as immoral and a liar. Queen Margaret’s immediate aside after the above line shows her honesty as well as her knowledge, cursing Richard’s lies and saying “Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world” (1.3.143).

While Margaret is clearly a vengeful and determined truth-teller, it is not just her honesty that is striking about her moral voice, or any other female character in the play. “Each of them makes liberal use of the rhetorical figure of ‘frank speech’ or outspokenness” (Thorne 6), which morphs their honesty into a weapon. “That such bold and forthright speech issues here from the mouths of aristocratic women is peculiarly shocking in its refusal to conform” (7). At a time when men ruled, the only choice for women would be to complain that the world is unjust due to men, having had no physical effect on the political state. Many of their complaints are brushed aside or seen as a joke, yet Thorne believes that we must “…assess the effectiveness of female complaint not just as a tool for exposing the abuses of the time, but as a means of putting them right” (12), bringing honesty and morality together.

Re-evaluating female complaint does not suggest that we ignore the emotions that these complaints spring from, and we cannot deny that there are personal interests behind every complaint made by the women in Richard III. Thorne believes that we must combine the emotional conflicts with the conflicts of the play as a whole, politics and anarchy included, in order to properly demonstrate these characters as moral. There is a great amount of personal suffering, mourning, and wailing done by the female leads in the play, but what must be acknowledged are the effects of these behaviours, not simply that they occur. While these emotional responses were expected of women at the time, “their culturally scripted performance of grief was also deplored as proof of their sex’s incapacity to govern their emotions” (Thorne 17), which speaks for women being cast out of the political sphere and being patronized. Emotion, however, is the driving force of complaint in the play, and therefore quite the weapon:

Queen Elizabeth:

My words are dull. O, quicken them with thine!

Queen Margaret:

Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine (Shakespeare, 4.4. 124-125).

Elizabeth and Margaret, though they do mourn and are in grief, spend most of their time rejecting “the standard script of tearful lamentation and what it betokens – women’s soft, watery disposition – for the fiery, choleric qualities thought to typify the male” (Thorne 18). Margaret’s curses are the best example of this statement, as they show very little of the sadness and a great amount of the fury, frightening Hastings and leaving all on edge (Shakespeare, 1.3). In Act 4, Scene 4, we begin to see the fury reach Elizabeth and the Duchess of York in their confrontation with Richard, as he even attempts to placate them both, telling his mother, “You speak too bitterly” (4.4.182). Unlike the deceitful and immoral characters around them, the female leads of Richard III speak for justice and honour, for right and wrong; if they cannot fight physically they seem very free to fight verbally. “This combustive mixture of grief and ire imbues the women’s speech with an impassioned vehemence, steering it away from the plangent accents of lament towards the more combative figurative devices” (Thorne 19).

It is important to note how these woman, though battling with each other as well as with Richard throughout the play, band together to fight for a common cause. The female leads are, near the end of the play, like peasants revolting against a corrupt king. “The female rivalry and antagonism that has dominated the plot for so long yields to a groundswell of empathetic solidarity” (24), which showcases these woman as not only fighters for justice, but fighters for a common good. It is clear how these women can be seen to voice the nation, as Thorne acknowledges, bringing complaint together with textual events to create a form of revolution for the betterment of society. Their almost sub-textual battle is emphasized when we reassess the reasons for as well as the effects of female complaint. Voicing the nation’s conscience is indeed what these female leads seem to do, but they do so by embodying the moral high ground of each situation they appear in. They display themselves as rational and logical, reacting as innocents would to violence and dishonour, while other characters blindly accept. The apparent melodrama of feminine complaint dwindles in the light of Thorne’s analysis, and the important role of each woman as a speaker for justice and morality overtakes their initially mewling appearances.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. Ed. Peter Holland. Toronto: Penguin, 2000. Print.

Thorne, Alison. "‘O lawful let it be / That I have room ... to curse a while’: voicing the nation's conscience in female complaint in Richard III, King John and Henry VIII.” This England, That Shakespeare. Ed. Willy Maley and Margaret Tudeau-Clayton. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 105-126. Print.