The Different Presentations of Female Villany in...

Female villainy is explored through Shakespeare’s tragic antagonist Lady Macbeth, a dominant and manipulative temptress who fights against the role a patriarchal society has granted her. Similarly in Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘The Laboratory’, we hear the voice of a subversive and emotionally disturbed jilted lover, preparing a poison for her rival in love. In contrast, in romantic poet Keats’ ballad ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, female villainy is developed from the perspective of a ‘knight at arms’, retelling his experiences with a femme fatale whom like LM, sexually manipulates her lover. Similarly in Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘My Last Duchess’ the reader is introduced to the young and naive wife of an arrogant duke, whose attempts to demonize her result in her untimely death. The two poems told by men leave the reader questioning their reliability in an endemically misogynistic society. Shakespeare portrays LM as predominant woman who refuses to conform to the expectations of a patriarchal society. From the perspective of a Jacobean audience, which believed that women were submissive and obedient, LM’s immediate plan for regicide comes as a great shock. It establishes the theme of female villainy from the beginning of the play. The conventional 16th century woman was also expected to embrace their femininity; Shakespeare uses explicit and unequivocal language to convey a corrupted LM who desires to relinquish every fibre of human tenderness, maternal instinct and