Sharing the Light: Feminine Power in Tudor and Stuart Comedy Page: 31
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31
seduction of betrayal" ("Poetics" 130-31).31 As Williamson
says, "by privileging female characters and neglecting the
patriarchal institutions which surround them, many feminist
critics concentrate on only part of the whole
representation, just as scholars interested in power often
write as if Elizabeth were the only woman in England"
(Patriarchy 19).
Kahn and Greene favor the Saussurean definition of the
text as "a signifying process which inscribes ideology"
(Difference 25), thus making literary criticism more
inclusive, more fluid, opening the possibility of many
viewpoints that may include the experiences of the reader—
an interpretative collaboration among signifier, sign, and
audience. I agree with Adrienne Munich that male-authored
texts are as valid for feminist reading as women's writing
("Notorious" 238-59). Then the sign becomes at once the
representation of the signifier's—the playwright's—and
receptor's ideologies. As an open-ended query with no
preconceived thesis, my study examines the women in these
plays as a question of their living; in attempting to
identify their moments of individual power over the males
(or other females, or the system) I must consider not only
my own response but also the authorial mindset and
contemporary philosophy that their individual power implies.
One aspect of so-called feminist criticism most
appealing to those of us not particularly loyal to any one
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Tanner, Jane Hinkle. Sharing the Light: Feminine Power in Tudor and Stuart Comedy, dissertation, May 1994; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278551/m1/37/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .