조영미. 소비 능력이 가정에 불러오는 위협과 여성의 자제력 - 데커와 웹스터의『서쪽으로』를 중심으로    page(s): 253-286
    [YoungMi Cho. Threats by Women"s Consumption in Early Modern England: Thomas Dekker and John Webster’s Westward Ho

Abstract

With Westward Ho (1604), Thomas Dekker and John Webster bring to the stage early modern England"s anxiety that city wives" housewifery and their access to the market might lead to their sexual licentiousness. One of many city comedies produced from the late 1590s into the 1610s, Westward Ho negotiates this anxiety by foregrounding three wealthy urban wives equipped with purchasing power. With the unprecedented change London experienced during that time, women were released from their traditional roles as silent, chaste, and obedient wives contained in domestic space and were able to move around the city in order to buy goods and services. The most prominent service the wives in Westward Ho buy is writing skill, which was usually denied to the early modern middle-class women. In Westward Ho, writing skill is rewritten as the sexual proficiency of city wives with the association of pen/penis, which creates chances of sexual promiscuity for them. With the new skill and knowledge obtained from the writing class, city wives materialize contemporary anxiety by leaving the bounds of their houses and eventually of the city walls and going on an excursion with gallants to Brainford, a suburban town notorious for illicit assignation. However, with their self-restraint strengthened by the alliance among them, they thwart the gallants" expectation of sexual consummation. In addition, they turn the table on their husbands, who are outraged by their wives" alleged adultery, by revealing that it is the husbands themselves who have betrayed their wives with visits to a city brothel. In this way, Westward Ho tries to deal with the anxiety about women"s sexuality released from domestic bounds. Nevertheless, with the fixed focus on conventional morality toward women"s chastity, Westward Ho suffers from inconsistency in tone between scenes and structural imbalance between characters" wit and the morality imposed by the dramatists.       
       
Keywords:  토마스 데커, 존 웹스터, 『서쪽으로』, 도시 희극, 런던, 음모, 시민의 아내, 여성의 성적 방종, 여성의 자제력, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, Westward Ho, city comedy, London, intrigue, city wives, women", s sexual licentiousness, women", s self-restraint