SOURCE: Marshall, Cynthia. “‘I Can Interpret All Her Martyr'd Signs’: Titus Andronicus, Feminism, and the Limits of Interpretation.” In Sexuality and Politics in Renaissance Drama, edited by Carole Levin and Karen Robertson, pp. 193-209. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Marshall claims that Titus Andronicus offers a profoundly misogynistic view of male-female relations through its presentation of women as estranged, alienated, and silenced.

Titus Andronicus presents special problems for a feminist critic. We are familiar with patriarchal societies like the Rome of Titus Andronicus, composed of tier upon tier of brothers, who openly barter women in their political maneuvers. Likewise, the play's polarized images of female possibility—the vicious, sexually voracious Tamora, and the powerless, chaste Lavinia—offer a compelling, but no longer surprising, instance of the way a misogynistic vision constructs its own reality. Kathleen McLuskie signals the dilemma: “Feminism cannot simply take...