Measure for Measure (Vol. 33) | Mario DiGangi (essay date 1993)
Mario DiGangi (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: "Pleasure and Danger: Measuring Female Sexuality in Measure for Measure," in ELH, Vol. 60, No. 3, Fall, 1993, pp. 589-609.
[In the following essay, DiGangi uses the example of Mistress Elbow to emphasize the dubious results of Renaissance efforts to control female sexuality through marriage.]
Despite its initial promise of equity and levity—a balanced title and a Folio classification as a comedy—Measure for Measure delivers what many readers have felt to be a skewed and dismal account of sexual desire. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics, responding to this anti-festive comedy's persistent reiteration of the manifold dangers that accompany sexual unions and desires, have usefully considered how female sexuality in particular is linked to "shame" and "contamination"; treated with "disgust" and "deep distrust"; figured as the "original sin that brings death into the world"; reduced...
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