가족의 붕괴: 『여자여 여자를 조심하라』읽기

Abstract

Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women portrays, like many other dramas of the time, the widespread corruptions revolved around the family, the basic structure of society. Portraying variously distorted family relationships―including husband and wife, mother and son, father and daughter, aunt and niece, uncle and niece―the drama satirizes the materialism and the absence of morality manifested in different individuals and the society as a whole. The work is quite unique in the senses that it satirizes human beings and their society by means of tragedy and that, through the satire, it displays the author's moral standards which are both austere and rigorous. The drama states that the destruction of family relationship is bound to result in social corruption, and the dramatist understands that no society in which the family members are against one another is able to maintain health and sanity. Perhaps this moral urgency with which Middleton views his society forces him to present his satire as a tragedy, instead of comedy which is the common practice for many other satirists, including Ben Jonson and John Marston. Considering that the meaning of the work lies in its satiric force, this paper explores what exactly is to be satirized and how the satire ultimately reveals Middleton's moral values. To state the conclusion, the drama depicts how individual corruptions in morality, or lack of will in sustaining moral integrity, destroy families and how the destruction of family subsequently corrupts the whole society. By presenting the entire process of corruption in form of tragedy, Women Beware Women makes its audience feel pity and fear, and afterwards catharsis, so as to become more effective satire than the case of comedy.