Vittoria: The White Devil?

“A Reconciliation of Opposites” (Coleridge)  The Craft of John Webster in The White Devil (1612). 

Is Vittoria the "White Devil" of John Webster's Play?

“Webster would not have us forget that she is the devil of his play’s title.” (C. Leech p.44)

“That she is the white devil of the title has remained an almost unquestioned assumption.” (R.W. Dent, p.180)

It is usual for Vittoria to be identified as the White Devil of the play, but it seems likely that Webster did not intend for us to be limited by literal, specific representations and the title may well have “a thematic relevance far more significant than any reference to a single character”  (Dent p.202/3). In this light, Webster perhaps refers to her burning desire for independence, which had been such a conundrum for renaissance thinkers. Or, J.W. Lever’s assertion may be more likely; that in a play “without heroes or heroines…The White Devil is not Vittoria Corombona- but Renaissance Europe” (1971). So while a euphemistic title such as “the White Devil” encourages conjecture, we cannot help but feel that Webster, in choosing it, is deliberately teasing us.

Having said that, the rights and wrongs of Vittoria’s behaviour are certainly central to the plot, despite her being offstage for much of the play. One of Webster’s most pressing challenges was to persuade an audience to overlook her malevolence and consider siding with her, for at least some of the time. This was tricky, as she faces some well-founded charges. However, while she is typically represented as evil, like The Duchess of Malfi (1613) she has an enviably proud “integrity of life” (DoM, 5,5,120).  By exploring this tension,, Webster cleverly balances condemnation with some very plausible mitigation.

“John Webster’s The White Devil replicates in microcosm women’s social limitations within a strongly patriarchal society: Vittoria is arraigned by powerful male interrogators and her right of response is negated by her gender. In this play, revenge is not executed for crimes that she is proven to have committed, but rather represents a damage-limitation exercise predicated on the necessity of containing female sexuality.” (Waudby, p.2)

Dilemmas

Webster meticulously constructs a series of moral dilemmas to both excite and confuse us. Vittoria has murder in her heart, but loves truly; she is intelligent in a society that does not wish her to be so; she marries to enhance the reputation of a family she comes to despise. A modern audience recognises and responds immediately to her flagrant commodification , especially when she proves more than capable of out-thinking her adversaries. We therefore tend not to concern ourselves overly with her possible defeat by a corrupt and hostile patriarchy, sensing (wrongly, as it turns out) that she is more than a match for them.Our fluctuating levels of support for Vittoria are affected by our response to this duality. She faces a tricky moral-commercial dichotomy, staking the gaining of social and financial advancement against her disgrace and, possibly, death. As part of this dilemma, Webster has created her persona carefully.

Being confident, intelligent and resourceful, she appears, implicitly, to be frustrated by her well-connected but unexciting marriage, undertaken altruistically to give her low-ranking family some security. Camillo’s status comes from his family connection to Monticelso, the future pope, a high placed schemer and a man unlikely to tolerate personal or political slights. Vittoria’s gamble to openly accept Brachiano’s advances is therefore risky, but is perhaps the most telling indicator of her character; Webster presents her as unable to tolerate mediocrity, whatever the risk.

Her opening lines convey her marital frustrations: “I did nothing to displease him, I carved to him at supper time” (1,2,121). A double-negative and a dubious joke is how Webster establishes her duplicity. We are convinced that she wants to free herself from a tedious and unrewarding marriage. Yet while we applaud her desire for independence, how acceptable is her conspiracy to have two innocents, her rivals, murdered? Clearly, from now on, we must consider which of the two Vittorias we are judging; an heroic seeker of self-determination, or a “temptress in a theatre of male desire.” (Waudby)

Moral Confusion

Herein lies the beauty of the play, and Webster’s craft. Perhaps Vittoria is as guilty as hell, but the audience does not want her to be, such is her charisma. Perhaps, if pressed, while we cannot forgive her shockingly cruel schemes, we are secretly pleased to agree with the realistic Francisco, who in court sees that all the evidence against her is circumstantial. Our confusion is Webster’s intention. While we squirm with embarrassment when the coarse Brachiano clumsily notes the position of her “jewel”, it is hard to argue that her “yew tree dream” was innocent. Even if she didn’t make it up, relating it so flirtatiously to the volatile Brachiano was inexcusable. So we have a guilty woman. But then Webster surprises us, with Vittoria’s heartfelt appeal to Cornelia: “dearest mother, hear me.”  (1,2,269). We see someone who is concerned at some level for her mother’s approbation- or lack of it. Then, who could fail to be moved at her trial, an intelligent, independent woman hung out to dry by a kangaroo court? As Ralph Berry states, “Is not her magnificent performance a true index to her character?” (1972). Webster convinces us to overlook her flaws as she bravely draws upon every ounce of her resourcefulness in a desperate bid to survive. Her defence is a balance, both reasoned and impassioned, and we are willingly fooled by her clever psychology, disguised as candour and openness:

“Sum up my faults I pray, and you shall find, That beauty and gay clothes, a merry heart and a good stomach to a feast are all All the poor crimes that you can charge me with…(3,2,215-8)

A little reflection causes us to re-evaluate the speech and consider that “its audacious proclamation of innocence is one of the few instances in the trial when we can be sure Vittoria is lying…” (Dent, 1966, p.194). Webster has presented Vittoria’s admirable strengths as irresistibly attractive. When she does survive, we share her anger at the unfair sentence; but we are also morally confused, being glad that a murderess has escaped.

Plain Sailing

After this, the next battle is easy for Vittoria. She is able, skilfully and coquettishly, to win Brachiano round over Francisco’s forged love letter, and all seems plain sailing. Webster contrives for us to conspire with her. At her lover’s inevitable death, our heart goes out to her. Surprised, we realise that she really loved him, and is now powerless again, manipulated by those who enjoy pulling the wings off flies. Yet her extraordinarily cynical and detached gloating at Flamineo’s death makes us gasp with horror. It leaves us, guiltily, unable to escape the feeling that we should have been against her all along. We have been led a merry dance by Webster. He has pulled us one way, and pushed us in another. We are now no longer sure what to think. This is the dramatist’s intention. Here’s one way of looking at it:

“There is, as it were, a subordinate side of Vittoria which is innocent. Actually, she is guilty, but there is a strong undercurrent of suggestion in the opposite direction. It never comes to the surface but it is there. Her character is a reconciliation of opposites.” (Bradbrook, 1935)

Ralph Berry, exploring Bradbrook, goes further. He is prepared to overlook her moral ambivalence due to lack of evidence (“no jury would convict her…we must bring in a verdict of ‘not proven”)  but- no matter- he believes that “the imagery damns her.” This is worth exploring. While only the most open-minded would accept the yew tree dream as genuine, Vittoria gets the benefit of the doubt over the evidence. After we have seen the courtroom scene, she probably deserves it.

Potent Imagery

Undoubtedly Webster’s imagery throughout “The White Devil” is potent. Vittoria is represented as an “unsavoury vine”, promising much but delivering poison; she is both Eve and the illicit fruit, a betrayer (“were there a second paradise to lose”); she is a “dunghill bird”, a “wolf”, and a “crocodile”. As Berry says, “Examples are manifold”. Yet Berry chooses to omit some powerful evidence. He ignores the repeated motif of jewellery and how, ultimately, as argued at length by Samuel Schuman, it provides an image which suggests that Vittoria is strong, and bright, and genuine. After she shrugs off Brachiano’s smutty innuendo, she claims the jewel motif as her own, in stages, throughout her trial. For example, when Flamineo calls Camillo a “counterfeit diamond”, the implication is that Brachiano’s ‘precious stone’ is the real thing. This gives Vittoria’s “jewel” even greater significance. The English Ambassador’s shrewd comment that she has “a brave spirit” represents further testimony to her credibility. As a result, Monticelso’s claim in the trial that she cannot be trusted (“such counterfeit jewels make true ones suspected” 3,2,138/9) is undermined. Webster finally gives Vittoria the jewel motif as her own when she replies:

“You are deceiv'd:
 For know, that all your strict-combined heads,
 Which strike against this mine of diamonds,
 Shall prove but glassen hammers: they shall break…” (3,2,140-3)

Strength of Will

This makes her final, triumphant line of the trial chilling in its claim.

“Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light” (3,2,292)

While “Vittoria’s subject position and brief moment of agency is unsustainable not only in terms of her role within the play, but also in Webster’s own society”, (Waudby, p.11) Webster undeniably gives her this moment. Her exclamation is an unequivocal statement of both moral superiority and her determination to achieve a degree of personal freedom; the imagery leaves little room to doubt her strength of will. This seems to undermine Berry’s claim that she is “damned” by Webster’s imagery. In a world of corruption, the purity of her light is the brightest; her “ jewel” must, then, be flawless. However, as J.W. Lever asserts “…it is the depth of the surrounding darkness, not the quality of the gems, that chiefly concerns us…” (ibid.)

It is not until the end that we realise the depth of her depravity and recoil from it. Yet even Vittoria’s inevitable death is ambiguous. While an audience shrinks in horror from her cruelly mocking treatment of her dying brother, it cannot help but admire her fortitude and stoicism- and chutzpah- when she taunts her killers.

An unbending moral position, such as that taken by Ian Jack (1940) might discount ambiguity and view Webster as having “no profound hold on any system of moral values”, condemning Vittoria as “Webster just makes her behave as if she were honourable.” Vittoria the “blazing, ominous star,” (5,6,130) may well be guilty, and she might also be a White Devil. But we are with her much, if not most of the way. Webster’s genius is to establish this “reconciliation of opposites” as wholly believable.

Ralph Berry The Art of John Webster Oxford University Press (1972)

Fredson Bowers Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy University of Virginia (1940)

M C Bradbrook Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy Cambridge Press (1935)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Biographia Literaria Ed. J.Shawcross Oxford University Press, (1907)

R.W. Dent The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona? Renaissance Drama, Vol. 9 pp. 179-203 University of Chicago Press (1966)

Ian Jack The Case of John Webster Scrutiny XV1 (1949)

Clifford Leech, John Webster London (1951)

J.W. Lever The Tragedy of State Methuen  (1971)

Roma Gill A Reading of The White Devil Essays and Studies XIX, University of Sheffield (1966)

Samuel Shuman The Ring and Jewel in Webster’s Tragedies Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol 14, No 2 (Summer 1972)

June Waudby Contextualising Vittoria: Subjectivity and Censure in The White Devil University of Hull (June 2010) www.thisroughmagic.org