Dinner is Served But it's Actually Just People: The Female Grotesque in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus

This paper analyzes the Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and specifically the characters of Lavinia and Tamora, to argue that the bodies of women in the play, bodies rendered grotesque through state-sanctioned violence and political subjugation, nonetheless find unique means by which to exert agency in a narrative dominated and dictated by the voices of men. The author argues that the female grotesque in the play is discursive of the way women’s bodies are objectified by dominant early modern and contemporary male power structures, and explores how the grotesque may offer new readings on gender dynamics in early modern drama. In this way, Titus Andronicus offers unique insight into how the grotesque may be deployed in resistance to patriarchal power structures that threaten to, and often succeed in, controlling, deforming, and destroying women’s bodies.