A mother's feast

Abstract

This thesis seeks to prove that the sexual system within Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is not a patriarchy, as assumed by most feminist critics, but a cannibalistic system in which the normal tenants of a patriarchy are subsumed. Exogamy becomes endogamy, which leads to incest within the familial groups of the play. The practice of incest also leads to the dissolution of the distinctions between in familial relationships as well as the collapse of identity and gender-specific familial roles. With the collapse of identity and gender-specific familial roles, the social system present within Titus Andronicus proves to be a self-consuming one in which identity, social position, and eventually, actual physical bodies all become consumed by the various characters.