In the play Dr. Faustus female characters are portrayed only in a sexual light. An example is seen in the character Helen of Troy. Helen of Troy is used as an object to please Faustus in order to keep him on the dark side. Helen was not conjured until the last act. She has the most status out of all of the women in play, yet she has no lines. She just enters on stage to stratify Faustus’s needs for a women. She just stands there and gets kissed by him twice and then leaves the stage to never be seen in the play again. While she’s onstage “Faustus relentlessly objectifies her. And yet, like so much else in the play, this can be read two ways: if the conjured Helen is real, Faustus’s treatment of her is selfishly arrogant; if, by contrast, ‘Helen’ is actually a devil in human shape, then Faustus’s lust is the pathetic result of supernatural manipulation” (Rasmussen & DeJong ). So women are either seen as a sexual conquest, something that men need for satisfaction, or used as manipulation to make men more susceptible to persuasion.
In the play, Faustus can be seen being susceptible to persuasion because of the character Mephastophilis. Mephastophilis in the first act is portrayed as a man. The devil and Mephastophilis continually, throughout the first act use peer pressure to make Faustus come to the dark side. When Faustus wants to go back to God and repent, Mephastophilis is now portrayed as a woman and manipulates Faustus into staying on the dark side. Another character on the dark side is the character Lechery. What gender do we identify Lechery as? If you said female, you are correct. We articulate seduction with the character Lechery.
Seduction was very important in Renaissance Literature, it’s still seen as a feminine characteristic today. Females are seen as seductresses, even in society today, which is why Lechery is portrayed as a female character in the play Dr. Faustus. She is even called the mistress minx even before the viewers know that she is Lechery, one of the seven deadly sins. Her only line in the play is, “Who, I serve? I am one that loves an inch of raw mutton better than an eel of fried stockfish; and the first letter of my name begins with Lechery” (Marlow 698). Her only line was about penises which can tell the audience that this is what men expect from women. They expect women to talk about their penises and to seduce them.
Females are always presented in a sexual light. “This tradition of presenting beautiful women in terms of their effect on others is surprisingly constant in literature” (Maguire 50). All of the women mentioned in the play are all viewed as manipulative because of their gender. Women are means to an end and nothing more. In Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, women are either seen as helpful or as a hindrance. Much like in the play Everyman, Beauty is seen as a hinderance.
Clip of Dr. Faustus Being Performed:
Works Cited
Maguire, Laurie. Helen of Troy : From Homer to Hollywood, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest E-book Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/up/detail.action?docID=428103.
Marlowe, Christopher. Dr. Faustus. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Simpson, James, et al. 10th ed., W.W. Norton, 2018.
Rasmussen, Eric, and Dejong, Ian. “An Introduction to Doctor Faustus: Morality and Sin.” The British Library, The British Library, 6 Mar. 2017, https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/an-introduction-to-doctor-faustus-morality-and- sin.