You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
An understanding of Isabella in Measure for Measure has eluded literary critics, who have made more antithetical appraisals of her than of almost any other Shakespearean character. Some eulogize her as a saint, an allegorical representation of the Bride of Christ, Shakespeare's epitome of unadulterated virtue.1 Yet, this same character evokes censure from other critics. These detractors brand her a “ferocious termagant,” “a vixen in her virtue,” and object to her chilly contempt for her brother's understandable fear of death.2
The allegation of a repressed libido in Isabella is persuasive.3 It occasionally surfaces, as during her meeting with Angelo, in the form of seductive language (“I am come to know your pleasure”) and vivid depictions of sexuality:
… were I under the terms of death,
Th'impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death as to a bed
That longing have been sick for….4
Viewing Isabella as a psychologically complex character afflicted with sexual disturbances eliminates some of the paradoxes surrounding her. And the above cited “keen whips” passage may be the key to understanding Isabella: it reveals the signs of masochistic fantasies which appear in many forms. These range in content from an unidentifiable authority figure beating an equally unidentifiable victim (usually a child) to the fantasizer's own father or mother or an unknown despotic figure beating the fantasizer.5 Furthermore, that Angelo is a sadist—the insightful argument of Hanns Sachs6—suggests that Isabella may engage in a symbiotic relation with Angelo and be his masochistic counterpart.