On the representational level, using women speakers in dramatic monologues gives a voice to an otherwise silenced, voiceless figure. For instance, instead of being the object of male observation and speculation, as in D. G. Rossetti’s “Jenny,” the prostitute—Jenny herself, so to speak—acquires a voice of her own in Webster’s “A Castaway.” In this case the Other is a woman, but any other group or class that has been oppressed, suppressed, silenced, or distorted by the hegemonic ruling ideology can benefit from this form.
Concomitant with the voices of women are shifted perspectives, standpoints, value systems, and standards of judgment. Imagine the difference in perspective it would make if the most famous of Browning’s dramatic monologues were told by the duchess. Therefore, by allowing the female speakers to tell their first-hand experiences, women’s monologues, construct these female characters as subjects rather than as the objects in the speech act. Additionally, having access to speech activates and empowers the subject, since the newly acquired voice allows her to speak for and defend herself, even though the speaker is a fictional character.
The critical neglect of dramatic monologues by women not only affect the interpretation of this genre, but also limits its counter-hegemonic potentiality in character representation. In The Audience in the Poem (1983), Dorothy Mermin, based on her analyses of dramatic monologues by five Victorian poets (Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Clough and Meredith), observes that the dramatic monologue proves to be “an unsuitable medium for telling any story more complex than a romantic, pathetic, or melodramatic anecdote,” because “its powers of characterization are highly limited and specialized. A monologue cannot depict character as the novel does, as a process of becoming, or incident as part of such a process” (10). She further argues that “if the speaker in a dramatic monologue were to enter a novel, he would have to be a minor figure whose nature does not change . . . .For the incidents that the monologue enact are not formative or educative: they can reveal the speaker’s character but they do not alter it” (10-11). Though pertinent to her study of a handful of male poets, Mermin’s observations prove untrue when applied to Webster, whose monologues push the boundary of the genre not only to “reveal the speaker’s character” but also, more significantly, to represent the change and growth of characters. Through inserting narrative contexts that relate to different stages in characters’ lives (as in “Sister Annunciata,” “A Castaway” and “Medea”), these poems represent dynamic change rather than static caricature.
However, the most significant connection between the dramatic monologue and women is a contingent one: the contingent historical consequences of women’s subjugation, especially their oppressed and silenced state. Instead of drawing an essential connection between women and the significance of the dramatic monologue, I want to emphasize this form’s uniqueness in providing a voice to the previously silenced…