The Portrayal of ‘the Other’ and Its Relationship to the City in The Roaring Girl and The Witch of Edmonton. Rebecca Masker College

“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could only be given to traveling: namely, the strange” – Jane Jacobs.

In both The Roaring Girl and The Witch of Edmonton the figure of ‘the other’ emerges through the female characters subversion of normative gender roles. Furthermore, one could argue that the city space serves to felicitate this breaking with gender expectations. As evidenced through the differing treatments of Moll Cutpurse and Elizabeth Sawyer; both of them are examples of aberrant female behaviour by Jacobean standards, yet Moll resides in the city and emerges as the triumphant hero, while Elizabeth inhabits a rural space and is punished as a villain. An alternate argument can also be made that these characters otherness stems not from their gendered defiance, but rather from their positions of low social standing and the power that they still retain despite their lowly position. A key point, that merits further exploration, is that the character of Moll and Elizabeth express not only gender anxiety but also the class anxiety that was emerging amongst the growing cosmopolitanism of the seventeenth century.

Judith Butler described gender as a series of “performative acts,” citing the act of drag or...