The White Devil

Vittoria’s acts of scheming and infidelity provide the driving force for much of the plot. At the beginning of the play, she is married to Camillo, but because her family has fallen on hard times, she believes that an affair and an eventual marriage with Bracciano can bring her the wealth and status that she craves. While Flaminio plots and schemes by bartering, lying, and making deals, Vittoria has far fewer tools for social mobility at her disposal. In the patriarchal society of the Italian Renaissance, women are marginalized, and Vittoria has far less power than her brothers, her lovers, or her husband. For this reason, she weaponizes her sexuality to attain a higher social status, seducing Bracciano and convincing him to kill Camillo. Thus, Vittoria’s sexuality becomes the foundation for the play’s complex portrayal of gender and sex. Despite her ostensibly powerless role in this patriarchal society, she can easily manipulate the men around her to achieve her own ends, using her sexuality as the only viable tool that society allows her to wield.

Vittoria’s social climbing is initially successful as she embarks on an affair with Bracciano and indirectly eliminates her husband. However, the play also depicts society’s attempts to curb women’s attempts to assert their own personal power in a patriarchal world. When she is put on trial, her sexuality is publicly policed by patriarchal religious figures, and she is summarily punished for daring to challenge male authority and for using her sexuality to do so. The trial is a deeply hypocritical affair, for although Vittoria is publicly shamed, Bracciano escapes largely unscathed. The outcome of the trial therefore suggests that women are not permitted the same freedoms that men can expect to enjoy. Accordingly, Vittoria points out the cynical and vacuous nature of the trial, criticizing Monticelso for acting as both judge and prosecutor. The fact that Monticelso later becomes Pope shows the extent to which the discrimination against her is institutionalized.

Although Vittoria is mistreated due to her a status as a woman, the fact remains that she is not a moral person, for she conspires to have her husband killed and manipulates those around her through seduction and lies. In this respect, she is very much her brother’s sister. Importantly, both Vittoria and Flaminio are criticized by their mother, Cornelia. The condemnations of Cornelia hold more weight in the play because, as a woman, she is similarly marginalized by society, but she has not resorted to immoral means to improve her station. Cornelia is therefore presented as an example of permissible femininity, while Vittoria’s self-aware sexuality is portrayed as cynical, immoral, and lamentable. As such, the play condemns and sympathizes with Vittoria in equal measure, recognizing her mistreatment while criticizing her for fighting back in a way that is deemed to be morally reprehensible.

Bracciano is a powerful man who finds his marriage to Isabella to tragically loveless, and he does not acknowledge her ongoing devotion to him despite his many flaws. Intent upon indulging his own immoral affair with Vittoria, another married woman, he decides to murder both Isabella and Vittoria’s husband, Camillo. Bracciano’s decision to kill two people to satisfy his sexual desires demonstrates his utter lack of morality, which his further emphasized by his proximity to dark, nefarious arts such as conjuring and poison. His willingness to dabble in witchcraft and assassination imply that his crimes are tainted by godlessness an motivated by sin. Ignoring The Dangers of Succumbing to Emotion, he allows himself to be led into a conspiracy of murder, lust, and witchcraft in order to satisfy his desire for Vittoria. In spite of his many crimes, however, he is not persecuted to the same extent as Vittoria. He does not fear religious or legal condemnation because his wealth, status, and power insulate him from any real repercussions. The only person he really fears is Francisco, a man whose wealth and status matches his own. Bracciano’s sense of immunity reflects the power dynamics of Italian society, in which powerful men only fear one another, while women are punished for committing crimes that are easily condoned in men.

At the end of the play, Bracciano is poisoned by Lodovico, and the manner of his death ironically mirrors the murder of Isabella. However, because Bracciano is killed by a criminal, his death does not conform to any sense of justice, nor can it be portrayed as an example of institutional prosecution. When Bracciano dies, his son Giovanni succeeds him. However, because Giovanni has been raised by the immoral Bracciano, the play hints that Giovanni will also perpetuate this violent cycle. Giovanni announces his need for an example in his life, a mentor to teach him how to be a man because his father is little more than a moral vacuum, and it is clear that without guidance, Giovanni is doomed to become as violent as his father. Bracciano does not just fail himself, but also his son and society as a whole.