"Hellish Laws in Ashes": Tradition, Empire, and the Question of Tragedy in Mariana Starke's The Widow of Malabar

According to Mark W. Roche, “Next to Aristotle’s account of tragedy, the theory of tragedy developed by…. Hegel has become the most studied and quoted in the West.” Roche asserts that, for Hegel, tragedy happens when a hero takes a just position, “but in doing so simultaneously violates a contrary and likewise [a] just position and so falls prey to a onesidedness” (11). For Hegel and those who follow his interpretation of tragedy, within a society there are two systems, kinship and state, which are fundamentally at odds. Engendering separate structures of law, these systems determine what is acceptable in each respective sphere, and this binary forms the foundation of private and social life. In Hegel’s understanding, tragic subjectivity arises when a tragic character takes a just position in one sphere, while that same position is both unjust and destructive in the adverse system. Crossed at just the right fissure, characters are divided within this dialectic, and this duality of obligation and duty becomes fatal. Focusing mainly on Sophocles’ Antigone, Hegel’s views of tragedy are outlined most prominently in Lectures in Aesthetics, but can be found in many of his works that are now considered foundational in Western thought.