Judith

I think the major dramatic question is “Is does Judith fall in love with Holofernes?” In the beginning of play, Judith acts as if she is shy and vulnerable when she is first introduced to Holofernes. She acts like she is just a prostitute for Holofernes, but she is actually in a plot to kill him. During the play, she engages in conversation with him about love and death and at one point, although she claims she is lying, in actuality she does really have love for him. Judith develops a fascination of Holofernes, but she can’t follow through with her love for him because he is planning to destroy her country of Israel. If she doesn’t follow through with the plan her family will be killed or enslaved in battle. I believe she loved him because before she killed him the servant had to remind her why she had to kill him. Judith was in a constant fight with herself about completing this task for many reasons. In the beginning, she was just uneasy about being his company because his topic of conversation was “death” which was strange. Then after they conversed for a while she began to see his vulnerability and she broke down his walls of being a harsh general. She developed feelings for him. Once she severed his head from his body, she acted like she was just caught up in the moment of telling him lies that she was rethinking the plan. Judith says to the servant “I was silly there.” In efforts to deter the servant from thinking she had developed feelings for Holofernes. Judith expresses that she still wants to have sex with his body. She states “the head is gone I can make him mine… the evil is gone, the evil is in the bag and I can love!” I think Judith is very desperately seeking love throughout the entire play because she is a widow. Unfortunately, Judith has to push her feelings aside and defend her country.