In The White Devil, the sociological aspects of the Corombona family are carefully described as they are ignored in other Jacobean plays. The family is a ruined aristocratic one, the father having squandered his patrimony so that his sons and daughter are compelled to live on their own. The society into which they are thrown is not favourable to them, especially Flamineo. He manages to graduate from a university, humiliating himself so that he can serve in the court, from where he "retrun'd ... not a suit the richer". This is precisely because the honest way of life means nothing in the society ruled by Bracciano and Francisco. Flamineo, therefore, determined to live as a villain and gets involved in the murder of Camillo and Isabella, as well as pandaring his sister to Bracciano, from whom he expects promotion in recompense for the eril acts. On the other hand, Vittoria, probably under coercion, marries Camillo, whose social status is far below hers in order to avoid the burden of an expensive dowry. But her desire to climb up the social ladder seems to be hard to quench, so that she lets herself be seduced by Bracciano. Consequently, both of them, decendants of a noble aristocratic family, are to be killed by Francisco, a more powerful ruler than Bracciano, because they had a hand in murdering his sister, wife of Bracciano. But, there would have been no other way to "preferment" in society. This is the double bind situation in WD, into which Flamineo and Vittoria have been thrown owing to the financial crisis of their family.
Both of them are, however, not worthy of sympathy, for their deaths are the result of their own evil behaviour, and the deaths are not a bit greater than their sins. On the other hand, their mother does earn the sympathy of the audience, for she expresses the misery of a mother of immoral children, finally driven mad by the death of her anothet son, honest son, Marcello. But her tragedy is not so much felt as the son as the emblem of the tragedy of the whole Corombona family, a typical ruined aristocratic family. This can be illustrated from the fact that she is represented as being very conscious of the ruin of "our [i.e. her] family", the Corombono family, and so does Marcello. Women in WD are described with deep insights into their miserable conditions, but they are not represented merely for their own sake, but for the intensification of the misery of the situation of ruined aristocracy in a double bind situation.