1. WOMEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THEATRE
1.1. SEXUAL PRACTICES IN ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN
1.1.1. A PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY.
Although Elizabethan and Jacobean times were periods of great changes in society's way of thinking as well as transformations in the society18, it was still a patriarchal system which governed communities. In her book The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama, Mary Beth Rose states that “it would seem that traditional Renaissance sexual values—polarization of sexual roles, the subordination of women, and
13 M.B. ROSE, The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama.
Cornell University Press, 1988, p.9.
14 A. KOWALSKA, op.cit., p.36.
15 M.B ROSE, op. cit., p.1.
16 F.P WILSON, "Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama" in R.J KAUFMANN (ed), Elizabethan Drama. Oxford University Press, ed. Ralph J. Kaufmann, 1970, p.8.
17 Ibid, p.7.
18 M. ABITEBOUL, Le Monde de Shakespeare. Ed. du temps, 2005, p.15.
marriage based on a balance of affection and property—constitute the norm against which the play’s biting satire operate"19, showing that patriarchy seemed to be a natural system for the English Renaissance. In the introduction of In Another Country: Feminist perspectives on Renaissance Drama, Dorothea Kehler and Susan Baker add that it is in “the direct interest of patriarchal power to believe […] that the particular conditions our society has developed for managing sexual drives, child rearing, and the economics of sustenance and inheritance are normal and natural and inevitable”20.
It was through the “idealised sexual norm of gender polarisation and male dominance”21 that persisted the normalisation of male control over female sexuality. Women never owned their own desire as they lived under a “transfer of authority”22 whereby the respectful daughter [would] be the obedient wife”23. Joseph Swetnam's pamphlet The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, forward, and unconstant women or the vanity of them, choose you whether, With a Commendation of wise, virtuous, and honest Women, Pleasant for married Men, profitable for young Men, and hurtful to none is a good example to understand the principle of male dominance and the misogynistic thoughts that could reinforced the idea of the female inferiority. He conveyed misogynistic ideas: “This first Chapter showeth to what use Women were made”24. For instance, he argues that “every married man knows this, that a woman will never be quiet if her mind be set upon a thing till she have it”25.
Even though misogynistic pamphlets existed in the seventeenth century, Mary Beth Rose explains that “The Elizabethan and Jacobean periods witnessed major transformations in the social construction of gender, the conceptualisation of the position of women, and the ideology of the family”26.
19 M.B. ROSE, op. cit., p.58.
20 D.KEHLER, S. BAKER, In Another Country : Feminist perspectives on Renaissance Drama, p.3
21 M.B ROSE, op. cit., p.76.
22 M. ABITEBOUL, Le Monde de Shakespeare. Ed. du temps, 2005, p.53.
23 trad. “la fille respectueuse deviendra la femme obéissante" in M. Abiteboul. Le Monde de Shakespeare. Ed. du temps, 2005, p.53.
24 J. SWETNAM, The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, forward, and unconstant women or the vanity of them, choose you whether, With a Commendation of wise, virtuous, and honest Women, Pleasant for married Men, profitable for young Men, and hurtful to none, 1615, p.2.
25 Ibid., p.5.
26 M.B ROSE, op. cit., p.2.
1.1.2. MARRIAGE IN THE JACOBEAN ERA.
In The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama, Mary Beth Rose reports that “studies […] have been primarily concerned to examine the interlocking connections between literary expression and configurations of political power, placing their emphasis on the relation of sexuality to public life.”27. “Public life” refers directly to the society and how sexuality is viewed and presented. Firstly, it is important to remember that before the Reformation in the sixteenth century, celibacy was the most
“prestigious form of sexual behaviour”28, because it preserved chastity, mainly for young women. Celibacy enabled the people who stayed chaste to protect their souls towards sexual sins. However, Protestantism tended to replace celibacy as the idealised sexuality by “the glorification of marriage”29, while keeping the female chastity and virgin virtue above the preoccupation of the Renaissance literary life, mostly to legitimise children and insure inheritance through marriage and its consumption30. Coppélia Kahn asserts that
"independent women without male guardians […] [were] represented as anomalies, freaks, or deviants"31.
In the seventeenth century, marriages were usually meant to provide alliances between families and avoid fornication32. In most cases for a marriage to be valid, the two parties have to establish an oral promise before a witness and then, consume it33. This practice was called per verba de praesenti, and it can be translated by "words of the present tense", and it engages an immediate effective marriage which could not be dissolved. This type of union appears in the theatre play The Duchess of Malfi written by John Webster. In Act I, scene 1 when the Duchess and Antonio get married, Cariola acts as the witness: "Be not amazed, this woman's of my counsel. I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber, per verba de praesenti is absolute marriage"34. Per verba de praesenti differed from the formula per verba de futuro inasmuch as it was the permanent commitment whereas the latter was more a promise of marriage. As per verba de praesenti can be translated by "words
27 Ibid, p.9.
28 M.B ROSE, op. cit., p.15.
29 Ibid, p.3.
30 Ibid, p.17.
31 C.KAHN, "Whores and Wives in Jacobean Drama" in D. Kehler and S. Baker In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives, p.246.
32 Ibid. p.15.
33 L. STONE, op. cit., p.30.
34 J. WEBSTER, The Duchess of Malfi, Act I, Scene 1, p.123
of the future tense", it only concerned a promise of a future marriage, one that could be dissolved. For instance, it is the case for Angelo and Mariana in Measure for Measure35. However, in the Early Modern period, women who married still stayed under male authority, that of their husband.
In the seventeenth century, widows had more power than married women. This power could appear as a threat to men because of the financial and personal autonomy they had at that time, compared to married women36. On the other hand, widows could be considered as whores if they decided to remarry37 without the consent of their families38. When they did so, they challenged the patriarchal system39. Rachel Prusko states that "[the]
patriarchal fear of young widows' propensity for lecherous, wanton, loose, idle, and foolish behaviour pervades the writing of the period and is often used as justification for pressing them into remarriage"40.
1.1.3. FEMALE SEXUAL DESIRE.
The patriarchal society was based on hearsay about sexuality and mostly female sexuality. Before the nineteenth century, the English language did not have words to describe the sexual activity beyond the reproductive act, and only the gender was called "sex". In Entre affirmation et répression Aleksandra Kowalska asserts that the Renaissance society did not speak much about sexuality or at least not in the same way41. Sociologically this statement could appear as true because in the seventeenth century it seemed that there were two conceptions of sexual love: it could be "idealised beyond physical existence" or "derided as lust"42. According to Mary Beth Rose, Puritans even had a "distrust of sexual desire"43,
35 D. LEMONNIER-TEXIER, G. WINTER, Lectures de Measure for Measure. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012, p.38.
36 G.A. SULLIVAN, P. CHENEY and A. HADFIELD, Early modern English drama. Oxford University Press, 2006, p.273.
37 D. KEHLER, and S. BAKER, op. cit., p.79.
38 M. ABITEBOUL, Le Monde de Shakespeare. Ed. du temps, 2005, p.52.
39 P. DROUET. and W.C. CARROLL (dir.), et al., The Duchess of Malfi: Webster's Tragedy of Blood. Belin éducation, 2018, p.98.
40 P. DROUET. and W.C. CARROLL (dir.), et al., op.cit., p.100.
41 A. KOWALSKA. op.cit., p.18.
42 M.B ROSE, op. cit., p.13.
43 Ibid, p.31.
she even speaks about "perils and evils of sexuality"44. Thus, the female sexuality and sexual desire was a sin: "the female entrance into the sexual world […] is equivalent to sin"45.
In the theatrical art, sexuality and love were subjected to the analysis of satire and tragedy. According to Mary Beth Rose, the Jacobean satire "highlights sexual tensions"46 and expounds the dramatic form to show the struggle of women for independence47, whereas Jacobean tragedy points out destruction and protest of the current sexual discourse48 as well as a "harsh repression of sexual desire"49.
Besides, a woman could not entirely own her body, through her youth when her father had power over her future, when she married and that she had to be "one flesh" with her husband, or even when she was pregnant and that she bore a foetus, her body "[is] never fully autonomous"50. The only time a woman could give her desire free rein was when she was a widow. That was one of the reasons why widows appeared so threatening from the male perspective, because they controlled their own sexuality.
However, at that time both women and men suffered from sexual issues in a medical way, women in particular could have "gynaecological disorders [such as] vaginal ulcers, tumors, inflammatory or haemorrhages, which often made sexual intercourse disagreeable, painful or impossible"51 which tended to prevent even more women from having blooming sexual intercourses.