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Wise Wench:

Women Beware WomenSlide2

Critics on the Rape of Bianca

Biggs attempts to refute claims that Bianca is raped; Hutchings refutes Biggs (but also fudges the issue in some ways):

What

happens next? We do not know. Professor [Anthony B.] Dawson assumes that the action of

II.ii

itself constitutes rape, and [William C.] Carroll seems to go along with him, until - in a mysteriously privileged view - he asserts that the Duke ‘actually’ rapes Bianca ‘offstage’. But the couple's final passage onstage suggests that the Duke no longer needs to use or even threaten force. Carroll argues that Women Beware Women ‘is one of the few Jacobean plays which actually feature rape or incest instead of merely threatening them’. But the evidence of

II.ii

is surely that rape is threatened rather than enacted;

or rather

, to put it more completely, that the

scene begins

as if leading

to coercion

to

intercourse, continues

intermittently to threaten such

coercion, and

ends as a seduction.

(Murray Biggs, ‘Does the Duke Rape Bianca in

Women Beware Women

?’,

Notes and Queries

44 (1997), 97-100; p. 99)

Biggs argues that ‘the scene begins as if leading to coercion to intercourse [the evasion of ‘rape’ is striking], continues intermittently to threaten such coercion, and ends as a seduction’… Biggs' thesis is that Bianca does not

protest sufficiently

to justify

critics’

claims that

the Duke

rapes her. Indeed,

‘Bianca

is both

vain and ambitious…and

therefore bears

some responsibility

for the outcome of

Il.ii

’

(99).

Yet it

is surely the case that in both

‘textual’

terms

- which

Biggs considers - and in

‘theatrical’ terms

- which he does not - Bianca

is threatened

by a social superior who will

not take ‘no’

for an answer.

Il.ii

suggests all

too readily

the

Duke’s

abuse of power: if

Bianca submits

, she does so, surely, because the

only alternative

is a brutal

rape. (Mark Hutchings

, ‘Middleton´s

Women Beware Women

: Rape, Seduction – Or Power, Simply

?´,

Notes and Queries

,

45 (1998), 366-367; p. 367)Slide3

1. Dissuasion.

(See Shakespeare,

Pericles

, Scene 19)

The function of rape as chastity test puts great emphasis on the female art of dissuasion. In spite of the numerous examples in which women are clearly powerless to prevent their rape, it is generally defined implicitly as a woman’s failure of eloquence. While giving women a voice, this emphasis also implies that if a woman cannot dissuade a man from rape, her chastity is questionable. If she fails and is raped, suicide may redeem her, or alternatively, an impulse towards suicide followed by marriage to the rapist; in these cases her eloquence is often reserved for after the event. Preferably, however, she should succeed in protecting herself, usually to the wonder of her assailant

. (Jocelyn Catty,

Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England

(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 100)Slide4

2. Divine Providence and/or luck.

She that has

that [chastity],

is clad in complete steel,

And like a quivered nymph with arrows keen

May trace huge forests, and

unharboured

heaths,

Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,

Where through the sacred rays of chastity,

No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer

Will dare to soil her virgin purity.

(John Milton,

Comus

, ll

. 420-426)

(See also Shakespeare,

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

; Jonson,

Volpone

.)Slide5

3. Marriage.

[M]

arriage

often functions as

recompense for

an actual rape, reflecting real-life

contingencies. In Painter’s

story ‘Alexander de

Medices

’ the rapist is compelled

to marry

his victim and ‘the marriage [was] made in presence of

the Duke

, with so great

ioy

and

contentation

of all

partes

, as there

was rage

and trouble for ye rape of the Bride

’.

This neat equation

seeks

to

cancel out the rape

, writing the issue of female consent and

desire out

of the story, and conflating all male sexual behaviour as ‘love

’, whether

aggressive or not. Alexander commands the rapist to ‘

loue

hir

so

dearely

, as fondly

heeretofore

she was

beloued

of thee’ (f. 168v).(Catty,

Writing Rape

, p. 29)Slide6

4. Suicide.

Even here she

sheathèd

in her harmless breast

A harmful knife, that thence her

soul

unsheathèd

.

That blow did bail it from the deep unrest

Of that

polluted prison

where it

breathèd

.

Her

contrite sighs

unto the clouds

bequeathèd

Her

wingèd

sprite, and through her wounds doth fly

Life’s lasting date, from cancelled destiny.

(Shakespeare,

The Rape of

Lucrece

, 1723-29

)Slide7

5. Murder.

SATURNINUS

Because the girl should not survive her shame,

And by her presence still renew his sorrows.

[…]

TITUS ANDRONICUS

Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee,

And with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die. (5.3.45-46)

(See Livy, ‘The History of Appius and Virginia’ in

The History of Rome

)Slide8

6. Survival and whoredom.

The virgin martyr sets the implicit standard for the heroine threatened with sexual violence. If, like Jonson’s Celia and Marston’s

Sophonisba

, she adheres to the example of the saints, she shares in their glory. If, like Middleton’s Bianca and Beatrice-Joanna, she deviates from their model,

valuing her life more and her chastity less, her deviation is a sign of moral and spiritual corruption

; she is, in

Vives’s

words, ‘an evil keeper’ of her chastity and she is punished for it by vituperation as a whore. In the Jacobean drama, as in the lives of the saints, the

truly

chaste woman is inviolable; her body may be ‘

defouled

’ by symbolic rape or erotic torture but not sexually violated. (Karen

Bamford

,

Sexual Violence on the Jacobean Stage

(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 32)

Bianca is not devoid of virtue. While the Duke pleads his passionate love and the futility of religious scruples, she has the moral strength to withstand him. But when he shrewdly pities her condition and offers comfort and security, Bianca has no answer because he has touched upon a newly felt need that is deeper than her desire to maintain her honor and remain true to

Leantio

… It is psychologically right that Bianca says no more:

morally she cannot acquiesce, emotionally she cannot resist

.

(

Verna Ann

Foster, ‘The Deed’s

Creature: The Tragedy of Bianca in

Women

Beware

Women

’,

The

Journal of English and Germanic Philology

,

78

,

(1979

),

508-521; 512)Slide9

Dissuasion

Divine Providence / luck

Marriage

Suicide

Murder

Survival and whoredomSlide10

HIPPOLITO

...vengeance met vengeance

Like a set match, as if the

plagues of sin

Had been agreed to meet here altogether. (5.2.159-61)

Many of the ‘plagues of sin’ (V.ii.158) that characterise the masque are

apocalyptic

in origin, and interestingly they offer a kind of inverted parody of the Catholic mass… Seen in this light, the vicious swiftness of the retribution that characterises the masque, and that so many critics have found problematic, makes sense. Isabella is killed when Livia throws ‘flaming gold’ (V.ii.117sd) upon her, an appropriately apocalyptic ending. She becomes figuratively ‘painted’ like the whore [of Babylon] as punishment for her sin… For the more

Calvinistically

minded members of the audience, these deaths would be

as appropriate as they were inevitable

. (Adrian

Streete

, ‘An old quarrel between us that will never be at an end’: Middleton's

Women Beware Women

and Late Jacobean Religious Politics’,

The Review of English

Studies,

60 (2009), 230-254; p. 253)Slide11

CARDINAL

Vowed you then never to keep

strumpet

more,

And are you now so swift in your desires

To

knit

your honours and your life fast

to her

?

Is not

sin

sure enough to wretched man,

But he must

bind himself in chains

to’t

? Worse!

Must marriage, that immaculate robe of honour,

That renders virtue glorious, fair, and fruitful

To her great master, be now made the garment

Of

leprosy

and foulness? (4.3.8-17)Slide12

BIANCA

…mine honour’s

leprous

… (2.2.422)

BIANCA

A blemished face best fits a

leprous

soul. (5.2.207)Slide13

BIANCA

Now bless me from a blasting; I saw that now

Fearful for any woman’s eye to look on.

Infectious mists and mildews hang

at’s

eyes,

The weather of a doomsday dwells upon him.

Yet since mine honour’s leprous,

why should I

Preserve that fair that caused the leprosy

?

Come, poison all at once. (2.2.418-24)

BIANCA

A blemished face best fits a leprous soul. (5.2.207)Slide14

First

of all, from what I understand from doctors,

that’s

really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape,

the female body has ways

to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or

something… (Todd Akin, former Republican Congressman, discussing abortion for rape victims 2012)

What is his picture of the sort of rape scenario that would cause the female body to “shut that whole thing down,” absent

divine intervention

?...

[D]

oes

Akin think that doing what one could to survive would delegitimize the rape—or that a legitimate victim is one who sees rape as a fate worse than death? Is it fear that shuts that whole thing down, or disgust? Fear and sex and pregnancy are not strangers… [T]here is a notion, common in conservative rhetoric lately, that desperation is always elsewhere, and that the crises in ordinary lives do not need to be contemplated or worried about—not by nice people. They are rare; something has gone wrong; maybe the complaint isn’t legitimate; maybe it’s their own fault. That indifference goes beyond the question of rape and abortion. (Amy Davidson, ‘What Does Todd Akin Think “Legitimate Rape” Is?’, The New Yorker, 19th August 2012)Slide15

‘…the female body has ways…’

The

opposition of body and

soul… –

an important strategy for containing the crime of rape which, as we know, goes back to Augustine – implicitly mystifies women, and in a context crucially concerned with establishing chastity. It thus

seems

likely to fuel

a prevalent anxiety concerning the

knowability

of female

sexuality

… The

problem goes beyond the mere practicality of catching a woman in the act of adultery, to the greater

anxiety generated by the relative invisibility of the female genitals and female sexual pleasure. The unknowability of female sexuality or sexual status, which we have already seen to be of particular pertinence for the issue of rape, is strongly problematized by the dramatic mode. (Catty, Writing Rape, pp. 107-08)LEANTIOThey are all of ’em a kind of spirits – soon raisedBut not so soon laid, Mother. As for example,A woman’s belly is got up in a trice –A simple charge ere it be laid down again:

So ever in all their quarrels, and their courses

. (1.1.80-84)Slide16

BIANCA

Oh the deadly snares

That women set for women, without pity

Either to soul or honour! Learn by me

To know your foes; in this belief I die:

Like

our own sex

, we have no enemy, no enemy! (5.2.213-17)Slide17

LEANTIO

Yet let’s be wise, and keep all

smothered

closely;

I have bethought a means; is the door fast?...

You know, Mother,

At the end of the dark parlour there’s a place

So artificially contrived for a conveyance,

No search could ever find it. When my father

Kept in for

manslaughter

, it was his sanctuary.

There will I lock my life’s best

treasure up,Bianca. BIANCA Would you keep me closer yet?Have you the conscience? Y’are best e’en choke me up, sir! (3.1.240-49)Slide18

LEANTIO

Here stands the poor

thief

, now, that

stole

the

treasure

,

And he’s not thought on. Ours is near kin now

To a twin-misery born into the world:

First the hard-

conscienced

worldling, he hoards wealth up;Then comes the next, and he feasts all upon’t –One’s damned for getting, th’other for spending on’t. (3.2.88-93)Slide19

BIANCA

Make me not bold with death and deeds of ruin

Because they fear not you; me they must fright.

Then am I best in health

. Should thunder speak

And none regard it, it had lost the name

And were as good be still. I’m not like those

That take their soundest sleeps in greatest tempests;

Then wake I most

, the weather

fearfullest

,

And

call for strength to virtue. (2.2.349-56)Slide20

ISABELLA

What’s that?

Methought

I heard ill news come toward me

,

Which commonly we understand too soon,

Then over-quick at hearing.

I’ll prevent it

,

Though my joys fare the harder. Welcome it?

It shall ne’er come so near mine ear again

. (1.2.216-20

)Note: the punctuation here is from the edition in Taylor and Lavagnino’s Collected Works of Middleton, not from Dutton’s Oxford World’s Classics edition. Slide21

FABRITIO

She’s a

dear

child to me.

DUKE

She must needs be; you say she is your daughter.

FABRITIO

Nay, my good lord,

dear to my purse

I mean –

Beside my person;

I ne’er reckoned that

.

She has the full qualities of a gentlewoman:I have brought her up to music, dancing, what notThat may commend her sex, and stir her husband. (3.2.104-10)Isabella’s lot, to be paraded like a prize mare for the lascivious scrutiny of the cretinous and phallically obsessed Ward, is a graphic reminder of the condition to which [the women in the play] all either are, or have been, or could be subject. Her protests about the social realities that place women in such situations are unanswerable. (Richard Dutton, ‘Introduction’, in Thomas Middleton,

Women Beware Women and Other Plays

(Oxford: OUP, 1999), p. xxii)Slide22

LYSANDER

You have her father’s love, Demetrius;

Let me have

Hermia’s

:

do you marry him

. (

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1.1)

In

keeping with

Leantio’s

commercialized, debased

Petrarchanism, I don’t think it coincidental that Bianca first appears at a distance, that she says nothing, and that we, like the Mother, are called upon to gaze at her She is indeed his master-piece, a token that reveals his mastery, his theft… Probably no scene in Jacobean drama represents so graphically the commodification of women as that in which the Ward and Sordido peer down Isabella's throat and peep under her skirts in their efforts to scan ‘all her parts over’ (III.iv.43) before buying. As in the main plot, economics and erotics come together here in the act of speculation. Isabella is not only a valuable commodity to be ventured for, she is also a visual, erotic object to be looked at. (Anthony B. Dawson, ‘Women Beware Women and the Economy of Rape’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 27 (1987), 303-320; p. 306)Slide23

ISABELLA

Marry a fool!

Can there be a greater misery to a woman

That means to keep her days true to her husband,

And know no other man? So virtue wills it.Slide24

Why

, how can I obey and honour him

But I must needs commit

idolatry

?

A fool is but the image of a man,

And that but ill made neither. Slide25

Oh

the heart-breakings

Of miserable maids,

where love’s enforced

!

The best condition is but bad enough:

When women have their choices, commonly

They do but buy their thraldoms, and bring great portions

To men to

keep’em

in subjection –

As if a fearful prisoner should bribe

The keeper to be good to him, yet lies in still,

And glad of a good usage, a good look sometimes.By’r Lady, no misery surmounts a woman’s:Men buy their slaves, but women buy their masters.Slide26

Yet

honesty and love

makes all this happy,

And, next to angels’, the most

blest estate

.

That Providence that has made

ev’ry

poison

Good for some use, and sets four warring elements

At peace in man, can make a harmony

In things that are most strange to human reason.

Oh but this marriage

! (1.2.157-81)DESDEMONAO, these men, these men! (Othello 4.3.59)PORTIAO me, the word ‘choose’! I may neither choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?... In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he – why,

he… (

The Merchant of Venice

1.2)Slide27

FABRITIO

Why, is not man

Tied to the same observance, lady sister,

And in one woman?

LIVIA

’Tis

enough for him;

Besides, he tastes of many sundry

dishes

That we poor wretches never lay our lips to:

As obedience forsooth, subjection, duty, and such kickshaws,

All of our making, but served in to them.

And if we lick a finger then sometimesWe are not to blame; your best cooks use it. EMILIA’Tis not a year or two shows us a man: They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;

They eat us

hungerly

, and when they are full,

They belch us. (

Othello

3.4)

[Christopher

Newstead

, in his

Apology for Women

(1620), contends] that all misogynists in history have been gluttons. (Later, he argues that women are more intelligent than men because they eat less, adducing the proverb ‘Fat

panches

make

leane

pates’.) (Linda Woodbridge,

Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620

(Brighton: Harvester, 1984), p.80)Slide28

FABRITIO

Th’art

a sweet lady, sister, and a witty-

LIVIA

A

witty

! Oh the

bud

of commendation

Fit for a

girl of sixteen

; I am

blown

, man,I should be wise by this time; and for instanceI have buried my two husbands in good fashion,And never mean more to marry.GUARDIANO No? Why so, lady?LIVIABecause the third shall never bury me.I think I am

more than witty

; how think you, sir? (1.2.37-53)Slide29

DUKE

She that is fortunate in a duke’s favour

Lights on a tree that bears all women’s wishes;

If your own mother saw you pluck fruit there,

She would commend your

wit

...

Come, play the

wise

wench and provide for ever. (2.2.368-80

)

Note: ‘wise’ reads ‘wife’ in the first printed edition.Slide30

DUKE

I can command,

Think

upon that. (2.2.360-61)

Although Renaissance law defined and enforced women’s subordinate position, one must remember that this was a period in which the notion of legal personhood itself was undergoing a radical transformation. It would not be many years after the law books began formulating their new definition of rape that political theorists started to articulate a modern notion of the law as mandated to protect the rights of individuals who expressed their freedom in their ability to consent to political, social, and economic contracts. The definition of rape as ‘carnal knowledge of a woman’s body against her will’ that took hold in English law at the beginning of the sixteenth century was arguably a precursor to the vision John Locke articulated at the close of the period when he asserted that government should be founded on the idea that ‘men are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another’.

And while proscriptions on female self-expression contributed to women’s subjugation, the tendency of feminist scholars to view the equation of female chastity with silence only in negative terms limits our ability to read the

positive

ideas and uses of silence in this period, and particularly its role in the development of a modern notion of subjectivity… While the word

privacy

derives, in its Latin root, from the concept of privation or exclusion from forms of public action and authority, it was this state of exile that made privacy the core of a new power attributed to the individual psyche as the seat of a will that operated independently of an external arena of social action

. (Amy

Greenstadt

,

Rape and the Rise of the Author: Gendering Intention in Early Modern England

(Farnham:

Ashgate

, 2009), p. 23)Slide31

ISABELLA

Oh

the heart-breakings

Of miserable maids, where love’s enforced

! (2.2.164-65)Slide32

The radical implications of Middleton’s

The Spanish Gypsy

(1623)

are…subdued

by its conclusion. The raped woman, Clara, is, as Gossett points out, ‘the first woman to be genuinely uncertain that she is stained’; her description of herself as ‘infected now / By your soul-staining lust’ condemns Roderigo’s soul as readily as

hers.

She is then quick to believe that she has purged herself with her

tears.

For Clara, knowledge of her lack of complicity is sufficient to ensure her right to live; she even refuses to rule out the possibility that she will marry a man other than the rapist.

Unfortunately, these implications are finally lost when she marries Roderigo. Conventionally, she claims that she is now ‘righted in noble satisfaction’, and Roderigo’s claim that he will ‘redeem my fault

’ enables

the audience to assume a happy marriage for them and to see him as the hero of the play

. (Catty,

Writing Rape, p. 107)