men's treatment of women

Jacobean assessment of female worth - MALFI

• ties to sexual availability - old lady has lost her sexuality

medieval attitudes to old women - MALFI

• Epicene (Jonson) - early modern writers used old women as objects of ridicule or moral corruption

view of cosmetics - MALFI

• considered akin to witchcraft for trying to improve a God-crafted face

Jacobean widows - MALFI

• Sir Thomas Overbury’s character sketches were against them remarrying

• culturally coded as sexually voracious

• over half between 1600-59 DID remarry so moral opposition is undermined

• literature of Vives and Fuller remarriage was seen as betrayal

• lusty widow was a stock figure in Jacobean drama - Middleton’s plays feature them

pheasants and quails - MALFI

• game birds raised in enclosed warrens for elite consumption

• fattened then killed

• hunting metaphor extends to women hunted by men as property

Palace of Pleasure (Painter 1567) descriptions of the Duchess - MALFI

• there Duchess described as ‘foolish woman’

• Webster prioritises Ant’s description to frame her morality

early modern views on twins - MALFI

• belief in a shared soul

• cultural belief of shared body or blood

• possession

social anxieties about relationships - MALFI

• sees disruption to the Great Chain of Being

• (Duchess’ marriage transcends this, Fred in aristocracy is furious at contamination, Duchess = object moving through society)

mediterranean honour culture - MALFI

• Malfi in Italian setting

• male relatives had customary right to punish female sexual transgression, also to protect lineage - Webster explores critically

Jacobean view on female role - MALFI

• The Ladies Calling (1673 encoding earlier norms) - said women belonged in domestic

Revenge tragedy - MALFI

• Francis Bacon ‘revenge is a kind of wild justice’

• first RevengeTragedy was ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ by Kid

Ferdinand’s humour - MALFI

• excess of choleric humour

‘angels’ in Jacobean society - MALFI

• also meant Jacobean gold coins worth ten shillings

• corrupt devilish payment

Calvinist ideas of sinful society - MALFI

• Eve’s Fall of Man had ruined human race

religious anxieties of era - MALFI

• post Reformation end of 16th C

• fear of Catholicism counter-reformation

• set in Catholic Italy

• Catholic Gunpowder Plot 1605 - attempt to blow up Parl + kill JI, cultural anxiety about corruption spreading from top down

book on female virtue - MALFI

• A Crystal Glass for Christian Women (Stubbe 1591) - female virtue to be measured in its ability to suppress desire

the ‘Virgin Queen’ - MALFI

• ‘political celibacy’

• (links to when Ant speaks of D’s ‘divine continence’)

Petrarchan love convention - MALFI

• lovesick narrator worshipping unattainable woman - man emasculated in inaction

Hortus Concluss (from SoS)

• symbol of wife’s locked chastity and male ownership

‘shrewish wife’ in literature

• De Nugis Curialum (Map 1180)

• Theoprastus’ anti-marriage tract

Eden + Roman de la Rose

• ironic as gardens references are sites of transgression

Pluto + Proserpina

• Pluto builds underworld to contain Prospering = Jan builds wall

• shapes what we think of the act

• story recounted in De Raptu Proserpinae + Ovid’s Metamorphoses

• Pluto bases his argument in Ecclesiastes

women as property

• women treated almost as ‘chattel;

• celebrated only as objects for men

Mary vs Eve imagery imposed on women by men

• women are both a divine gift and the cause of original sin - impossible dual standard

medieval marriages as economic transactions

• not uncommon to buy a wife

• Chaucer’s niece was bought

• women also become husband’s property through coverture

economy in Chaucer (merchants)

• Chaucer was made Head of Customs Dept in London 1374

• merchants seen to be causing disruption in society by moving through the 3 estates

maistrie (sovereignty/control in marriage)

• WoB believes women should have this

• Clerk believes men should have it

• Merchant believes men should

• Jan believes he is enforcing it BUT really it is May who is

anti-feminist tradition

• Jerome + Walter Map + Theophrastus - all say women are devil’s instrument

Early-modern debate rejecting anti-feminist tradition

• Book of the City of Ladies (1405) - rebutted idea of women as devil’s isnstrument

importance of beauty

• early ideas of physiognomy

• women married very young and beautiful - May (~20) marries Jan (60+), women only exist for v short period

• irony that May’s beauty and desirability are what Jan wants but also what drives the fabliaux’s plot

courtly love ridiculed

• most loved literature in Europe second only to religious lit

• typically has lots of dialogue (courage) but here doesn’t

• Lancelot and Genevieve are examples of the convention

• Damyan’s lovesickness is considered real medical condition in humour theory - this suffering is half-assed (not like tragedies of Troilus & Cressida so nobility of emotion undercut)