It’s a few pages in when Breitenberg makes the clarification that, “this book is more concerned with how ideas of ‘woman’ function in this time period…and it is more interested in how these ideas reveal the anxieties and contradictions of masculinity in early modern patriarchy rather than its oppressive and pernicious effects on women.” This explanation reveals a key component to the ideology of masculine anxiety, it is very much reactionary to natural femininity. To deconstruct masculinity is to deconstruct the tools that built it; in Breitenberg’s nod to Derrida and Post-Structuralism, he acknowledges that we must use the tools most overtly given to us in order to decolonize former narratives. Masculine anxiety being an instrument of its own perpetuation allows us to also use it as a “critical lens.” In a way, Fletcher does the same thing in Tamer Tamed by using the tools that Shakespeare laid out and synthesizing them with his own words and thoughts on the issue. “I’ll make you know, and fear a wife Petruchio/ There my cause lies/ You have been famous for a woman tamer/ And bear the feared name of a brave wife breaker/ A woman now shall take those honors off/ And tame you.” In these lines, Maria is quite literally encapsulating the patriarchal duty of anxiety, subliminally it is implied that Petruchio or the male figure has something to fear. His implicit control is being threatened despite the structures put in place to prevent this kind of scenario.
fantastic! These are really great insights, both into the theoretical lens that Breitenberg brings to bear, and the ways in which this applies to Fletcher and his deconstruction of the “shrew taming” narrative. Well done!
Breitenberg offers a similar analogy to that of Butler’s concerning the performativity of gender and identity on stage. He gives the example of an actor on stage. They take on a role and play their part within the limits of the script. Yet, that isn’t to say that they have no room for self-expression. In fact, they are allowed some interpretation of the script as long as it is within the confines of the script. Similarly, masculinity and the way that it is fashioned under the patriarchy is a performance that the man takes on before he even “steps on stage.” The role is already predetermined. Breitenberg points to the ideological structure of the patriarchal system that interpellates the man as a subject whose displaced anxieties are projected towards his opposite–the woman. I find this statement very interesting. For one, we have been reading about and discussing the woman as the subject–and the object–in this class (and rightly so). But Breitenberg also states that men, the same agents who perpetuate the patriarchy, are also the subjects. As men in a “masculine” society, their roles as the privileged class has already been predetermined. Yet with this privilege comes the anxiety of losing it. Much of their identity is rooted in their privileged status and they must make ways to preserve that status by keeping women under their control. And so, when they lose control of a woman their whole masculine identity becomes threatened and starts to crumble, as their anxieties materialize. This just shows how much they rely on women to define and validate their masculinity.
Indeed, we see this in the end scene of Tamer Tamed at Petruchio’s fake funeral viewing. Maria is in grief, not because Petruchio is dead, but because she thought he led a “poor unmanly wretched foolish life,” and “[h]ow far below a man, how far from reason/[f]rom common understanding…” (5.1) he was when he was living. Maria emasculates, even dehumanizes, Petruchio. But the weight of that emasculation disappears when Maria, in her pity, wishes she were more obedient to Petruchio. Then Petruchio “rises” from the dead. Maria’s very statement of loyalty and obedience to Petruchio comically revives him, as his masculinity is finally restored. Maria situates herself under him; his identity is fixed.
Excellent! You’ve gone to the heart of Breitenberg’s analysis of the binary construction masculine-feminine, and then thought creatively about how that applies to the play–well done! Also well noted the point about the theatrical model–a script that also allows for agency in the form of improvisation…
As I began reading the excerpt from Mark Breitenberg’s “Anxious masculinity in early modern England,” I was struck by the apparent influence from Structuralist/Post-Structuralist thinking; specifically, the idea of binaries (comprised of a dominant and a supplement) within the “early modern patriarchy.” Breitenberg writes in his introduction, “…this book is more concerned with how ideas of ‘woman’ function in this period rather than with the actual lives of women, and it is more interested in how those ideas reveal the anxieties and contradictions of masculinity in early modern patriarchy rather than in its oppressive and pernicious effects on women” (8). This got me thinking about the formation of one’s identity (which appears to be where Breitenberg is headed in his text, focusing on the male versus female identities of this period), especially in relation to gender. If men are continuously defined as superior to women, then women have no choice but to define themselves in relation to men. This is the crux of the power dynamic within the established patriarchy; even if women try and change their position within the hierarchy, they are still forced to define themselves in relation to men, which situates women, yet again, powerless to these preestablished gender roles.
This patriarchal structure is clearly what Fletcher wants to disrupt in The Tamer Tamed by swapping Maria for Petruchio in the position of the “tamer,” but this still brings us to an interesting contrast; the female characters in this play are still defined in contrast to the men around them, regardless of being written as having more agency. I think that the interplay between gender and identity, specifically the solely male-female binary, within both taming plays that we have read thus far is interesting to think about in terms of the “masculine anxieties” that Breitenberg describes in his text as well, and how this serves as the basis of one’s general identity.
excellent! And your comment about the deconstructive tendencies of Breitenberg’s piece is very well observed. Yes–I think both the critic and the playwright are interested in the ways in which masculine and feminine identities are critically bound together, so that when one side departs from a norm, the other is radically undermined (perhaps we could see P’s “death” in this way?)
Breitenberg’s article spends much of its time discussing the origins of anxious masculinity in terms of how it relates to female infidelity. While that general idea of the masculine need to control female sexuality is quite relevant to Tamer, Tamed, I found that considering it in terms of fatherhood was also interesting. As we’ve discussed in class, Petronius is actually the most vulgar of the characters in terms of how he speaks to Maria and Livia. Breitenberg writes “the very construction of woman as an Other who either confirms or disrupts masculine identity” (21). I had been thinking about this concept mostly in terms of husbands and wives, but it feels that in Tamer, Tamed, Livia and Maria’s sexual decisions, while emasculating their partners, are also emasculating their father. Breitenberg speaks specifically about the family unit saying, “in addition to the forms of social discontent particular to the early modern period, the centrality of the family provides an available discourse for linking or assigning those discontents to women” (22). Applying this to Tamer, Tamed, so much of Petronius’ social and political position rests on the obedience and acquiescence of his daughters. Then, since they are not obeying, he attempts to humiliate them into submission, with his various quotes such as “I hear you whore.” Thus, the fact that his masculinity also rests on controlling the sexuality of his daughters could serve as an explanation for why he is equally enraged with Maria for not sleeping with Petrucchio.
Very good–as I was thinking about the ending of the play I was also noticing again how omnipresent Petronius is–in the scenes with Livia as well as Maria–and as someone (I think Charlie) mentioned in class, Petronius is the one who says M should be “carted” and calls her a “whore.”
Peter Stallybrass’ article was a great accompaniment to John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, and the former helped me to understand the ways in which clothing and gender contribute to forms of power in the play. One part of the article that interested me was Stallybrass’ comparison of man to merchant: he explains that, since the social construction of gender is defined through “economic discourses of commodities and enclosures”, there exists a “distinction between woman as a passive possession and man as active agent, as merchant” (Stallybrass, 128). Not only is woman seen as a part of man’s estate, but, importantly, the man is viewed as having the power to participate in a social economy. This effectively places men in a theoretical marketplace.
When considering the binary of the grotesque and the classical bodies, men’s situation in the social marketplace ultimately gives men a free pass to be grotesque. As Stallybrass describes, “the grotesque body’s favored space is the marketplace where it enjoys ‘a certain extraterritoriality in a world of official order and official ideology’; in the ‘liberties’ of the marketplace it can speak the language of festive obscenity and abuse” (Stallybrass, 124). I think that the acceptance of the marketplace is an interesting means of permitting the grotesque in men, while completely excluding women from any form of expressive freedom, both socially and economically. Women are not allowed to exercise the financial power that would situate them as merchants, and are, at the same time, ostracized if they disobey the social rules that limit their bodily freedoms. Men, however, benefit from the cultural code that allows them to be grotesque even as they are conforming to standard, socially expected behaviors.
excellent–you notice two intersecting points–the freedom of men to be “merchants” and thus at home in the marketplace, and the role of women as “territory” or stock owned by their husbands. It helps explain something about Petrucchio’s use of excessive clothing at the wedding, perhaps?
Stallybrass in the article discusses the constant surveillance of the woman and her virginity by fathers and husbands. A woman’s virginity and chastity is described as “fragile states” that have to be controlled, contained and colonized. Men in this time regulated women’s dress as a form of “policing” the wife’s body to protect this chastity through modesty. Maria; however, takes control of her dress in Act III Scene II:
I do not like that dressing; ‘tis too poor.
Let me have six gold laces, broad and massy,
And betwixt every lace a rich embroidery;
Line the gown through with plush, perfumed, and purfle
All the sleeves down with pearls. (99-103)
This is a moment of Maria regaining control of her previously tyrannized body. Her body here is not mapped by a male authority set out to place borders of fabric to protect her virginity. Stallybrass explains how the woman was contained into “paradises” of the enclosed body; he states, “the state, like the virgin, was a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden walled off from enemies.” While this construction of the woman was portrayed as a natural and tranquil balance that needed maintaining, Maria’s dress of artificial “perfume” and a surplus of pearls and lace challenges this balance while fortifying her self-drawn borders. Maria, by rejecting modesty, achieves a freedom from male surveillance and the ideology that a woman has to be a paradise through her closed classical body. In this dress, Maria reclaims her wealthy status and places herself above Petruchio on the gender and class hierarchy and declares an independent state apart from Petruchio’s governing.
excellent! This is a great reading of the importance of this little scene. Perhaps it also echoes or responds to the scene of Kate’s humiliation with the tailor in TS?
There were many aspects of the Stallybrass article that I found intriguing, but for the sake of concision I will only write in detail about one of them. The piece of the article discusses the acquisition and subsequent division of wealth and power through the marriage of a man and a woman: on page 133 of the article, Stallybrass (the author of the piece) writes that “in societies where heterosexuality and marriage are prescribed, these privileges [wealth and power] can only be conferred back on men,” and follows that up with “the differentiation of women simultaneously establishes or reinforces the differentiation of men.” That really made me think about the transferral of Katherine from Baptiste’s house directly to Petruchio’s house in The Taming of the Shrew; indeed, Katherine has no “neutral ground” (such as the space between houses or the woods) for her to escape and share her true feelings, either with another character or with us (the audience). That, in turn, made me think about how marriage agreements were still very much a thing up until not too long ago, how a male priest usually officiates marriage ceremonies, and even how it is traditional for the father to “give away” his daughter to the groom during the ceremony itself. While I certainly hope these traditions are on their way out of common practice, at least I know more about from whence they came. All of this really reinforces Stallybrass’s point that how all of the benefits of marriage really were reaped by the various men who took part in it. Or, as Anjelica Schuyler put it in the musical Hamilton, “I’m a girl in a world where my only job is to marry rich.”
very good! Yes, I think it’s very important to see marriage in this period especially for what it was–a negotiation and exchange between men. Hence “twas a commodity lay fretting by you”–in relation to Katherine. Maria’s behaviour attempts–and we will discuss how successfully–to disrupt that pattern.
I found Stallybrass’ discussion of policing and laws around clothing particularly useful in explaining the differences in the clothing choices made by Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew and Maria in The Tamer Tamed. Petruchio intends to humiliate his bride by arriving at his wedding
“in a new hat and an old/
Jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair/
Of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled,/
Another laced, an old rusty sword ta’en out of the/
Town-armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless;/
With two broken points” (2.2.42-49)
just as Maria intends to humiliate her husband by dressing herself just i’ the’ cut/of one of those that multiply i’ th’ subhurbs/ For single money, and as dirtily” (4.4.46-9) however the specific attire each chooses to humiliate their partner exposes a larger network of gendered and economic power relations. Petruchio’s humiliating attire has no precedent- he is dressing completely outside of any established order while Maria humiliates her husband by contradicting her place within that established order. Petruchio’s clothes are simply absurd and inappropriate while is dressing as another type of woman (what Munro glosses as a “cheap prostitute). As Stallybrass explains, “in societies where heterosexuality and marriage are prescribed, those privileges can only be conferred back onto men, so the differentiation of women simultaneously establishes or reinforces the differentiation of men” (133). Just as “privileges can only be conferred back onto men” so can dishonor. By denying her status as a rich virgin through her dress, Maria denies Petruchio’s gentility and masculinity more than she degrades herself. Her reputation is no more her own than her body, legal status, or future. They all fall together under her husband’s ownership and thus her humiliations are also his. Her dishonor and apparent lack of status reflect on him but not vice versa; she encourages him to dress as a peasant telling him “the poorer and baser ye appear/ the more you look through still” (4.4.162-163). Maria yields her lack of social autonomy and economic independence to humiliate her husband into submission.
This is excellent, Charlie, and would make a great basis for a paper. Yes, I agree that the comparison between the two plays at the level of clothing and the performance of a kind of antic refusal to stay within sartorial norms clearly shows where the power lies–to me it also suggests the vulnerability of early modern masculinity, which is predicated on the behaviour/commodification of the wife.
I found a lot of what Stallybrass wrote to be very interesting, particularly his statements regarding women as both different and the same as one another through the distinct lenses of class and gender. “In societies where heterosexuality and marriage are prescribed, those privileges [status, wealth] can only be conferred back on men, so the differentiation of women simultaneously establishes or reinforces the differentiation of men” (133). We can easily see this in The Taming of the Shrew, as the main motive of the men of the play is to acquire wealth through marriage. Bianca is not the only possible bride bridging a man to wealth, but she is the most desirable. Petruchio and Hortensio are both content enough marrying their own rich brides, who are able to transfer their wealth from one man (Katherine’s father, the widow’s late husband) to another (each of their new husbands). Throughout the play, men constantly feign wealth and status by pretending to have wealth and status, often through the guise of costumes (which the context of the theater indicates as delusive). Only through the acquisition of high-class women, who are securely passed through the contract of marriage, are the men actually able to gain wealth and status.
But it occurs to me now that men’s conferring of women among themselves is not only symbolic, since women bear the sons that will eventually possess the family’s name and wealth, and the daughters that will confer such status to other men. Thus the rejection of men by “shrewish” women, which we see in both The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed creates fundamental obstacles for the men who are trying to “perpetuate and naturalize class structure” (133) to the advantage of both themselves and their family name.
very good! These are complex questions about the intersection of class and gender, and you make some great observations–I do agree that the shrewish woman creates a kind of crisis precisely because she interrupts the smooth running of this system of “conferring” honor and wealth back on to men. good!
The last line of the Stallybrass article, in which he says, “The female grotesque could, indeed, interrogate class and gender hierarchies alike, subverting the enclosed body,” strikes me as similar to Maria’s strategy to tame Petruchio. By withholding sex and threatening to sleep with other men, she is constantly reminding him of her “grotesque” body. She of course also accomplishes this through other means such as speaking often and drinking, neither of which conform to the ideal enclosed female body. However, it is her sexuality that she primarily uses to tame Petruchio into submission, emphasizing her ability to be “open” to both Petruchio and any other man if he is not fit. She exaggerates any traits or deeds traditionally thought to belong to the male body, forcing Petruchio to be confronted with a woman rejecting the enclosures structured by society and marriage. By embracing the grotesque nature of her body, she reclaims her agency and makes Petruchio reconcile that with the image of a wife that he had held before. Also, by appealing to Petruchio’s lust, she’s implicitly showing that they both have bodies that are grotesque and open, and that for Petruchio’s sexuality to be satisfied, he must accept the existence of her own sexuality.
Still, I would not go as far as to characterize this as the “validation of the female grotesque,” as Stallybrass said the rejection of female enclosures is. Once Maria accomplishes her goal, she shrinks back down into the enclosures and subservience that she had previously rejected. In Act V, scene iv, she says, “I have tamed ye, and now am vowed your servant,” and then a couple lines later: “I dedicate in service to your pleasure.” She does not completely subvert the nature of her relationship with him nor becomes his equal in the marriage. Nevertheless, she does ensure her own security, since Petruchio has been “tamed” to the point where he will no longer beat her or threaten her personal safety.
very good, Shelby. I too am always confounded by those closing scenes of the play, where the playwright seems perhaps to retreat a bit from the radical terms of the rest of the play. That aside, though, Maria’s disruption of what Elias (quoted by Stallybrass) would call “civility” seems a political and even revolutionary act.
In the conversation with Tranio in Act 3, Scene 1, Roland defines love as a thing that a man is at risk of “falling” into (“for fear thou fall into ‘t), a trap of violence and pain in which this unlucky, preyed-upon man is at risk of losing his “gentry,” “freedom,” “language,” and “tongue” to the wrath of a woman (3.1.25-35). Somehow a woman, in Roland’s world, goes from being a “calf with the white face” to this agent of destruction (3.1.26). And this destruction, it seems, is centered around “language” and tongue”; those in love, Roland says, “ne’er talk as we do,” and instead “sigh and shake their head,” sometimes “whistle” (3.1.30-35). We’ve tracked a constant anxiety around tongues and open mouths and speech in what we’ve read, but it’s been almost entirely about the man’s fear of female agency, sexuality, and speech rooted in her own tongue, not the threat she poses to a man’s. Roland mimics what men in love might say to their partner, and it’s all superfluous and saccharine; what he might have defined as emasculating. So is the fear not only the loss of the tongue, but the use of the tongue in a feminine or “foolish” way? Or the use of the tongue in a way that is not tailored and straight-to-the-point, but instead meandering and excessive? This notion of the “leaky” or “grotesque” body, I think, can be applied to the tongue alone—a tongue that leaks is a tongue that says too much, and this type of tongue is feminine and embarrassing.
Also, the line that references a baby bear born shapeless and licked into shape by the mother—”…you poor unworthy lump,’ and then she licks him—seems interestingly tied in to the Stallybrass piece on form and matter and the Renaissance body. Perhaps this indicates a certain power in the mother; is it the mother that gives the man his shape?
Great points! I’m also interested in that scene with roland–because it showcases just how fragile this ideal version of masculinity is; Livia somehow has the ability to unman him–“thou art no more a man”–he says of the man in love. The reference to the bear whelp is interesting too–it crops up frequently in this period as a way of referencing dependence on the mother–something early modern masculinity always anxiously rejects.
October 2, 2019 at 11:42 pm
It’s a few pages in when Breitenberg makes the clarification that, “this book is more concerned with how ideas of ‘woman’ function in this time period…and it is more interested in how these ideas reveal the anxieties and contradictions of masculinity in early modern patriarchy rather than its oppressive and pernicious effects on women.” This explanation reveals a key component to the ideology of masculine anxiety, it is very much reactionary to natural femininity. To deconstruct masculinity is to deconstruct the tools that built it; in Breitenberg’s nod to Derrida and Post-Structuralism, he acknowledges that we must use the tools most overtly given to us in order to decolonize former narratives. Masculine anxiety being an instrument of its own perpetuation allows us to also use it as a “critical lens.” In a way, Fletcher does the same thing in Tamer Tamed by using the tools that Shakespeare laid out and synthesizing them with his own words and thoughts on the issue. “I’ll make you know, and fear a wife Petruchio/ There my cause lies/ You have been famous for a woman tamer/ And bear the feared name of a brave wife breaker/ A woman now shall take those honors off/ And tame you.” In these lines, Maria is quite literally encapsulating the patriarchal duty of anxiety, subliminally it is implied that Petruchio or the male figure has something to fear. His implicit control is being threatened despite the structures put in place to prevent this kind of scenario.
October 3, 2019 at 10:27 am
fantastic! These are really great insights, both into the theoretical lens that Breitenberg brings to bear, and the ways in which this applies to Fletcher and his deconstruction of the “shrew taming” narrative. Well done!
October 2, 2019 at 8:13 pm
Breitenberg offers a similar analogy to that of Butler’s concerning the performativity of gender and identity on stage. He gives the example of an actor on stage. They take on a role and play their part within the limits of the script. Yet, that isn’t to say that they have no room for self-expression. In fact, they are allowed some interpretation of the script as long as it is within the confines of the script. Similarly, masculinity and the way that it is fashioned under the patriarchy is a performance that the man takes on before he even “steps on stage.” The role is already predetermined. Breitenberg points to the ideological structure of the patriarchal system that interpellates the man as a subject whose displaced anxieties are projected towards his opposite–the woman. I find this statement very interesting. For one, we have been reading about and discussing the woman as the subject–and the object–in this class (and rightly so). But Breitenberg also states that men, the same agents who perpetuate the patriarchy, are also the subjects. As men in a “masculine” society, their roles as the privileged class has already been predetermined. Yet with this privilege comes the anxiety of losing it. Much of their identity is rooted in their privileged status and they must make ways to preserve that status by keeping women under their control. And so, when they lose control of a woman their whole masculine identity becomes threatened and starts to crumble, as their anxieties materialize. This just shows how much they rely on women to define and validate their masculinity.
Indeed, we see this in the end scene of Tamer Tamed at Petruchio’s fake funeral viewing. Maria is in grief, not because Petruchio is dead, but because she thought he led a “poor unmanly wretched foolish life,” and “[h]ow far below a man, how far from reason/[f]rom common understanding…” (5.1) he was when he was living. Maria emasculates, even dehumanizes, Petruchio. But the weight of that emasculation disappears when Maria, in her pity, wishes she were more obedient to Petruchio. Then Petruchio “rises” from the dead. Maria’s very statement of loyalty and obedience to Petruchio comically revives him, as his masculinity is finally restored. Maria situates herself under him; his identity is fixed.
October 3, 2019 at 10:29 am
Excellent! You’ve gone to the heart of Breitenberg’s analysis of the binary construction masculine-feminine, and then thought creatively about how that applies to the play–well done! Also well noted the point about the theatrical model–a script that also allows for agency in the form of improvisation…
October 2, 2019 at 5:10 pm
As I began reading the excerpt from Mark Breitenberg’s “Anxious masculinity in early modern England,” I was struck by the apparent influence from Structuralist/Post-Structuralist thinking; specifically, the idea of binaries (comprised of a dominant and a supplement) within the “early modern patriarchy.” Breitenberg writes in his introduction, “…this book is more concerned with how ideas of ‘woman’ function in this period rather than with the actual lives of women, and it is more interested in how those ideas reveal the anxieties and contradictions of masculinity in early modern patriarchy rather than in its oppressive and pernicious effects on women” (8). This got me thinking about the formation of one’s identity (which appears to be where Breitenberg is headed in his text, focusing on the male versus female identities of this period), especially in relation to gender. If men are continuously defined as superior to women, then women have no choice but to define themselves in relation to men. This is the crux of the power dynamic within the established patriarchy; even if women try and change their position within the hierarchy, they are still forced to define themselves in relation to men, which situates women, yet again, powerless to these preestablished gender roles.
This patriarchal structure is clearly what Fletcher wants to disrupt in The Tamer Tamed by swapping Maria for Petruchio in the position of the “tamer,” but this still brings us to an interesting contrast; the female characters in this play are still defined in contrast to the men around them, regardless of being written as having more agency. I think that the interplay between gender and identity, specifically the solely male-female binary, within both taming plays that we have read thus far is interesting to think about in terms of the “masculine anxieties” that Breitenberg describes in his text as well, and how this serves as the basis of one’s general identity.
October 3, 2019 at 10:31 am
excellent! And your comment about the deconstructive tendencies of Breitenberg’s piece is very well observed. Yes–I think both the critic and the playwright are interested in the ways in which masculine and feminine identities are critically bound together, so that when one side departs from a norm, the other is radically undermined (perhaps we could see P’s “death” in this way?)
October 2, 2019 at 4:58 pm
Breitenberg’s article spends much of its time discussing the origins of anxious masculinity in terms of how it relates to female infidelity. While that general idea of the masculine need to control female sexuality is quite relevant to Tamer, Tamed, I found that considering it in terms of fatherhood was also interesting. As we’ve discussed in class, Petronius is actually the most vulgar of the characters in terms of how he speaks to Maria and Livia. Breitenberg writes “the very construction of woman as an Other who either confirms or disrupts masculine identity” (21). I had been thinking about this concept mostly in terms of husbands and wives, but it feels that in Tamer, Tamed, Livia and Maria’s sexual decisions, while emasculating their partners, are also emasculating their father. Breitenberg speaks specifically about the family unit saying, “in addition to the forms of social discontent particular to the early modern period, the centrality of the family provides an available discourse for linking or assigning those discontents to women” (22). Applying this to Tamer, Tamed, so much of Petronius’ social and political position rests on the obedience and acquiescence of his daughters. Then, since they are not obeying, he attempts to humiliate them into submission, with his various quotes such as “I hear you whore.” Thus, the fact that his masculinity also rests on controlling the sexuality of his daughters could serve as an explanation for why he is equally enraged with Maria for not sleeping with Petrucchio.
October 3, 2019 at 10:32 am
Very good–as I was thinking about the ending of the play I was also noticing again how omnipresent Petronius is–in the scenes with Livia as well as Maria–and as someone (I think Charlie) mentioned in class, Petronius is the one who says M should be “carted” and calls her a “whore.”
October 1, 2019 at 8:59 am
Peter Stallybrass’ article was a great accompaniment to John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, and the former helped me to understand the ways in which clothing and gender contribute to forms of power in the play. One part of the article that interested me was Stallybrass’ comparison of man to merchant: he explains that, since the social construction of gender is defined through “economic discourses of commodities and enclosures”, there exists a “distinction between woman as a passive possession and man as active agent, as merchant” (Stallybrass, 128). Not only is woman seen as a part of man’s estate, but, importantly, the man is viewed as having the power to participate in a social economy. This effectively places men in a theoretical marketplace.
When considering the binary of the grotesque and the classical bodies, men’s situation in the social marketplace ultimately gives men a free pass to be grotesque. As Stallybrass describes, “the grotesque body’s favored space is the marketplace where it enjoys ‘a certain extraterritoriality in a world of official order and official ideology’; in the ‘liberties’ of the marketplace it can speak the language of festive obscenity and abuse” (Stallybrass, 124). I think that the acceptance of the marketplace is an interesting means of permitting the grotesque in men, while completely excluding women from any form of expressive freedom, both socially and economically. Women are not allowed to exercise the financial power that would situate them as merchants, and are, at the same time, ostracized if they disobey the social rules that limit their bodily freedoms. Men, however, benefit from the cultural code that allows them to be grotesque even as they are conforming to standard, socially expected behaviors.
October 1, 2019 at 9:25 am
excellent–you notice two intersecting points–the freedom of men to be “merchants” and thus at home in the marketplace, and the role of women as “territory” or stock owned by their husbands. It helps explain something about Petrucchio’s use of excessive clothing at the wedding, perhaps?
September 30, 2019 at 10:45 pm
Stallybrass in the article discusses the constant surveillance of the woman and her virginity by fathers and husbands. A woman’s virginity and chastity is described as “fragile states” that have to be controlled, contained and colonized. Men in this time regulated women’s dress as a form of “policing” the wife’s body to protect this chastity through modesty. Maria; however, takes control of her dress in Act III Scene II:
I do not like that dressing; ‘tis too poor.
Let me have six gold laces, broad and massy,
And betwixt every lace a rich embroidery;
Line the gown through with plush, perfumed, and purfle
All the sleeves down with pearls. (99-103)
This is a moment of Maria regaining control of her previously tyrannized body. Her body here is not mapped by a male authority set out to place borders of fabric to protect her virginity. Stallybrass explains how the woman was contained into “paradises” of the enclosed body; he states, “the state, like the virgin, was a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden walled off from enemies.” While this construction of the woman was portrayed as a natural and tranquil balance that needed maintaining, Maria’s dress of artificial “perfume” and a surplus of pearls and lace challenges this balance while fortifying her self-drawn borders. Maria, by rejecting modesty, achieves a freedom from male surveillance and the ideology that a woman has to be a paradise through her closed classical body. In this dress, Maria reclaims her wealthy status and places herself above Petruchio on the gender and class hierarchy and declares an independent state apart from Petruchio’s governing.
October 1, 2019 at 9:26 am
excellent! This is a great reading of the importance of this little scene. Perhaps it also echoes or responds to the scene of Kate’s humiliation with the tailor in TS?
September 30, 2019 at 9:38 pm
There were many aspects of the Stallybrass article that I found intriguing, but for the sake of concision I will only write in detail about one of them. The piece of the article discusses the acquisition and subsequent division of wealth and power through the marriage of a man and a woman: on page 133 of the article, Stallybrass (the author of the piece) writes that “in societies where heterosexuality and marriage are prescribed, these privileges [wealth and power] can only be conferred back on men,” and follows that up with “the differentiation of women simultaneously establishes or reinforces the differentiation of men.” That really made me think about the transferral of Katherine from Baptiste’s house directly to Petruchio’s house in The Taming of the Shrew; indeed, Katherine has no “neutral ground” (such as the space between houses or the woods) for her to escape and share her true feelings, either with another character or with us (the audience). That, in turn, made me think about how marriage agreements were still very much a thing up until not too long ago, how a male priest usually officiates marriage ceremonies, and even how it is traditional for the father to “give away” his daughter to the groom during the ceremony itself. While I certainly hope these traditions are on their way out of common practice, at least I know more about from whence they came. All of this really reinforces Stallybrass’s point that how all of the benefits of marriage really were reaped by the various men who took part in it. Or, as Anjelica Schuyler put it in the musical Hamilton, “I’m a girl in a world where my only job is to marry rich.”
October 1, 2019 at 9:28 am
very good! Yes, I think it’s very important to see marriage in this period especially for what it was–a negotiation and exchange between men. Hence “twas a commodity lay fretting by you”–in relation to Katherine. Maria’s behaviour attempts–and we will discuss how successfully–to disrupt that pattern.
September 30, 2019 at 9:05 pm
I found Stallybrass’ discussion of policing and laws around clothing particularly useful in explaining the differences in the clothing choices made by Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew and Maria in The Tamer Tamed. Petruchio intends to humiliate his bride by arriving at his wedding
“in a new hat and an old/
Jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair/
Of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled,/
Another laced, an old rusty sword ta’en out of the/
Town-armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless;/
With two broken points” (2.2.42-49)
just as Maria intends to humiliate her husband by dressing herself just i’ the’ cut/of one of those that multiply i’ th’ subhurbs/ For single money, and as dirtily” (4.4.46-9) however the specific attire each chooses to humiliate their partner exposes a larger network of gendered and economic power relations. Petruchio’s humiliating attire has no precedent- he is dressing completely outside of any established order while Maria humiliates her husband by contradicting her place within that established order. Petruchio’s clothes are simply absurd and inappropriate while is dressing as another type of woman (what Munro glosses as a “cheap prostitute). As Stallybrass explains, “in societies where heterosexuality and marriage are prescribed, those privileges can only be conferred back onto men, so the differentiation of women simultaneously establishes or reinforces the differentiation of men” (133). Just as “privileges can only be conferred back onto men” so can dishonor. By denying her status as a rich virgin through her dress, Maria denies Petruchio’s gentility and masculinity more than she degrades herself. Her reputation is no more her own than her body, legal status, or future. They all fall together under her husband’s ownership and thus her humiliations are also his. Her dishonor and apparent lack of status reflect on him but not vice versa; she encourages him to dress as a peasant telling him “the poorer and baser ye appear/ the more you look through still” (4.4.162-163). Maria yields her lack of social autonomy and economic independence to humiliate her husband into submission.
October 1, 2019 at 9:32 am
This is excellent, Charlie, and would make a great basis for a paper. Yes, I agree that the comparison between the two plays at the level of clothing and the performance of a kind of antic refusal to stay within sartorial norms clearly shows where the power lies–to me it also suggests the vulnerability of early modern masculinity, which is predicated on the behaviour/commodification of the wife.
September 30, 2019 at 8:19 pm
I found a lot of what Stallybrass wrote to be very interesting, particularly his statements regarding women as both different and the same as one another through the distinct lenses of class and gender. “In societies where heterosexuality and marriage are prescribed, those privileges [status, wealth] can only be conferred back on men, so the differentiation of women simultaneously establishes or reinforces the differentiation of men” (133). We can easily see this in The Taming of the Shrew, as the main motive of the men of the play is to acquire wealth through marriage. Bianca is not the only possible bride bridging a man to wealth, but she is the most desirable. Petruchio and Hortensio are both content enough marrying their own rich brides, who are able to transfer their wealth from one man (Katherine’s father, the widow’s late husband) to another (each of their new husbands). Throughout the play, men constantly feign wealth and status by pretending to have wealth and status, often through the guise of costumes (which the context of the theater indicates as delusive). Only through the acquisition of high-class women, who are securely passed through the contract of marriage, are the men actually able to gain wealth and status.
But it occurs to me now that men’s conferring of women among themselves is not only symbolic, since women bear the sons that will eventually possess the family’s name and wealth, and the daughters that will confer such status to other men. Thus the rejection of men by “shrewish” women, which we see in both The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed creates fundamental obstacles for the men who are trying to “perpetuate and naturalize class structure” (133) to the advantage of both themselves and their family name.
October 1, 2019 at 9:34 am
very good! These are complex questions about the intersection of class and gender, and you make some great observations–I do agree that the shrewish woman creates a kind of crisis precisely because she interrupts the smooth running of this system of “conferring” honor and wealth back on to men. good!
September 30, 2019 at 6:32 pm
The last line of the Stallybrass article, in which he says, “The female grotesque could, indeed, interrogate class and gender hierarchies alike, subverting the enclosed body,” strikes me as similar to Maria’s strategy to tame Petruchio. By withholding sex and threatening to sleep with other men, she is constantly reminding him of her “grotesque” body. She of course also accomplishes this through other means such as speaking often and drinking, neither of which conform to the ideal enclosed female body. However, it is her sexuality that she primarily uses to tame Petruchio into submission, emphasizing her ability to be “open” to both Petruchio and any other man if he is not fit. She exaggerates any traits or deeds traditionally thought to belong to the male body, forcing Petruchio to be confronted with a woman rejecting the enclosures structured by society and marriage. By embracing the grotesque nature of her body, she reclaims her agency and makes Petruchio reconcile that with the image of a wife that he had held before. Also, by appealing to Petruchio’s lust, she’s implicitly showing that they both have bodies that are grotesque and open, and that for Petruchio’s sexuality to be satisfied, he must accept the existence of her own sexuality.
Still, I would not go as far as to characterize this as the “validation of the female grotesque,” as Stallybrass said the rejection of female enclosures is. Once Maria accomplishes her goal, she shrinks back down into the enclosures and subservience that she had previously rejected. In Act V, scene iv, she says, “I have tamed ye, and now am vowed your servant,” and then a couple lines later: “I dedicate in service to your pleasure.” She does not completely subvert the nature of her relationship with him nor becomes his equal in the marriage. Nevertheless, she does ensure her own security, since Petruchio has been “tamed” to the point where he will no longer beat her or threaten her personal safety.
October 1, 2019 at 9:36 am
very good, Shelby. I too am always confounded by those closing scenes of the play, where the playwright seems perhaps to retreat a bit from the radical terms of the rest of the play. That aside, though, Maria’s disruption of what Elias (quoted by Stallybrass) would call “civility” seems a political and even revolutionary act.
September 30, 2019 at 6:01 pm
In the conversation with Tranio in Act 3, Scene 1, Roland defines love as a thing that a man is at risk of “falling” into (“for fear thou fall into ‘t), a trap of violence and pain in which this unlucky, preyed-upon man is at risk of losing his “gentry,” “freedom,” “language,” and “tongue” to the wrath of a woman (3.1.25-35). Somehow a woman, in Roland’s world, goes from being a “calf with the white face” to this agent of destruction (3.1.26). And this destruction, it seems, is centered around “language” and tongue”; those in love, Roland says, “ne’er talk as we do,” and instead “sigh and shake their head,” sometimes “whistle” (3.1.30-35). We’ve tracked a constant anxiety around tongues and open mouths and speech in what we’ve read, but it’s been almost entirely about the man’s fear of female agency, sexuality, and speech rooted in her own tongue, not the threat she poses to a man’s. Roland mimics what men in love might say to their partner, and it’s all superfluous and saccharine; what he might have defined as emasculating. So is the fear not only the loss of the tongue, but the use of the tongue in a feminine or “foolish” way? Or the use of the tongue in a way that is not tailored and straight-to-the-point, but instead meandering and excessive? This notion of the “leaky” or “grotesque” body, I think, can be applied to the tongue alone—a tongue that leaks is a tongue that says too much, and this type of tongue is feminine and embarrassing.
Also, the line that references a baby bear born shapeless and licked into shape by the mother—”…you poor unworthy lump,’ and then she licks him—seems interestingly tied in to the Stallybrass piece on form and matter and the Renaissance body. Perhaps this indicates a certain power in the mother; is it the mother that gives the man his shape?
October 1, 2019 at 9:39 am
Great points! I’m also interested in that scene with roland–because it showcases just how fragile this ideal version of masculinity is; Livia somehow has the ability to unman him–“thou art no more a man”–he says of the man in love. The reference to the bear whelp is interesting too–it crops up frequently in this period as a way of referencing dependence on the mother–something early modern masculinity always anxiously rejects.