The transition from The Witch of Edmonton to The Convent of Pleasure was quite a dramatic one. I was fascinated by how differently female pleasure is centered in the two plays. The Witch of Edmonton highlights the ways in which women are constantly disadvantaged by a system constructed by societal norms; whereas in Convent of Pleasure, Lady Happy and all the other women create their own society that puts their own comfort and happiness at the forefront. From the very beginning, the narrative is framed as one might expect, from the perspective of three gentlemen trying to woo the newly endowed Lady Happy. They banter in the typical sexist manner that we’ve seen in past plays, treating women as a monolithic object to be conquered. It is not until the second scene that we get an honest reflection of the female perspective from Lady Happy, “Men are the only troublers of Women; for they only cross and oppose their sweet delights and peaceable life; they cause their pains, but not their pleasures” (I.II p220). Lady Happy is resolute in her idea of female pleasure, which should be expected in all aspects of life, as shown through her lengthy description of aesthetics and fragrances that will be displayed in the convent. Lady Happy is refreshingly aware—she even acknowledges her newfound privilege of wealth, and recognizes that wealth gives her the freedom of mobility and choice, “I will not be so inslaved, but will live retired from their company.” As a result of this, she offers her house to other women, on the one condition that they remain single. I’m intrigued by this narrative and am very interested to see how it divulges. I see many comparisons already to Lysistrata, and am interested to see how progressively this play engages with the topic of sexual pleasure in relation to the lack of men.
great comments and observations Mel–the connection to Lysistrata (and thus also to our own Tamer Tamed) is a really interesting one! I also find the creation of a space of female pleasure–outside of the heteronormative social/public sphere–yet both Cavendish and her alter ego (I would argue) are acutely aware of the precarity of this enterprise.
When Lady Happy describes the aesthetic and logistical details of her female-only utopia, she evokes strong connectivity with nature. Through designing the aesthetics and pleasures of the Convent, “according to each Season,” Lady Happy illustrates the importance of equilibrium with nature in a healthy functioning society (2.2). Cavendish’s ideas evoke the ideas of ecofeminism, the movement that draws parallels between how men and patriarchal societies dominate and exploit both nature and women. Moreover, this mode of thinking blames the current depilated and exploited state of the planet on the patriarchy and imagines that in a more equal (or female-run) society, perhaps the state of the environment would not be as bad. The women in this single-gender society are named “Nature’s Devotes,” which characterizes them caring for nature (2.1).
Furthermore, Lady Happy’s description of the ladies’ convent in Scene II, Act II detail how they will change their naturally decorated interior according to with available plants and materials found in nature, as well as their bedding, food, and temperature of the water. All this illustrates the idea that a close relationship to nature promotes people who “None in this World can be happier” (2.2). However, the distinction of her society as giving attention and forging this connection to implies that it does not exist in typical patriarchy. Cavendish showcased proto-feminist thinking in her novel, as well as early ideas about how a disconnected and uncaring relationship to nature can cause the downfall of society.
such an interesting point–that there is a structure in the convent that aligns with ecofeminist positions regarding patriarchy/nature. I think you’re right that the feminist move into a utopian all-female sphere is situated within a larger reading of nature and culture that aligns destructive masculine forces with the latter.
Lady Happy, rather than marry, chooses to “incloister” herself in a place that “shall not be a Cloister of restraint, but a place for freedom, not to vex the senses but to please them” (220). This becomes the Convent of Pleasure. Kellet writes:
“What at first seems to be a specifically female, oppositional space to heteronormativity, the convent becomes, with closer analysis, a rapidly changing environment that transforms with the language that creates it. Its resistance to stabilization—its curiously immaterial space—suggests that the subversive power of identity exists not merely in bodies, but in the discourse that produces those bodies” (421).
I was interested in Kellett’s point that the convent represents a “performative” that comes into being “only through utterance”—it ‘resists the kind of stability that reproduces oppressive power structures” (427) because it doesn’t physically exist. Lady Happy, in describing tangible qualities of this “immaterial” feminine space, creates it. Her description of the convent functions as a performative; in describing it, the space is invoked into the play’s landscape. In naming this abstract space “the convent of pleasure,” the concept of being shut away in a secluded domestic sphere (or convent, which suggests pious chastity) is rendered pleasurable. The Monsieurs are stripped of their ability to constrain women to the home—Lady Happy and her ladies have now done it to themselves. Kellett writes that the power of the convent comes from “from Lady Happy’s discursive ability to resignify the patriarchal world that inhibits her” (424). This space is not one of safety or refuge; it is not reactionary. It is, instead, a place of pleasure, where the women seek to go. Because of its immateriality, the patriarchal world of the woman inside the home is deconstructed. The door is not shut on them, but, instead, by them, keeping the Monsieurs out and desperate to break in.
very interesting–I can see why this notion appealed to you, given your current interests! Because of the odd nature of Cavendish’s play–something between a closet drama and a simply unperformed one, it’s true that the physical space of the convent is always to some degree discursive and imaginary–and this does give it a kind of metaphorical power to exist even within patriarchal confines. However, I also feel that it is a precarious and unstable space…more later!
While reading Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, I was interested in the attempted construction of an all-female space by the women in the play, reminiscent of the myth of Amazonia. The house originally represents a seat of masculine power, because it was passed on by the Lord and even though it belongs to Lady Happy, it is assumed that it will fall to whatever man she married, thereby symbolizing patriarchal politics and wealth. However, she feminizes the space by stripping away its political nature when she refuses to take a husband and remains a virgin. She also aligns the space with Nature, which is represented as a female figure of which “men are obstructers,” by emphasizing the “gardens, orchards, walks, groves,” that the grounds of the house offer as well as bringing flowers and other elements of nature into the house. This creates a literal green space inside, which has traditionally been an arena of male dominance. Most significantly, she make the household change and evolve to go along with the seasons. Embracing the cycle of nature feels to me like an embrace of other natural cycles associated with the feminine, like the menstrual cycle, that tend to be stigmatized or hidden. Because the masculine body was associated with constancy while the feminine body was feared or condemned for the way that it changes, a space that physically changes with time represents a mark of deference towards the aspect of the feminine that had historically been denounced, or even a representation of the body itself. However, from its inception, the male characters attempt to infiltrate and violate the all-female space, while threatening violence such as being “punish’d with a severe Husband, or tortured with a debits Husband.” If the physical space is read as an analogy for the female body, then the men trying to invade it is reminiscent of sexual violence or rape, especially in light of the language of sexual domination that the men use to describe the women inside.
These are wonderful points, Shelby–I especially liked your idea about the convent as a newly fashioned (feminine) green space, one that is aligned with the seasons rather than attempting to thwart change–excellent. I also agree with you sense of the violence implicit in the men’s envy and rage about the space–their effort to infiltrate it. We’ll need to see how Cavendish manages this tension by the end.
“Wherefore those Women that are poor, and have not means to buy delights, and maintain pleasures, are only fit for Men; for having not means to please themselves, they must serve only to please others; but those Women, where Fortune, Nature, and the gods are joined to make happy, were mad to live with Men, who make the Female sex their slaves” (Act I Scene II)
Cavendish’s play details a rejection of the heterosexual economy and the idea of a stable bodily identity as argued by Kellett. Kellett in her article argues that Cavendish challenges Butler’s distinction between performance and performativity because the characters are able to reshape their subjectivity and are not bound by their bodies. However, the play only contests this distinction for the upper class; the minority. The majority of women, who Lady Happy characterizes as “only fit for men” because they have “no means to buy delights,” do not have the resources to upend their subjectivity and instead are meant to take the place of the wealthy women as mens’ slaves. The play, in my opinion, does not “represent their [the women’s] ability to resignify their bodies and disrupt the coherence of any system that attempts to regulate them” as suggested by Kellett. Rather, I think the play tells of how wealth and class have the power to usurp even something as powerful and overarching as patriarchy. Lady Happy suggests that poor women “must serve only to please others” and were “mad to live with Men.” The true performativity of women’s gender is not contested in the play; rather, the utopian convent seems to act solely as a performance of the wealthy but does not work the upend the subjectivity of the majority of women. In fact, in most instances it appears Lady Happy is adding to the discourse that builds women’s subjectivity rather than deconstructing it.
Further, Kellett suggests that the play emphasizes how without women the heterosexual hegemony is unable to reproduce itself. Yet, the Monsieurs in the play make it obvious that they are not angered by their loss of women in general but rather their loss of wealthy and “refined” women. The Monsieurs state, “The fear is, that all the rich Heirs will make Convents, and all the Young Beauties associate themselves in such Convents” (Act III, Scene X). The heterosexual hegemony will live on outside the convent through the poor women that do not have guards and fortresses to protect them from men. I personally don’t think Kellett focuses enough on the fact that the women in the covent are of the minority and that it is the majority that defines the group and are subjected to performativity.
Dicalimer: I’ve only read about half of the Kellett article so apologies if she delves deeper into economic class later on.
Haley: this is a very smart and well honed critique–which I entirely agree with. Lady H is focused on the high social class, and although she incidentally seems to take a fleet of servants with her, this isn’t, I think, with any idea of transferring her freedoms to them, or of upending the social and class constraints that are as real as the gendered ones. I’m struck by this limitation to Cavendish’s vision–which in other respects is so astonishingly revolutionary.
In reading Paster’s article, I immediately thought back to Anxious Masculinity and the active roles men must take in asserting their own dominance due to the active role fear plays in their identities. Specifically, Paster calls Old Banks’s anal kiss with his cow, “a terrifying involuntarity of meaning in his own bodily behaviors and his own unnatural dependence on an animal” (258). In essence, the witchcraft Sawyer enacts is to place Old Banks in the same terrifying position of the female body in question. Old Banks is forced to perform the same acts of which he accused Sawyer, and therefore made to feel the same horror of the out-of-control body, the body which has witchiness discursively assigned to it.
In this way, I found the relative agency of the witches in the play telling. Paster also examines their agency, and the way in which the natural physical functions of the female body were demonized through their interpretation of agency: “the compulsory conversion of involuntary bodily events into the voluntary transactions of desire” (250). This is a constant battle anxious masculinity wages: it must tell women they are not in control of themselves and need male authority, but must also find ways to make their deviation from conformity into an active choice which they can be punished for. This was very apparent to me in the final act of the play. Here, Sawyer and Frank are treated very differently, for a variety of reasons, but one is how much agency they are thought to have in relation to the influence of the devil.
Even though Sawyer eventually repents (her last line is a condemnation of the devil) her interaction with the court consists of repeated accusations of her wrongdoings. When Frank arrives, however, he seems too quickly forgiven. Everyone he has wronged fully forgives his heinous acts, acts which he himself was more active in than Sawyer, who cast her curses from afar. Not only is he forgiven, but those present actively wish that the law had as much forgiveness as they do. Old Carter, whose daughter Frank tricked into an unlawful marriage and then murdered, tells him, “If thou hadst not had ill counsel / thou wouldst not have done as thou didst; the more / shame for them” (5.2.153). Here, anxious masculinity is performing a queasy balancing act between denying women autonomy, as Sawyer was in being assigned the role of witch before performing witchcraft, and yet conferring more agency onto her in regards to her relationship with the devil.
excellent comments, Rachel–I think you capture perfectly that paradox of involuntary (bad) and voluntary (good because accusable) inherent in the witch accusations–along with the paradoxical conferring of greater agency on the witch (because otherwise she’s just a helpless old woman)–the nature and extent of Sawyer’s speech in the play seems to exemplify this. Also very much agree on the deliberation distinction the play draws between Sawyer and Frank at the end. Great job!
In reading the Paster piece “The Body Embarrassed” I was struck mostly by the idea of the body as a site of contestation—a contestation that is always in a state of precarity, ambiguity, and negotiation. Paster writes that “a body under interrogation whose wars and excrescences are tokens is one already deeply inscribed with social expressiveness…such a body has already been made to count in a culture’s ongoing, always contested classification of what is and is not natural.” In this sense, bodies become not private affairs at all, but deeply social constructions of gendered forms of control and discipline. This can be seen within witch hunts, in which women’s bodies are subjected to public examinations, and thus become part of continuous struggle to create and regulate what subjects are marked as ‘normal’ and what subjects are marked as unruly, grotesque, and deviant.
The idea of the body as a public battleground or site for contestation is an extremely relevant point of study because it is an example of the ongoing negotiation of power that is often grafted onto the flesh of certain categorized bodies, both within the witch hunts of the 16th century and of today. It is also worth studying how these marked bodies respond to their specific forms of subjection. Paster touches briefly upon this, writing about the aftermath of Elizabeth Sawyer’s ‘interpellation and function’ as a witch. Paster also states that ‘rebellion is the sin of witch craft.’ So what happens when a woman like Sawyer rebells against her subject-position as old, functionless, and poor? (Furthermore, is it active rebellion or is it interpellation in the sense that she has no other choice?) I was quite struck by Sawyer’s response to being called a witch, and the subsequent emphasis she put on the revenge against those who wronged her or refused to help her. ‘To be revenged had need turn witch,’ Sawyer speaks at one point, and has several other moments of calling on Dog to carry out her vengeful acts as well. I am curious about the link between interpellation, rebellion, and revenge in these moments, and with what intentions the authors of the play were attempting to portray Sawyer’s vengeful nature with.
Very good–there’s a paper’s worth of thoughts and questions in here. The tension between interpellation and rebellion is worth pausing over–she is interpellated into the role of witch, but she seems to accept and internalize that role because it suits her desire for revenge–there being no other way to get revenge. I also think your point about the spectacularization of bodies is essential–the body and especially the female body is in NO sense private–it belongs to the community, as does the assessment of its “meaning.”
As I finished “The Witch of Edmonton”, the article by Gail Kern Paster on the body of the witch reminded me of an important part of the play that I’d forgotten about: throughout the Mother Sawyer’s witch trial and Frank’s murder trial, the character of Winifred is pregnant! I had overlooked this during my initial read of the play, but, after reading the Paster article about the fraught relationship between the witch and maternal bodies, I was struck by scenes that featured the pregnant Winifred.
From the very beginning of the play, we are privy to the information that Winifred is pregnant. Although we first believe the father to be Frank, it’s soon revealed that the child is the product of Winifred’s affair with Sir Arthur. Consequently, we see that the introduction of the child into the play ushers in the sin of adultery, which is condemnable by Jacobean standards. Winifred’s motherhood is tainted by her association with infidelity— even though, later on, we see that Frank (the presumed father) is guilty of the same thing (and worse!). Winifred maintains her claim that Frank is the father of her child when, in Act IV, scene ii she “arraigns this father for two sins / Adultery and murder” (4.2.188-189).
While Winifred’s status as a pregnant woman was interesting enough to me, the Paster article helped me situate motherhood in relation to witches. We don’t know if Winifred is planning on nursing her own child, but women of her socioeconomic status often used wet nurses— who were often accused of involvement with witchcraft. As Paster explains, “wet nursing endowed lower-class women with [a] form of bodily self-management only by systemically taking it away from the mothers socially above them” (Paster, 252). Thus, even if Mother Sawyer was not acting as wet nurse to Winifred’s baby, the two women are pitted against each other from the start as a result of socially combative identities.
Even if Winifred were to nurse her own child, she would still fall victim to the stigmatization of maternal figures that led to witch accusations: “Not only do witches resemble lactating mothers, but thanks to the witch hunters’ fetishistic attention to the witch’s teat, lactating mothers come to resemble witches” (Paster, 249). In this regard, Winifred’s identity as a mother is nearly as dangerous as Mother Sawyer’s label of witch. Both characters are involved in categories that are only accessible to women, and must face the social repercussions of their labeling. For Winifred, this means accepting the title of sinner despite a double standard that allows men to behave as she did (in court at Frank’s trial, she confesses that “my fault was lust, my punishment was shame” [5.3.10]); and, for Mother Sawyer, this means death.
excellent! Yes, Winifred’s maternity brings the pregnant body into the limelight in a way quite different from the other plays, and yet just as contested. Here the accusation that we’ve seen before of adultery is in a way true, although I think the paternity of the baby actually remains ambiguous. It’s interesting that unlike both Hermione and the duchess of M, Winifred survives–she seems adaptable and adept at improvisation (hence the disguises). I completely agree about the mirroring of the mother and the witch–Winifred is in that sense an alter ego of Sawyer, which is very interesting.
In Gail Kern Paster’s article “The Body Embarrassed”, she mentions cursing, and how it was seen as a type of female speech that was “socially disruptive” and “increasingly criminalized”. In the fifth act of The Witch of Edmonton, very close to Mother Sawyer’s death, the reader sees the titular character thinking about revenge. She says
Revenge to me is sweeter far than life;
Thou art my raven, on whose coal-black wings
Revenge comes flying to me. O, my best love!
I am on fire, even in the midst of ice,
Raking my blood up, till my shrunk knees feel
Thy curled head leaning on them: (V, 7-12)
Though there is no explicit cursing evident in this passage, Sawyer’s recitation of words that allude to her desire for revenge seems to represent a form of socially disruptive speech. Her assertion that she regards revenge as ‘sweeter far than life’ exhibits the anger and frustration that she has built up inside her. These emotions develop into a rage that makes her feel as if she is ‘on fire’. Since women were expected to remain calm, collected and submissive, Elizabeth’s expression of these feelings, though very subtle, would be seen as extremely inappropriate.
We see a similar constraint on Susan in the third scene of the third act. When she questions Frank’s whereabouts and recent actions, he declares that he is going to murder her. When she questions him as to why, he responds with “Because you are a whore”. Susan’s audacity to question her cheating husband contributes to her death; in a way, her confrontation of Frank is a form of socially disruptive female speech. Rather than remaining silent, her confidence allows her to follow Frank and ask him where he is going. However, his response changes her reality — once she hears his words, she becomes regretful and reflective.
Though the actions of Mother Sawyer and Susan are extremely different, the fate of both is the same: murder. I’m curious to hear the thoughts of other class members on the concept of ‘socially disruptive speech’, and what they think is appropriate for women to say during this time period. An alternative answer to this question could be that women must engage in complete and utter silence.
Great comments and questions, Faraz–I think the idea of disruptive speech is central to the play–it’s what characterizes Sawyer throughout, and it’s what brings the Dog onstage in the first place. The passage you choose is interesting–it seems to express a kind of passion for the devil–the fire and ice imagery comes from love lyric–so that’s in a way even more disruptive!
With our reading of Paster’s “The Body Embarrassed” it struck me that woman at every stage of her life is never free from the masculine gaze. Indeed, a woman in her youth is the ideal for the classical body, given that she remains pure as a virgin. As she matures sexually and then reaches motherhood, her classical body denigrates to that of the grotesque. Later in life, when she is menopausal and unable to reproduce, her body is even more subject to male demonization. As we all have established Mother Sawyer is at this denigrated point in her life that ultimately makes her the perfect scapegoat for the crimes that Frank has committed and Sir Arthur has indirectly, but nonetheless influentially, generated. As Paster specifies, Sawyer is a site not of desire but of “fear, revulsion, [and] ridicule” (Paster 256). Paster also likens Mother Sawyer’s elderly body to that of the other female deviant in society, the prostitute’s body. Both are seen as “receptacles” for men’s fears and anxieties (Paster 255). This interest in the female body does not just end in death. In fact, this obsessive attention towards women’s bodies continues. The Dog tells Young Banks that “[t]he old cadaver of some self-strangled wretch/[he] sometimes borrow, and appear human./The carcass of some disease-slain strumpet,/[he] varnish fresh, and wear as her first beauty” (5.1.142-145). Here, the Dog admits that he uses the bodies of dead women, of prostitutes in particular, as tools for deception. A woman’s body does not reach freedom in death; the devil may still make use of her to deceive “lecher[s]” (5.1.147) and other kinds of men. On a different note, stemming from this particular scene with Young Banks and the Dog are underlying references towards homosexuality.
In Act 5.1, the Dog’s relationship with his owner is further sexualized: “A lady’s arming puppy, there you might lick sweet lips, and/do many pretty offices; but to creep under an old witch’s coats, and suck like a great puppy,,, I haven’t heard beastly things of you, Tom” (5.1.177-180). Young Banks expresses his disgust with the Dog’s suckling of Mother Sawyer’s, a woman with a denigration body as opposed to being a younger “lady’s arming puppy” (5.1.177). Here, it is very apparent what Paster highlights: the voyeuristic quality of Minister Henry Goodcole’s account of Mother Sawyer’s relationship with her familiar, to which this play was directly based on. Paster shows that there is a deep anxiety about what an old woman like Mother Sawyer does behind closed doors with her familiar, a “forbidden erotic” (Paster 251) they condemn but at the same time also desire to see. A different type of anxiety is also at play here. When the Dog asks, albeit ironically, Young Banks: “Shall I serve thee, fool, at the self-same rate?” (5.1.182), Young Banks denies him. His refusal highlights his desire to not participate in an almost homosexual acitvity between a male witch and his familiar. For what else is there on a man that hangs outside the body, that the woman does not have, but the phallus– the most obvious protruding thing that his body possesses? This anxiety that Young Banks projects is one of effeminization. While his role becomes reduced to the body that gives suck to the devil, he himself becomes a witch figure that could be subject to the punishment Mother Sawyer becomes subject to. Indeed, there have been male witches in history but the word “witch” have more or less always connotated a woman. The fact that the Dog leaves Young Banks be could be referencing this. But, doesn’t Sir Arthuer become a witch figure? If a witch is one that brings harm to their neighbor, Sir Arthur has definitely caused more harm than Mother Sawyer has been accused of. Sir Arthur’s machinations from the beginning has caused many of the complications within Frank’s narrative to happen. Yet, Sir Arthur does not face punishment while Mother Sawyer does for crimes that she did not commit.
Fantastic questions and observations about the complexity of the play’s representation of Sawyer and the category of “witch” more broadly–I totally agree about the “panopticon”–to use Foucault’s term–in which women are scrutinized and interrogated. The witch accusation makes that power to see particularly clear, since it empowered groups of villagers to examine her body. I also liked your question about Arthur-yes, the justice admits that he is responsible for much of what happened, here, but he’s allowed to pay his way out of justice. Great work.
What really stood out to me this weekend were the myriad connections that I noticed between the Paster excerpt, the play itself, and the #MeToo movement (which is the topic of my group’s upcoming presentation that I have been thinking quite a lot about). There are so many parts of the Paster excerpt that I found engaging, but one that was particularly intriguing was when she wrote about how needed it was to frame a witch as an “other”. As I understand it, this idea is directly related to the events of Act 3 Scene 2 and Act 3 Scene 3 of the play. In A3S2, Frank “others” Winnifred by having her exit with his sword in order to be alone with Susan, with whom he is lovey-dovey and romantic; indeed, he showers her with kisses while she calls him “sweetheart”. In A3S3, the tables completely turn; Frank “others” Susan in the “you are my whore. No wife of mine; the word admits no second” monologue, which occurs almost at the start of the scene. He then proceeds to stab and kill her, literally the scene after being super lovey-dovey with her. While I cannot claim to understand why Frank turned so quickly, I can argue that the process of “othering” – which the late Toni Morrison, in her “The Origin of Others” essay, argues is inherently dehumanizing, which I completely agree with – had a hand in causing Frank to turn so quickly.
Another idea from the Paster excerpt that I found particularly intriguing is “the witch herself could not have seen or known her body’s secret parts as her searchers did” (Paster 250). I was interested by this idea for several reasons. One reason is that this idea clearly connects to women’s reproductive rights insofar as access to (and control of) women’s bodies is concerned. Another reason – which is admittedly much more of a stretch – is that this idea could be connected to the theme of anxious masculinity which we discussed at length in class last week. I can easily imagine how people who accuse others of witchcraft would have no qualms about making up anything to justify their claims, especially something quasi-scientific about how women’s bodies work that they hoped people would buy without question.
I will end this blog post by comparing two ridiculous practices (one is historical and one is contemporary) that are relevant to the ideas I have previously written about in this blog. The historical ridiculous practice is how some communities determined whether someone was a witch. These people would throw the accused person into a well and see if the person would float or not. If the person floated, that was proof that they were a witch, which meant that the person would be hauled out and burned at the stake. If the person drowned, oh well, better luck next time! The modern ridiculous practice is governments that have legislature about women getting abortions. For me, it is a pretty fundamental truth that women have absolute control over their bodies, which should apply to consent as well as to abortions. So, the decision about whether or not to get an abortion should be entirely up to the woman, as should the decision about whether or not to be physically intimate with someone. That’s basic common sense to me, so the fact that people are pro-life and/or fail to ask before doing any physical act with anyone is inherently ridiculous. Early modern witch-hunting practices were ridiculous, but we as humanity are by no means out of the woods just yet.
very good observations, and a nice integration of critical, primary, and contemporary texts. You are certainly right that the notion of othering is central here–Sawyer in particular is made to bear what the community cannot bear about itself–hence that “sink” imagery. Then of course she herself becomes unbearable–away, away! I actually think the anxious masculinity theme is not too much of a stretch here–the woman who defies patriarchal control as she repeatedly does is a threat to a certain form of masculinity (as Banks and Sir Arthur keep showing).
Gail Kern Paster’s “The Body Embarrassed,” made me think back to a lot of the themes we discussed surrounding anxious masculinity. Witch hunts and witch trials strike me as yet another manifestation of this same patriarchal anxiety, which in turn stems from trying to naturalize an unnatural social order based on a hierarchy of gender (and class and race). When an entire societal structure, not to mention people’s reputations and identities, are predicated on the behavior of another person (ie a woman or wife), it is a logical reaction to try and strip autonomy from that class of person and to punish anyone who steps out of line. We saw this with accusations of cuckoldry and infidelity, and I think we are seeing a similar tactic play out with accusations of witchcraft. This also helps explain why women were the ones raising the charges much of the time. In doing so, they were performing their femininity correctly and ensuring conformity to the system to protect themselves from it at the expense of another (often older) woman. It is also worth noting that both in cases of infidelity and witchcraft, the woman in question is a heavily embodied subject—pregnant, lactating, elderly, etc.
One thing that especially interested me about Paster’s analysis was the framing of the witch as an almost necessary “other.” For example, she describes Cleopatra as strengthening the community’s self-cohesion through her difference (246). We talked about this in class—how society created witches in order to enact the purging evil from the community as a whole. This otherness in women was marked by disruptive speech (especially angry or cursing speech) and sexual deviance, as well as by a clear fear of the aging female body. We see this in invasive searches for the witch’s teat and torturous methods of interrogation regarding witchcraft. This difference was also marked as a matter of willful defiance—the idea at the time was that women CHOSE to be sexually impure just like they CHOSE to be witches. This makes it much easier to prosecute and punish such deviant behaviors as corrupt choices that put the community in danger, which is exactly what happened.
excellent comments, Sarah–Yes, I entirely agree that the witch-hunt dynamic is intimately tied up with the anxious masculinity we discussed earlier; Banks is a particularly good example of that, with the “anal kiss” that seems to dis/re-place a feared sexuality with Sawyer herself (given the positioning of her “teat”). The use of the witch’s body is a particularly good example of how bodily and vocal transgression seemed to be yoked together…
As I was reading the excerpt from Gail Kern Paster’s The Body Embarrassed, I was very interested with the idea that “…the witch herself could not have seen or known her body’s secret parts as her searchers did” during a search of her own body during a witch hunt (Paster, 250). I think that the theme of women’s bodies and their access to them is a theme that is not just prevalent in The Witch of Edmonton and the other works that we have read this semester, but is a theme that we have seen in contemporary society over and over. I know we are not discussing contemporary issues just yet, but I have been thinking about my upcoming presentation, and the connections that these texts have to the #MeToo Movement, and there are many overlapping themes.
The idea of one’s own access to one’s body that Paster discusses is something that I have been thinking about for a while, especially in relation to sexual assault/trauma, or any experience that alienates someone from their own body. In a more contemporary context, these ideas play into the #MeToo Movement, as women were empowered to reclaim not only their bodies, but their voices as well—another idea central to the works that we have been reading this semester. I was also interested in Paster’s idea of one’s own bodily volition, and the idea of the witch’s teat that is transformed from an “involuntary body blemish into the symptom of freely chosen malevolence” (Paster, 251). The idea that a witch could wield her body over others is important to the discussion of female sexuality, and plays into the discussion of incels that we had last class—their perception that women are using sex as a weapon over them. (Sorry that this post is just many ideas floating around, but Paster’s piece really interests me, especially in terms of the female body and who/what is granted/not granted access).
These are rich and interesting ideas, kari–and all are closely related to the kinds of themes we’ve been getting at in relation to the punishing of women’s bodies and voices in these plays–this play is the most explicit one to thematize punishment, but in some ways it’s not all that distant from Taming of the Shrew…I think your focus on who has access to female bodies, and for what purpose, is essential–the notion that a community can decide how to read “marks” that the woman herself didn’t even know were there, and then broadcast her a “witch” is terrifyingly believable.
November 13, 2019 at 11:51 pm
The transition from The Witch of Edmonton to The Convent of Pleasure was quite a dramatic one. I was fascinated by how differently female pleasure is centered in the two plays. The Witch of Edmonton highlights the ways in which women are constantly disadvantaged by a system constructed by societal norms; whereas in Convent of Pleasure, Lady Happy and all the other women create their own society that puts their own comfort and happiness at the forefront. From the very beginning, the narrative is framed as one might expect, from the perspective of three gentlemen trying to woo the newly endowed Lady Happy. They banter in the typical sexist manner that we’ve seen in past plays, treating women as a monolithic object to be conquered. It is not until the second scene that we get an honest reflection of the female perspective from Lady Happy, “Men are the only troublers of Women; for they only cross and oppose their sweet delights and peaceable life; they cause their pains, but not their pleasures” (I.II p220). Lady Happy is resolute in her idea of female pleasure, which should be expected in all aspects of life, as shown through her lengthy description of aesthetics and fragrances that will be displayed in the convent. Lady Happy is refreshingly aware—she even acknowledges her newfound privilege of wealth, and recognizes that wealth gives her the freedom of mobility and choice, “I will not be so inslaved, but will live retired from their company.” As a result of this, she offers her house to other women, on the one condition that they remain single. I’m intrigued by this narrative and am very interested to see how it divulges. I see many comparisons already to Lysistrata, and am interested to see how progressively this play engages with the topic of sexual pleasure in relation to the lack of men.
November 14, 2019 at 9:03 am
great comments and observations Mel–the connection to Lysistrata (and thus also to our own Tamer Tamed) is a really interesting one! I also find the creation of a space of female pleasure–outside of the heteronormative social/public sphere–yet both Cavendish and her alter ego (I would argue) are acutely aware of the precarity of this enterprise.
November 13, 2019 at 9:47 pm
When Lady Happy describes the aesthetic and logistical details of her female-only utopia, she evokes strong connectivity with nature. Through designing the aesthetics and pleasures of the Convent, “according to each Season,” Lady Happy illustrates the importance of equilibrium with nature in a healthy functioning society (2.2). Cavendish’s ideas evoke the ideas of ecofeminism, the movement that draws parallels between how men and patriarchal societies dominate and exploit both nature and women. Moreover, this mode of thinking blames the current depilated and exploited state of the planet on the patriarchy and imagines that in a more equal (or female-run) society, perhaps the state of the environment would not be as bad. The women in this single-gender society are named “Nature’s Devotes,” which characterizes them caring for nature (2.1).
Furthermore, Lady Happy’s description of the ladies’ convent in Scene II, Act II detail how they will change their naturally decorated interior according to with available plants and materials found in nature, as well as their bedding, food, and temperature of the water. All this illustrates the idea that a close relationship to nature promotes people who “None in this World can be happier” (2.2). However, the distinction of her society as giving attention and forging this connection to implies that it does not exist in typical patriarchy. Cavendish showcased proto-feminist thinking in her novel, as well as early ideas about how a disconnected and uncaring relationship to nature can cause the downfall of society.
November 14, 2019 at 9:05 am
such an interesting point–that there is a structure in the convent that aligns with ecofeminist positions regarding patriarchy/nature. I think you’re right that the feminist move into a utopian all-female sphere is situated within a larger reading of nature and culture that aligns destructive masculine forces with the latter.
November 13, 2019 at 9:38 pm
Lady Happy, rather than marry, chooses to “incloister” herself in a place that “shall not be a Cloister of restraint, but a place for freedom, not to vex the senses but to please them” (220). This becomes the Convent of Pleasure. Kellet writes:
“What at first seems to be a specifically female, oppositional space to heteronormativity, the convent becomes, with closer analysis, a rapidly changing environment that transforms with the language that creates it. Its resistance to stabilization—its curiously immaterial space—suggests that the subversive power of identity exists not merely in bodies, but in the discourse that produces those bodies” (421).
I was interested in Kellett’s point that the convent represents a “performative” that comes into being “only through utterance”—it ‘resists the kind of stability that reproduces oppressive power structures” (427) because it doesn’t physically exist. Lady Happy, in describing tangible qualities of this “immaterial” feminine space, creates it. Her description of the convent functions as a performative; in describing it, the space is invoked into the play’s landscape. In naming this abstract space “the convent of pleasure,” the concept of being shut away in a secluded domestic sphere (or convent, which suggests pious chastity) is rendered pleasurable. The Monsieurs are stripped of their ability to constrain women to the home—Lady Happy and her ladies have now done it to themselves. Kellett writes that the power of the convent comes from “from Lady Happy’s discursive ability to resignify the patriarchal world that inhibits her” (424). This space is not one of safety or refuge; it is not reactionary. It is, instead, a place of pleasure, where the women seek to go. Because of its immateriality, the patriarchal world of the woman inside the home is deconstructed. The door is not shut on them, but, instead, by them, keeping the Monsieurs out and desperate to break in.
November 14, 2019 at 9:18 am
very interesting–I can see why this notion appealed to you, given your current interests! Because of the odd nature of Cavendish’s play–something between a closet drama and a simply unperformed one, it’s true that the physical space of the convent is always to some degree discursive and imaginary–and this does give it a kind of metaphorical power to exist even within patriarchal confines. However, I also feel that it is a precarious and unstable space…more later!
November 13, 2019 at 8:16 pm
While reading Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, I was interested in the attempted construction of an all-female space by the women in the play, reminiscent of the myth of Amazonia. The house originally represents a seat of masculine power, because it was passed on by the Lord and even though it belongs to Lady Happy, it is assumed that it will fall to whatever man she married, thereby symbolizing patriarchal politics and wealth. However, she feminizes the space by stripping away its political nature when she refuses to take a husband and remains a virgin. She also aligns the space with Nature, which is represented as a female figure of which “men are obstructers,” by emphasizing the “gardens, orchards, walks, groves,” that the grounds of the house offer as well as bringing flowers and other elements of nature into the house. This creates a literal green space inside, which has traditionally been an arena of male dominance. Most significantly, she make the household change and evolve to go along with the seasons. Embracing the cycle of nature feels to me like an embrace of other natural cycles associated with the feminine, like the menstrual cycle, that tend to be stigmatized or hidden. Because the masculine body was associated with constancy while the feminine body was feared or condemned for the way that it changes, a space that physically changes with time represents a mark of deference towards the aspect of the feminine that had historically been denounced, or even a representation of the body itself. However, from its inception, the male characters attempt to infiltrate and violate the all-female space, while threatening violence such as being “punish’d with a severe Husband, or tortured with a debits Husband.” If the physical space is read as an analogy for the female body, then the men trying to invade it is reminiscent of sexual violence or rape, especially in light of the language of sexual domination that the men use to describe the women inside.
November 14, 2019 at 9:24 am
These are wonderful points, Shelby–I especially liked your idea about the convent as a newly fashioned (feminine) green space, one that is aligned with the seasons rather than attempting to thwart change–excellent. I also agree with you sense of the violence implicit in the men’s envy and rage about the space–their effort to infiltrate it. We’ll need to see how Cavendish manages this tension by the end.
November 13, 2019 at 3:37 pm
“Wherefore those Women that are poor, and have not means to buy delights, and maintain pleasures, are only fit for Men; for having not means to please themselves, they must serve only to please others; but those Women, where Fortune, Nature, and the gods are joined to make happy, were mad to live with Men, who make the Female sex their slaves” (Act I Scene II)
Cavendish’s play details a rejection of the heterosexual economy and the idea of a stable bodily identity as argued by Kellett. Kellett in her article argues that Cavendish challenges Butler’s distinction between performance and performativity because the characters are able to reshape their subjectivity and are not bound by their bodies. However, the play only contests this distinction for the upper class; the minority. The majority of women, who Lady Happy characterizes as “only fit for men” because they have “no means to buy delights,” do not have the resources to upend their subjectivity and instead are meant to take the place of the wealthy women as mens’ slaves. The play, in my opinion, does not “represent their [the women’s] ability to resignify their bodies and disrupt the coherence of any system that attempts to regulate them” as suggested by Kellett. Rather, I think the play tells of how wealth and class have the power to usurp even something as powerful and overarching as patriarchy. Lady Happy suggests that poor women “must serve only to please others” and were “mad to live with Men.” The true performativity of women’s gender is not contested in the play; rather, the utopian convent seems to act solely as a performance of the wealthy but does not work the upend the subjectivity of the majority of women. In fact, in most instances it appears Lady Happy is adding to the discourse that builds women’s subjectivity rather than deconstructing it.
Further, Kellett suggests that the play emphasizes how without women the heterosexual hegemony is unable to reproduce itself. Yet, the Monsieurs in the play make it obvious that they are not angered by their loss of women in general but rather their loss of wealthy and “refined” women. The Monsieurs state, “The fear is, that all the rich Heirs will make Convents, and all the Young Beauties associate themselves in such Convents” (Act III, Scene X). The heterosexual hegemony will live on outside the convent through the poor women that do not have guards and fortresses to protect them from men. I personally don’t think Kellett focuses enough on the fact that the women in the covent are of the minority and that it is the majority that defines the group and are subjected to performativity.
Dicalimer: I’ve only read about half of the Kellett article so apologies if she delves deeper into economic class later on.
November 14, 2019 at 9:26 am
Haley: this is a very smart and well honed critique–which I entirely agree with. Lady H is focused on the high social class, and although she incidentally seems to take a fleet of servants with her, this isn’t, I think, with any idea of transferring her freedoms to them, or of upending the social and class constraints that are as real as the gendered ones. I’m struck by this limitation to Cavendish’s vision–which in other respects is so astonishingly revolutionary.
November 11, 2019 at 10:33 pm
In reading Paster’s article, I immediately thought back to Anxious Masculinity and the active roles men must take in asserting their own dominance due to the active role fear plays in their identities. Specifically, Paster calls Old Banks’s anal kiss with his cow, “a terrifying involuntarity of meaning in his own bodily behaviors and his own unnatural dependence on an animal” (258). In essence, the witchcraft Sawyer enacts is to place Old Banks in the same terrifying position of the female body in question. Old Banks is forced to perform the same acts of which he accused Sawyer, and therefore made to feel the same horror of the out-of-control body, the body which has witchiness discursively assigned to it.
In this way, I found the relative agency of the witches in the play telling. Paster also examines their agency, and the way in which the natural physical functions of the female body were demonized through their interpretation of agency: “the compulsory conversion of involuntary bodily events into the voluntary transactions of desire” (250). This is a constant battle anxious masculinity wages: it must tell women they are not in control of themselves and need male authority, but must also find ways to make their deviation from conformity into an active choice which they can be punished for. This was very apparent to me in the final act of the play. Here, Sawyer and Frank are treated very differently, for a variety of reasons, but one is how much agency they are thought to have in relation to the influence of the devil.
Even though Sawyer eventually repents (her last line is a condemnation of the devil) her interaction with the court consists of repeated accusations of her wrongdoings. When Frank arrives, however, he seems too quickly forgiven. Everyone he has wronged fully forgives his heinous acts, acts which he himself was more active in than Sawyer, who cast her curses from afar. Not only is he forgiven, but those present actively wish that the law had as much forgiveness as they do. Old Carter, whose daughter Frank tricked into an unlawful marriage and then murdered, tells him, “If thou hadst not had ill counsel / thou wouldst not have done as thou didst; the more / shame for them” (5.2.153). Here, anxious masculinity is performing a queasy balancing act between denying women autonomy, as Sawyer was in being assigned the role of witch before performing witchcraft, and yet conferring more agency onto her in regards to her relationship with the devil.
November 12, 2019 at 9:15 am
excellent comments, Rachel–I think you capture perfectly that paradox of involuntary (bad) and voluntary (good because accusable) inherent in the witch accusations–along with the paradoxical conferring of greater agency on the witch (because otherwise she’s just a helpless old woman)–the nature and extent of Sawyer’s speech in the play seems to exemplify this. Also very much agree on the deliberation distinction the play draws between Sawyer and Frank at the end. Great job!
November 11, 2019 at 10:18 pm
In reading the Paster piece “The Body Embarrassed” I was struck mostly by the idea of the body as a site of contestation—a contestation that is always in a state of precarity, ambiguity, and negotiation. Paster writes that “a body under interrogation whose wars and excrescences are tokens is one already deeply inscribed with social expressiveness…such a body has already been made to count in a culture’s ongoing, always contested classification of what is and is not natural.” In this sense, bodies become not private affairs at all, but deeply social constructions of gendered forms of control and discipline. This can be seen within witch hunts, in which women’s bodies are subjected to public examinations, and thus become part of continuous struggle to create and regulate what subjects are marked as ‘normal’ and what subjects are marked as unruly, grotesque, and deviant.
The idea of the body as a public battleground or site for contestation is an extremely relevant point of study because it is an example of the ongoing negotiation of power that is often grafted onto the flesh of certain categorized bodies, both within the witch hunts of the 16th century and of today. It is also worth studying how these marked bodies respond to their specific forms of subjection. Paster touches briefly upon this, writing about the aftermath of Elizabeth Sawyer’s ‘interpellation and function’ as a witch. Paster also states that ‘rebellion is the sin of witch craft.’ So what happens when a woman like Sawyer rebells against her subject-position as old, functionless, and poor? (Furthermore, is it active rebellion or is it interpellation in the sense that she has no other choice?) I was quite struck by Sawyer’s response to being called a witch, and the subsequent emphasis she put on the revenge against those who wronged her or refused to help her. ‘To be revenged had need turn witch,’ Sawyer speaks at one point, and has several other moments of calling on Dog to carry out her vengeful acts as well. I am curious about the link between interpellation, rebellion, and revenge in these moments, and with what intentions the authors of the play were attempting to portray Sawyer’s vengeful nature with.
November 12, 2019 at 9:17 am
Very good–there’s a paper’s worth of thoughts and questions in here. The tension between interpellation and rebellion is worth pausing over–she is interpellated into the role of witch, but she seems to accept and internalize that role because it suits her desire for revenge–there being no other way to get revenge. I also think your point about the spectacularization of bodies is essential–the body and especially the female body is in NO sense private–it belongs to the community, as does the assessment of its “meaning.”
November 11, 2019 at 9:33 pm
As I finished “The Witch of Edmonton”, the article by Gail Kern Paster on the body of the witch reminded me of an important part of the play that I’d forgotten about: throughout the Mother Sawyer’s witch trial and Frank’s murder trial, the character of Winifred is pregnant! I had overlooked this during my initial read of the play, but, after reading the Paster article about the fraught relationship between the witch and maternal bodies, I was struck by scenes that featured the pregnant Winifred.
From the very beginning of the play, we are privy to the information that Winifred is pregnant. Although we first believe the father to be Frank, it’s soon revealed that the child is the product of Winifred’s affair with Sir Arthur. Consequently, we see that the introduction of the child into the play ushers in the sin of adultery, which is condemnable by Jacobean standards. Winifred’s motherhood is tainted by her association with infidelity— even though, later on, we see that Frank (the presumed father) is guilty of the same thing (and worse!). Winifred maintains her claim that Frank is the father of her child when, in Act IV, scene ii she “arraigns this father for two sins / Adultery and murder” (4.2.188-189).
While Winifred’s status as a pregnant woman was interesting enough to me, the Paster article helped me situate motherhood in relation to witches. We don’t know if Winifred is planning on nursing her own child, but women of her socioeconomic status often used wet nurses— who were often accused of involvement with witchcraft. As Paster explains, “wet nursing endowed lower-class women with [a] form of bodily self-management only by systemically taking it away from the mothers socially above them” (Paster, 252). Thus, even if Mother Sawyer was not acting as wet nurse to Winifred’s baby, the two women are pitted against each other from the start as a result of socially combative identities.
Even if Winifred were to nurse her own child, she would still fall victim to the stigmatization of maternal figures that led to witch accusations: “Not only do witches resemble lactating mothers, but thanks to the witch hunters’ fetishistic attention to the witch’s teat, lactating mothers come to resemble witches” (Paster, 249). In this regard, Winifred’s identity as a mother is nearly as dangerous as Mother Sawyer’s label of witch. Both characters are involved in categories that are only accessible to women, and must face the social repercussions of their labeling. For Winifred, this means accepting the title of sinner despite a double standard that allows men to behave as she did (in court at Frank’s trial, she confesses that “my fault was lust, my punishment was shame” [5.3.10]); and, for Mother Sawyer, this means death.
November 12, 2019 at 9:23 am
excellent! Yes, Winifred’s maternity brings the pregnant body into the limelight in a way quite different from the other plays, and yet just as contested. Here the accusation that we’ve seen before of adultery is in a way true, although I think the paternity of the baby actually remains ambiguous. It’s interesting that unlike both Hermione and the duchess of M, Winifred survives–she seems adaptable and adept at improvisation (hence the disguises). I completely agree about the mirroring of the mother and the witch–Winifred is in that sense an alter ego of Sawyer, which is very interesting.
November 11, 2019 at 7:43 pm
In Gail Kern Paster’s article “The Body Embarrassed”, she mentions cursing, and how it was seen as a type of female speech that was “socially disruptive” and “increasingly criminalized”. In the fifth act of The Witch of Edmonton, very close to Mother Sawyer’s death, the reader sees the titular character thinking about revenge. She says
Revenge to me is sweeter far than life;
Thou art my raven, on whose coal-black wings
Revenge comes flying to me. O, my best love!
I am on fire, even in the midst of ice,
Raking my blood up, till my shrunk knees feel
Thy curled head leaning on them: (V, 7-12)
Though there is no explicit cursing evident in this passage, Sawyer’s recitation of words that allude to her desire for revenge seems to represent a form of socially disruptive speech. Her assertion that she regards revenge as ‘sweeter far than life’ exhibits the anger and frustration that she has built up inside her. These emotions develop into a rage that makes her feel as if she is ‘on fire’. Since women were expected to remain calm, collected and submissive, Elizabeth’s expression of these feelings, though very subtle, would be seen as extremely inappropriate.
We see a similar constraint on Susan in the third scene of the third act. When she questions Frank’s whereabouts and recent actions, he declares that he is going to murder her. When she questions him as to why, he responds with “Because you are a whore”. Susan’s audacity to question her cheating husband contributes to her death; in a way, her confrontation of Frank is a form of socially disruptive female speech. Rather than remaining silent, her confidence allows her to follow Frank and ask him where he is going. However, his response changes her reality — once she hears his words, she becomes regretful and reflective.
Though the actions of Mother Sawyer and Susan are extremely different, the fate of both is the same: murder. I’m curious to hear the thoughts of other class members on the concept of ‘socially disruptive speech’, and what they think is appropriate for women to say during this time period. An alternative answer to this question could be that women must engage in complete and utter silence.
November 12, 2019 at 9:26 am
Great comments and questions, Faraz–I think the idea of disruptive speech is central to the play–it’s what characterizes Sawyer throughout, and it’s what brings the Dog onstage in the first place. The passage you choose is interesting–it seems to express a kind of passion for the devil–the fire and ice imagery comes from love lyric–so that’s in a way even more disruptive!
November 11, 2019 at 7:38 pm
With our reading of Paster’s “The Body Embarrassed” it struck me that woman at every stage of her life is never free from the masculine gaze. Indeed, a woman in her youth is the ideal for the classical body, given that she remains pure as a virgin. As she matures sexually and then reaches motherhood, her classical body denigrates to that of the grotesque. Later in life, when she is menopausal and unable to reproduce, her body is even more subject to male demonization. As we all have established Mother Sawyer is at this denigrated point in her life that ultimately makes her the perfect scapegoat for the crimes that Frank has committed and Sir Arthur has indirectly, but nonetheless influentially, generated. As Paster specifies, Sawyer is a site not of desire but of “fear, revulsion, [and] ridicule” (Paster 256). Paster also likens Mother Sawyer’s elderly body to that of the other female deviant in society, the prostitute’s body. Both are seen as “receptacles” for men’s fears and anxieties (Paster 255). This interest in the female body does not just end in death. In fact, this obsessive attention towards women’s bodies continues. The Dog tells Young Banks that “[t]he old cadaver of some self-strangled wretch/[he] sometimes borrow, and appear human./The carcass of some disease-slain strumpet,/[he] varnish fresh, and wear as her first beauty” (5.1.142-145). Here, the Dog admits that he uses the bodies of dead women, of prostitutes in particular, as tools for deception. A woman’s body does not reach freedom in death; the devil may still make use of her to deceive “lecher[s]” (5.1.147) and other kinds of men. On a different note, stemming from this particular scene with Young Banks and the Dog are underlying references towards homosexuality.
In Act 5.1, the Dog’s relationship with his owner is further sexualized: “A lady’s arming puppy, there you might lick sweet lips, and/do many pretty offices; but to creep under an old witch’s coats, and suck like a great puppy,,, I haven’t heard beastly things of you, Tom” (5.1.177-180). Young Banks expresses his disgust with the Dog’s suckling of Mother Sawyer’s, a woman with a denigration body as opposed to being a younger “lady’s arming puppy” (5.1.177). Here, it is very apparent what Paster highlights: the voyeuristic quality of Minister Henry Goodcole’s account of Mother Sawyer’s relationship with her familiar, to which this play was directly based on. Paster shows that there is a deep anxiety about what an old woman like Mother Sawyer does behind closed doors with her familiar, a “forbidden erotic” (Paster 251) they condemn but at the same time also desire to see. A different type of anxiety is also at play here. When the Dog asks, albeit ironically, Young Banks: “Shall I serve thee, fool, at the self-same rate?” (5.1.182), Young Banks denies him. His refusal highlights his desire to not participate in an almost homosexual acitvity between a male witch and his familiar. For what else is there on a man that hangs outside the body, that the woman does not have, but the phallus– the most obvious protruding thing that his body possesses? This anxiety that Young Banks projects is one of effeminization. While his role becomes reduced to the body that gives suck to the devil, he himself becomes a witch figure that could be subject to the punishment Mother Sawyer becomes subject to. Indeed, there have been male witches in history but the word “witch” have more or less always connotated a woman. The fact that the Dog leaves Young Banks be could be referencing this. But, doesn’t Sir Arthuer become a witch figure? If a witch is one that brings harm to their neighbor, Sir Arthur has definitely caused more harm than Mother Sawyer has been accused of. Sir Arthur’s machinations from the beginning has caused many of the complications within Frank’s narrative to happen. Yet, Sir Arthur does not face punishment while Mother Sawyer does for crimes that she did not commit.
November 12, 2019 at 9:29 am
Fantastic questions and observations about the complexity of the play’s representation of Sawyer and the category of “witch” more broadly–I totally agree about the “panopticon”–to use Foucault’s term–in which women are scrutinized and interrogated. The witch accusation makes that power to see particularly clear, since it empowered groups of villagers to examine her body. I also liked your question about Arthur-yes, the justice admits that he is responsible for much of what happened, here, but he’s allowed to pay his way out of justice. Great work.
November 11, 2019 at 6:22 pm
What really stood out to me this weekend were the myriad connections that I noticed between the Paster excerpt, the play itself, and the #MeToo movement (which is the topic of my group’s upcoming presentation that I have been thinking quite a lot about). There are so many parts of the Paster excerpt that I found engaging, but one that was particularly intriguing was when she wrote about how needed it was to frame a witch as an “other”. As I understand it, this idea is directly related to the events of Act 3 Scene 2 and Act 3 Scene 3 of the play. In A3S2, Frank “others” Winnifred by having her exit with his sword in order to be alone with Susan, with whom he is lovey-dovey and romantic; indeed, he showers her with kisses while she calls him “sweetheart”. In A3S3, the tables completely turn; Frank “others” Susan in the “you are my whore. No wife of mine; the word admits no second” monologue, which occurs almost at the start of the scene. He then proceeds to stab and kill her, literally the scene after being super lovey-dovey with her. While I cannot claim to understand why Frank turned so quickly, I can argue that the process of “othering” – which the late Toni Morrison, in her “The Origin of Others” essay, argues is inherently dehumanizing, which I completely agree with – had a hand in causing Frank to turn so quickly.
Another idea from the Paster excerpt that I found particularly intriguing is “the witch herself could not have seen or known her body’s secret parts as her searchers did” (Paster 250). I was interested by this idea for several reasons. One reason is that this idea clearly connects to women’s reproductive rights insofar as access to (and control of) women’s bodies is concerned. Another reason – which is admittedly much more of a stretch – is that this idea could be connected to the theme of anxious masculinity which we discussed at length in class last week. I can easily imagine how people who accuse others of witchcraft would have no qualms about making up anything to justify their claims, especially something quasi-scientific about how women’s bodies work that they hoped people would buy without question.
I will end this blog post by comparing two ridiculous practices (one is historical and one is contemporary) that are relevant to the ideas I have previously written about in this blog. The historical ridiculous practice is how some communities determined whether someone was a witch. These people would throw the accused person into a well and see if the person would float or not. If the person floated, that was proof that they were a witch, which meant that the person would be hauled out and burned at the stake. If the person drowned, oh well, better luck next time! The modern ridiculous practice is governments that have legislature about women getting abortions. For me, it is a pretty fundamental truth that women have absolute control over their bodies, which should apply to consent as well as to abortions. So, the decision about whether or not to get an abortion should be entirely up to the woman, as should the decision about whether or not to be physically intimate with someone. That’s basic common sense to me, so the fact that people are pro-life and/or fail to ask before doing any physical act with anyone is inherently ridiculous. Early modern witch-hunting practices were ridiculous, but we as humanity are by no means out of the woods just yet.
November 12, 2019 at 9:35 am
very good observations, and a nice integration of critical, primary, and contemporary texts. You are certainly right that the notion of othering is central here–Sawyer in particular is made to bear what the community cannot bear about itself–hence that “sink” imagery. Then of course she herself becomes unbearable–away, away! I actually think the anxious masculinity theme is not too much of a stretch here–the woman who defies patriarchal control as she repeatedly does is a threat to a certain form of masculinity (as Banks and Sir Arthur keep showing).
November 11, 2019 at 3:08 pm
Gail Kern Paster’s “The Body Embarrassed,” made me think back to a lot of the themes we discussed surrounding anxious masculinity. Witch hunts and witch trials strike me as yet another manifestation of this same patriarchal anxiety, which in turn stems from trying to naturalize an unnatural social order based on a hierarchy of gender (and class and race). When an entire societal structure, not to mention people’s reputations and identities, are predicated on the behavior of another person (ie a woman or wife), it is a logical reaction to try and strip autonomy from that class of person and to punish anyone who steps out of line. We saw this with accusations of cuckoldry and infidelity, and I think we are seeing a similar tactic play out with accusations of witchcraft. This also helps explain why women were the ones raising the charges much of the time. In doing so, they were performing their femininity correctly and ensuring conformity to the system to protect themselves from it at the expense of another (often older) woman. It is also worth noting that both in cases of infidelity and witchcraft, the woman in question is a heavily embodied subject—pregnant, lactating, elderly, etc.
One thing that especially interested me about Paster’s analysis was the framing of the witch as an almost necessary “other.” For example, she describes Cleopatra as strengthening the community’s self-cohesion through her difference (246). We talked about this in class—how society created witches in order to enact the purging evil from the community as a whole. This otherness in women was marked by disruptive speech (especially angry or cursing speech) and sexual deviance, as well as by a clear fear of the aging female body. We see this in invasive searches for the witch’s teat and torturous methods of interrogation regarding witchcraft. This difference was also marked as a matter of willful defiance—the idea at the time was that women CHOSE to be sexually impure just like they CHOSE to be witches. This makes it much easier to prosecute and punish such deviant behaviors as corrupt choices that put the community in danger, which is exactly what happened.
November 12, 2019 at 9:39 am
excellent comments, Sarah–Yes, I entirely agree that the witch-hunt dynamic is intimately tied up with the anxious masculinity we discussed earlier; Banks is a particularly good example of that, with the “anal kiss” that seems to dis/re-place a feared sexuality with Sawyer herself (given the positioning of her “teat”). The use of the witch’s body is a particularly good example of how bodily and vocal transgression seemed to be yoked together…
November 11, 2019 at 12:41 pm
As I was reading the excerpt from Gail Kern Paster’s The Body Embarrassed, I was very interested with the idea that “…the witch herself could not have seen or known her body’s secret parts as her searchers did” during a search of her own body during a witch hunt (Paster, 250). I think that the theme of women’s bodies and their access to them is a theme that is not just prevalent in The Witch of Edmonton and the other works that we have read this semester, but is a theme that we have seen in contemporary society over and over. I know we are not discussing contemporary issues just yet, but I have been thinking about my upcoming presentation, and the connections that these texts have to the #MeToo Movement, and there are many overlapping themes.
The idea of one’s own access to one’s body that Paster discusses is something that I have been thinking about for a while, especially in relation to sexual assault/trauma, or any experience that alienates someone from their own body. In a more contemporary context, these ideas play into the #MeToo Movement, as women were empowered to reclaim not only their bodies, but their voices as well—another idea central to the works that we have been reading this semester. I was also interested in Paster’s idea of one’s own bodily volition, and the idea of the witch’s teat that is transformed from an “involuntary body blemish into the symptom of freely chosen malevolence” (Paster, 251). The idea that a witch could wield her body over others is important to the discussion of female sexuality, and plays into the discussion of incels that we had last class—their perception that women are using sex as a weapon over them. (Sorry that this post is just many ideas floating around, but Paster’s piece really interests me, especially in terms of the female body and who/what is granted/not granted access).
November 12, 2019 at 9:42 am
These are rich and interesting ideas, kari–and all are closely related to the kinds of themes we’ve been getting at in relation to the punishing of women’s bodies and voices in these plays–this play is the most explicit one to thematize punishment, but in some ways it’s not all that distant from Taming of the Shrew…I think your focus on who has access to female bodies, and for what purpose, is essential–the notion that a community can decide how to read “marks” that the woman herself didn’t even know were there, and then broadcast her a “witch” is terrifyingly believable.