Witch of Edmonton | On "Gender Instability" and Connections to Other Renaissance Texts

This weekend, I attended the 6th Annual Meeting in the Middle Medieval (and Renaissance) Conference at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. And yes, I did think, "There's not really a place called Farmville," when I first saw the town in which the university was located. But there is; true fact. Anyhow, while I was there, I was able to hear a wonderful presentation by Caden John Campbell, an undergraduate at Sweet Briar College, who presented on the idea of "gender instability," particularly in The Witch of Edmonton.

Gender instability, which was (or perhaps is, I do not know how Campbell would discuss the modern world in response to this terming) the result of a conflict of gender between how one appears and how one acts, leads to the idea of monstrosity. That is, in essence, if a women appears like a woman, yet acts like a man, or if a woman has both masculine and feminine characteristics, yet looks mostly like a man and acts mostly like a woman, she is considered monstrous. In the presentation, Campbell discussed how the witch of Edmonton, Elizabeth Sawyer, appears, at first, like a woman, particularly through her dress. Campbell provided this depiction of Sawyer, noting how she wears a dress and hat typically worn by women during the time:

Yet, Campbell argued, since the heat of a man was thought to turn blood into semen, and since the devil was said to suck blood from Sawyer, Sawyer is thus acting in a masculine fashion. Also, Sawyer was described as having a teat (see bottom of p.6, The Wonderfull Discouerie of Elizabeth Sawyer), from which milk is typically drawn and thus a feminine feature. Yet the feature is also somewhat phallic by nature, and, again, was how the devil was said to suck Sawyer's blood. Thus, Campbell argued, Sawyer was both male and female, and this duality composes her gender instability and thus made her monstrous.

Now, the point of this post is not to restate Campbell's presentation. Instead, I would like to go back and explore the pieces previously mentioned in this blog to examine where we might find cases of such gender instability. The last play mentioned was Arden of Faversham. Certainly, in this play we find a woman (Alice) acting with agency. But is she acting like a man? I would argue that she transforms into a man at the end of her play, and thus transforms into Campbell's idea of the monstrous. Poison was typically a woman's weapon in cases of domestic violence during the early modern period. And this, tellingly enough, is Alice's weapon of choice for killing Arden in the beginning of the play. Yet when the poison is unsuccessful, Alice must take more drastic measures. In the end, both Black Will and Mosby stab Arden (a more masculine action), though they do not kill him. Alice then demands the knife (a phallic image in its own right) and kills Arden with it. Alice, then, while still appearing and acting as a wife (albeit an unhappy one) also acts as a man, and thus she is both man and woman at one time. And thus she becomes monstrous.

In The Duchess of Malfi we again see gender instability. The Duchess clearly looks like a woman, yet she, within the first several scenes of the play, already displays masculine behavior, as she asks Antonio to marry her, which is typically a role which is performed by men. Already then, she enters into the realm of the monstrous. But here I must admit that I am unsure if the Duchess is truly monstrous, for after this display of masculine behavior, she slips into the role of mother, bearing three children throughout the course of the play. Perhaps, then, the Duchess only lapses briefly into an instance of gender instability that is not permanent nor enough to define her as a monstrous figure, as I certainly did not consider her to be so when I read the play.

Campbell, in this presentation, noted that it was generally more acceptable for a man to act like a woman than vice versa, and thus gender instability is a term which is difficult to apply to men, if it may be done so at all. Thus I shall not comment upon Doctor Faustus, a play wherein women are suspiciously absent. I was going to say that The Faerie Queene also lacks instances of gender instability, as I cannot think of any good instances within the work off the top of my head, but it seems to me that something may be made of Duessa, though perhaps not. I will have to consider this further (when I have more time to do so).

As a final note, I would like to reiterate that Campbell's presentation was absolutely brilliant and that any mention of gender instability that I have made in this post owes much credit to Campbell for explaining the terminology and demonstrating where it might be seen within The Witch of Edmonton.