Resource Post 5

I'd like to continue my series of resource posts with another book that discusses household structure and domestic violence in early modern England: Domestic Dangers, by Laura Gowing.

This book is similar in a lot of ways to Dolan's Dangerous Familiars. Gowing's book, however, is much more focused on the role of women in society and in domestic violence, whereas Dolan takes a much broader approach to the subject matter. Gowing, in this book, provides a very thorough exploration of such topics as: gender, as it would have been perceived in early modern England, in the household domestic space and also in larger society; women and their interactions with the early modern court system; the importance of language (namely spoken language--few women read and wrote with much frequency) and of reputation in both societal and judicial aspects; and domestic violence (specifically, the link between adultery and domestic violence).

The one thing that I really like about Dolan's book is that, while it does examine a fairly broad subject, it does so while also linking back to literature of the period. As a literature student, that is fairly invaluable to me. Dolan also, however, considers judiciary documents from the period, as well as some historical pieces. Gowing, on the other hand, deals almost exclusively with court cases and court documents. This can be a really great source, then, if court cases and the early modern English legal system is what you're interested in. The really great thing about Gowing's book, too, is that she lists an extensive bibliography of primary (printed and unprinted) and secondary works, which makes it quite easy to find other sources about, well, practically any and every aspect of what Gowing discusses over the course of her book.

While I'm not entirely sure how much use I will get out of Gowing's book in working on my specific research topic (see my post from a few weeks ago), I have certainly gotten a fair bit of use from it in getting background information about early modern English society, particularly with regard to domestic violence and gender roles, and I have also used the bibliography to point me in the direction of several other sources (though, admittedly, I don't have access to the majority of the works she lists).

Anyhow, I hope to do a few more of these quick posts tonight, including one or two fairly specific journal article posts.

Resource Posts 3 and 4

Alright, on to our next resource. Or rather, two resources that go hand-in-hand with one another. Today I would like to turn to the homosocial bond aspect of my research topic. And for that, I would recommend looking at two primary sources, from the early modern English period: Michel de Montaigne's essay "Of Friendship" and Francis Bacon's essay "Of Friendship" (their titling is quite original, no?). Michel de Montaigne was a French essayist writing during the middle-late 1500s, and Francis Bacon was a... well, hm... he did many things, one of which was write essays, which he did during the late 1500s and early 1600s. Their respective "Of Friendship" essays both consider the male bond of friendship (and it is important to note that they were, in fact, talking exclusively about male-male friendship) and its fullness or pureness as opposed to other bonds, particularly that of marriage. While there are many points made in each essay, there is one passage from each of these essays that I have found to be of particular importance.

First, from Bacon:
"A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession."

Bacon here describes friendship in a very medical sense. Diseases plague the body, but the mind may also become diseased if a man does not have someone to whom he may open his heart and share all his feelings. And this person, as Bacon asserts, is a male friend. This casts the male friendship in a very important, almost necessary, light, a notion which is reinforced with Bacon's closing lines: "I have given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage."

Second, from Montaigne:
"Concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant which hath nothing free but the entrance, the continuance being forced and constrained, depending else-where than from our will, and a match ordinarily concluded to other ends: A thousand strange knots are therein commonly to be unknit, able to break the web, and trouble the whole course of a lively affection; whereas in friendship there is no commerce or busines depending on the same, but it selfe. Seeing (to speake truly) that the ordinary sufficiency of women cannot answer this conference and communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seeme their mindes strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so fast, and durable. And truly, if without that, such a genuine and voluntarie acquaintance might be contracted, where not only mindes had this entire jovissance,  but also bodies, a share of the alliance, and where a man might wholly be engaged: It is certaine, that friendship would thereby be more compleat and full: But this sex could never yet by any example attaine unto it, and is by ancient schooles rejected thence."

My interest in Montaigne is that he compares the bond of friendship with the bond of marriage. Not only is friendship a pure bond which does not require work to maintain and which is difficult to destroy, but it is also a greater bond than marriage, which is a much weaker bond, requiring work and which may come undone with ordinary stresses. If we were to turn back to Bacon and look at his essay "Of Marriage and Single Life," we could determine a similar devaluing of marriage.

Male friendship was an important aspect of early modern English society, and these two essays, as far as I have seen, tend to be two of the most essential in discussing this topic. As such, if you are at all interested in this aspect, I would recommend that you definitely read these two essays in their entirety to get a better sense of what male friendship at the time was about and how it was viewed.

Resource Post 2

Here's the second installment in my presentation of information sources pertaining to domestic violence, gender roles, and homosocial bonds in early modern England: Sex, Gender, and Subordination in England, 1500-1800, by Anthony Fletcher.

Fletcher's book is easily one of the most comprehensive studies of early English ideas about gender and domestic space that I have encountered over the past several years of studying early English literature. He discusses the idea of the gendered body, the patriarchal construction of society, ideas about femininity and female gender roles, ideas about masculinity and masculine gender roles, the progression of these views from the beginning to the end of the early modern period, and more. He analyzes these aspects utilizing a variety of different sources, such a court cases, literature, recorded history, as well as scholarship by a number of scholars from various fields writing on a variety of topics. If you are at all interested in further reading on ideas about sex and gender as they existed in early modern England, this is the resource to go to.

Further, I mentioned that a major downfall to Dolan's book (which I discussed in yesterday's post) was that there was no comprehensive bibliography with which one could look for further sources on a topic of interest. This is decidedly not the case in Fletcher's book. Fletcher compiles what I would estimate to be well over 500 sources, about one quarter to one third of which are primary and the rest are secondary from a variety of mediums. In this way, if there is a particular subject which Fletcher touches on but doesn't fully explore, there are still numerous sources which he provides that the reader may use to find further, more specific information. Fletcher also makes detailed notes throughout the body of his book, too, which also adds to the incredible comprehensiveness of his work.

Moreover, Fletcher's book is available for preview on Google Books right here. While this is just a preview, you can nonetheless gain a sense of what the book is all about as well as see the table of contents and a few pages from each section. If you are looking for a specific subject, the Google Books preview is also fully searchable, returning results even from pages not up for preview. In this way, you are able to find out if what you are looking for is in the book. I have done this on multiple occasions, as the book is admittedly quite long and finding a 1-2 page entry on a specific subject can become rather frustrating.

All in all then, this book is a wonderful place to start with regard to the topic at hand. It is a great resource in and of itself, yet it is also a great place to look for further sources. I highly recommend this as a resource for anyone interested in gender in early modern England, as I have certainly gotten a fair bit of use out of it over the course of the past several semesters.

Anyhow, see you tomorrow with the next resource.

Resource Post 1

I announced several weeks ago that the topic for the research portion of this blog would focus on homosocial bonds and adultery/husband murder in early modern England, particularly as it is presented in the play Arden of Faversham, by an anonymous author. Rather than make a post discussing one of these aspects and providing a bibliography of works (that I have found) which treat that subject, which would undoubtedly be quite unwieldy, I will be presenting a series of posts considering one source each. In each post I aim to do two things: 1) discuss a book or scholarly article's merit with regard to one of the two topics mentioned above, and 2) demonstrate (briefly) the book or article's significance with regard to my specific research topic. So without further ado, I present our first book: Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Crime in England, 1550-1700, by Francis Dolan. I do not aim to discuss the topics of any books in detail; that is, of course, what the books I discuss are for. I merely aim to survey their material with slightly more specificity than just reading their title/subtitle would allow.

This book is a great resource for anyone wishing to find out more information on crime within the scope of the domestic sphere in early modern England. Dolan, throughout the course of his book, covers such topics as: husband murder, the social conditions which led to husband murder, and the after-effects of such a murder on the perpetrator and the community as a whole; petty treason and also domestic violence and rebellion, particularly as seen in The Tempest (Shakespeare), Arden of Faversham (Anonymous), and transcripts of the earl of Castlehaven's rape and sodomy trial; wife murder, societal influences for wife murder, and the effects of wife murder; infanticide, its societal influences and effects, and its occurrence in The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare); and finally, witchcraft and its connection with domestic violence during the early modern period.

This text is ideal especially for those writers coming from a background in literature, history, and criminal justice, as Dolan deals at length with early modern plays (again, namely The Tempest, Arden of Faversham, and The Winter's Tale), which undoubtedly reflect many values and thoughts contemporary to the time, as well as with court cases and other recorded instances of domestic violence and domestic culture during the early modern period. In this aspect, Dolan's book is more focused in its subject material than other books designed to give a broad overview of the domestic landscape of early modern England, but it still broad enough of a subject to be useful in many regards. The only downfall to Dolan's book is that there is no bibliography of works listed, so the reader must be rather clever and hunt down the works referenced in the text of the book itself.

Finally, this book will, for a variety of the reasons listed above, be very useful to my research topic. As I have mentioned, the book deals specifically with domestic violence in the play Arden of Faversham, the main/sole text with which my topic deals. Moreover, the book as a whole deals with issues of wife murder in a more general sense, too, and since wife murder is what the action of Arden of Faversham accumulates to in the end, this material will doubtless be useful to me also.

I will continue to post more sources throughout the week and into next, and hopefully I can have some 13-14 sources in all to help give any interested persons a good starting place for finding material treating domestic violence and homosocial bonds in early modern England.

Paradise Lost | On Books 2 and 4

I have two things that I wish to accomplish on this blog today. The first is to briefly give my thoughts on Books 2 and 4 of Paradise Lost. This I will get to in a moment. The second is to begin my research portion of this blog, which I will do in a post to immediately follow this one.

Book 2. The thing that interested me the most about Book 2 is the portrayal of Heaven versus Hell. The most striking difference, to me, is how Hell is presented as a rapidly-developing, already-changing kingdom with an open forum for the expression of ideas and the ruling of the land. This stands in stark contrast to Heaven, which is presented as stagnant and unchanging (it always has been and always will be as it existed before, and even after Satan's fall, I didn't get the impression that anything in Heaven had really changed) and as a place ruled solely by the commands and judgments of God. This portrayal is particularly fascinating because I find myself to like the fallen angels' new Hell more than I like God's Heaven. We are shown, in Book 1, the result of God's anger at Satan and his followers (who are cast out of Heaven) as well as his forgiveness towards them (as he allows them to be free of their adamantine chains). Yet even though there are several devils in Book 2 who express anger at God and wish revenge upon him, their open forum system keeps such emotions in check and allows for calm reason to play out. And even though this reason does lead to the decision to taint God's new creations with sin, it is nevertheless a course of action decided upon by the popular majority by way of reasoned argument. Further, I have resisted saying "Satan's Hell" because I never truly get the impression that Hell is completely Satan's. He may be the most powerful of the fallen angels, and he may have been the leader of the rebellion in Heaven, but I don't get the impression that he could pull rank and veto the other fallen's suggestions for actions in favor of an unpopular suggestion of his own and have all the other fallen angels follow him regardless, as is the case (again, as I read it) with Heaven's God. I realize that much of these impressions that I have are the result of Satan and Beelzebub's dialogue and that feeling tempted by Satan and his cause is maybe an intentional reflection of how Satan and sin (i.e. evil) are tempting to man. Further, the poem may condemn this republic-like government structure in associating it with Satan and Hell, but the fact remains that Heaven is still under the dictatorial-like (as far as I can see) rule of God whereas Hell is a place wherein debate is allowed, in whatever form you may see it to be. So if it is a sin to choose Hell over Heaven on the basis that Hell seems more reason-based and fair than Heaven, where one all-powerful figure makes all decisions and requires obedience from his followers, well, I'd still choose Hell. Just sayin'.

Book 4. I have never understood the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil) test which God made for Adam and Eve. God knows that Adam and Eve have the potential to break the rule God gave to them to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge--it is the human flaw which Satan capitalizes on when he observes Adam and Eve in this book--and yet he nevertheless places Adam and Eve near the tree while evil-inducing Satan is, with God's knowledge, on the loose. Why not, you know, put the pair elsewhere, if he really didn't want them to be tempted by Satan into eating from the tree? Or why didn't he keep Satan in his chains so that he wouldn't be free to bring sin into God's new world? Hm. In the end, I think that God is the true bringer of evil into the new world. He clearly demonstrates the he is aware of Satan's presence in Eden (when he presents Satan with a sign), and he also has demonstrated that he has the power to stop Satan (sending him back to Hell, either with or sans his adamantine chains), yet all he sends to Satan is an "I'm watching you" message. It's almost as though God is just using Satan as a puppet to do evil; Satan may perform the actual evil acts (though, arguably, persuading Adam and Eve to obtain a knowledge of good and evil isn't so much evil as it is an act of disobedience of God's command), but God is clearly pulling the strings. Gabriel even shows up and apprehends Satan, holding a clear advantage over Satan, but God lets him fly off anyway. I honestly cannot see Satan as a bad guy here; rather, I see him as a pawn for God's will, whether Satan sees himself as such or not.

Anyhow, research post number 1 to follow!

Paradise Lost | On Milton, Renaissance Literature, and First Impressions

Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, once said of Milton: "Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is." I think this statement pretty much sums up the sentiments I have heard from others regarding Paradise Lost over the last several years, and as a fifth year English major, I have heard a fair number of sentiments on an equally fair number of literary works. The opinion that many of my classmates seem to have is that Paradise Lost is a work which one should read at some point, especially if one is a student of literature, though it may not be an enjoyable text, or even a text which one would like to take up again in the future. So, right from the start, I think I may be a little biased in my approach to reading Milton. However, I remember thinking, once upon a time, that Shakespeare was much the same way. "Shakespeare is 'the greatest writer of all time' and everyone should read something of his, though his work is often not enjoyable nor understandable." Yet now, however, I sincerely enjoy Shakespeare and see why he is the subject of so much study. And so, with a notion of "perhaps this won't be so bad," I set off to read Paradise Lost. Since I am hesitant to provide my analysis or any "deep" thoughts when I am only 400 lines into the poem, I hope here to simply give an overview of my first impressions.

You know, it's not so bad so far. I expected something lofty and difficult to understand, and though the invocation at the opening of Book 1 certainly attempted to be as such, I have not found the poem to be too terribly bad at all. In fact, I rather enjoyed the reading so far. Aside from the early modern word spellings, the poem reads, in my opinion, a lot like a short fantasy piece could read today. I also enjoyed the poem's focus on Satan rather than God. It's a refreshing change of pace, and I think that it's interesting to see Satan characterized as any other character might be. He expresses his worries and fears to Beelzebub at the opening of Book 1, and Beelzebub offers advice which seems to ease these anxieties. Satan is almost made human-like in this opening portrait, though this is juxtaposed with further imagery of Satan abd Beelzebub in a lake of fire where no light but only darkness is visible--a truly supernatural image. Further, I admire Satan's perseverance (another human-like quality). He has been cast from heaven, his rebellion defeated, and yet he still carries on the fight. And even though he admits that he may not overthrow God, he nevertheless aims to at least subvert some of God's authority. While I cannot yet pinpoint why, I feel as though Satan isn't so bad here. I see no blatant indication (aside from that he *is* Satan) that Satan is thoroughly and unquestionably evil. In fact, Milton's Satan, so far, puts my thoughts more in line with Twain's Satan in Letters from the Earth, if I recall correctly.

I'll post more later, when I get farther in and have more opinions on the text.

The Roaring Girl | Assorted Notes

Hi all. Brief post today. I've been thinking a bit more about The Roaring Girl, and I figured that I would use this time to simply compile my thoughts here. So without further ado, I present to you "The Assorted Musings of an English Major on The Roaring Girl":

Moll's cross-dressing enables her to have an agency that she wouldn't be able to have if she remained a woman, no? This presents the question, "Why does she dress like a woman at all, then?" After all, why would she want to give up this agency? And women in the early modern period did certainly have a lack of agency. Perhaps Moll dresses like a woman on occasion because it allows her to construct an identity for herself which she can also take advantage of. Look at her interaction with Laxton, for instance. Moll is said to be whore because she dresses as a man, yet in dressing like a woman she reminds all that she is, despite the male attire she wears sometimes, a woman. She is able to trick Laxton into thinking he is going to have sex, because she is a both a woman and a rogue, and even when she takes his money, she is acting like a rogue while her dialogue defending women presents herself as a woman, too.

I find it interesting to consider Moll as a central point in the play that bridges a variety of social constructions despite her being denounced by most of them. Moll is wealthy, though she is denounced by the aristocrats presented in the play, and she is a notorious cutpurse, though the other thieves all seem to fear her. Her existence in both spheres allows her to bridge the gap between them, yet she is not a true part of either. Similarly, Moll is "masculine" when she dresses like a man, yet the other "masculine" figures dislike her for being so. Yet when Moll presents herself as "feminine," not only do the other women of the play seem uneasy around her, but the men still denounce her. Moll assumes this awkward space in the play where she exists in all the spheres constructed therein, yet never completely so.

Also, Sebastian and Mary's marriage at the end of the play is thought by some to be an "ideal" wedding. But I have a problem with this thought. Why should we possibly think that their marriage will be ideal when it is surrounded (in the play) by other marriages in which deception and manipulation are commonplace? Further on this point, doesn't Sebastian and Mary's wedding embody this deception and manipulation already? In the opening of the play, Sebastian is only able to see Mary because she is disguised, and the only reason they are able to get married at the end is because of the marriage trick which is performed. I simply cannot think that their marriage will be ideal but rather think that it will continue to embody these ideas of deception and manipulation so that it eventually degrades into a similar state as the other marriages within the play.

Finally, I would like to turn to Moll as she is presented at the end of the play. It has been pointed out that Moll arguably embodies here the epitome of femininity; she is dressed as a bride, which is perhaps the most clearly feminine outfit and the most clearly feminine role a woman may have. Does this scene not undermine all that Moll has railed against throughout the play? She has railed against prostitution and the subjection of women, in particular, but can't both of these be seen at the end of the play? By playing along with Sebastian's plot, she is allowing herself--more specifically, her body, for she displays herself as a woman for all to see--to be prostituted for Sebastian's sake. Further, in playing the bride, she is stepping into a gender that was supposed to be very subordinate to the male sex. And even if it is just an act, only Sebastian, Mary, and Moll know this; the rest of society sees her as his bride, and thus his subordinate. And since there is no costume change (presumably) before the epilogue, this is the last way we see Moll. I must think, then, that in the end she allows herself, whether she realizes so or not, to be made into the very thing which she clearly does not want to become--a subordinate, objectified woman. And that, I think, makes the play a tragic one. Who cares about Sebastian and Mary? They are absent for most the play. Moll is not, and she becomes a very tragic figure in my eyes.

Just some things to think on. Night.