When writing literary criticism one must ponder upon the significance of the topic to the literary canon as a whole. While there may not be a single definitive answer to how significant a topic is, one can question if the topic has been neglected or rejected by Western literary circles. If the answer is “yes,” then it is the critics’ duty to refashion the spotlight on the text. It was not until the 1970’s where feminism influenced the revival of texts authored by women.
Historically conditioned suppositions of male superiority has allowed the sex to dominate certain genres of literature, moreover men are given recognition for ideas that are thought of as revolutionary and original where, in fact, silenced female authors have reflected upon, and even perfected those thoughts. Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes in Introduction to Writing Race and the Difference It Makes that ever since T. S. Eliot established himself as an author, the canonical texts of the Western literary tradition have been defined as a more or less closed set of works that somehow speak to the “human condition” (213).
This idea and notion of the human condition being discovered and associated mostly with authors of the early twentieth century establishes a problematic because it annuls and silences voices that have been speaking of their own neglected condition hundreds of years prior. These are echoed voices of women whose text serve as a platform for a critical and unprecedented discussion of the collective silencing suffered by women in patriarchal society.
By examining the narrative of female performativity and speech acts in The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary and select poems by Isabella Whitney, there emerges a critique of patriarchy, sexism and the human condition in the English Renaissance. Isabella Whitney was a Renaissance poet who wrote herself into existence while documenting the delights and horrors of urban life for a single woman. Whitney did not marry and relied on her own earnings from employment and publishing of her work.
Her brother Geoffrey Whitney was the primogenitor of her family’s estate and did not respond to her pleads for financial support. Geoffrey’s inheritance forced his siblings into economic depravation. The publishing of her work allowed Whitney to sustain herself and to claim a minor degree success. Through her poetry Whitney skillfully criticized the structure of patriarchal society that not only failed her, but also left her to fend for herself. Despite facing strenuous economic hardship, Whitney rewrites the classic western hero from a woman’s perspective thus salvaging women and their reputation.
This role reversal is particularly relevant in her ballad “Admonition by the Author” where Whitney draws from wellestablished myths and classic stories where the men in these epics are all emulated as heroes. The admonition is a call for young women to be vigilant about the seductive authority of men. These epic heroes are commonly depicted as brave, honest and courageous in contrast with women in the stories who are cheated out of a happy ending; the stories end in their death, downfall, or some other tragedy.
Whitney reverses the gender roles of the sexes not by making women a commodity subject to men’s will and disposal, but rather by making them heroines whose dignity is at stake, and so drawing upon the classics Whitney offers advice to her female readers in the fourth stanza: “Beware of fair and painted talk beware of flattering tongues The mermaids do pretend no good for all their pleasant songs” (1041). In this stanza, Whitney appropriates the notion of men being the seducers in the form of sirens. The inversion of Homer’s sirens in the Odyssey into mermaids places the male in a role that has been traditionally reserved for females.
Consequently, like the sirens, the seductive speech of these men leads to destruction for the young women who surrender to it. Rewriting the classics to showcase the masked intentions of the male sex subverts the preexisting canon of male dominated social hierarchies. Additionally, one cannot but help to see the parallels between the temptation by sirens in the Admonition and the biblical references alluding to book 4 of Matthew when the Devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor (Matthew 4:1-11). He, like the sirens in Whitney’s Admonition, actively preys upon the innocent to lead them to their ultimate destruction.
Delving further into the classic mythologies Whitney showcases several women who were abused and neglected by the men they loved. She further uses the imagery of fishing that is widely considered as the art of love, and reverses it to showcase the dangers in the allegory. In one scenario, Whitney explains the literal ill fortune a young woman may have at taking the bait and meeting her demise on the shore. In the next scenario, the fish is irreparably damaged and is constantly weary of being tricked. “The little fish that careless is within the water clear, How glad is he, when he doth see a bait for to appear….
But since thy fortune is so ill to end thy life on shore, Of this thy most unhappy end I mind to speak no more…. That he from fishers hook did sprint before he could him take. … And now he pries on every bait, suspecting still that prick wherewith the fishers strike” (Whitney 1044) The fish allegory serves to highlight that men do not use flattery to honor women; they use it to destroy them. Whitney portrayal of the historical duplicity of men – as showcased in the classics – subverts traditional hierarchical notions of gender roles while ventriloquizing feelings and experiences that are shared by women to this day.
Positing this poem within the public realm for all to see, Whitney’s unequivocal message to women is for them to salvage the agency they have over themselves. The poem offers to critique the male sex beyond their betrayal of women; it offers a social critique of their duplicity in maintaining the oppression of male hegemony. Among the works published in Isabella Whitney’s A Sweet Nosegay collection of poems The Manner of Her Will becomes central to the established framework of the collective silencing experienced by women in the Renaissance.
This volume is a prime example of economic, gendered and creative inconsistencies in one family. Foregrounding the poem in a will is certainly telling of Whitney’s masked intention to criticize social structures preventing women for having an equal status to men. The poem begins prefacing her ill fortune at having to leave the city and life with commodities she previously had through her employer.
Whitney humbles herself and accepts her fate without anger however the desperation is apparent in her verse when she writes “But many women foolishly / like me, and other mo’e // Do such a fixed fancy set / on those which least deserve. She takes a stance on her previous mistakes and acknowledges her current status as a disenfranchised woman. The poem marks her farewell from London as she was unemployed and could not enjoy the luxuries of living in a city. Whitney foregrounds the poem by explaining that while she is whole physically and mentally, her economic condition is not: “I whole in body, and in mind, but very weak in purse, Do make, and write my testament for fear it will be worse.
And first I wholly do commend my soul and body eke, To God the Father and the Son, so long as I can speak. (1046) Whitney makes a distinction between her rationales, the perceived physical limitations of her sex, and her devotion to Christ. It is important to note that Whitney must foreground her Will so there would be no question of her worship. The poem serves as a descriptor of the city landmarks that were important to her, however she pays particular attention to the different types of prisons in the city where she notes the prisoners are placed in a precarious position by the duplicity of tradesmen, to which she endows a “counter” keeping track of accounts.
One can argue that one of the impecunious poet’s desires is to provide a minor reformation to the prison complex. This inclusion to help the decrepit state of affairs in the system is unfavorable towards the less fortunate; those who cannot post bail have very limited means to serve their term. She suggests The Newgate prison to hold trial once a month to prevent overcrowding and infection. The Fleet was a prison for people convicted of crimes dealing with affairs of conscience and differences of faith.
Whitney is seemingly safe from the confines of these prisons as she already established her commitment to Christ through Catholicism. However there exists the Ludgate prison that is specifically reserved for debtors, a prison she offers nothing to. Additionally she addresses the audience that laughs at her condition since she is forced to beg her friends, family and readers to help her improve her economy. In her Will not only does she neglects to bequeath Ludgate, but rather reserves a space for herself: “What makes you standers-by to smile, and laugh so in your sleeve, I think it is, because that I to Ludgate nothing give.
I am not not in case to lie, Here is no place of jest; I did reserve that for myself. If I my health possessed. ” (1051) By reserving this space Whitney acknowledges that she would die in debt before being able to pay any creditor. This becomes a testament grounded on the possibility of dying of poverty. This particular instance exposes Whitney’s vulnerability, as she has nobody to turn to but her audience and is willing to acknowledge her self and condition to depravity.
Given the persistence with which she reminds us of her single state, her isolation is as paramount important as her allusions to her lost coterie. She had fostered a community of young women of similar social status. Her Will captures the chronicled loss of those she had trusted in the past, and beckons them to aid her in the present. Mary Beth Rose writes that Kelly Joan asserted women did not have a Renaissance, but rather lived through a Renaissance period. She further explains that unlike men, women did not have a period of liberation from ideological constraints.
Instead they experienced a contraction of social and personal options that men of their same social classes did not (1). Kelly elaborated that the contraction created a new division between the public and private realm. Marriage laws changed drastically between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in which the freedoms of wives were restricted more than before. Women were unable to buy or sell goods without their husband or guardian’s approval. They could not be witnesses, write wills, make contracts, or be guardians of their own children (Rose 3-5).
This constriction of women and their silencing was a deliberate choice by patriarchs in order to maintain the status quo. Any action taken by women was threatening; the most radical act would be the act of speech. Keir Elam writes that a basic speech act is generally a sentence that begins with I, and employs a performative verb in the present tense. This verb often has you as the object, and has a prepositional addition to describe the specifics of the act (202). Examples of speech acts include command, bid, demand, plead, deny, confess, vow, protest.
