Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England

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Acknowledgments Virtuous Necessity has been a labor of love since I was a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, so there are many people to thank for their help and support at different stages in this project’s life. My mentors have helped me with more rounds of feedback than I can count, and I am very grateful to them for their intellectual generosity. The late and greatly missed Richard Helgerson helped me gain confidence in my ideas. Mark Rose and Michael O’Connell both consistently challenged me to make my points more clearly. Ken Hiltner graciously stepped in to help with an almost finished project after Richard passed away. I will spend my whole career striving to be the kind of mentor and advisor Patricia Fumerton was for me. She was always there to discuss my ideas and encourage me to push myself. My gratitude to Paddy grows each day I am on the job. Throughout graduate school and beyond, I have spent a lot of time sharing work with generous colleagues and friends. I would like to thank those who have taken the time over the years to read and improve portions of this work with their feedback, including, among others, Pav Aulakh, Matt Brown, Megan Palmer Browne, Simone Chess, Susan Cook, Tim Daniels, Steve Deng, Bill Gahan, Tassie Gniady, Shari Goldberg, SГ¶ren and Jennifer Hammerschmidt, Charles Hatfield, Kim Knight, Alan Liu, Patrick Ludolph, Rachel Mann, Kris McAbee, Sears McGee, Laura Miller, Cihan Muslu, Eric Nebeker, Elisa Oh, Nathan Perry, Monica Rankin, Theresa Russ, Maggie Sloan de Lloret, Liberty Stanavage, Sabrina Starnaman, and Cat Zusky. I am very grateful to Sujata Iyengar for helping me find a new title as I moved this book from its initial stages to completion. There are a few colleagues and friends who have really been dedicated mentors and readers of my work and without whom I am not sure I could have finished this book. Frances E. Dolan, an excellent scholar whom I admire,Page x → is also a very generous mentor. I am grateful to her for reading portions of this work and helping me hone my ideas. Patricia Michaelson fulfills the role of colleague, mentor, and friend at the University of Texas at Dallas. Pat’s willingness to help keep me sane as I struggled through my first few years on the tenure track has been a real inspiration to me. Simone Chess and Kris McAbee have been my writing buddies since graduate school, and I know that my life and my work are both better for knowing them. I am also grateful to all of the people who have worked at the English Broadside Ballad Archive for their constant sharing of ideas. The Graduate Division of the University of California, Santa Barbara, provided me with generous support throughout my graduate career, for which I am very appreciative. The dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dennis Kratz, has supported me with conference funding to help me present some of the arguments I have added to this work since its initial incarnation. I am especially indebted to my undergraduate advisors who encouraged me to pursue graduate study: Cristina LeГіn Alfar, Alan Hausman, Gerald Press, and Beth Stickney. This work would not have been possible without my family: my mother, Karen; my husband, Kenneth Brewer; and our three amazing children, Emily, Annabelle, and Daniel.

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Introduction In the last scene of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Kate tells her fellow new brides what it takes to be a good wife. Readers and performers of the play often pause to puzzle over this moment. How, they wonder, could Kate have gone from the argumentative individual at the beginning of the play to this submissive wife at the end? In this introduction, I consider the possibility that these two, seemingly contradictory Kates are in keeping with the many-sidedness of behavioral prescriptions for women with which authors of early modern conduct literature and literary texts were quite familiar. Early modern English literature concerned with women’s behavior demonstrates both the multiplicity and the constructedness of codes of conduct. If we take conduct manuals as representative of the “patriarchal master narrative,”1 we see that this narrative itself admits that the virtuous woman is a cultural construct. To give a sense of how authors saw the project of constructing the virtuous female subject in early modern England, I open this study with a consideration of the prefatory material of a number of conduct manuals written between 1529 and 1650. A number of prefaces to conduct manuals claim that the manual was written in response to an outbreak of misbehaving women—the assumption in these texts is that one can, through training, (re)make a woman’s behavior. For example, Walter Lynne’s A Watchword for Willful Women claims, “This good dialogue hath ben penned of pure affection, both for the instruction of the good, and amendment if possible it may be of the evil and wicked.”2 Lynne imagines a complicated interaction with his text by both women who follow and those who disobey the rules of conduct therein. And doubtlesse if honest huswives, godly widowes, or vertuous maidens, shall read or heare this well framed dialogue. They shall thereby Page 2 →greatly strengthen their modest minds. Againe if stubborne women, unaptedames, and wilful younglings wil but once geve eare with diligence to the hearing or reading therof: to know themselves they shal have fit cautions, and to amend themselves fit occasions, wherefore good Christian reader vouchsafe to judge with understanding & understande with a godly minde so shall my paynes bee well digested.3 This work, Lynne claims, might do some good in the world to encourage well-behaved women to continue to follow expectations properly. Lynne’s preface also demonstrates the potential uses of behavioral codes: women who are “unapt” might be able to learn to mend their ways if they would only turn their attention to his text. In other words, Watchword has the potential to reform even the worst women as long as they are willing to listen. Another expression of anxiety about a decline in women’s virtue can be found in John Brinsley’s A Looking Glass for Good Women, which tells readers that it is intended for the members of the “weaker Sex, who are either turned or turning from the way of the Church of Christ.”4 Many authors claim that there is a strong need for their conduct manuals. Robert Snawsel, for one, declares that he noticed that men and women were not living properly as husband and wife and “that there was no booke extant of this subject in English; and that for want of meanes many have lived ignorantly.”5 Even the prefaces that explicitly distance themselves from an attempt to help already corrupt women are still reacting to what they see as an abundance of unvirtuous women in the world. This tension between professed intentions to reform, on the one hand, and content that focuses on the creation of virtuous women, on the other, is indicative of the nature of early modern advice literature for women. Virtuous women are constructed by expectations, but they are also partly responsible for cultivating their virtue. The front matter of conduct texts is frequently concerned with the labor involved in making virtuous women. For example, Giovanni Bruto writes to Maria Catena, to whom he dedicated his The Necessary Fit, translated into English by “W.P.”, And although by so good beginnings hitherto apparant & knowen to be in you, we conceive a certen & most assured hope, that of your self you wil in short time become as vertuous as we desire: notwithstanding, as the fairest plants by the continuall labour and expert hand of the husbandman,

procure fruites much more delicate and sweete than otherwise they would, so by adding that care and diligence which is meete and convenient, unto the vertuous mind and noblenesse of nature,Page 3 → alreadie ingrafted in your heart; wee may expect and persuade our selves, that the fruites of your vertues will soone be ripened, and become of a most sweete and pleasaunt taste: which peradventure, not beeing laboured, would never proove so exquisite.6

Bruto compares Maria to “the fairest plants” and claims that “virtuous mind and nobleness of nature” are “engrafted in [her] heart.” At the same time, he expresses a hope that she will become “as virtuous as we desire,” with the help of “care and diligence.” To make this happen, one must apply the “continual labor and expert hand” of proper parenting. Bruto stresses the fact that unripe fruit (i.e., Maria’s virtue) needs help to become fully “ripened.” Maria’s innate goodness, “which peradventure, not being labored, would never prove so exquisite,” is only a potential at this point in her life. For Bruto, then, it is not strange that the virtuous woman is constructed; rather, such construction is expected. As these few examples show, early modern English conduct literature for women shows a consciousness of the work involved in creating virtuous female subjects. From the prefatory material, we can also learn just what kinds of women are eligible to become such subjects. Bruto’s letter reveals one of the difficulties of prefacing a work of conduct literature dedicated to a specific patron: the author must make his text both necessary and unnecessary at the same time. Unlike Lynne’s text, which is generally directed at any woman who might benefit, Bruto’s is specifically addressed to a supposedly virtuous woman. To walk this delicate line between necessity and offense, Bruto uses flattery, coupled with an urge to teach. Manuals are often dedicated either to the young women whom they will benefit or to patronesses who stand as great examples of behavior. For example, another translation of Bruto’s work, Thomas Salter’s Mirror of Modesty, is dedicated to Lady Anne, wife of Sir Thomas Lodge. In the dedication, Edward White, the printer, gives his text a past by claiming that when the copy came into his hands, he wondered to whom he should dedicate it, then realized that Lady Anne was the appropriate dedicatee because he was “so greatly beholden” to her “by many received courtesses.”7 Lady Anne was, moreover, a “Mistresse, and therefore maye the better judge if it bee well wrought.”8 There is no sense in the dedication that Lady Anne could learn anything from reading this book, although the title page does claim that it is “no less profitable and pleasant, then necessarie to bee read and practiced.” Some of the major differences between the two translations of Bruto’s work are precisely about the issue of who profits from reading conduct literature. For instance, while the translation of Bruto by Page 4 →“W.P.” preserves the dedication to Maria alone and the notion that the text is intended to help a noble-born woman attain “ripened” virtue, the translation by Salter widens the scope. As William St. Clair and Irmgard Maassen point out in their collection of conduct literature, “Salter’s Mirrhor broadens the social range of its intended readership to include the non-aristocratic classes.”9 They further conclude that “by constructing a collective gender identity for women beyond distinctions of rank,” Salter’s version of Bruto’s book “claims a more general validity for its precepts.”10 Because of this broader social range, Salter spends time in his prefatory matter outlining the distinction between who can and who cannot benefit from reading a text of conduct literature. In a letter to “all Mothers, Matrones, and Maidens of Englande,” for example, Salter claims that his book will help mothers learn how to raise their daughters correctly in order to save them from horrible wrongs.11 There is a difficult contradiction at work here as well—that between the perceived weak nature of women, on the one hand, and their lasting influence over men’s experience, on the other. Nothing, according to these texts, is as influential as the behavior of women. Richard Hyrde makes this clear in his 1529 translation of Juan Luis Vives’s Instruction of a Christian Woman. To Catherine of Aragon, Hyrde writes, For what is more frutefull than the good education and ordre of women, the one halfe of all mankynd, and that halfe also, whose good behavour or evyll tatchis giveth or bereveth the other halfe, almoste all the holle pleasure and commodite of this present lyfe, byside the furtherance or hyndrance forther growyng there upon, concernyng the lyfe to come?12

How women behave, Hyrde argues, is a major determiner of men’s happiness and, he implies, the functioning of society—here and in “the life to come.” A conduct manual such as Vives’s is thus crucial to everyone’s happiness and eternal salvation. In Hyrde’s dedication, we can see one of the most important trends in texts about women’s behavior: women’s virtue is essential to the proper functioning of society, extending its influence beyond the household to reach out to the community at large. The texts that we might consider the most rigid in their prescriptions grant female agents this power over those around them, even as the texts try to control that power. Since the 1982 publication of Suzanne Hull’s study of many of the books written for women between 1475 and 1650, critics have treated the conduct literature of the early modern period in England as a body of work interesting Page 5 →primarily for its list of rules. Hull’s Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 remains the authoritative book about women’s conduct manuals. Hull is particularly interested in what she sees as an increase in books published for women; she writes of the “mini-explosion of female literature,” composed of “largely practical guides,” toward the end of the sixteenth century.13 Ann Rosalind Jones argues that the “explosion” was really of literature written by men for other men: “the practical conduct books that proliferated during the sixteenth century were directed by men toward fellow men on the rise, as in the etiquette manuals written for aspiring courtiers, or addressed to the fathers and husbands of potentially unruly daughters and wives, in the case of bourgeois and Protestant marriage manuals.”14 The “practical guides” Hull discusses include conduct manuals and household management guides—texts that are specifically aimed at the behavior of women.15 These texts were so numerous that one might expect to see an abundance of scholarship that reads them critically. For the most part, however, critics have tended to read conduct literature straightforwardly and in order to measure the successes or failures of female characters in fictional texts. Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England looks at early modern women’s conduct literature in a new way, by reconsidering the approach that depends on such literature only for its rigid set of rules by which early modern women were expected to live. Certainly, the works present themselves as sets of expectations, with categories of rules. Kate Aughterson, in her collection of primary texts about early modern women, notes that conduct literature is “exhortative, claiming certain rules for the public and private behavior of women,” and that “the content of the exhortation is structured around certain characteristics, described as ideal feminine virtues: chastity, obedience, humility and silence.” She adds “the specific areas of women’s lives and their duties within each sphere are delineated for the reader.”16 Among critics, there has been an assumption at work that conduct literature has a cultural imperative involving strict codes with the potential to create either chaste, silent, and obedient subjects or their unruly counterparts.17 Take, for example, the following dichotomy presented by Aughterson: On the one hand, we are presented with a picture of women in need of counseling, instructing, and leading, being socialised into a condition of submission. On the other, we have accounts of active and successful women struggling with both this ideology and other economic, social and political troubles.18 Page 6 →Aughterson’s assumption here is that only women who do not follow the codes of behavior put forth by the conduct literature can be considered to be “liberated.” It follows logically, then, that conduct literature itself builds this dichotomy rather strictly. For example, of The Tragedy of Mariam, Karen Raber writes, “The chorus delineates an extremely narrow view of the domestic sphere women occupy, yet this view is culturally powerful and representative of much conduct literature and political writing.”19 For Raber, conduct literature for women can offer no more than “an extremely narrow view.” Conduct literature is just as uninteresting to Raber as the women in the “condition of submission” are to Aughterson, because Raber sees nothing to be learned from such literature beyond strict behavioral codes. I would like to trouble the assumptions about women who appear to conform and the literature that offers them advice, by positing that both ends of the spectrum of feminine virtue20 strive to socialize women into certain behavioral patterns. Portrayals of both “good” and “bad” women are used to construct the ideal of feminine virtue. Thus female characters who behave contrary to social prescriptions are just as important to those

prescriptions as the female characters who follow them. Further, in a sense, the women who follow prescriptions should be of more interest to scholars for the ways in which they negotiate rules of behavior. Christina Luckyj, in her study of early modern women’s silence, argues that though silence was socially restrictive, it also offered significant alternatives to speech for women in the early modern period.21 We would do well to consider the entire triad of feminine virtues (chastity, silence, and obedience) as more intricate than many have claimed. Kathryn Schwarz, in her excellent study of feminine will in the drama of Shakespeare, argues that “women pose a threat when they willingly conform to social conventions.”22 Work by scholars such as Luckyj and Schwarz shows the possibilities that are opened up when we reconsider both the triad of feminine virtue and woman’s place as acting subject in relation to that triad. Conduct literature was not read by contemporaries in isolation from other kinds of literature, but this does not necessarily mean that there was a tension between conduct literature and everything else. Both types of literature were instructive, as St. Clair and Maassen point out: “Conduct literature for women constituted only a small and specialist section of a large amount of general advice literature produced during the period. Many texts from related genres fed into, and overlapped with, conduct books both in terms of their subject matter and in their didactic intention.”23 With or without overt “didactic intentions,” many texts participate in the making of the virtuous woman in early modern England. For example, as I shall show in chapter 5 of Page 7 →this book, broadside ballads, which Salter refers to as “lascivious” and urges fathers to forbid, often contain didactic messages.24 Furthermore, even the ballads without didactic messages contain representations of the virtuous and unvirtuous behavior of women. Virtuous Necessity offers a crucial revision of the way we think about conduct literature, by examining a wide range of (literary and nonliterary) texts from circa 1529–1650 about women’s conduct—including prose advice, prose fiction, household documents, poetry, drama, and street literature—to uncover the multiple meanings of behavioral expectations for women. Drawing on studies of early modern literature and culture as well as gender theory and philosophy, I argue that models of conduct in the period—especially of the virtues chastity and obedience—are much more multivalent and open than critics have so far acknowledged. This multivalence reveals that the renegotiation of cultural ideals provides models for “acceptable” conduct that lie outside of rigid prescriptions. This study engages these manual-like works together with more literary texts about women’s conduct on an even playing field. Both kinds of literature, I argue, are crucial to understanding fully how rules of conduct functioned in early modern England. Exploring how prescriptions for women’s behavior interact with the culture that surrounds their production is important to the study of early modern literature. Women’s experiences of “patriarchy” are not uniform, as Erica Longfellow reminds us,25 and it is worth exploring the intersections between what conduct manuals command women to do, what women are represented doing in literary works, and how women represent their own virtue. Typically, one imagines conduct manuals as the main storehouses for advice to women about how to behave. Indeed, many conduct manuals—manuscript and printed, private and public, aimed at a specific woman or at women in general—circulated between 1529 and 1650. Insofar as there might be said to be a separation in declared purpose between conduct literature and other literary forms, it is important to reconstruct the dialogue between conduct manuals and works of literature that show women receiving, acting on, and even subverting advice. By doing so, we get a better sense of the way in which early modern cultural representations worked. Virtuous Necessity is interested in the place where didactic literature for women and the “literary” meet. As much as possible throughout this study, I avoid privileging one over the other or keeping the categories “historical” and “literary” rigidly separated. To demonstrate the range of genres involved in constructing women’s conduct, I move, in the chapters of this study, from consideration of the poetryPage 8 → of Edmund Spenser and John Milton; through religious writing, Shakespearean drama, and writings of early modern women; to, finally, popular broadside ballads. At the nexus of these varied genres, I find not only the expected rigid behavioral models but also vividly nuanced representations of virtuous women whose conduct challenges behavioral expectations in ways that come to be socially sanctioned. Through my multitextual analysis, I show that the same prescriptions that might have limited women’s behavior can sometimes simultaneously function as the tools that facilitate representations of women’s ability

to break through rigid barriers. Virtuous Necessity demonstrates the literary and cultural retooling of rigid and confining behavioral expectations, toward the possibility that those rigid rules might offer modes of resistance. I offer Kate’s final speech in The Taming of the Shrew as an example of the kind of moment Virtuous Necessity strives to understand better. Some scholars, such as CoppГ©lia Kahn, argue that Kate is being sarcastic, while others, such as Larry S. Champion, claim that she has been truly completely reformed.26 Karen Newman, pointing to the speech’s recognition of the realities of performance, posits that Kate’s final speech is subversive: “The very indeterminateness of the actor’s sexualityВ .В .В . foregrounds its artifice and therefore subverts the play’s patriarchal master narrative by exposing it as neither natural nor divinely ordained, but culturally constructed.”27 Holly Crocker recognizes the speech “as a marker of gender performativity which remains unstable.”28 Criticism of the speech creates multiple Kates—a Kate who has learned how to perform her gender, a Kate who is biding her time until she can rail at her husband, and a Kate whose feminine identity is undermined by the masculine body. These Kates, it seems, are irreconcilable, because she cannot be both reformed and still a shrew, both a straightforward representation and a subversion of gender hierarchy. At the same time, however, Kate’s character does elicit these multiple and seemingly disparate responses. In this book, I am concerned precisely with the multiplicity that I believe Kate’s final speech reveals: the multiple meanings of early modern models of behavior for women. Kate opens her speech by scolding the Widow and Bianca for their surly behavior. Fie, fie, unknit that threatening unkind brow And dart not scornful glances from those eyes To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor. Page 9 →It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, And in no sense is meet or amiable. A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty, And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.29 (5.2.136–45) One might be tempted to concentrate on the fact that Kate claims the husband is “thy lord, thy king, thy governor,” but I would like to just take that for granted. The husband was considered to be the ruler of his household in early modern England; for Kate, this is just the statement of a fact. More important, the beginning of this speech offers us a sense of how women were expected to behave. Kate characterizes the wives’ disobedience as disturbed nature—“meads” bitten by “frosts,” “fair buds” shaken by “whirlwinds,” a “fountain troubled, / Muddy, ill-seeming, thick.” An obedient woman, then, would be naturally warm, still, pretty, and drinkable. Yet at the same time, obedience is active: “unknit that threatening unkind brow,” Kate instructs. That brow, which has the ability to spoil a woman’s reputation and make her undesirable, must also have the ability to benefit her reputation and make her desirable. The repetition of un- in this phrase reinforces the action of undoing something. Obedience is thus both a doing and an undoing. Obedience is also the debt a wife owes to her husband. Kate claims that the husband cares for the wife: “for thy maintenance [he] commits his body / To painful labor both by sea and land” (5.2.148–49). For this care, he “craves no other tribute at thy hands / But love, fair looks, and true obedience” (5.2.152–53). Here the husband’s labors are laid out alongside the wife’s. He cares for her and works hard away from home. She need pay him only with “love, fair looks, and true obedience,” which Kate argues is “too little payment for so great a debt” (5.2.154). Her lengthy speech and description of the duties a wife owes to her husband, however, suggest that the wife’s obedience requires quite a bit of work. After all, Kate came to be obedient only after an extended period of “taming,” during which Petruchio relied on methods of torture to

break her (4.3).30 There are also real-life consequences for disobedience, of which Kate warns the wives. It is no light thing to be seen as disobedient to one’s husband. Page 10 →Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband, And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her lord? (5.2.155–60) To be a “foul contending rebel” is to commit a kind of treason, to be a “graceless traitor.”31 Treason is no small crime, and Kate’s suggestion that rebelling against a husband is just as bad as rebelling against a king makes it clear that the punishment could be grave. Disobedience, in Kate’s view, is thus not a logical option for women. I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace, Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway, When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. (5.2.161–64) Kate claims that “women are so simple” because they do not realize the potential for strength in obeying. This strength is found not by pretending obedience or saying all of the right things but by performing obedience in the way that the conduct manuals would recommend—in such a way as to draw others to virtue. To seek for “rule, supremacy, and sway” is not the way to have influence, according to the authors of advice literature; to “serve, love, and obey” is the way to make change. Kate concludes her speech with a call to reform based on her own experience. She claims to the other wives that though her “mind hath been as big” as one of theirs (5.2.169), now she sees that their “lances are but straws” (5.2.172). She then advises the women to “vail” their “stomachs,” because pride is useless (5.2.175). But Kate ends her speech with a call to action: “And place your hands below your husband’s foot, / In token of which duty, if he please, / My hand is ready, may it do him ease” (5.2.176–78). This moment—when Kate urges the women to change because of her own invigorating improvement—is indicative of the expectations for women’s obedience. According to the literature that purports to prescribe women’s behavior, demonstrating not only obedience but also reformation is one of their main duties. Kate, because she has had the experience of a “shrew,” is perfectly placed as an instructor Page 11 →for other women. She can pass on the teaching because she herself has been, in a sense, made to reconcile the contradictory requirements of behavioral expectations; through Petruchio’s “teaching,” Kate has learned the paradoxical power of submission. At the same time, however, Kate reminds the other wives that she may have been smarter than they (“my reason haply more,” 5.2.170). Kate is in the position of teacher because of her superior reason. In a way, then, it takes an extremely smart woman to know how to reform others. Neither the readings that see Kate as fully reformed (and thus a sort of lost cause for feminists) nor those that see her as fully ironical (and thus a champion for feminists) acknowledge that these two Kates might be one. According to Helga Ramsey-Kurz, there is a desire for the “synthesis” of these Kates in scholarship that treats her final speech.32 I believe that codes of conduct for women’s behavior are the key to such a synthesis. How can one both be obedient and have an influential effect on the world? This is not a question that authors of conduct literature would ask; in their minds, these characteristics are not mutually exclusive. To our modern critical gaze, the obedience of an early modern woman appears to be a conformity that does not involve any

critical moves on the woman’s part. We assume that one must choose either to be obedient or to have influence over others. However, the authors of early modern conduct books do not see these two positions as incompatible. There is undoubtedly a contradiction here: how can obedience (i.e., the act of following orders) involve not following orders? This is possible because obedience requires analytical action on the part of the obedient woman. Virtuous Necessity opens with a look at the way authors engage with ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical behavioral expectations. In particular, the first two chapters are concerned with the representations of chastity and obedience in early modern English texts. Chastity and obedience then serve as the focus of the third chapter, which treats two plays by Shakespeare that take on the representation of behavioral expectations for women. The first three chapters rely on what we might consider the central, or “official,” position with regard to women’s behavior—although, as we will see, this is by no means a straightforward categorization. The fourth and fifth chapters consider the marginal responses to this central position—from women writers and from popular broadside ballads. Juan Luis Vives’s extremely influential Instruction of a Christian Woman both demands that virgins guard their chastity at all costs and, at the same time, declares young women too weak to guard it properly. In the first chapter of this study, “The Paradox of Chastity,” I examine the language authors Page 12 →use to describe chastity—a language that often paradoxically turns in on itself—in both conduct literature (e.g., Juan Luis Vives’s Instruction of a Christian Woman) and literary texts (e.g., Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam). The notion of chastity expounded in these works seems quite straightforward and strict at first but quickly escapes authorial control. Rather than resolving the contradictions generated, such as the conflicting descriptions of chastity’s protective ability, these authors defiantly push their theses about chastity through the paradoxical language over the course of their work and offer apparent resolutions. Moving from the seemingly impossible-to-negotiate contradictions of representations of chastity to a more performative model of virtue, I devote the second chapter of this book, “вЂHonest Government’: Feminine Virtue’s Network of Influence in Early Modern England,” to a consideration of the virtue of obedience. In contrast to the paradox of chastity that appears to limit women’s options, prescriptive literature often portrays obedience as a virtue that is both performative and reformative. I argue that early modern women were taught not to be unquestioningly obedient but, rather, that they had a responsibility to be virtuous—to perform submission in order to reform others. The model of performance requires women to analyze behavioral prescriptions critically because their proper performance necessitates interpretation on their part, which shows that self-reflection is possible and even encouraged. To get a sense of the implications of the representations of chastity and obedience I look at in the first two chapters of this book, I turn to Shakespeare’s theater in the third chapter, “Contradiction and CounterMagic: Advice to Women on Shakespeare’s Stage.” I argue that Ophelia in Hamlet and Paulina in The Winter’s Tale reveal the contradictions inherent in the projects of chastity and obedience, inasmuch as their behavior is the result of their following of prescriptions and is simultaneously in apparent opposition to what is prescribed. In Ophelia and Paulina, we see opposite extremes: the young girl expected to be chaste and the married woman who stands up to her king (and her husband) for what she believes is just. I argue that Ophelia’s madness is caused by the advice she receives and that Paulina’s seeming disobedience is actually a form of properly performed obedience. Chapter 4 of this study, “Virtue in Early Modern Women’s Advice,” takes up the question of women writers’ engagement with behavioral prescriptions. In particular, I look at early modern women writers’ ways of representing the circulation of feminine virtue. I focus on women writers offering advice—to other women, to men, and to their own children—and explore the ways in Page 13 →which these writers challenge the normativities of prescriptive literature from within the very space opened up by prescriptive literature’s contradictions and paradoxes., this chapter draws material from advice books and letters written by women, alongside well-known writers like Amelia Lanyer and Katherine Philips.

My final chapter, “вЂAdvice to the Ladies of London’: Feminine Virtue in English Broadside Ballads, ” shows that while many critics argue that popular literature offers only two opposing choices for women—the “bad,” venomous shrew or the proverbial opposite, the “good,” obedient sheep—ballads actually present a complicated spectrum of possible roles for women, according to which, for instance, a shrew might paradoxically be socially effective and even endorsed. Although it is in service of restoring order, the shrew’s behavior may well offer different options or models for women that have the same result as the behavior of good wives. Because ballads are such valuable cultural documents, in that they open a window into the everyday lives of the masses, examining their ultimately conservative representation of feminine virtue adds a taste of the everyday to this multigenre project. The twenty-first century is a momentous time for a study such as this, because we are faced with our own cultural paradoxes about the behavior of women. Take, for example, the tabloid treatment of sexualized children such as Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus. While lamenting the loss of childhood, magazines such as Us Weekly and People publish photos that reveal more and more of the bodies of young women. Once Britney Spears began having children, however, the focus shifted to her maternal body constructed as grotesque. That new focus did not change the finger-wagging tone, but it did change the terms and stakes of the debate, because it now involved the lives of others. Our culture’s fascination with the loss of innocence takes the form of an obsession with what has replaced that innocence—a sexualized body (budding, as in Cyrus’s case, or used up, as in Spears’s). But the fascination is also with the preservation of innocence at all costs. These messages are confusing because they are paradoxical. In the brief epilogue to this study, I consider whether understanding the making of the virtuous woman in early modern England might offer an insight into the paradoxes and contradictions of our own culture’s attempts to construct the ideal woman.

Page 14 →One The Paradox of Chastity Any reader of early modern texts about women’s behavior is familiar with the virtue of chastity. Poet Edmund Spenser places it “farre above the rest” in the pantheon of feminine virtues, and conduct manuals will often dedicate entire chapters or sections to chastity.1 Chastity’s prominence might lead us to believe that the virtue has a clear definition and can be straightforwardly represented in the texts in which it appears. This is far from the case. Take, for example, our current seemingly simple definition of chastity from the Oxford English Dictionary: “purity from unlawful sexual intercourse; continence.”2 Here, chastity is associated with purity—a quality often considered innate rather than cultivated—and also with the laws of men, nature, and religious authority. To be chaste, one must remain free from unlawful sexual intercourse, which includes intercourse outside of marriage (a legal and religious institution). However, just staying within the bounds of one’s marriage is not enough, as chastity also requires “continence.” This continence puts a limit on sexual intercourse even within marriage that likely derives from the Bible.3 What we see in the OED’s definition is a chastity subject to numerous and occasionally conflicting rules. Chastity is not a simple concept; rather, it is one of the most complicated for acting subjects to understand and for authors to represent. I begin my exploration of the representation of feminine virtue in early modern English texts with chastity because of its importance to those texts and because of its difficulty of representation. In this chapter, I consider what I call the “paradox of chastity,” that is, the self-contradictory statements that lie at the heart of any attempt to represent chastity in language. Chastity is, for instance, at once weak and strong, passive and active, obvious and hidden. We need not see this paradox of chastity as the end of any attempt to understand how this feminine virtue functions in early modern behavioral texts. Peter Page 15 →Platt, writing of Shakespeare’s work, claims that “paradoxes can—if we let them, if we resist the urge to harmonize their contradictions and instead allow their opposites to resonate—help bring variety, complexity, and insight into a world that too often can seem weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.”4 In keeping with Platt’s claims for paradox, I argue that the paradox of chastity illuminates some of the complexity of early modern thinking about feminine virtue. Chastity is everywhere in early modern texts, and authors’ fascination with chastity stems from a fascination with its inherent contradictions as a virtue. This claim may seem to run contrary to the assumption that chastity is most important as a result of evolutionary psychological necessity: if a man knows beyond a doubt that his wife has been faithful, he knows with certainty that his children are biologically his. In this way, female chastity ensures his paternity.5 Evolutionary psychology is not, however, enough to explain authors’ seeming obsession with chastity. Consider, for example, that any discussion of chastity always calls to mind sexuality. Virginity, a specific type of chastity, experiences a similar difficulty of representation, as virgins are often highly eroticized in literature. Theodora Jankowski, in her examination of what she calls “queer virginity,” claims, “Being a virgin means that the woman in question defines herself in terms of herself and other women, not in terms of men, or the patriarchal sexual economy.”6 The eroticization of virgins may be a response to this perceived attempt at self-definition. Chastity and virginity share the problem of placement in the “patriarchal sexual economy,” but chastity especially lends itself to contradictions, because it is both a prohibition of and encouragement for sexual activity. In this chapter, I examine the language early modern authors use to depict chastity—a language that often turns in on itself—in both conduct literature, such as Juan Luis Vives’s Instruction of a Christian Woman, and literary texts, such as Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, and John Milton’s Comus. The authors of these works share a preoccupation with chastity, but their approaches to its paradox vary. Vives, for example, works to “harmonize the contradictions” of the paradox of chastity throughout his Instruction, in an attempt to show just how valuable this virtue can be. Cary shows the dangerous confusion that can arise when a woman tries to live up to the paradoxical ideal of chastity. Spenser, for his part, includes multiple characterizations of chastity in book 3 of The Faerie Queene, because only one character for chastity is not sufficient to show chastity’s many and sometimes oppositional meanings. Milton, like Vives, strives to resolve these oppositional meanings, but Milton does so by revising his language.

Page 16 →In recent years, a number of scholars have turned their attention to the language of chastity. Philippa Berry, for one, claims that “the Renaissance attempt to accord fixed meanings to the figure of a desirable but chaste woman proved to be fraught with difficulties.”7 Moreover, whereas female chastity was once considered simply to be the imposition of a rule by men on women, Kathryn Schwarz argues that chastity “is not a straightforward mechanism of hierarchical imposition but a complicated and always potentially contested interplay of constraint and will.” As part of “a social fabric both knit up and unraveled by the women in whose hands it rests,” chastity, according to Schwarz, is always also an act of female agency.8 Writing about William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Schwarz claims, “The play’s unspoken final verdict highlights a troubled awareness that chastity is a matter of will and that whatever chaste feminine subjects might choose to do, it must always be too much, and can never be enough.”9 Chastity is therefore a virtue that is a matter of choice by women as agents, but the acting subject is not the only force of chastity that “unravels” the “social fabric.” The language of chastity itself has the potential to be paradoxical, and the authors I look at in this chapter struggle with its paradoxical language. Chastity is the most important feminine virtue in Juan Luis Vives’s Instruction of a Christian Woman, a very popular work in early modern England and widely considered the definitive conduct manual of the sixteenth century.10 Vives writes, “Take from a woman her beautie, take from her kynrede, ryches, comelynes, eloquence, sharpenes of wytte, counnynge in her crafte, gyve her chastite, and thou haste gyven her all thynges” (G4v).11 Vives’s concern with chastity is well documented. For example, in their edition of the Instruction, Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell notice that chastity “invades virtually every chapter of his treatise.”12 According to them, “the concept of chastity as premarital virginity and marital fidelity appears prominently in the text of the Instruction. However, its subtext endorses celibacy, the conventional Catholic alternative for women.”13 The subtext that these editors read in the Instruction is born out of Vives’s presumed subconscious reactions to the events in his life. The treatise’s compulsive insistence on preserving virginity and chastity may thus have been generated by two acute dangers—sensual dangers threatening him in Bruges and religious terrorism linked to his sisters in Spain but concealed unconsciously within this metaphor.14 Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell see a connection especially between the experiences of conversos in Vives’s native Spain and the Instruction’s “obsessed Page 17 →preoccupation with chastity.”15 They claim that the terrors of the Inquisition and anxiety about his sisters led Vives to compose the work while under a lot of stress. Therefore, according to them, Vives’s concern for his sisters, conversas, after the death of their parents influenced his insistence on chastity. Moreover, they argue, he was reacting to not only his own family’s situation but also the situation of many women in his home country: “Certainly his pessimism, and perhaps also his obsessed preoccupation with chastity, may be connected to the devastating persecution of people of Jewish descent by the Spanish Inquisitors.”16 In this reading, Vives’s concern with chastity and virginity grew from his fear for the safety of women. Vives’s insistence on the safety that can be found in chastity is certainly apparent in his text. For example, he claims, “We have redde of women, that have ben taken & let go agayne of the moste unruly soudyours, only for the reverence of the name of virginitie bicause they sayde that they were virgins” (G2r). Vives’s regimented program for the cultivation of virtues that preserve women creates a protected space for the reader to imagine the good life—a life in which true virtue can keep a woman from the danger of rape. In the dominant reading of Vives, chastity is the most important feminine virtue partly because of its ability to keep a woman safe from harm. Vives recommends chastity wholeheartedly both for the safety of women’s bodies and for the safety of their reputations, with little recognition of its problems. But, as Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell note, Vives’s “attitude toward chastity is accompanied by a concomitant attention to unchastity.”17 Nancy Weitz Miller further asserts, “Vives’s use of figurative language mystifies by cloaking the contradictions lurking within his construction of chastity.”18 Miller sees two recurring metaphors throughout Vives’s treatment of chastity: the “economic” and the “martial.” She claims that these “metaphors also turn the virtue into an object distinct from the bearer of the virtue.”19 For Miller, Vives “cloaks” the contradictions in

the chastity he demands of his readers with his metaphors. The consequence of this, she argues, is that it is difficult for women to live up to the expectations in the Instruction. Social prescriptions for ideal behavior, however, are unrealistic by nature. The contradiction Miller sees in these metaphors couples with the violence of Vives’s images to suggest that his attempt to “harmonize” the paradox of chastity is unsuccessful. Vives does not attempt to control the behavior of women through linguistic trickery; he tries to “harmonize” the contradictions of chastity rather than letting the “contrarieties” “resonate.”20 More than being merely confusing, however, Vives’s attempts to resolve contradictions result in violent language. Page 18 →Vives works to show that chastity ought to keep a woman safe from harm, but he simultaneously reveals that chastity is incapable of protecting her. The martial metaphor Miller recognizes is most prevalent in Vives’s discussion of chastity as a protector. For instance, Vives suggests that a woman should prepare for “battle” when leaving her home. But afore she go forth at dore, let her prepare her mynde and stomake none other wise than if she went to fyghtВ .В .В . Let her consider with her selfe that some thyng shall chaunce on everye syde that shall move her chastite and her good mynde. Agaynst these dartes of the devyll, let her take the buckler of stomake, defended with good examples & preceptes, & a fyrme purpose of chastite & a mynd ever bente towarde Christe. (N3r) If she must leave her house, which Vives advises against in the first place, a woman ought to prepare herself as if “she went to fight.” The preservation of chastity is, in this instance, a continuing struggle on the part of the chaste to remain so. Vives claims that “good examples and precepts” and “a firm purpose of chastity and a mind ever bent toward Christ” will keep a woman safe. Here, the strength of chastity alone can protect it (and, by extension, the woman who possesses it) from harm; that is, only its inviolability can keep chastity from violation, especially rape. But Vives characterizes chastity differently in his invective against women attending jousts and other events: “Hit can nat lyghtly be a chaste mynde that is occupied with thynkynge on armour, and turney, and mannes valiaunce. What places amonge these be for chastite unarmed and weake?” (E3r–v). In this case, chastity is “unarmed and weak.” In Vives’s formulation, chastity is thus both weak and strong, both inviolable and vulnerable. Vives locates the harmony of these contradictions in his treatment of the “problem of rape,” a problem with which any claim that chastity can keep a woman safe from harm must necessarily contend. The problem of rape is similar to the problem of evil in theology, in that chastity, like faith, carries with it the promise of complete safety but does not always deliver. Vives deals with this problem by locating the cause of rape in the woman herself. Hit is an evyll keper that can nat kepe one thyng well commytted to her kepyng and put in truste to her with moche commendation of wordes: and specially whiche no man wil take from her agaynst her wyll nor touche hit excepte she be wyllynge her selfe. (G4r) Page 19 →According to Vives, a woman who loses her virginity always consents to do so, even when it seems most obvious that her consent is absent. Sexual violation is therefore rarely a violation at all; rather, it is something for which the woman has offered her tacit consent. The fault lies entirely with the woman (the victim). Chastity protects her from harm, and if the woman is harmed, she must not have had chastity to begin with. Here we see the paradox of chastity: chastity is both strong enough to protect a woman from harm and unable to protect her from harm. A woman must therefore place faith in the abstract virtue even to the exclusion of faith in her ownership of that virtue. Whereas Vives deals with the violence of the threat of rape by erasing its violence—no man will violate a woman “except she be willing herself”—he spends a good deal of time explaining the violent repercussions for the loss of chastity. A violated woman will find no solace in this world: “Lette her that hath lost her virginite turne her whiche way she will, she shal fynde al thynges sorowfull and hevy, waylyng, &

mournyng, & angry, & displeaserfull” (G2v). There is sadness in the state of the ruined woman that Vives conveys here, but he turns quickly from sadness to anger, claiming that the woman’s family will “openly hate her” (G2v). This hatred manifests itself in physical violence: “Nowe wherto shulde I reherce the hate & anger of folkes? For I knowe that many fathers have cut the throtes of their doughters, bretherne of theyr systers, and kynnesmen of theyr kynneswomen” (G2v–G3r). Vives immediately follows with concrete examples of such violence. In one case, a father locks his daughter in with a wild and hungry horse: “Hippomenes a great man of Athenes whan he knewe his doughter desoyled of one he shutte her up in a stable with a wylde horse kepte meateles: so the horse whan he had suffered great hounger longe and bycause he was of nature fierse he waxed mad and all to take the yonge woman to fede hymselfe with” (G3r). In a sense, Hippomenes reenacts the initial violation of his daughter by locking her in the stable with a wild horse, who is like a young man full of desire. The horse needs to “take the young woman to feed himself,” echoing the language of sexual conquest. Vives lists a series of fathers who kill their daughters because of the daughters’ unchastity, as well as one father who kills his daughter to avoid the probability of future unchastity (G3r). He mentions one woman’s brothers who kill her immediately after the birth of the child of her adulterous union: “as soone as she was delyvered of her chylde, they throuste swordes into her bealye and slewe her, the myddewyfe lokynge on” (G3r). The violence does not always come only from outside of the woman. Vives uses the example of Lucrece to show that complete chastity is possible only if Page 20 →both body and mind are chaste, even at the cost of a woman purging herself through self-inflicted violence. What can be safe to a woman saith Lucrecia whan her honestie is gone? And yet had she a chast mynde in a corrupt body. TherforeВ .В .В . she thrist [sic] a sworde in to her body and avenged the compulsyon that the pure mynde myght be seperated from the defyled body as shortly as coude be. But I saye nat this bycause other shulde folowe the dede but the mynde: Bycause she that hath ones lost her honestie shulde thynke there is nothynge lefte. Take from a woman her beautie, take from her kynrede, ryches, comelynes, eloquence, sharpenes of wytte, counnynge in her crafte, gyve her chastite, and thou haste gyven her all thynges. (G4r–v) On the one hand, Vives claims that no woman can be violated “except she be willing”; on the other, he claims that Lucrece has “a chaste mind in a corrupt body.” According to Vives’s characterization of rape—that no man will violate a woman unless she is somewhat willing—chastity ought to be unattainable for Lucrece. However, Lucrece is one of the most common exempla of the chaste woman, because her chastity is so important to her that she takes her own life. This self-annihilating “deed,” Vives claims, ought not to be followed, but Lucrece still stands as the perfect chaste woman. The implication, then, is that the most chaste woman is a dead woman. Vives’s violent images not only fail to resolve chastity’s contradictions but also point to another of the aspects of the paradox of chastity—that it simultaneously calls for the absence and presence of the erotic. Vives’s violent language invokes sexual penetration, thereby calling sex to mind while discussing the virtue that ought to keep sex under control. For example, the brothers of the adulterous woman “thrust swords into her [their sister’s] belly,” and Lucrece “thrust a sword into her body” to “avenge the compulsion.” In these instances, the punishment for sexual intercourse is a violent phallic violation of the woman’s body. The violence that Vives’s descriptions of chastity cannot avoid undermines his claims to the virtue’s safety. Although critics have concentrated on the fact that Vives is obsessed with chastity, they pay less attention to the violent language of his obsession. As we previously saw, Vives’s preoccupation with chastity and virginity may very well have stemmed from his concern for the safety of women (perhaps even his own sisters). But that Vives’s discussions of chastity inevitably turn violentPage 21 → throughout the Instruction suggests that he cannot find the safety for women in the concept of chastity that he seeks. The violence of Vives’s discussion of chastity is a result of his attempt to resolve the paradox of chastity by harmonizing, resolving, or suppressing its contradictions.

It is the safety of chastity that Mariam seeks but does not find in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, a closet drama.21 As she waits for her death sentence to be served, Mariam expresses her disappointment in the failure of her chastity to save her from Herod’s wrath. Had I but with humility been grac’d, As well as fair I might have prov’d me wise: But I did think because I knew me chaste, One virtue for a woman might suffice. (4.8.559–62)22 Such critics as Barry Weller and Margaret Ferguson see this moment in Cary’s play as revealing Mariam’s failure to negotiate social categories prescribing the behavior of women. Conduct manuals and religious literature, however, seem to assert that chastity alone is the most important virtue for women. It is only logical that Mariam would think it would “suffice.” Although Mariam believes that she demonstrates this one highly valued virtue very well, the Chorus claims that Mariam’s failure is her inability to appear chaste. But it is not entirely clear what it means in this play to appear chaste. Because appearing chaste necessitates representing chastity—a representation rendered near impossible, as we shall see, by the concept’s multiple meanings in this play—Mariam’s allegiance to chastity undermines her self-representation. How Mariam appears to other characters is one of the central problems of The Tragedy of Mariam, and how she represents herself is one of the central concerns of critics. Most claim that she does not appear chaste, because of her speech or disobedience. However, several different notions of chastity operate throughout the play (as faithfulness, as virginity, as silence, as obedience, as all virtues in one, as not enough on its own). As a result, any attempt to appear chaste in the world of this play cannot succeed. In the words of Alexandra Bennett, “Selfawareness is never enough to secure one’s place in the world—public representations of one’s self as a consistent entity conforming to extant standards are necessary.”23 Mariam’s choice of chastity as the “one virtue” is part of her attempt to control how others read her, and Mariam’s chaste “public representation” malfunctions. In the play, chastity’s “multivalence”—a Page 22 →term I borrow from Christina Luckyj, who sees silence as encompassing a range of meanings—denies Mariam the possibility of presenting herself as a “consistent entity.” The Chorus claims that Mariam is unable to demonstrate her virtue. ’Tis not enough for one that is a wife To keep her spotless from an act of ill, But from suspicion she should free her life, And bare her self of power as well as will. ’Tis not so glorious for her to be free, As by her proper self restrained to be. (3.Chorus.1–6) The Chorus, which can be said to stand for societal behavioral prescriptions, argues that it is the wife’s duty to control how others read her. Being virtuous is insufficient; a woman must keep herself free of suspicion. The way to do this, it seems, is to relinquish both power and will, because freedom is not as valuable in a wife as is restraint. In the Chorus’s figuration, though, Mariam’s speech on which they comment is not itself an “act of ill”; problematic, according to the Chorus, is what that speech shows. A truthful virtuous selfrepresentation is not as critical, then, as a lack of willfulness. For the Chorus, Mariam not only fails to appear chaste but, for this very reason, also fails to be chaste. In keeping with Vives, the Chorus further equates unchaste thoughts with an unchaste body: “For in a wife it is not worse to find, / A common body than a common mind” (3.Chorus.29–30). Here, a common mind is both the impure mind and the mind shared with others through speech. Enacting the purpose of its warning about speech, the Chorus moves from advising that Mariam ought to keep her “life” “free from suspicion” to claiming that she has a “common mind” and

is therefore unchaste. Mariam’s speech, which the Chorus claims demonstrates her unchastity, has the potential to threaten her safety as well as her reputation. According to Sohemus, “Unbridled speech is Mariam’s worst disgrace, / And will endanger her without desert” (3.3.65–66). Mariam’s speech causes Sohemus to believe not that she is unchaste but merely that she may come to harm “without desert.” It would seem, then, that if Mariam could “restrain” or “bridle” her speech, her silence would rescue her from harm. Yet Mariam’s use of silence later in the play does not stop her execution. Luckyj claims that Mariam’s choice of silence in the face of Herod’s accusations is a means of controlling how others read her. But Mariam’s silence ultimately, for Luckyj, “opens her Page 23 →to two closed, dichotomous interpretations, erasing her subjective choice: for Herod she is guilty; for the readerВ .В .В . she is innocent.”24 Women’s silence is not a virtue that can be easily thought of as existing in a clearly delineated world of right and wrong; rather, it is a virtue that is better conceived of as covering a range of occasionally contradictory meanings. Since, for so many in the play, the proof of Mariam’s chastity relies on whether she speaks or not, Cary draws a connection between the contradictions of silence and those of chastity. Chastity, similar to silence, has contradictory meanings. Mariam’s speech, complicated as it is by her use of silence and by her husband’s lack of self-control, is not the root of her inability to appear chaste. Silence is required not only of wives but also of husbands, who were expected to practice silence as a method of self-control. Edmund Tilney, in A Brief and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Marriage, Called the Flower of Friendship, claims, “The first delicate herbe that the married man must plant for the preservation of his friendlye Flower is to be advised in speeche. For the man that without discretion speaketh more hastilye, than wisely, for the most parte falleth into errors.”25 Tilney’s advice resembles the Chorus’s call for a wife “by her proper self restrained to be” (3.Chorus.6), but here it is extended to the husband. Herod does not “plant” this most “delicate herb” in his marriage to Mariam. On the contrary, Herod is often taken with vociferous outbursts. Boyd M. Berry considersВ that “the play asks the audience to listen to the crazy way men talk” and argues that “Mariam shrewdly alters the tales it retells to emphasize that the patriarch is crazy and the world he dreams he controls is fully infected by his disease.”26 Herod’s speech is no more sanctioned than Mariam’s when it comes to their marriage. I have so far taken for granted that Mariam fails to appear chaste, but she does appear chaste to most of the characters in the play. Sohemus never questions her chastity; he merely worries that she be careful about how she wields it. He counsels Mariam to “break those vows” that she has taken to forswear Herod’s bed (3.3.17). Constabarus says, “The sweet faced Mariam [is] as free from guilt / As heaven from spots!” (1.6.113–14). Nuntio claims that Mariam’s death will be “The end of beauty, chastity and wit” (5.1.4). Although he spends most of the play convinced of Mariam’s infidelity, even Herod eventually believes in her chastity: after her death, he exclaims, “I hold her chaste ev’n in my inmost soul!” (5.1.76). Before this revelation, Herod is not merely convinced of Mariam’s unchastity; he is also obsessed with it: “Hell itself lies hid / Beneath thy heavenly show. Yet never wert thou chaste” (4.4.45–46); “Hadst thou complotted Herod’s massacreВ .В .В . Not half so grievous such an action were, / As once to think that Mariam is defiled” (4.4.49, 51–52); “I cannot Page 24 →think she meant to poison me, / But certain ’tis she lived too wantonly, / And therefore shall she never more be free” (4.4.98–100). Even this obsession fades with Mariam’s death, when Herod joins the majority of the other characters who believe in her chastity. This change of heart might lead us to believe that Herod had merely missed the “truth” of Mariam’s chastity; that is, we might well come to believe that he was just an insanely jealous man all along, egged on by his sister. If he were the only one convinced of Mariam’s unchastity, we could believe that. But there is one character who considers Mariam unchaste throughout the play, and her beliefs about Mariam demonstrate the difficulty of defining chastity in this play. Doris, Herod’s former wife whom Mariam supplanted after Herod divorced her, accuses Mariam of adultery from the moment the romance with Herod began. In heav’n! Your beauty cannot bring you thither.

Your soul is black and spotted, full of sin. You in adult’ry lived nine years together, And heav’n will never let adult’ry in. (4.8.51–54) Doris does not allow for the possibility of chastity in a marriage that is adulterous by definition. This shows that chastity itself can be variably defined: Mariam is faithful to Herod, but in Doris’s view, Mariam was always merely his mistress and therefore unchaste. Mariam can never convince Doris of her chastity, because the foundation of her marriage, in Doris’s terms, is unjustifiably adulterous. Thus the very act of marrying Herod makes Mariam unchaste. Mariam does not see her marriage as an adulterous one; to her, it is a marriage born of love and fidelity. In her first speech, Mariam struggles with her reaction to the news of Herod’s death (later revealed as false): she is both pleased and troubled by it. Her memory of the love she and Herod once shared is the root of her sadness: “But now his death to memory doth call / The tender love that he to Mariam bare: / And mine to him” (1.1.31–33). This love, however, could not survive Herod’s tyranny. Mariam takes her “solemn vows” not to sleep with him because he murdered her brother and grandfather (3.3.134). Then rage and scorn had put my love to flight, That love which once on him was firmly set: Page 25 →Hate hid his true affection from my sight, And kept my heart from paying him his debt. (1.1.19–22) “Debt” here is both the marriage debt discussed by Paul in 1 Corinthians and the love Mariam owes Herod as her husband, as it is her “heart” that is “keptВ .В .В . from paying him his debt.” By refusing to pay Herod the marriage debt, Mariam chooses to be chaste within marriage (i.e., to refrain from sexual intercourse), but without her husband’s consent. It is not in Mariam’s authority to make this choice, according to Paul, “For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”27 Paul recommends marriage and the equity of the marriage debt only as a “concession,” not a “command,” as he would much rather that nobody touches anybody else at all.28 Thus, on the one hand, Mariam makes the mistake of taking “authority over her own body”; on the other, Mariam’s refusal to sleep with Herod is more in line with Paul’s notion of chastity, because he recommends abstinence. The other debt Mariam refuses to pay is that of the love she owes her husband. Mariam’s “love” was “putВ .В .В . to flight” by Herod’s “rage and scorn.” Herod, according to Mariam, betrayed the basis of their marriage, and she punishes him by revoking her love.29 Wives were expected to be chaste but also to love their husbands. Juan Luis Vives, for example, argues that it is most important for a wife to be chaste and love her husband. Amonge all other vertues of a marryed woman ii there ought to be mooste speciall and greatest: the whiche onely if she have them, may cause mariage to be sure, stable, durable, easye, lyght, swete, and happy: and agayne, if the one be lacked: it shalbe unsure, paynfull, unpleasant, and intollerable, yea & full of myserye, and wretchednesse. These two vertues that I mean be chastite and great love towarde her husbande. (U3v) The unchaste or unloving wife will face a life that is “painful” and “wretched.” Mariam’s entire first speech is a struggle with these components of her wifely identity. She chastises herself for the sadness she feels about Herod’s presumed death: “How canst thou then so faintly now lament / Thy truest lover’s death, a death’s disgrace?” (1.1.65–66). The love she feels for Herod disturbs her, and she must turn

away from it to become “Hard-hearted Mariam!” Page 26 →(1.1.63). But although Mariam vows to hate Herod, she chooses to remain sexually faithful to him. To Mariam, this choice makes her chaste. The question of Mariam’s chastity—not only whether she is chaste (for Herod and Doris) but also whether she seems chaste (for Sohemus and the Chorus)—is central to Cary’s Tragedy. By the end of the play, we learn that Mariam both is and is not chaste and both seems and does not seem chaste. Both Mariam’s speech and her silence have the potential to demonstrate her unchastity. She is simultaneously chaste and unchaste, because she is faithful to her husband but refuses to pay her “debt.” Mariam understands her chastity in terms of her role as a wife, but her understanding clashes with that of others. It is not that she alone does not understand what is expected of her; rather, it is that no one in the play can pin down the specifics of the expectation of chastity. These multiple interpretations of Mariam’s behavior in The Tragedy of Mariam reveal the multivalent nature of chastity and the cultural expectations that require it. Cary demonstrates the problem of defining chastity by exposing its inherent contradictions. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene highlights the multivalence of chastity through the proliferation of allegorical “chastities” in book 3. Spenser’s proem to book 3 lays out some of the difficulty in using poetry to discuss chastity, the virtue his queen represents so perfectly. “How then shall I,” he writes, “Presume so high to stretch mine humble quill?” (3.proem.3).30 Instead of presuming, the poet must “in colourd showesВ .В .В . shadow it” (3.proem.3). The poet offers his queen “mirrours more then one” in which to see herself, and these “mirrours” can be said to extend to the notion of chastity as well (3.proem.5). In her entry on “chastity” in The Spenser Encyclopedia, Carol V. Kaske claims, “Chastity is divided by Spenser into virginity and faithful monogamy.”31 But this simple division by no means describes the many layers of chastity Spenser shows us in book 3. The Book of Chastity presents at least four allegorical versions of true chastity and one of false chastity: Amoret (married chastity), Belphoebe (virginity), Florimell (beauty), the False Florimell (carnal desire), and Britomart (martial fidelity in the tradition of Diana). Together, these female characters fulfill Spenser’s allegory of chastity. The two virtues that are the subjects of the first two books of The Faerie Queene require only one knight each to represent them—the Red Crosse Knight and Guyon, respectively. But while book 3’s Britomart is the knight of Chastity, the other female characters are necessary to Spenser’s allegory of chastity in this book. Spenser’s multiplication of chastity through these many characters in book 3, I argue, is a result of the paradox of chastity, which posits simultaneously contradictory aspects of the virtue. Page 27 →In Spenser’s attempt “to write of Chastity, / The fairest vertue, farre above the rest,” he must necessarily call on no fewer than four characterizations (3.proem.1). In this brief discussion, I would like to look at the twins, Amoret and Belphoebe, as two very different—perhaps even contradictory—versions of chastity, born of the same mother, Chrysogone. This one story shows three of the different types of chastity Spenser calls on in book 3. The twins’ birth is miraculous, suggesting that there is no natural way for the embodiment of chastity to be born. Canto 6 of book 3 reports the birth of Amoret and Belphoebe while Chrysogone was sleeping: “Unwares she them conceiv’d [impregnated by the rays of the sun], unwares she bore: / She bore withouten paine, that she conceived / Withouten pleasure” (3.6.27). The “paine” of childbirth and the “pleasure” of conception are both a part of the process of creating offspring.32 Yet Chrysogone does not experience either here. Not only is the childbirth fantastical, but Venus and Diana immediately take away the products of the birth.33 Chrysogone’s chastity is defined by her naГЇvetГ©, Belphoebe’s by her association with Diana, and Amoret’s by her association with Venus. Spenser’s initial characterization of the twins implies that they share evenly in the virtue of chastity. Belphoebe was born to be a virgin: “all her whole creation did her shew / Pure and unspotted from all loathly crime.” But she was also raised to be a virgin: “So was she trayned up from time to time, / In all chast vertue, and true bounti-hed” (3.6.3). Amoret was born “in the second place,” after Belphoebe, and destined for marriage. Thus “twixt them two did share / The heritage of all celestiall grace” (3.6.4). We might assume that Belphoebe is the better of these two in a way, because her virginity is inviolable, whereas Busirane imprisons and repeatedly tortures the adult Amoret.34 However, Spenser’s ideal of female sexuality is not virginity, as the Faerie Queene’s criticism of Queen Elizabeth I suggests.35 Virginity is just one

expression of chastity, but it is certainly not the best. Britomart, the knight of Chastity, should bring together all of the aspects of chastity and perfect them, but this is not possible because the many definitions of chastity conflict with one another. As a result, the synthesis that ought to be found in Britomart is incomplete. Britomart’s predicted marriage to Artegall does not take place within the poem—it is only imagined. I argue elsewhere that Spenser portrays Britomart’s virginity as diseased, in a criticism of Elizabeth I. The disease of virgins, known as “greensickness,” had one surefire cure—marriage. Thus Britomart’s unmarried state by the end of the poem, as it now stands, implies that she still suffers from greensickness and is not therefore perfect in any way.36 Page 28 →The paradox of chastity can also be seen in the moments when Spenser must tell stories of unchastity. Spenser opens book 3 by claiming that he is not sure his verse is good enough to reveal the chastity of his sovereign. Later in the book, he offers another apology for his language. In his introduction to the story of Malbecco and Hellenore, Spenser asks for patience with his use of wanton language to talk about chastity: “Right sore I feare, least with unworthy blames / This odious argument my rimes should shend, / Or ought your goodly patience offend” (3.9.1). Spenser’s anxiety about his verse here is typical throughout The Faerie Queene, but in this case, when he must “of a wanton LadyВ .В .В . write,” he is not worried about the inability of his poetry to represent chastity (3.9.1). His anxiety focuses on the effect that a discussion of “loose incontinence” might have on a book about chastity: “Whiles of a wanton Lady I do write, / Which with her loose incontinence doth blend / The shyning glory of your soveraigne light” (3.9.1). Nevertheless, he does not question the need to tell the story of Hellenore, only whether the “argument” will disgrace his “rimes” (3.9.1). That the story of the “wanton Lady” does not exist apart from the “soveraigne light” but blemishes it suggests that chastity and wantonness are necessarily connected in language, because to blemish something is to mar its surface (3.9.1). Paradoxically, to talk about chastity, the poet must talk about unchastity. Further, as a representation of Elizabeth I, The Faerie Queene is troubled by some of the same difficulties that the queen’s public use of the virtue of chastity demonstrates. Philippa Berry observes that the “inner contradictions” of “gender relationsВ .В .В . became especially apparent in literary representations of an unmarried queen as an object of sublimated desire.”37 But Elizabeth’s sexuality and her chastity are not only inseparable in representations of her (by herself and by others) but also crucial to an understanding of her actual political power. Another famous representation of Elizabeth I as queen, George Gower’s Armada Portrait (1588), shows the instability of any notion of chastity (see fig. 1). In the portrait, the queen’s dress is decorated with bows: they come down her shoulders, go around her arms, and form an arch above her pelvis. A triangular piece of fabric comes down from the center of the arch, and a bow with a pearl decorates its point. The tied bow binds what lies beneath, and the dangling pearl reminds the viewer that underneath is something virgin and pure. While the tied bow and the pearl both represent chaste purity, our eyes are nevertheless drawn to the point of the triangle. Claiming that this “painting is an iconic essay on the theme of inviolable boundaries,” Louis Montrose refers to the “coy iconography of Queen Elizabeth’s virgin-knot.”38 Just as Page 29 →Montrose has argued elsewhere that the “cult of Elizabeth” is not as straightforward and sincere as scholars such as Roy Strong and Frances Yates assume, there are, in fact, contradictions in this political representation.39 Those contradictions are on par with the paradox of chastity. Spenser and Elizabeth both rely on notions of unchastity in their treatment of chastity, making their representations of the virtue similarly paradoxical. Fig. 1. The Armada Portrait, by George Gower (1588). (Reproduced by kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees of the Bedford Estates.) Referred to as “The Faerie Queene at Ludlow,” John Milton’s masque Comus engages specifically with Spenserian chastity.40 Milton’s Lady there, some claim, has been modeled on Amoret; however, attempts to map her onto one or another of Spenser’s chastities ultimately fall prey to the same problem of multiplication we find in The Faerie Queene.41 Here, I would like to look at a very specific moment in Comus: the

conversation between the Lady and Page 30 →Comus about chastity. Milton revised this portion for the 1637 printing of the masque, perhaps in an attempt to fix the unstable language of chastity—to iron out the contradictions. But, in fact, the revisions make the paradox of chastity even more palpable. At first glance, Milton’s Comus appears to endorse the safety and protection of chastity: the characters admire the Lady’s chastity, and in the tradition of pageantry, she is released with the help of a chaste nymph. Comus is not, however, that straightforward. As Lauren Shohet argues, that “Milton takes up the issue of chastity in a masque,” which is “the very genre that Puritan critics most explicitly indict as вЂwanton,’” indicates that he is “explor[ing] the challenged chastity both of his Lady and of masque figuration itself.”42 The work’s very genre, then, represents a kind of foil to the chastity of the Lady. Much work has been done on Milton’s representation of chastity in this masque. For example, Schwarz argues that the Lady’s will in seizing control of her own chastity is what frightens Comus: “Milton’s Lady articulates her virtue so strongly that Comus shakes where he stands.”43 While Schwarz reexamines chastity in the masque to find its subversive potential, her analysis, like other readings of chastity in Comus, takes for granted that the masque puts forth one consistent view of chastity as a protective virtue desirable for women. I suggest that Milton’s addition of the lines that include the Lady’s passionate advocacy of chastity and Comus’s resultant fear (779–806) not only indicates Milton’s discomfort with the paradox of chastity but also belies that paradox in its language.44 Like conduct literature, Comus is intended to instruct, which is clear from the beginning of the masque. The Attendant Spirit opens by claiming he has put on his costume only for the good of those who may learn virtue. Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of eternity: To such my errand is; and, but for such, I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.45 (12–17) The work has a specific audience in mind—those who are open to receive “the crown that Virtue gives” (9). Many of the prefaces or letters to the reader of Page 31 →conduct manuals, such as those I have discussed in the introduction to this book, begin in a similar way. For example, Hugh Plat’s Delight for Ladies (1603) is addressed “To all true Lovers of Art and knowledge.”46 Walter Lynne tells the reader that his “good dialogue,” the 1581 A Watchword for Willful women, “hath been penned of pure affection, both for the instruction of the good, and amendment if possible it may be of the evil and wicked.”47 Therefore the Attendant Spirit’s first lines, which resemble those in the introductions to conduct manuals, tell the reader to expect instruction ahead. As it is the virtue to which the characters turn throughout the masque, chastity stands out as one of the more important virtues about which the masque will offer instruction. The Lady has faith in her chastity to protect her, as do other characters in the masque. For example, her elder brother assures his younger brother that their sister’s virtue is enough to keep her safe from harm as well as influence (366–72). While the younger of her brothers is worried, he “incline[s] to hope rather than fear” (412). There is more than mere hope in his hope, for he is sure that his sister “has a hidden strength” (415). This strength is the armor of chastity, because “she that has [chastity] is clad in complete steel” (421). In this “complete steel,” we see again the martial metaphor used to discuss chastity that Miller points out in Vives. Even after the Attendant Spirit tells the brothers that the Lady has been taken by Comus, the elder brother still assures his younger brother that his sister is safe: “Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt” (589). Despite all of the characters’ faith in it, however, the Lady’s chastity is not enough on its own to keep her safe: Comus’s magic binds her to the chair even after the brothers chase him away, and the Attendant

Spirit reprimands the brothers for not taking Comus’s wand (815–19). In other words, chastity cannot alone save the Lady; she needs something more. Her attacker’s “rod” or “wand” must be taken away. Chastity, then, cannot stand alone; its preservation requires men to behave in prescribed ways around it. We see here the same kind of contradiction evidenced in Vives: chastity is simultaneously unassailable and vulnerable. The most famous moment in the masque about chastity is the Lady’s long speech about its power. Most critics read this speech as naturally a part of the Lady’s dedication to the virtue of chastity. Not since the 1930s has anyone really been interested in the fact that this speech and Comus’s response to it (779–806) were added for the 1637 printing of the masque.48 The lines added to the Lady’s speech about gluttony and temperance and to Comus’s response precede Comus’s claim “Come, no more, / This is mere moral babble” (806). Page 32 →Stephen Orgel notes that in Milton’s revision of the masque for publication, “those arguments in favor of temperance and chastity get rewritten and elaborated, and grow even more doctrinaire.”49 Thus, for Orgel, the addition merely reinforces the Lady’s previously established firm allegiance to chastity, and Milton means only to drive home the doctrinal value of chastity. Milton’s language might lead us to the same conclusion as Orgel, as it stresses that the revision is an amplification of the Lady’s thoughts on chastity. The speech before the added lines opens with a justification for speaking at all: “I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, / And virtue has no tongue to check her pride” (760–61). Here, the Lady claims that she must speak because virtue is silent and because someone has to “check” vice’s “pride.” Opening with “Shall I go on? / Or have I said enough?” (779–80), the expanded portion of the Lady’s speech demands our attention. In an earlier version of the masque, the Lady had indeed “said enough”; in this version, she must “go on.” Milton may have intended for the added lines to make chastity clearer, but the erotic language of these lines undermines any attempt to represent chastity as a singular and coherent virtue. The Lady refers to “the Sunclad power of Chastity” (782) but assures Comus that he cannot possibly understand, for he has “nor Ear, nor Soul to apprehend / The sublime notion, and high mystery” (784–85). The Lady claims that Comus would be brought “more happiness” than he currently knows if he could understand this “serious doctrine” (789, 787). She does not stop at the mere idea of “happiness” though. The Lady continues to describe how her “rapt spirits” would be “kindle[d]” if she started to try to explain chastity to Comus (794). Due to the all-consuming nature of this fire, things would be drawn to her against their will, and an earthquake would result and destroy Comus’s “magic structures” (798). Casting herself as a figure out of Revelation—the woman of 12.1, “clothed in the sun”—the Lady imagines her chastity as being assailed by the wicked. Chastity is strong enough to bring on the second woe of Revelation 11—the earthquake that destroys “a tenth of the city”50—and that strength is reflected in the vigor of the Lady’s speech (796–99). However, the language that expresses chastity’s strength also expresses its sensuality. The erotic language the Lady uses to talk about chastity is a result of the paradox of chastity. To talk about the “doctrine of Virginity,” she must necessarily call up physical desire (787). Catherine Thomas argues that despite its concern with chastity, Comus “still has something to teach us about the necessity of desire.”51 Her reading, which runs counter to those she challenges, does not allow for any measure of reconciliation between desire and virtue in the end, because “Comus is still at large, and desire continues to circulate.”52 Page 33 →But Thomas’s reading, which pits chastity and desire against one another, does not take into account the sexy language of the Lady’s speech. The image portrayed in the added lines is one of a woman whose speech can so enflame her that objects would be drawn to her, as if by magnetic force, and the earth would shake beneath her feet. Comus’s response to the Lady’s speech was also enlarged for the 1637 printing (800–806), and these lines make clear that the Lady’s speech makes Comus nervous: he says, “I feel that I do fear” (800). While he acknowledges this fear, Comus is not discouraged by it. In fact, Comus is urged, by the Lady’s erotic words, to try harder: “I must dissemble, / And try her yet more strongly” (805–6). Comus simultaneously fears and is drawn to the Lady because of her speech. He is turned on. Milton’s Comus takes on the task of representing chastity’s strength, but as we have seen, it is

chastity’s weakness that comes through in the performance of the masque.53 The Lady requires the help of Sabrina and her brothers to be freed from Comus; her chastity is not enough. Milton, who always fiddles with his work to get it just right,54 takes on the task of making chastity appear stronger in the printed version of the masque. His intention in emending his text may have been twofold: the masque has not quite gotten chastity right, and the very fact of printing necessitates a stronger statement of the virtue. Contrary to the likely intention of the revision, however, his changes serve only to highlight the paradox of chastity, as the erotic language of the added lines undermines the sexual purity of the virtue. Chastity is multivalent, it encompasses a range of meanings, and these meanings are often contradictory. The authors that I have examined here work through the resulting paradox of chastity in a variety of ways. Vives and Milton attempt to resolve chastity’s contradictions. Vives’s language promptly turns violent, and Milton’s turns sexual. These turns suggest that any attempt to “harmonize” the contradictions will destabilize the idea of chastity itself. Cary and Spenser deal with the paradox of chastity by diffusing its meanings over a spectrum of characters and definitions. In Cary’s case, highlighting the many and opposing meanings of chastity within her play allows her to reveal the difficulty women might have in living up to an ideal of behavior that is difficult to pin down. Spenser’s multiplication of “chastities” opens up the possibilities for defining chastity but, at the same time, replicates its contradictions. In sum, the paradox of chastity creates difficulty for authors who attempt to describe it as well as for the subjects who attempt to live up to it.

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Two “Honest Government” Feminine Virtue’s Network of Influence in Early Modern England1 The transformative power of feminine virtue is a common trope in conduct literature. In Robert Greene’s prose romance Penelope’s Web, for instance, Penelope tells her ladies, I cannot thinke (quoth Penelope) that there is any husband so bad, which the honest government of his wife may not in time refourme, especially if she keepe those three speciall poynts that are requisite in every woman, Obedience, Chastitie, and Silence, three such graces, Nurse, as may reclayme the most gracelesse husband in the world.2 For Greene’s Penelope, the familiar triad of female virtues—obedience, chastity, and silence—can transform the worst man and protect the best woman. Eulaly, the reformed wife who teaches women to be good wives in Robert Snawsel’s A Looking Glass for Married Folks, claims, “We wives may doe much either in making or marring our husbands.”3 Literature that seeks to influence the behavior of women (and men) relies on the trope of the transformative power of feminine virtue to portray a cycle in which a wife, often unhappily married, must reform herself and choose to submit to her husband so that she can reform him and thus make possible a happy marriage. Therefore, “willing subjection to [the] husbands’ authority” grants influence and provides pleasure.4 The power of feminine virtue is not limited to the genre of conduct literature; it can also be found in abundant supply in sermons and treatises that seek to influence behavior. For instance, both Hannibal Gamon’s funeral Page 35 →sermon and Philip Stubbes’s piece about his deceased wife make claims for the influence of their female subjects’ virtue over others. Together, these infrequently read and seemingly disparate texts tell a story about the influence of feminine virtue within and beyond marriage. In this narrative, women are the teachers and pupils, the reformers and the reformed, the subject and the object. Yet these roles do not necessarily mean that women have power as such. Rather, as the story goes, through their performance of submission, women are shown to have influence—an influence that is at once both wide and narrow. The choice to submit to a husband’s authority may be read as agency, but this reading is problematic. While the texts that I look at in this chapter do provide a space for feminine agency, women are shown to use that space to resubmit themselves to the authority that this agency allegedly challenges, in a move that is figured as profitable for them. Moving beyond the notion that feminine agency is subversive by nature, I look at how these texts construct acting subjects who desire their own subjection because of the power and happiness it grants them. In these examples of feminine agency, the women do not subvert authority, precisely because they are the agents of their own subjection. Too often, critics read early modern didactic texts as imposing a set of rules that fit perfectly into an ideology demanding that women be powerless.5 A more recent trend, however, reexamines some of the long-held assumptions about feminine agency. In one of the best examples of this recent work, Kathryn Schwarz finds in Shakespeare’s works a “pattern” in which “women pose a threat when they willingly conform to social conventions.”6 In her work, Schwarz focuses on the “often adversarial or paradoxical contracts forged by feminine will.”7 In the first chapter of the present study, I argued that the paradox of chastity we see in texts that consider the virtue complicates any straightforward attempt to represent chastity. Now, I turn to obedience, examining it through the literature that prescribes behavior. I hope to show that early modern women were taught to exert influence through their compliance. These texts suggest that women had a responsibility to be virtuous, which requires performing submission, so that they could reform others. Authors of prescriptive texts concentrate on this responsibility and its concomitant power. If women who think are, by nature, a threat, the prescriptive texts

promote this threat. We should also consider the possibility that these texts, by creating the parameters for women’s negotiation of behavioral expectations, neutralize any threat such thought might pose. The texts considered in this chapter come from a variety of genres; nevertheless,Page 36 → they share a concern with the performance and influence of feminine virtue. Together, they tell a story about early modern perceptions of feminine virtue that might not otherwise be intelligible. That story shows women (as readers and receivers of the prescriptions through culture) that feminine virtue has power and is thus desirable. A virtuous woman, these works tell us, can change people during her life, through her goodness, and can help people change after her death, through her example. Penelope’s Web, a prose romance, shows that, to a certain extent, feminine virtue always requires performance, while A Looking Glass for Married Folks, a dialogue, shows how this performance can be used to effect reform within marriage. This reform extends beyond the married couple, as can be seen in The Praise of a Godly Woman, a sermon that stresses the influence that a virtuous woman has over others during and after her lifetime. A Crystal Glass for Christian Women also focuses on the influence a virtuous woman can have over others; according to that discourse, she can affect not only their behavior but also their beliefs. Feminine virtue, as these works figure it, carries the weight of a network of influence within and beyond marriage. Feminine virtue is always on display and always being created/performed by subjects. The power that allegedly comes from this proper performance makes influence desirable while simultaneously reinforcing the need for submission. Prescriptive literature that recommends a purpose beyond the married couple may seem puzzling, because many consider the couple to be the main focus of conduct literature in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell, for example, claim that “in marriage treatises the concept [of chastity] is reformulated to direct it away from the woman and toward the couple” and that this shift of attention to the couple is accompanied by a shift of attention away from chastity and toward obedience: that is, “the Protestants empower obedience.”8 As the texts under examination here reveal, the reformation of the couple is made possible partly by the network of influence of feminine virtue. The larger purpose—that a woman’s behavior can affect people outside of the marriage unit—is an element of “empowering” obedience. Women, then, are responsible for the souls of a community, in addition to their own souls and those of their families.9 The feminine virtue of obedience that is so prominent in marriage manuals is always performative. What makes a woman a good woman is the repeated performance of her virtue. The performance can be internalized, and a wife can presumably be always thinking obedient thoughts, but she must perform her duty—publicly and domestically—for her obedience to be clear and acknowledged. Although that acknowledgment is the act’s end, such that Page 37 →obedience is marked by actions observed rather than intentions or identity, it is not necessarily the case that obedience is disconnected from the obeyer. Judith Butler, in The Psychic Life of Power, argues that the subject is both subjected to and formed by power.10 It follows, then, that obedience is not only due to an external authority but also crucial to the formation of a subject. Furthermore, performance, as Butler claims in Gender Trouble, is a necessary part of gender identity: “вЂpersons’ only become intelligible through becoming gendered in conformity with recognizable standards of gender identity.”11 According to Butler, “gender [is] a corporeal style, an вЂact,’ as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where вЂperformative’ suggests a dramatic and contingent construction of meaning.”12 If subjection is required for the formation of a subject and if performance is necessary for the formation of a gender identity, a woman becomes a feminine subject through the performance of the subjection of feminine obedience. Thus, being a woman means performing obedience, which, in turn, is an essential part of being considered a woman. The texts that this chapter examines reveal the “dramatic” element of feminine virtue by using performative necessity in their representations of feminine virtue in order to tell a story of feminine virtue that shows the vast rewards of “good behavior.” For some, the “dramatic and contingent” element signals the possibility for the subversion of authority.13 Such vast rewards, however, ought not to lead us to believe that these texts offer a chance for real subversion in terms of undermining authority. Any subversion here is merely theoretical, because it is used in order for the subject to resubmit herself to an authority. Penelope’s Web (1587) exemplifies the performative nature of feminine virtue. This prose romance, part of a genre that was often denounced as corrupting its readers because of its immoral content, is one of Robert

Greene’s first romances. William St. Clair and Irmgard Maassen note that Greene gives Penelope “a moralising veneer” in order to counter the claim that romances were depraved, which makes Penelope “an early example of the complex fusion of prose fiction with conduct literature.”14 Much of the prose is spent in dialogue, as it recounts the conversations that Penelope has with her nurse and ladies about one of the three feminine virtues—silence, chastity, and obedience—on each of three nights.15 These conversations take place while Penelope unweaves her day’s weaving—a repetitive performative act I discuss shortly. Thus, within the fused didactic/prose romance text, there are generic elements of the dramatic: dialogue, characters, and the action of unweaving. Penelope’s Web reveals a truth about feminine virtue: the woman who strives to be virtuous must also be a first-rate performer. The necessity of performance Page 38 →is clear in the romance’s preoccupation with the dialogue between the characters as well as in the character of Penelope herself. Further, the romance develops the relationship between this performance and feminine virtue by making it a part of Penelope’s teaching of virtue. Early modern authors often turn to the ideal wife of Homer’s Odyssey to show women how they ought to behave. Critics such as Georgianna Ziegler have shown that these authors often get more than they bargained for; Penelope does not present an uncomplicated picture of perfect virtue. Take, for instance, Penelope’s signature act—her weaving. This weaving is the performance of a womanly task that convinces her suitors of her honesty. However, when she unravels her daily weaving, she performs her wifely duty to Odysseus.16 Both actions allow Penelope to appear virtuous to competing audiences: to the reader, who, in Homer’s Odyssey, is allied with Odysseus, and to the suitors, who wait for Penelope to finish her weaving so that they can vie for her hand. Her noble dishonesty sanctions the deceit that is inherent in her performance. Greene’s use of Penelope’s unweaving as the frame narrative for his conduct manual is telling; the display of feminine virtue requires performance, even fraudulent performance. Moreover, that Penelope takes feminine virtue as her topic while she unweaves suggests that there is something unstable about such a discussion. Rather than weaving her story while she weaves her cloth, she tells her story while she pulls apart her weaving. Subversion is thus inherent in the performance. That her unweaving is actually a performance of wifely duty, however, complicates this subversion. Ziegler claims that this weaving and unweaving are part of Penelope’s formation as a subject: “Penelope constructs herself through words as she deconstructs the fabric or ploy which enables her to maintain that chastity which is the core of her identity.”17 Further, Ziegler claims, “the need for women to be instructed in the first place is both asserted and denied” in Greene’s text.18 Thus, for Ziegler, the character of Penelope generally undercuts any representation of feminine virtue, even though she is a paragon of feminine virtue in the period. To build on what Ziegler persuasively argues, I claim that the presence of Penelope in this romance must always remind the reader of the performativity of feminine virtue. In addition, her position as cultural icon suggests the possibility for immortality. Like the poet who lives on in his verse, the virtuous woman lives on in her virtue, which continues to instruct others. If Penelope’s weaving and unweaving are part of a performance aimed at demonstrating her feminine virtue, so are the stories she tells. More specifically, her stories reveal that performance is necessary for virtue to be intelligible. Penelope proposes to discuss one of the “three special points”—that is, Page 39 →one of the three feminine virtues—each night. The order Penelope chooses—obedience, chastity, and then silence—may be taken as a hierarchy, in keeping with the observed privileging of obedience over chastity in the later sixteenth century. These three virtues also vary with regard to what they seem to require from women who perform them. Although chastity and silence are both virtues that traditionally denote a lack of action, these virtues call for performance according to Penelope’s stories. They may appear to require that a woman not act, but both virtues require external acknowledgment. During her discussion of chastity on the second night, Penelope repeatedly uses the language of display: “adorned,” “perfume,” “ornament that adorneth,” “cast their eyes uppon her.”19 As I argue in the first chapter, the paradox of chastity is productive; that is, it can allow for multiple meanings. Penelope’s treatment of the virtue reveals that this is more than merely a literary productivity. In her performance of her gender, a woman must display her chastity in order to achieve the safety that prescriptions of the virtue promise her. The risks of being unvirtuous are clear to Penelope, as she

introduces the topic of woman’s silence, her subject on the third night, by talking of the dangers of speech: “Many inconveniences grow of the intemperancie of the tongue, as dissention and strife in a house, whereas contrarywise nothing more appeaseth choller nor sheweth modestie then silence.”20 Whereas intemperate speech can cause “strife,” silence “sheweth modestie.” In this case, then, both speech and silence can make something happen. A woman must perform silence to show modesty, as Penelope’s tale on the third night reveals. In this account, King Ariamenes of Delphos, needing to choose an heir and finding his sons all of equal virtue, decides to judge them by the quality of their wives. He holds a meeting in which the three sons are set to argue in favor of their respective wives, and he who proves his wife to be the most virtuous will win the crown. The first son praises his wife’s virtues, but before the second son can speak, the first’s wife gets up and praises herself to the court. The second wife, taking offense to this, also stands up and celebrates her own virtues. The wife of the youngest son remains silent throughout this exchange until the king asks her why she does not speak. In a reply that resembles Cordelia’s in King Lear, the wife says, “He that gaineth a Crowne getteth care, is it not follie then to hunt after losse.”21 The king then asks her what quality she has that she feels would recommend her as the most virtuous; her response is “that when others talke, yet being a woman I can hold my peace.”22 The king and his council choose the youngest son because they deem his wife the most virtuous. Although the wives of the first two Page 40 →sons may seem to be the only performers at this meeting, they are not. The youngest son’s wife chooses to play the role of the silent and virtuous woman. Her silence is by no means passive, as even she refers to it as “hold[ing] [her] peace,” and it is no less of a “hunt after” the crown than the self-praising women’s.23 Greene’s awareness of the third wife’s self-conscious performance of silence can be seen in Ismena’s argument that this silence is not the epitome of the virtue of silence. When Penelope tells her lady that she ought to take heed of the story, Ismena claims, “Feare not you Madame: for when I have such a proffer as a Crowne, I will gaze so fast at that, that I will forget my prattle.”24 For Ismena, then, the third wife’s silence may be awe (“gaze”) and calculation (“when I have such a proffer as a crown”). After Ismena’s comment, she and the Nurse engage in “merrie quips” with one another about Ismena’s “tongue.”25 This quipping is cut short by news of the arrival of Odysseus, and Penelope’s telling of the story ends. Ismena’s comment is never subsumed by the correction of the Nurse or Penelope. Ismena shows us that while the wife was indeed silent, her silence may have had a motive—gaining the crown. The silence of the woman in Penelope’s story is one that she performs to achieve her end. Perhaps, Ismena suggests, all virtuous women perform seemingly passive virtues for this reason.26 Unlike chastity and silence, obedience is the feminine virtue that most obviously seems to require doing something: reacting to the husband or father by following his rules. Penelope’s discussion of obedience on the first night, however, reveals that it is not a result of the straightforward imposition of rule on a wife by a husband. Plato’s “Androgina,” Penelope explains, argues that “a wise woman ought to thinke her husbands maners the lawes of her life, which if they be good, she must take as a forme of her actions, if they bee bad, she must brooke with patience.”27 As “there is no better thing praise worthie in a woman then Obedience,” it would seem that obedience involves merely following the husband’s example and his “laws,” even “if they be bad.”28 Indeed, Penelope illustrates the praiseworthiness of obedience by way of a story about a patiently obedient woman. Contrary to the reader’s expectation, Penelope characterizes the woman’s patient obedience as a force which although Nature forbad her to brooke, yet obedience the Heralt that best imblazeth love, taught her that against such sorrowe there was no better salve then patience: that revenge in a woman was not to bee executed by the hand, but by the heart, and yet not with rigour, but with clemencie.29 Page 41 →In Penelope’s estimation, obedience is a “herald” that “emblazes love”; it is not passive but pathbreaking. Moreover, it makes room for an alternative to “revengeВ .В .В . by the hand,” and that alternative takes the form of “clemency.” A wife is granted the option of “patience” and “clemency” and can use this choice as a form of revenge against “sorrow.” In the story Penelope

tells, the woman’s revenge is against the wrongs done to her: by being obedient and patient, the woman in the story is given the power to teach her husband to be good. The purpose of the performance of feminine virtue is thus not only external acknowledgment but also the ability to teach others how to be virtuous. As she performs her duty to Odysseus by unweaving, Penelope performs another duty—that of teaching her ladies. Just in case the reader is unaware of Penelope’s virtue, the romance opens with her ladies’ praise of Penelope for her constancy and devotion to Odysseus during his absence: “although the Prince Ulisses hath tenne yeeres bene absent at the sieege [sic] of Troy, and report in this space hath made sundrie and uncertaine tales of his deathВ .В .В .В , yet hath affection, armed with vertue, so grounded the mynd from wavering.”30 It is Penelope’s wifely devotion (affection and virtue together) that makes her so admirable. This same wifely devotion also makes her an apt teacher of other women. In fact, in all of the primary works addressed in this chapter, women do the teaching: they are both the examples and the distributors of the examples. Wifely submission cannot be learned from a husband; it requires women to teach it to other women. This is not to say that men play no part in this process, however, as all of the authors I look at here function as mediators between the teaching and the learning women. Just as Greene is a male author who mediates between Penelope and the “Courteous and Courtly Ladyes of England,” the male preacher of a funeral sermon mediates between the deceased and the women whom her example would teach.31 Hannibal Gamon, a puritan preacher, relies on just that influence in his funeral sermon for Lady Frances Robartes, The Praise of a Godly Woman.32 From language encouraging Robartes’s son, John, to follow her example, Gamon moves seamlessly to the call for all to follow her example. You should never have heard mee commend this deceased Lady, but in hope, that Gods Graces in Her might by this meanes, survive in you and all them that are of Her bloud; but also in all them that have heard or shall read this Sermon. This is all the gaine I looke and pray for, that Gods wordВ .В .В . may be constantly practised by us all.33 Page 42 →Gamon’s purpose in preaching and printing the sermon is exactly prescriptive—to tell us that we should imitate Lady Robartes’s godliness. Gamon suggests that practicing “God’s word” is essential to being godly; pure thoughts and passive piety are insufficient. To be a good Christian, one must “constantly” practice the word. This constant practice is difficult for both men and women, according to Gamon: “By nature then both sexes are alike faultie, alike discommendable in Gods sight, and so they should be in ours.”34 Nevertheless, Gamon maintains, it is more difficult for women than for men, because “a womans weaknesse is naturally greater than the mans, and therefore by how much her flesh is weaker, and her spirit less willing, by so much the combate she hath, is more difficult, and the victory she gets, more commendable.”35 A woman’s performance, her constant practice, is more challenging than a man’s because she is “weaker,” according to Gamon. However, this difficulty makes her virtue that much more praiseworthy than a man’s. Unexpectedly, a woman’s “weakness” requires strength to become praiseworthy. Lest we think that Gamon’s ascription of influence to Robartes is something that sermons take for granted, we should note that he goes to lengths to justify his praise of her. Even after he shows that it is much more difficult for women to be good Christians, Gamon must still rationalize his praise of Robartes. He claims, “This was the Life of this Elect Lady fearing the Lord, and therefore she hath right and interest to all those Honourable Attributes of Praise, which you heard even now God himselfe give her in His owne words.”36 Gamon must do this kind of justifying both because of differing opinions of church ritual and because he asks others to imitate Robartes’s example. According to Retha M. Warnicke, eulogies reflect differences in opinion about church ritual. The roots of this religious discord may be found in the early Reformation when the traditional, Catholic commendations of the nobility, beauty, and stewardship of the deceased were criticized, many reformers refusing to offer such praises for fear they could be interpreted as prayers for the dead.37

In keeping with the Protestant move away from the saints and ceremonies of Catholicism, preachers had to be sure that their praise of the dead did not sound like “Catholic commendations.” It is therefore important for Gamon to praise only the godly woman for her godliness. However, Gamon is not merely asking for an excuse to praise Robartes; he also wants to hold her up as a model for all Christians. Warnicke notes that through the evolution of Page 43 →Protestantism, funeral sermons change over time and “beg[i]n to offer information about the deceased’s spiritual pilgrimages, holding them up as models for all Christians to imitate, men being admonished to follow the examples of women as well as those of other men.”38 Certainly, Gamon wishes for all Christians—male and female—to imitate Robartes’s example: “And I may well wish with Saint Jerome, that Men would emulate and imitate Women in their deserved attributions of Praise.”39 There is evidence, according to Warnicke, that at least women did take seriously the examples offered in sermons: “documents written by Stuart women indicate that a number of them had been socialized into accepting the model set before them in sermons and treatises.”40 The literature that holds virtuous women up as examples of good behavior figures the influence of these virtuous women over the behavior of others as great. As in the texts already discussed in this chapter, women are the teachers in Robert Snawsel’s A Looking Glass for Married Folks. Snawsel translates one of Erasmus’s seven dialogues into English and adds to it because he claims that the number of unhappy marriages that he sees around him suggests that people need more help, for “there was no booke extant of this subject in English; and that for want of meanes many have lived ignorantly.”41 The dialogue form, as has been well demonstrated in the study of Plato, is a genre that has the potential to be dramatic as well as didactic.42 Snawsel’s dialogue has dramatic qualities (characters enter and depart, they refer to each other’s clothing, they eavesdrop on conversations), but its content also teaches a performance. The characters of this dialogue represent a range of women—the purely pious (Abigail), the reformed materialist (Eulaly), the shrew (Xantip), the cynic (Margery)—and a range of marital situations (the mismatched, the perfectly matched, the painstakingly matched). In A Looking Glass, feminine virtue, performed correctly, is shown to have the power to reform a bad husband into a good one. According to Eulaly, who is herself a reformed wife and the text’s main speaker, a wife must put on the right costume (defined negatively—as not the wrong costume), do the right actions (cooking, cleaning, entertaining), and delight her husband. Only then can she teach him. The pleasure or happiness of wives is also at stake; by delighting her husband, a wife can be made happy, and by reading about the reformation of women, she can become the kind of wife capable of reforming her husband. A Looking Glass’s presentation also suggests that it is meant to be a practical book; it is an octavo, which means that it would have been easy to carry around and consult. Its content (dramatic dialogue) and appearance (practical size) thus come together in a book that is meant to both teach Page 44 →and delight. Eulaly teaches Xantip to be a good wife by convincing her that teaching and pleasing her husband simultaneously is the only way to make sure he is a good husband. The previously noted cycle that begins with an unhappy marriage can be seen in Eulaly’s recommendation of submission to help deal with an abusive husband: “there is no wilde beast so savage, but by gentle handling it may be tamed.”43 The power to reform her husband comes from the wife’s ability to submit in this formulation. This submission, however, is not figured as passive: it is “handling” that will “tame” a “wild beast.” Eulaly’s description of how she gradually convinced her husband to stop drinking reveals that submission must be performed in order to effect reform: “I was wont to use a preface, and make him promise mee, that hee would have patience with me, if a simple woman should put him in minde of something that might tend to his credit or wel-fare any way and when I had told him my minde, I would breake of that talke, and fall into some other more delightfull to him.”44 Eulaly teaches her husband by giving advice interspersed with things that delight him. In Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy, Frances E. Dolan looks at what she refers to as the “economy of scarcity” in marriage, which makes the institution a “zero-sum game” with only one winner.45 Eulaly’s ideas about wives who can reform their husbands hints that it is possible for each spouse to feel as if she or he is the winner. As Dolan notes, “the most doctrinaire texts waffle as to whether women actually are inferior or should simply act as if they think they are. In fleeting moments, they concede their own status as fictions.”46 But Eulaly does not recommend deceptive submission; rather, she focuses on the possibility for peace and happiness as the wife’s aim.

Eulaly finds proof of a wife’s ability to reform her husband in her own life as well as in the married life of her neighbors. There was a neighbour of ours, a very honest man, but somewhat of a hastie nature, and of a waspish and techy disposition: on a day he beat his wife, a woman (by common report) of singular good carriage, and excellent behaviourВ .В .В . being very well beloved of all her neighbours. Being beaten and abused of her husband, she betakes her selfe into her secret closet, and there shee sits sighing and sobbing, so easing her heart, & digesting her griefe. Soone after upon occasion her husband went into that roome, and finding his wife weeping, saies to her: Why sittest thou here sighing and sobbing, and crying like a childe? Shee then thus prudently and patiently answered: Husband, said she, is it Page 45 →not better to doe thus, here to bewaile my griefe where no body heares nor sees, than to runne and cry out in the streets, and to exclaime on you, as others doe on their husbands? By this wise and gentle speech of his wife, the stout heart of her husband was broken: he gave her his right hand, and promised that hee would never touch her againe in any evill manner; neither did he.47 In this story, the wife is indisputably a victim of her husband’s abuse. She bears his violence by expressing her sorrow only in private (“her secret closet”). The wife has chosen one, allegedly nonpublic way of performing her role as a wife. By not “exclaim[ing]В .В .В . out in the streetsВ .В .В . as others do on their husbands,” she manages to reform her husband. There is an irony here since Eulaly does know of this story; thus, the “common report” can reveal a performance that is ostensibly secret. On the one hand, the story of Eulaly’s neighbor serves to fulfill a fantasy: it allows the woman who suffers abuse quietly to imagine the possibility of a different kind of marriage.48 On the other hand, as a representation, the story reveals the performative nature of marital duties. Both spouses in the story were known by their behavior: the husband was “honest” but “hastie” and “tetchy,” and the wife was “of singular good carriage and excellent behavior.” The husband’s temperament singles him out as worthy of being reformed, while the wife’s behavior singles her out as worthy of reforming him. But the most interesting thing about this example is the parenthetical “by common report.” We can know how the wife behaves only through the testimony of others. Her worth as a reformer (and therefore as a wife) is wholly determined by her perceived behavior. Exemplary women also influence perception. The case of Lady Robartes reveals that an examination of a woman’s godliness is as much about what she actually does as about how others choose to read her actions. For example, Lady Robartes must have made quite a scene while she was dying, but Gamon urges the reader /listener not to think about that, because we ought to judge that scene according to all of the good things she has done. For what though shee were (as Sicke folke are commonly) more Passionate than others, yea than Her selfe in Her health, yet if God judgeth not according to the strange Effects and Symptoms of Her sicknesse, not according to the short moment and violent passions of Her Death; but according to the holy Actions of Her Health, the former Affections of Her Heart, and the Generall Course of Her Life.49 Page 46 →The godliness that Lady Robartes practiced throughout her life ought to excuse the “violent passions of Her Death.” Her godliness does not necessarily give her power, but as an example, it sets up the perceived benefits of godliness for a woman. Gamon suggests that Robartes’s extreme behavior, which may have ruined the reputation of her children, should be seen as perfectly acceptable in the circumstances. Thus, Gamon presents a hope that his sermon can change the way that others choose to read a woman’s actions. The influence of Robartes’s virtue touches her family and, through her death, extends far beyond that unit, into all of Christendom. It shows the right way for Christians to behave and the right way for them to read the actions of others. In other words, it is both a performance script and a performance criticism. The influence of feminine virtue outside of marriage is an important figure in Gamon’s text, and performance is crucial to this influence.

Within marriage, reforming a husband is hard work that cannot be done through inaction. A Looking Glass’s Eulaly worries that Xantip may not be up to the difficult job of reforming her husband: “And doth it seeme irksome and tedious unto you to take some paines to make your husband a good man? you are not the woman I tooke you for.”50 There is a sense here that helping one’s husband to be a better man takes a certain amount of “woman,” for the inability or unwillingness to do this makes Xantip “not the woman” Eulaly “took [her] for.” This points to the performative nature of being a wife, as it highlights the need to act like a woman as well as to be taken for one (the act and the required acknowledgment of that act). What Eulaly describes as necessary in order to make over one’s husband is, in fact, quite extensive. She begins with the wife’s duties in the house and their effect. Bee carefull that your house be neat and cleanly, that there may be nothing to drive your husband out of doores. Bee gentle, loving and kinde to him; bee alwaies mindfull of that reverence which is due to him. Bee not lumpish, nor yet tomboyish: be not sluttish, nor yet garish in your apparell.51 A wife’s first concern, according to Eulaly, ought to be her husband’s comfort, because a comfortable husband is one who will stay home and not go “out of doors.” In fact, the lack of such comfort may “drive” him out. Like an audience member disgusted with a performance, a husband will leave if his wife is not performing her part to his liking. A wife’s costume, which includes her physical body, is likewise important—she ought not to be “lumpish” or “tomboyish” or “sluttish” or “garish.” Eulaly’s description of wifely duties hardly Page 47 →liberates women from patriarchal authority, but they are portrayed as active rather than passive. That portrayal grants the wife some control over her family, control that she can use even while living up to expectations of virtuous behavior. Part of the difficulty of working through the cycle of reform that begins with an unhappy marriage and ends in bliss is that a wife must keep her husband nearby to reform him. Eulaly’s advice about how to keep a husband happy suggests that women must be entertainers and that a wife should try to make the house as much like “out of doors” as possible, to keep her husband at home. Let your meat be well dressed, and in due season: know your husbands tooth: let him have that which will delight his palate: shew your selfe gentle and affable to his friends, bid them often to your house, and see with cheerefulnesse all bee handsome. When your husband is merry, be not you sad: and when he is melancholy, be not you merry: for contraries will not agree together.52 In an early incarnation of the idiom “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Eulaly advises Xantip to “know” her husband’s “tooth” and give him food that “will delight his palate.” He ought, then, to be treated with respect and given good food at home so that he does not seek it outside the home. This would have been particularly resonant for a mid-seventeenth-century wife, as “taverns began to offer increasingly elaborate meals.”53 These gathering places rivaled the home because they provided good meals and good company. Therefore, by creating a tavern-like atmosphere, the wife could keep her husband at home. However, good food and an attractive wife are not all a man needs to want to stay home; he has to have his friends as well, whom the wife must entertain “with cheerfulness.” Thus, her performance includes not only the way she acts toward her husband but also the way she treats a larger community that may, in fact, be a threat to the happiness of her marriage.54 Underlying this portion of Eulaly’s advice, of course, is the anxiety that husbands might stay away from the home for too long. Financial stability is also crucial to a happy marriage, and there are detrimental economic consequences, in addition to emotional ones, from a husband staying out all of the time. According to Eulaly, a husband who feels comfortable and welcome at home will save money: “Make his bed soft, and see that every thing which is good be provided for him. By this meanes you shall have him keepe home, and so save idle expences.”55 These “idle expenses”Page 48 → include drinking and prostitutes. Once the good effects of the wife’s performance reach the finances, reformation is underway. When the husband begins to “save idle expenses, ” he also begins to become a better husband. Thus will he thinke with himselfe at length; Good Lord, what meane I? what a foole am I that live

ranging abroad with losse of my goods and good name, by keeping drabs and drunken company, when I have such a good and loving wife at home, which takes more pleasure in me, than this flattering harlot? Why then, much more should I be delightfull to her, if I would quite leave these truls, and swilling company. Well I will resolve with me selfe henceforth to leave this filthy and beastly course of life.56

It is as if the husband was awakened from a dream and recognized the harm of the “loss of [his] goods and good name” in straying from the home. The tangible loss is financial, but he has also been missing out on the “pleasure” his wife “takes” in him. This pleasure is evidenced by the wife’s performance of her duties, because a happy wife will keep a nice house, entertain her husband’s friends, and be kind. Thus, in this description, her obedience is actually a sign of her happiness. The text does not assume that women are not already seeking their own happiness in marriage; it merely hints that there is a proper way to do it. The correct way is for the wife to make both partners desire a happy marriage enough to make sacrifices. By the beginning of A Looking Glass, Xantip has already been trying to change her husband’s behaviors—the same ones Eulaly offers a course to reform—but she has been going about it all wrong. Xantip’s husband, Ben-ezar, claims, I will tell you both but a little, how she hath used mee. If I spend but a teaster or twelve-pence, then shee railes upon mee, as if I were her prentice boy, that had stolne it from her: or if I will not buy her this toy, or that new fangle, this dainty morsell or that; shee takes on like a mad woman; saying, That such a woman can have this and that for a word, and why may not shee as well have the same? And if I bee but forth a little why then shee will raile upon mee, as if I were her slave.57 Xantip’s main complaints are that her husband spends too much money (on idle expenses) and that he stays out too much. Her method of reforming him (railing on him) is ineffective because it makes him feel like she sees him as a Page 49 →“slave.” Yet truly being a meek wife, argues Margery, makes one “a foole and a foot-stoole.”58 Both spouses must be made to believe that they are choosing to be good to one another in order to make their marriage a felicitous one. The reformed Ben-ezar claims, The husbands should not swell too much with their authoritie, that they should not make their poore wives as slaves, but should account of them as themselves. For the Lord knew very well that men are of such natures (for the most part) that if hee gave them power, they would stretch it to the uttermost: and therefore hee abates their superiority, and makes it in some measure equall with the wives.59 According to Ben-ezar, God gave both spouses power in marriage, to avoid abuse of power. Ben-ezar’s reform reveals the effectiveness of the course that the dialogue suggests for making one’s husband better. Snawsel’s major change to Erasmus’s dialogue (the addition of the character of Xantip’s husband, Ben-ezar) makes Snawsel’s text more dramatic than Erasmus’s and therefore highlights the performative nature of being a wife. Furthermore, Ben-ezar’s presence in the text serves as a positive example of the influence of feminine virtue, because his reformation takes place before the reader’s eyes. In the texts discussed so far in this chapter, performative feminine virtue engages in a network of influence over the behavior of others; it can reform a husband and even all of Christendom. I end this chapter with an example that takes this influence beyond the behavior of others. Phillip Stubbes’s A Crystal Glass for Christian Women reveals how performative feminine virtue can have power over even how people believe. A Crystal Glass recounts the “godly life and Christian death” of Katherine Stubbes, the author’s late wife.60 In this text, Stubbes presents his wife as an exemplary Christian woman: she is an obedient wife, who speaks only on matters of religion in order to set people right. The “causes” of her confession before her death give us a glimpse of the “causes” of conduct literature more generally. Moreover, the popularity of this text suggests that the example Stubbes provides is one that readers desired.61 Just like Lady Frances Robartes, Katherine Stubbes exerts an influence that grows through her death.62 Stubbes

opens his work with praise of his wife, “who whilest shee lived, was a Myrrour of womanhood, and now being dead, is a perfect patterne of true Christianitie.”63 Women may have imitated her example while she lived, but now that she is dead, her husband suggests that all Christians should do likewise. This increase in influence is not just Page 50 →aimed at making all Christians behave like better Christians; it is also aimed at making Christians believe the right things. In fact, a large portion of this Protestant ars moriendi is devoted to the subject’s confession of her faith.64 The influence of such an example is not assumed by the text, though. Stubbes takes care to include the importance of her example in the content of the work. Before she makes her confession, Katherine Stubbes claims, “I am perswaded for three causes to make a confession of my faith, before you all.”65 These three causes are (1) to help others who “are not thoroughly resolved in the truth of God,” (2) “for that none of you should judge that I died not a perfect christian & a lively member of the mystical body of Jesus Christ,” and (3) “as you have been witnesses of part of my life: so you may be witnesses of my faith and beleeve also.”66 These are the causes of her confession, but we can also see them as the causes of the book as a whole. The teaching that Katherine Stubbes sets out to do in the first cause is one that the texts discussed in this chapter see as a woman’s job, and her assumption of the role of teacher signals that this piece is meant to be didactic. Furthermore, she wants to teach people—those who are ignorant of “the truth of God”—what to believe. The second cause for her confession, that others should recognize her good life, reveals the performative nature of femininity, which, in this case as in Robartes’s, includes a certain level of piety. Her confession proves to others that she was a great Christian and thus that she is fit to teach others. The third cause—that she wants to declare her faith—must then be taken in context of the other two causes: she wants to teach and is fit to teach. Therefore, we can see teaching doctrine as the purpose of Stubbes’s piece. To teach doctrine, Stubbes uses the same technique as feminine conduct literature (indeed, the title suggests that this is a conduct manual). This technique relies on a female teacher who displays her own virtue and seeks to teach others how to do the same. Recognizing that display is essential to Stubbes’s notion of conduct, Peter Stallybrass claims that in Stubbes’s Anatomie of Abuses (1583), “conduct is conceptualized above all as spectacle. If conduct is sometimes concealed or secret, the work of the magistrate (as of the writer of conduct books) is to make visible.”67 Further, according to Stallybrass’s analysis of Stubbes, “The politics of conduct is a politics of appearance.”68 About A Crystal Glass more specifically, Stallybrass writes, “In A Christal Glasse Stubbes’s deceased wife is represented as the antithesis of the вЂunruly’ women of the Anatomie.”69 This makes Katherine Stubbes’s example intertextual, as A Crystal Glass would bring the “unruly” characters in Anatomie to mind for a reader. Katherine Stubbes’s example, therefore, stands not Page 51 →alone but as part of a network of examples that can all be read together and against one another. Although Stubbes’s discussion of his wife shows her performing her virtue, it simultaneously shows her to be opposed to the theatrical nature of Catholicism. For Stubbes, this is not a contradiction, because in the same way that Katherine Stubbes’s speech draws its authority from godly service, her performance draws legitimacy from its teaching of others. Katherine Stubbes was silent, except in the case of sanctioned speech, and she spoke with great skill on matters of religion. According to Stubbes, his wife spoke some “golden sentences” during her life that he “willingly omit[s].”70 That Stubbes brings up her speech at all indicates both that he might have some real-life behaviors to explain away (as in the case of Robartes above) and that silence is as performative as speech when it comes to feminine behavior. Here, as in the example of the silent wife in Penelope’s tale, performing silence makes one a virtuous woman who then is allowed to perform appropriate speech. Katherine Stubbes, according to her husband, was the perfect wife, but this perfection was achieved through a self-erasure that ends with her death. After her child is born, she gives him to her husband and says, Beloved husband, I bequeath this my child unto you, hee is no longer mine hee is the Lordes and yours, I forsake him, you, and all the world, yea and mine owne selfe, and esteeme al things dung, that I may win Jesus Christ. And I pray you sweet husband bring up this childe in good letters, in learning and discipline, and above all things, see that he be brought up and instructed in the exercise

of true religion.71

Part of her virtue is her willingness to “forsake” everything—her child, her husband, the world, and herself. However, she is not merely forsaking worldly things here; she also leaves instructions for the care of her child after she has passed away. While Katherine Stubbes is dying and letting go of the world, she is also taking control of it by willing her son to her husband and the Lord with instructions for his education—especially “in the exercise of true religion.” Katherine Stubbes’s example reveals the influence that feminine virtue can have over the beliefs of others, while at the same time showing the need for the complete annihilation of the subject whose virtue is influential. The perfect wife is, in this case, a dead woman, which returns us to Dolan’s “economy of scarcity.”72 While Katherine Stubbes’s influence is clear and is even acknowledged in her speech as she hands her son to her husband, it can Page 52 →be complete only when she has completely given herself up. Therefore the power of her influence is tempered by the need for her death. For early modern writers, feminine virtue is not passive, but neither is it independently active. As the texts here demonstrate, feminine virtue is always performative and influential: women must display their behavior in order to be considered virtuous, and that displayed virtue can influence others’ behavior and beliefs. This influence is not necessarily subversive, because the wife often uses it to resubmit herself and to convince other women to submit as well. Moreover, the strongest influence is granted to women who are dead. Along the way to the perfect virtue of death, however, women are given the opportunity to seek their own pleasure through the performance of feminine virtue. Snawsel’s text shows that being a “good wife” opens up the possibility for happiness and pleasure in a marriage. Penelope’s story about the silent wife reveals the material rewards of performed submission. Thus, negotiating the mandate for an obedience that simultaneously requires complete submission and critical performance allows some room for women to find a happiness of their own making. Early modern women were not taught to be unquestioningly obedient, but what they were taught may not be that much more heartening. The authors of prescriptive texts concentrate on the influence of virtue and the possibilities for pleasure, but these rewards of virtue depend on feminine submission. At the same time, however, these texts taught that both pleasure in a marriage and influence over others were desirable. They do not paint a picture of pathetic misery in marriage for women; rather, they paint one in which wives have made possible their own marital happiness. So far in this study, we have considered some early modern authors’ attempts to resolve the “paradox of chastity,” and we have seen early modern advice literature that recommends that women think critically about the advice they receive, in order to properly perform feminine virtue. I now turn to two plays by Shakespeare, to illustrate some of the major differences in these two approaches to advising women.

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Three Contradiction and Counter-Magic Advice to Women on Shakespeare’s Stage Early in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare shows us one woman advising another: Julia asks, “But say, Lucetta, now we are alone, / Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?” and Lucetta responds, “Ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully” (1.2.1–3).1 Whereas most conduct manuals of the sixteenth century counsel women to stay away from love completely until after marriage, Lucetta sees love as a way to avoid the trouble of love. The comic nature of this scene derives in part from its interaction with the prominent conduct literature of Shakespeare’s time. Representations of advice to the women of Shakespeare’s stage simultaneously engage with, challenge, and support the varied advice to women offered in conduct literature. But while there have been many studies of Shakespeare’s female characters—focusing on their individual and shared characteristics, the conditions under which they were created, power relationships on stage, will and agency2—there has yet to be much discussion of the advice these women receive. Addressing that lack, this chapter is concerned primarily with the engagement of that dramatic advice with prominent conduct literature of the time. Theater and conduct literature function in similar ways, because they both model behavior and participate in the making of the self; theater, like conduct literature, “offered material for moral and practical benefit and use.”3 Looking at the advice to women on stage alongside advice to women in conduct literature thus allows us an insight into early modern notions not only of feminine virtue but also of the self as it was formed and created at the time. Reading was commonly a public practice in the period, and as we saw in the last chapter, conduct literature encourages proper performance of feminine virtue. Theater is an extension and elaboration of that performance. RonaldPage 54 → Bedford claims that the theater is a source of possible personae for its audience members, because the roles that the actors play model the behaviors that the spectators can imitate in their own lives. Bedford examines “the mimesis that occurs not when the dramatist or poet holds a mirror up to nature but when an audience member or reader is moved to imitate what is represented.”4 This chapter further develops Bedford’s thesis by positing that the theater was one of the few public places where women in particular were presented with viable possible personae (this is the case even though men or boys enacted such women on the stage). Whereas men could see men acting publicly all around (at the Inns of Court, in church), women’s examples came primarily from the home (mothers, aunts, caregivers). Public examples of womanly behavior were often negative—for instance, examples of prostitutes and vulgar saleswomen. But the theater presented an opportunity to counteract—if, in some cases, also to support—those negative options. In a very explicit way, then, theater and conduct literature share an affinity for modeling behavior for women.5 Some say that the choices Shakespeare’s stage offered in so representing models for women were limited—shrew or sheep, monster or angel, whore or virgin. But as I argue in this book, conduct literature available for women by Shakespeare’s time portrayed feminine virtue as existing on a spectrum with a lot of room for interpretation. Theater is perhaps the clearest example we can look at: within the format of self-contained five-act plays, it both offers a range of possible behaviors for women to emulate and also reveals potential social consequences for their actions. I do not want to claim that theater is primarily didactic, however. Rather, I propose that it participates in some of the same modeling that occurs in conduct literature for women. I examine theater alongside the more obviously didactic literature of the period in order to understand how the women in the audience might have understood what was being shown to them in a way that takes into account the possibility for theater to influence the understanding of the self. Although feminine virtue is an undercurrent (if not specifically discussed) almost every time a female character appears on stage, my analysis here focuses on two instances as indicative of Shakespeare’s portrayal of feminine virtue: Ophelia in Hamlet and Paulina in The Winter’s Tale. Rather than merely showing

Ophelia’s behavior, Shakespeare gives us one root of her understanding of the world—the advice she receives. Ophelia is a young girl whose counselors treat her as if she is on the verge of sexual maturity and give her all the “right” advice, but to no avail.6 Her unhappy end suggests that perhaps following the prescriptions of conduct literature is not enough Page 55 →to lead a girl safely to womanhood. Further, this unhappy end also implies that if a girl were left alone to interpret the advice she receives, she could be driven mad by the task. In showing Ophelia “under advice,” Shakespeare shows not only something about feminine virtue but also something about how advice functions (or malfunctions, as in this case). Because the models of behavior from which Hamlet’s characters draw do not support any notion that a woman ought to know how to interpret the advice she receives, Ophelia cannot survive under such counsel. By contrast, the happy ending of The Winter’s Tale would not have been possible without the intercession of an ostensibly nonconforming woman, Paulina, who does not follow advice or, for that matter, orders. To intercede to rectify the dire results of King Leontes’s jealousy, Paulina, a married woman, must disobey both her husband and her king. Interestingly, she is not punished for this disobedience, and the lack of punishment is puzzling. However, if we look to a different and, at first glance, more radical model of conduct than the traditional conduct manuals and consider Paulina’s relationship to the early modern witch who unwitches the bewitched through her practice of “counter-magic,” Paulina’s behavior finds social sanction. What appears, on the surface, to be “disobedience” on Paulina’s part is, in fact, a reformative move in line with the kind of obedience I discussed in chapter 2. The difference between the dramatized advice and conduct of Ophelia and Paulina further lies in the contrast between the paradoxical and stifling model of advice by early authors of conduct manuals, such as Juan Luis Vives, whose work focuses on chastity, on the one hand, and the performative/reformative and more interpretative model of obedience found in later Protestant marriage manuals, on the other. For Ophelia, following the Vivesian model of female conduct, advice leads to madness. By contrast, for Paulina, following the counter-magical and Reformation model of female conduct, advice is reworked within the nuances of obedience so that it becomes enabling and even curative. Thus, these two characters show both the multivalence of feminine virtue and the shift in conduct literature over the course of the sixteenth century. There are a number of women characters in Shakespeare’s plays to which I could have turned for an investigation of his portrayal of feminine virtue. In fact, Shakespeare often tackles the issue of how women ought to behave and what that behavior looks like in practical terms. For example, Portia in The Merchant of Venice takes on the guise and profession of a man to bring about justice and marry Bassanio.7 Portia resembles Paulina in that she uses her feminine virtue to right a wrong, and her goal is ultimately resubmission Page 56 →to the authority of a man.8 Othello’s Desdemona is a tragically wronged wife and a victim of infectious jealousy, in much the same way as Hermione in The Winter’s Tale.9 Two “tragic virgins,” King Lear’s Cordelia and Romeo and Juliet’s Juliet, engage with social prescriptions in opposing ways and yet experience similar ends. Cordelia obeys the call for women to be silent, but her silence works against her.10 Juliet disobeys her parents in order to marry Romeo, and her disobedience brings her to ruin. While the examples in Shakespeare are numerous, I choose to concentrate on Paulina and Ophelia here, both as representative of a spectrum and as uniquely illustrative of the shifts in the edicts of conduct manuals over the course of the sixteenth century.

“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”: Advice to Ophelia in Hamlet Neil Diamond opens the song from which this section takes its title with words that express the struggle for control of a young woman on the brink of sexual maturity: “Love you so much, can’t count all the ways / I’d die for you girl, and all they can say is / вЂHe’s not your kind’ /В .В .В . / Don’t let them make up your mind / Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.”11 That the advice comes from a male suitor who is trying to convince a young woman to enter into a sexual relationship with him is indicative of the kinds of questionable motives behind advice to women. The advice that women receive is often contradictory, in addition to being driven by ulterior motives. The speaker here, for example, asks the “girl” both to think for herself and to obey his will. In Hamlet, Ophelia is the girl who will be a woman soon; that is, she will pass out of adolescence and into sexual maturity soon. Poised as she is at the verge of adult womanhood, Ophelia is a target for men’s attentions. Anxiety over this imminent sexuality causes the men in her life to channel that attention

in the form of advice. Ophelia receives advice from men three times throughout the play: first from her brother, Laertes; then from her father, Polonius; and last from her lover, Hamlet. The advice that Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet offer Ophelia about how to be a virtuous young woman draws its wisdom from the same cultural fount as prominent advice literature of the early sixteenth century, such as Vives’s Instruction of a Christian Woman, but the advice does not prepare Ophelia in any way to be a woman. Their advice is paradoxical, and only the power of their presence can keep up the illusion that it is not. Therefore, in the absence of her counselors, Ophelia is driven mad by the advice she tries to understand. If, as Carol Thomas Neely notes, “sufferers of mental distress were viewed as divided, diverted, disassembled—as beside themselves,” then the root of Ophelia’s distress is in the contradictory advice Page 57 →she receives, and it causes her to come apart.12 Ophelia’s self-division exhibits itself in her mad speeches as a reframing of the advice she has been given. The advice to Ophelia was always doomed to fail, because its paradoxes do not offer her viable models of behavior. As we saw in the first chapter of the present study, the attempt to harmonize can lead to certain destruction, and this, I assert, is what happens to Ophelia. Ophelia’s advice scenes are not as much discussed by critics as one would expect, given the popularity in the early modern period of advice, particularly of advice to women, as a genre of its own and as a common recurring theme in literature of all genres. Scholars do discuss advice in Hamlet; however, they seem most interested in the “precepts” Polonius offers Laertes to keep in his “memory” (1.3.58–80).13 Invested only in Polonius, they ask if Polonius plagiarized the whole of his advice, what his source is, and whether his advice reveals that he is wise or a fool.14 Those who look at the scenes in which Ophelia receives advice often subordinate the importance of them to the seemingly more pressing issues of Ophelia’s effect on Hamlet, Laertes’s hypocrisy, and Polonius’s pomposity. Such considerations sidestep an examination of the culture within which these three men were licensed to give Ophelia counsel, regardless of whether that counsel is sound, contradictory, hypocritical, or abusive.15 Ophelia herself serves in these arguments more as an instrument in the lives of her male family members than as a character deserving consideration in her own right. For example, Linda Wagner, writing in 1963, takes a traditional view of Ophelia as an instrument of pathos, claiming that “Shakespeare’s chief dramatic use of Ophelia is in the evocation of pathos” and that she is “a dutiful daughter sweetly counselled by Laertes.”16 For Wagner, Ophelia’s character ought not to make the audience think; rather, it should merely make them feel. The advice Ophelia receives from Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet is crucial to forming Ophelia’s character; in fact, the feature for which she is most remembered—her madness—is a direct result of the paradoxical advice she receives. Ophelia’s counselors’ preoccupation with her sexuality in their advice indicates that Ophelia’s sexuality is simultaneously of the utmost importance and of the utmost anxiety to her counselors. The danger of Ophelia’s sexuality comes primarily from its potential to ruin her—perhaps with an unwanted pregnancy—and, by extension, to ruin her family and the court with which she is associated. Because that sexuality is so dangerous to them, Ophelia’s counselors cannot prepare her for sexual maturity, no matter how many books and maxims they rely on. They try to discourage her from any sexuality, which is in keeping with the virginity that authors like Vives recommend.17 Page 58 →However, since the moment in which the play was written is itself a post-Reformation one, the audience would be aware of the many medical treatises of the latter sixteenth century that encouraged young women to marry and engage in sexual intercourse to avoid diseases associated with virginity, particularly “greensickness.”18 Shakespeare thus makes clear the inability of Vives’s chastity to work for young women of his time. Ophelia’s first scene on stage is one in which she receives advice from her brother, and it shows both the importance of advice to her character development and the contradictions inherent to advice. His is the first in a long line of advice offerings that do Ophelia no good because they are contradictory. As I have already mentioned, a person who gives advice often does so for his or her own reasons, and in the case of Laertes and Polonius, the reason is only ostensibly Ophelia’s welfare. Before he receives his own “precepts” from Polonius, Laertes instructs his sister about how to handle Hamlet and preserve her honor. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood,

A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute, No more. (1.3.5–9) Laertes advises his sister not to take Hamlet’s affection as anything more than a passing fancy, because Hamlet, according to Laertes, is a young man incapable of anything more than a “trifling” favor or a “toy.” While his advice literally suggests that Hamlet is too young to be serious about a relationship with Ophelia, Laertes’s language is loaded with suggestions that sex with Hamlet would be disappointing and not worth the risk to her honor. Hamlet’s fancy is a “fashion,” thus it will move on before maturing enough to be satisfying. It is “not permanent, .В .В .В not lasting,” which suggests premature ejaculation or at least a short-lived sexual encounter. Sex with Hamlet will bring Ophelia pleasure for “a minute, / No more.” Laertes thus advises Ophelia to preserve her honor by not taking Hamlet seriously, all the while hinting to her that sex with Hamlet could not satisfy her anyway. Underlying Laertes’s advice is his warning to Ophelia about bad sex: she should not fall for Hamlet’s pleas, because he is too young to last very long. He says not that sex itself is unsatisfying but that she should fear the Page 59 →sex of an inexperienced man. The problem, though, is that he does not give her another outlet for the desire that is inevitable; he merely advises that she “fear” (1.3.43). Film versions of Hamlet frequently pick up on the sexual undertones in Laertes’s advice to Ophelia. For instance, Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film relies heavily on light and shadow to illustrate Ophelia’s innocence in the face of Laertes’s experience.19 Ophelia, played by Jean Simmons, sits by an open window in her chamber. Terence Morgan’s Laertes comes to give her the advice and stands between her and the open window. Given Olivier’s interest in psychoanalytic readings of the play, any viewer must take seriously the openings and tunnels in the film as well as obstructions of such openings. Simmons’s facial expressions show shock, fear, and disappointment at Laertes’s advice. Morgan moves away from the window, drawing Simmons’s gaze with him. Olivier shows us an Ophelia on a threshold and being drawn away from it by her brother’s advice. Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet 2000 takes the sexual energy of the scene even further by loading the scene with sexual tension between the siblings.20 Julia Stiles’s Ophelia screws up her mouth skeptically throughout the scene, but Liev Schreiber’s Laertes uses physical proximity to challenge her skepticism. The scene opens with sensual music playing in the background and a close-up of a youthfully painted blue fingernail holding a photograph of Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet. Laertes speaks in such a way that you can imagine his breath on the back of Ophelia’s neck, and he frequently casts glances at her face as if desiring a return look. Ophelia rises and fidgets like a young girl, walking around the room. Laertes gains the eye contact he seems to have been angling for when he mentions her “chaste treasure.” Olivier and Almereyda both employ the techniques of film to demonstrate the underlying sexual tone of Laertes’s advice. In Shakespeare’s play, even Laertes’s description of Hamlet’s power is paradoxical. Laertes does not attribute deceptive motives to Hamlet; he acknowledges that it is Hamlet’s position as prince that interferes with his promises: “his will is not his own” (1.3.17). Laertes continues, Then if he says he loves you It fits your wisdom so far to believe it As he in his peculiar sect and force May give his saying deed, which is no further Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. (1.3.24–28)

Page 60 →Laertes makes clear that Hamlet can make promises only so far as the “main voice of Denmark” will allow, but it is important to remember that the fact of this backing ought to make Hamlet’s word strong. If the “main voice” were to approve of Hamlet’s desire to marry, his marriage would have the backing of the government. A good prince understands that his promises must follow the law and that he must follow policy in his marriage.21 Of course, at this moment in the play, the “main voice of Denmark” does not seem to be with Hamlet at all—neither in the sense of general agreement nor in the sense of the king himself. Ironically, then, the power that revokes Hamlet’s ability to give his word of his own will is the same power that makes his word trustworthy. This confusing, if accurate, description of the power of the prince’s word is typical of the kind of advice Ophelia receives. At this point in the play, Ophelia actively engages with the advice Laertes offers; she is not merely a passive receptacle of such conflictive advice. Demonstrating an understanding of the way advice to women works, Ophelia playfully reprimands her brother for presuming to be in a position to preach to her, and she reveals her knowledge of the hypocrisy that infests preaching by men to women. Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede. (1.3.47–51) More specifically, Ophelia points out the contradictions in her brother’s advice; he, after all, spends all of his time in France “like a puffed and reckless libertine.” Advising Laertes not to ignore his own advice, Ophelia reveals that she sees the double standard at work behind it. She engages critically with the advice she receives from Laertes in this first scene of advice in the play, and it is the capability for such critical engagement that her later counselors shut down. As an example of such analysis, Ophelia even seems aware of the source of Laertes’s advice: the written word. Her “rede” of the last line—a word that shares its root with the verb “to read”—reminds the listener that there are written words behind the advice being given, even though we are watching two people speak.22 Indeed, in saying “rede,” Ophelia shows she knows full well that Laertes’s sources lie in the maxims of conduct books: “The chariest Page 61 →maid is prodigal enough,” “Virtue escapes not calumnious strokes,” and “The canker galls the infants of the spring” (1.3.36, 38, 39).23 These maxims also echo sentiments expressed by Vives: for instance, on the fragility of virtue, Vives writes, “As oft as a maid go forth among people, so often she cometh in judgment and extreme peril of her beauty, honesty, demureness, wit, shamefastness, and virtue. For nothing is more tender, than is the fame and estimation of women, nor nothing more in danger of wrong” (L2r).24 Laertes draws on these common printed “precepts” to advise his sister, just as his father will later do to advise him. Lagretta Tallent Lenker notes that Ophelia’s response to Laertes here is the only moment in the play in which Ophelia has control and that “Ophelia later becomes paralyzed between childlike innocence and adult sexual knowledge.”25 Ophelia’s control here comes from thinking critically about the advice she receives from Laertes. Such critical thinking is crucial to her growth as a sexual being, for it enables her to make choices about her world. By pointing out to Laertes his potential hypocrisy in quoting rote from conduct manuals when his own conduct belies such maxims, Ophelia highlights the problematic contradictions that riddle Laertes’s advice. Indeed, steeped as it is in the “wisdom” of advice literature, Laertes’s advice undermines itself with paradoxical metaphors, such as in his use of military language to emphasize the importance of Ophelia’s chastity to her honor. Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, If with too credent ear you list his songs, Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open

To his unmastered importunity. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, And keep you in the rear of your affection, Out of the shot and danger of desire. .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В .В . . And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent. Be wary then, best safety lies in fear: Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. (1.3.29–35, 41–44) Here Laertes advises Ophelia to shrink from desire because “best safety lies in fear.” He does not want her to “lose her heart” or “open” her “chaste treasure.” In this admonition, Laertes further uses a military metaphor, in which Page 62 →desire is an attacking army: “keep you in the rear of your affection.” One editor claims that this military metaphor shows that “Ophelia is not to go so far as her affection might lead her.”26 In the “rear of her affection,” Ophelia is in charge of the least dangerous part of the attacking formation. However, she is also behind the outward show of her affection and protecting herself from being attacked from the rear, which suggests sexual positions, including nonreproductive ones.27 Laertes’s evocation of sex and sexual desire in his prohibition thus points to the paradoxical slipperiness of the concept of chastity. As I discussed (following Nancy Weitz Miller) in the first chapter of this study, Vives often reverts to military and economic language when treating chastity.28 Laertes’s advice participates in the same project as does Vives’s, and as in Vives, the military metaphor with regard to chastity here undermines itself, because chastity is portrayed as both the fragile treasure in need of protection and the agent of that protection. Even more suggestively and problematically, chastity is also portrayed as both sexually inactive and sexually active. Polonius’s advice to Ophelia is not only paradoxical like her brother’s; it shuts down the kind of critical thinking Ophelia was able to perform in response to Laertes’s advice. Drawing on the received wisdom about raising a daughter, Polonius cannot prepare Ophelia for sexual maturity, because the advice does not prepare her to make her own decisions about her options. Polonius fails to teach either of his children to think critically about him and thus about the world; this is what causes the “paralysis” in Ophelia that Lenker notices. As Sharon Hamilton further claims, “Polonius equips neither of his children to see him objectively, to measure his homilies against his actions or to question the role he has cast them in: son as clone, daughter as pretty possession.”29 Laertes, however, has the benefit of experiencing the world outside of Denmark’s court; thus, he does not suffer the same consequences that Ophelia does. Polonius’s advice continues the trend of stalling Ophelia’s desire, but in this case, he also hinders her ability to analyze his advice, and this ultimately results in her demise. When he turns his advice attention to Ophelia, Polonius begins by setting her up as naive and vulnerable. By referring to Hamlet’s affections as “springes to catch woodcocks” (1.3.114), traps for birds that were easily caught, Polonius portrays Ophelia as gullible.30 Vives uses the same image of the easily caught bird as Polonius does: “for these lovers know well enough the vain-glorious minds of many, which have a great delight in their own praises wherewith they be caught like as the birder beguiles the birds” (N2r).31 The trapper catching an easily caught bird is a common metaphor used to warn Page 63 →young women about men. Polonius encourages Ophelia to see herself as vulnerable in order to remove the confidence she displayed in her conversation with Laertes. Polonius then begins the process of replacing Ophelia’s confidence with his own power, by claiming that it is her inherent vulnerability that leads him to encourage her to stay away from Hamlet. He warns, “From this time / Be something scanter of your maiden presence” (1.3.120–21). As Hamilton points out, it is important for Polonius’s honor that Ophelia maintain a good reputation, and her involvement with Hamlet will not make that easy.32 Indeed, in warning Ophelia, “Roaming it thus—you’ll tender me a fool” (1.3.109),

Polonius expresses exactly that anxiety. However, Polonius’s advice is not as straightforwardly about his honor as it might appear, for he opens this speech by broaching more specifically the subject of sexuality. I do know, When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows. These blazes daughter, Giving more light than heat, extinct in both Even in their promise as it is a-making, You must not take for fire. (1.3.115–20) In his text, Vives addresses both the young woman and her parents, and his advice to parents is indicative of the cultural wisdom that informs Polonius’s advice to Ophelia. Vives advises parents to “keep their daughters, especially when they begin to grow from child’s state, and hold them from men’s company” (F2r). To Polonius, it is his duty to save the gullible Ophelia from herself, “especially” insofar as she “begin[s] to grow from child’s state” (F2r). But heat, the dominant image in this portion of Polonius’s advice and a familiar one from Vives, carries conflicting associations, and the sexual imagery Polonius uses to make his point does not stay under his control. Polonius acknowledges that it is when the “blood burns” that false promises are made; the heat creates the false promises. Vives also warns of the heat that is dangerous to young people: “For neither the burning Etna, nor the country of Vulcan, nor Vesuvius, nor yet Olympus boils with such heat as the bodies of young folks enflamed” (F3v).33 Heat, the essential Galenic component of male bodies, is dangerous, then, and should be avoided. But as Polonius continues, his language simultaneously turns the heat that is so dangerous into the missing substance of Hamlet’s “blazes” that give “more light than heat,” Page 64 →thereby making the heat that they lack the yearned-for core of a developing attachment. Ophelia is left wondering whether her father expects her to want heat or to shun it. In his advice, Polonius illustrates the characteristic multivalence of—and sometimes inherent conflicts in—directives for chastity, by advising Ophelia to desire and not to desire at the same time. These paradoxes are not only metaphorical. Like Laertes before him, Polonius claims authority based on his experience; he introduces the idea of burning blood with “I do know” (1.3.114). Thus, by the time Polonius has finished giving his advice, Ophelia has been subject to two counselors steeped in hypocrisy, expecting her to do as they say and not as they do. Once again, the hypocrisy that both Polonius and Laertes exhibit is a result of the many conflicting messages of advice literature: women should be taught to think for themselves so that they can make wise decisions, but they should also be discouraged from thinking for themselves, because they cannot be trusted; men are inherently bawdy, but men are superior to women when it comes to moral reasoning. Men derive authority from their sexual experience and use that authority to exclude women from participating in sex. Contradictions and confusions infuse the advice Ophelia receives. Once he has convinced her of her vulnerability and replaced her analytical ability with his own power, Polonius concludes with a final contradictory message about the power Ophelia has over her own behavior. He opened with the sentiment that Ophelia is birdlike, gullible, and incapable of handling her own affairs, but by the conclusion of his speech, Polonius expects her to understand his military and economic language. Set your entreatments at a higher rate Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet, Believe so much in him, that he is young And with a larger tedder may he walk Than may be given you. In few Ophelia, Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers, Not of that dye which their investments show,

But mere implorators of unholy suits, Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds, The better to beguile. This is for all: I would not in plain terms from this time forth Have you so slander any moment leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. Look to’t I charge you. Come your ways. (1.3.122–35; my emphasis) Page 65 →In a speech that appears to be about the falsity of young men’s promises, Polonius attributes the power of negotiation to Ophelia and asks her not to use it. A “command to parley” should not be enough to win Ophelia’s “entreatments,” nor should she enter into negotiations too quickly. While Polonius trusts that she understands the rules of engagement, he does not want her to participate in the game. Once again, the military and economic metaphors convey perplexing advice about the preservation of chastity. As Miller points out, the dominant metaphors throughout Vives’s Instruction are economic and military ones: chastity can be “armor”—a defense—and simultaneously a “treasure” or prize.34 In all its confusing complexity, Polonius’s language is once again reminiscent of Vives’s. Further, for all his talk of her need to comprehend and enforce his muddled maxims, Polonius, in effect, shuts down Ophelia’s analytical tendency by taking it over. Polonius’s advice thus ironically brings Ophelia’s will under his control at the same time as it claims she should think independently. Unlike her metrical completion of Gertrude’s line (3.1.42) and her clever response to Laertes (1.3.47–51), Ophelia’s response to Polonius is disconnected from the advice; she responds as if to a command: “I shall obey, my lord” (1.3.136). For Ophelia, there is nothing left to say. This moment marks the beginning signs of her division from her self, because she can no longer engage critically with the advice. Whereas she had earlier offered her brother an analysis, her only response here is to “obey.”35 By the time Ophelia receives advice from a “mad” Hamlet, her division from her self has already begun. Hamlet’s angry and confusing rhetoric, which is also drawn from conduct literature such as Vives’s, advances this cleavage. Although the scene in which Hamlet offers Ophelia advice is subject to a number of different factors (namely, his antic disposition and the presence of eavesdroppers), Hamlet’s advice, like that of Laertes and Polonius, also shares Vives’s confusing images. The anger Hamlet expresses toward Ophelia can be read as an accusation that she is no longer a virgin.36 Hamlet asks Ophelia, “Are you honest?” (3.1.103). Vives claims that honesty is the best of womanly virtues: “Finally no man wyl loke for any other thing of a woman, but her honestye: the which only, if hit be lacked, is lyke as a man, if he lacke al that he shuld have. For in a woman, the honestie is in stede of all” (G4r). Honesty has a number of meanings here, one of which is sexual honesty—chastity. According to Vives, if a maid loses her virginity before marriage, all of her family and friends, even the one who loves her, will grow to “openly hate her” (E4v). Even the man with whom she loses her honesty, as Vives points out, will despise her. After telling Ophelia, “I did love you once” (3.1.114), Hamlet immediately reverses that claim with “I loved you not” (3.1.117). Like Laertes Page 66 →and Polonius before him, Hamlet speaks of Ophelia’s chastity, but not in the same preventative terms; he has turned on her, as Vives warns men will, with accusations of the loss of chastity. By stressing the difference between outward show and inward self, Hamlet further encourages Ophelia to see her self torn apart, an essential step toward her madness. Like Laertes’s and Polonius’s advice, his advice to Ophelia echoes the received wisdom about advising women. If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery go, and quickly too. Farewell. (3.1.131–35)

Here, Hamlet tells Ophelia that no matter how good she is, she cannot “escape calumny.” Laertes, in his earlier counsel to Ophelia, had used the maxim “Virtue escapes not calumnious strokes” (1.3.38). The “contagious blastments” of Laertes’s earlier advice also reminded Ophelia to beware of slander (1.3.42). In the protection of her chastity, a woman was charged with keeping herself safe from the possibility of false report. In sum, both Laertes and Hamlet demonstrate that sexuality and chastity are considered in terms of appearance, not reality. They warn Ophelia that what matters is not always what she actually does but what she appears to do, and both men rely on received wisdoms from conduct literature to communicate this point. Whether or not Ophelia has had sexual relations with Hamlet or with her brother, Hamlet treats her as if her virtue has been compromised. Ophelia cannot win. She can never be “wholly” virtuous (even if she has remained chaste on the inside), because the received wisdoms employed by Hamlet (as by her brother and father) are conflicting and destructive of an integrated and chaste female identity. Hamlet also introduces the troublesome image of the desiring virgin, by advising Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery.” The word nunnery here could certainly be read as denoting a brothel, but its meaning is richer if it is read as denoting a convent. A convent was a place to which parents could send daughters they could not afford to provide for, perhaps the daughters that had become pregnant out of wedlock. Hamlet’s suggestion that Ophelia go to a “nunnery” is practical if he believes she has conceived a child or even merely been disgraced by her sexual activity. These enclosed communities of women were understood as places where the unruly sexuality of women was ostensibly controlled; however, use of the word nunnery to denote a brothel suggests that this control was always under question.37 Page 67 →The advice Ophelia receives from Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet renders her unprepared for womanhood because not only is it conflictive in its own right, but also it conflicts with the ways in which Ophelia understands herself. She cannot have confidence in her own virtue, because its presence no longer guarantees that she is virtuous. As we saw in Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, analyzed in chapter 1 of this study, it is not enough to be chaste; one must also appear chaste. Thus, Ophelia’s attempt to enact such advice exhibits itself as madness—a division of the self from the self. After her father’s death, Ophelia engages in mad speech that demonstrates her failed attempt to assimilate the advice she has received. Neely, in an examination of Ophelia’s madness, notes that the quotes of madness have “connections” with Ophelia’s “premad, gendered identity.”38 One of these connections, I suggest, is through the advice her counselors have given her. Ophelia’s madness may have manifested only after her father’s death, but it results from the fact that, for one crucial moment, there was no one around who could maintain the facade of resolved contradictions. When Ophelia goes mad, all of her counselors are absent: Laertes and Hamlet are away, and her father is dead. In this one moment, no one is pretending that she should be both desiring and chaste, both thoughtful and vacuous, both silent and talkative. Now, as she must process the advice she’s received, the contradictions that make up that advice divide her. Her mad speeches and songs reveal her hopeless attempt to sort out the intentionally incoherent advice she has been given. A dominant theme in the advice Ophelia’s brother and father offer her, as well as advice literature more generally, is that dangers lurk around every corner, threatening a young woman’s chastity. Before we even see Ophelia in her distressed state, we learn from a gentleman that she suspects the world of trickery: “SheВ .В .В . says she hears / There’s tricks i’th’world” (4.5.4–5). This gentleman prompts the audience to expect a distrustful Ophelia who believes that the world is full of “tricks.” Men’s deceitful tongues are the most threatening of these tricks, and Polonius and Laertes had both warned Ophelia not to trust Hamlet’s words. Ophelia’s mad speech “quotes” the advice that her brother and father have given her, and men’s deceitfulness is a recurrent theme in her speeches. For example, in her first song, which is based on a ballad, she sings of distrust: “How should I your true love know / From another one?” (4.5.23–24).39 Ophelia here wonders what proof there can be of “true love,” and her question implies that words are not good enough. This opening song is reminiscent of Laertes’s description of Hamlet’s promises as unreliable. Unreliable promises, as Laertes and Polonius make clear in their advice, can lead only to a woman’s ruin. It is this ruin that Ophelia’s St. Valentine’s song expresses.

Page 68 →And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door; Let in the maid that out a maid Never departed more. (4.5.50–55) The maid of this song has lost her virginity to the man who “dupped the chamber door,” for the virgin who would not exit a virgin. She was lured there by his promises of marriage, and the remainder of the song recalls Vives’s warning about women who lose their virginity before marriage, as well as Hamlet’s turning on Ophelia in the nunnery speech. Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed.” He answers— “So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun, And thou hadst not come to my bed.” (4.5.62–66) The paradox here is that the unidentified lover would have married her had she not done the one thing he convinced her that she needed to do in order for him to marry her, that is, “come to [his] bed.” Recall that Vives warns that the one with whom a virgin has sex will “openly hate her” and that Hamlet claims “I loved you not” (3.1.117) once he has turned against Ophelia. Thus, Ophelia’s songs about desertion and loss of virginity directly reflect the confusing (one might even say “mad”) advice she has received from her counselors.40 Ophelia’s mad speeches are more than merely thematically linked to the advice she has received; they also mimic the offering of advice and refer to advice generally more than once. Ophelia conflates her counselors by replacing the absent lover in the ballad previously cited with her father: “He is dead and gone lady” (4.5.29). In this example, Polonius and Hamlet become one and the same, thereby signaling their similar roles. The gentleman also claims that she “speaks things in doubt / That carry but half sense” (4.5.6–7), but people “yawn at it [her speech], / And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts” (4.5.9–10). In an enactment of the way advice is given in the play, as Ophelia speaks in contradictions, people somehow make sense of what she Page 69 →says. Revealing further that advice is not reliable as a way of helping a girl become a woman, Ophelia claims that transformation is always uncertain: “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be” (4.5.43). Before Ophelia exits the stage for the last time, she says, “I thank you for your good counsel” (4.5.70). Her last lines thus ironically express gratitude for the advice that has brought her to where she is. The desertion and loss that Ophelia’s mad speech reports flow in a direct line, from the conduct literature that would have been available, to Ophelia’s counselors (if they had actually lived in Shakespeare’s England), to Ophelia herself, who digests her counselors’ advice and regurgitates it in the form of her madness. In a move that is almost full circle, Ophelia offers up these pieces of advice in the form of philosophical flowers. The “nosegay” of philosophical and religious sayings was a common trope in advice literature of all kinds.41 Ophelia’s mad speeches and songs remind the audience not only that she has received advice but also that she cannot make sense of its contradictions, because they are irresolvable. There is no parallel for Ophelia’s madness in the source tales, and Neely asserts that “the introduction of the role of Ophelia and the language that represents her madness invites the audience to examine the differences between female distraction and male melancholy, madness and feigned madness, and voluntary and involuntary suicide.”42 This introduction also serves to get the audience thinking about the role of advice in the lives of young women—about its contradictions and the danger they pose. The advice that young women receive, as the example of Ophelia

implies, plays a part in their formation as subjects. Ophelia’s character is linked inextricably to the concept of advice, but most think of her as an example of a woman ruined by the lack of a mother or by her love for Hamlet.43 Mary Pipher’s 1995 bestseller Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls aims to help parents avoid Polonius’s mistakes so that their adolescent girls do not suffer the same fate as Ophelia.44 There was a brief resurgence of critical interest in Ophelia’s character after the publication of Pipher’s book, but it died down soon after. According to Pipher, The story of Ophelia, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, shows the destructive forces that affect young women. As a girl, Ophelia is happy and free, but with adolescence she loses herself. When she falls in love with Hamlet, she lives only for his approval. She has no inner direction; rather she struggles to meet the demands of Hamlet and her father. Her value is determined utterly by their approval. Ophelia is torn apart by her own efforts to please.45 Page 70 →Young women, Pipher claims, are subject to “destructive forces”; nevertheless, as her book’s publication suggests, parents can be taught to help their daughters avoid these forces. Pipher reads Ophelia’s failure as one that stems from the difficulty of living up to impossible standards. However, Ophelia’s downfall is caused by the attempts of the men in her life to guide her into adulthood “by the book,” and it reveals not only the paradoxical but also the multivalent nature of advice to women. Perhaps the reason modern-day critics shun Ophelia is because it is difficult to make sense of a woman who gets so much advice and still does not survive. As R. S. White writes, “What runs through all the different accounts of Ophelia is a pastel coloring of regret, the kind of futile speculation of an unlived future.”46 If her counselors had a more nuanced understanding of feminine virtue, as later Protestant manuals do, perhaps Ophelia would have been able to work with their advice once they were no longer present. Ophelia is an example of the ways in which well-studied advice is sometimes insufficient or even counterproductive. Because her father shuts down her analytical tendency early in the play, Ophelia is unable to put the advice she has received to good use once he is gone. The analytical tendency is, at least in part, encouraged by the later Protestant marriage manuals that underlie Shakespeare’s treatment of feminine virtue in The Winter’s Tale.

Paulina’s “Counter-Magic” Virgins were expected to obey their fathers, and wives were expected to obey their husbands as if their husbands were God’s representatives in the household.47 As I have already argued in chapter 2, however, the prescription for obedience in post-Reformation advice literature was not one that expected women to be unquestioningly obedient; rather, it posited a network of influence within and beyond marriage that was ultimately used to resubmit the wife to her husband’s authority. This helps us understand why Paulina goes unpunished in The Winter’s Tale for her apparent disobedience of her husband and king in favor of what she saw as a higher power and is rewarded with remarriage at the end of the play. Ignoring the advice of her husband and the men who attend Leontes, who advise her to be silent and obedient, Paulina takes it upon herself to restore the monarchy to health. Her apparent disobedience is therefore authorized. Shakespeare explores the idea of a sanctioned disobedience on the part of women through the concept of “counter-magic,” a term I borrow from Diane Purkiss, who uses it to categorize the condoned witch activities she uncovers in her examination of witness depositions in Page 71 →early modern English witchcraft cases.48 While the references in The Winter’s Tale to Paulina as a witch might seem to discredit her power (given the view of witches in the time period), they do not discredit the challenges Paulina presents to the order of authority in the form of chastising and trying to reform the king. Kirstie Gulick Rosenfield reads “Shakespeare’s re-appropriation of witchcraft as a complex metaphor for artistic creation, .В .В .В as a critique of anti-theatricality and as part of a cultural narrative that links femininity and birthing to art.”49 Paulina, as Rosenfield notes, is the only woman accused of witchcraft in the play who is not immediately cleared of the charge.50 Paulina remains in a position from which she can critique the structure of authority in Leontes’s kingdom. Understanding the kind of witchcraft Paulina practices thus becomes more important to our understanding of the play.

Paulina uses counter-magic to remedy the ills caused by the infection of Leontes’s jealousy. Counter-magic, the form of witchcraft in which Paulina’s character participates, thus strengthens her challenge to the authority of Leontes, rather than weakening it. Paulina’s use of such “witchcraft” to reform the king, while it may at first appear to be disobedience, is a kind of properly performed feminine virtue. Furthermore, because it is so rooted in domestic actions, Paulina’s counter-magic shows the possibility for women who perform everyday tasks to have influence on a national scale. Typically, when we encounter a witch in a text from the early modern period, we consider that witch to be the product of a coherent cultural narrative, a specific kind of witch, typically bad, who functions in a certain way in the text, as an outsider or other figure. Counter-magic, however, is restorative. In The Witch in History, Purkiss gives a history of witchcraft as seen through the eyes of women deponents, recounting the common threads that run through stories about witches, most of which reflect household issues, such as food, children, and cleanliness. Against the witch’s curse, a woman might use “counter-magical remedies,” which look a lot like recipes from household guides. To most holy people in the early modern period, the distinction between a witch and a woman practicing “counter-magic” was nonexistent, but Purkiss claims that there were many in the period who clearly distinguished between helpful and harmful magic. Witches represented possible harm to the household, while those who participated in “counter-magical remedies,” which “bear a strong resemblance to recipes, or to guides to household care,” were thought to restore the household to its intended state.51 Purkiss refers to this restorative use of counter-magic as “unwitching.”52 According to P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, unwitching is frequently the purview of doctors and of witches who are themselves called on to undo the curses they make.53 The Page 72 →kind of counter-magic Purkiss looks at, however, is the kind practiced by women who are not otherwise considered witches. There is, for Purkiss, a difference between women known as witches and those who “actively sought a social identity as magic-users, though not necessarily as witches.”54 Paulina’s witchcraft, which I propose is counter-magical, restores the monarchy and installs a female line of inheritance. Significantly, Leontes calls Paulina a “mankind witch!” (2.3.67).55 There are several such references in the play to Paulina as a witch.56 As a result of these references, scholars often see Paulina as an example of a bad witch who is an outsider figure. David Schalkwyk argues, “Paulina’s power goes far beyond that of any of the romantic heroines, which is perhaps why witchcraft continues to be invoked to the very end.”57 Witchcraft serves, for Schalkwyk, to keep Paulina’s character from being completely good (and therefore she remains dangerous because she challenges authority), by explaining away any power she has. The fact that “witchcraft continues to be invoked” does not make a lasting difference for Schalkwyk, however, because the last word of the play is Leontes’s silencing of Paulina. He claims that the play’s “ultimate restoration” is “that of the overriding potency of the lord’s word.”58 On the contrary, I argue that the “ultimate restoration” of the play is that of a female line of inheritance. Hermione is restored to the kingdom, and since Leontes’s only son is dead, Perdita emerges as the sole heir to the throne of Sicilia. The invocation of witchcraft thus does make a difference as to how Paulina’s character might have been received.59 By showing Paulina as a user of counter-magic, Shakespeare presents a recognizable and reliable character; her power over a king adds credit to the objections to absolute monarchy she voices, and her ultimate use of “magic” installs a female line of inheritance. Because she is a practitioner of counter-magic, Paulina sees it as her duty to cure the king and restore the kingdom to health. Purkiss claims that “women who feared bewitchment were also paradoxically enabledВ .В .В . to take action against the witch, action which might involve behaviours at variance with the range of feminine ideals available to women in the early modern period.”60 Paulina describes Leontes’s jealousy as “these dangerous, unsafe lunes i’th’ King” (2.2.29). According to Paulina, it is a woman’s job to heal these “unsafe lunes”—his jealousy—and it is she who will take on this job: “These dangerous, unsafe lunes i’th’King, beshrew them! / He must be told on’t, and he shall. The office / Becomes a woman best; I’ll take’t upon me” (2.2.29–32). Paulina does not doubt her ability to reform the king, even though her proclamation could be taken as a transgression. As the woman’s place of the Page 73 →household is what witches often cursed, it is the place of the woman to combat that witchcraft with “counter-magic,” and in using “counter-magic,” Paulina was “enabled” to behave in a way

“at variance” with what was expected of a woman in the early modern period. The “office becomes a woman best” because it was the woman’s place to use “counter-magic.” Paulina is referring to the use of “counter-magic” when she determines that she is the one who can best “rid the king of these unsafe lunes.” It is thus Paulina’s duty—her “office,” both as a practitioner of counter-magic and as a woman—to unwitch the king. This duty highlights the domestic prerogative that is prominent in so many post-Reformation manuals. Feminine virtue in these manuals, unlike the more restrictive (and conflictive) virtue Vives advocates, can be used to reform and restore. Paulina takes on the task of healing Leontes by reforming him. Purkiss demonstrates that stories of witchcraft also reflect concerns about the diseases of the body.61 Proclaiming herself to be Leontes’s “loyal servant” and “physician” (2.3.54), Paulina comes to Leontes to cure him of his illness, which Camillo refers to as “this diseased opinion” (1.2.294) and which even Leontes himself calls an “infection of my brains” (1.2.144). She brings the newborn child of Hermione to Leontes’s chambers with an expectation: “The silence often of pure innocence / Persuades when speaking fails” (2.2.40–41). According to Purkiss, “early modern medicine, which in garbled form did influence the practices of cunning folk as well as the counter-magical activities of villagers and townsfolk, understood all bodies as flowing substances which threatened to get out of hand.”62 In this context, it was believed that “illness or maleficium can be drawn out of one body by another.”63 Purkiss tells the story of a midwife who healed sick people using the bodies of infants, claiming that “the breath of the children would suck the spirits out of” the sick person.64 Paulina brings the infant Perdita to Leontes’s chambers, claiming to have the cure to help him rest. I come to bring him sleep. ’Tis such as you That creep like shadows by him and do sigh At each his needless heavings, such as you Nourish the cause of his awaking. I Do come with words as medicinal, as true— Honest as either—to purge him of that humour That presses him from sleep. (2.3.33–39) Page 74 →Paulina’s words, like an incantation, are medicinal, and she will “use that tongue” she has to cure her king (2.2.50). These words work in conjunction with the presentation of the infant and can very well be seen as part of her magic. Paulina’s claim that her words are “true” and “honest” further stresses that she is not taking practiced political action like his counselors. Her cure is something more homespun—as if she were a nurse to both child and king—and free of artifice. Counter-magic is an excellent concept for understanding the domestic prerogative, specifically because it brings together women’s obligations to protect the household and their obligations to use their virtue to reform husbands. Paulina’s actions, thought of in terms of early modern conduct literature for women, have a lot to do with the stress on the household found in post-Reformation Protestant marriage and household manuals. Witches often were accused of cursing the household, and it was the place of the woman to combat the damage to her domestic arena by challenging that witchcraft with counter-magic. Witches were commonly thought to be associated with household anxieties about food, especially spoiled food. For example, Purkiss tells of a woman suspected of witchcraft who, “on being refused pease, turned it rotten and uneatable.”65 Paulina, rather than spoiling food, takes the responsibility for feeding Hermione during the sixteen years that she is “dead.”66 As Purkiss notes of the stories about unwitching, “exchanges of breath, blood, urine, clothing or food characterize the counter-magical remedies.”67 Through her care of Hermione, Paulina repairs or counteracts the damage done by Leontes’s jealousy. Paulina’s engagement with the advice she receives also connects her to the women of conduct literature. Antigonus advises his wife to avoid the king (2.3.44–46), and a lord gives her similar advice (3.2.213–15). But Paulina refuses to become a passive receiver of advice. She instead sees herself in the role of “obedient

counselor” (2.3.55), one who simultaneously obeys and counsels. Camillo struggles with being both loyal to Leontes and moral when he is asked to kill Polixenes: “Is the obedience to a master, one / Who, in rebellion with himself, will have / All that are his so too” (1.2.350–52). Paulina appears to be working a countermagic in order to be a “loyal servant” (2.3.54), to heal the wrongs that have resulted from Leontes’s illness or bewitchment. Just as we saw in the conduct literature of chapter 2, Paulina’s critical interpretation and proper performance of feminine virtue come together to repair a kingdom injured by tyranny. Paulina distances herself from “bad” magic, the kind that has previously infected Leontes, so that her actions are not treated as transgressive. When Page 75 →Paulina brings Leontes to the chapel to view the statue of Hermione, she denies any wickedness in her magic. If you can behold it, I’ll make the statue move indeed, descend And take you by the hand—but then you’ll think, Which I protest against, I am assisted By wicked powers. (5.3.87–91) Her powers are not “wicked”; they are part of her performance of femininity. The everyday aspects of counter-magic make it perfectly suited to the average woman who tries to live up to the ideal of virtue. Indeed, Paulina insists that the magic she uses is not that of the “bad” witch: “those that think it is unlawful business / I am about, let them depart” (5.3.96–97). Paulina refers to her spell as “lawful” (5.3.105) and claims that Hermione’s “actions shall be holy” (5.3.104).68 Distinguishing herself from the witch associated with cursing people, Paulina allies herself with the woman who combats the witch’s “unlawful” spell. Additionally, Paulina uses the word lawful more than once to stress that she is not breaking the law with respect to the king but merely following a higher law in order to restore the kingdom. Although she distances herself ostensibly from politics, Paulina’s association with the household has political implications, because the king’s disease is not just in his mind but also in the ideology of an absolute monarchy propped up by the bad advice of counselors. Paulina accuses Leontes’s men of being the ones who “nourish the cause of his awaking” (2.3.33–36). Thus, Leontes’s illness could be seen as being caused by the attempt to live up to the ideal of absolute monarchy, because the men who dare not contradict him encourage his “unsafe lunes.”69 In this sense, Paulina takes on the task of curing not only the king but also the kingdom. In a play that appears to be about the redemption of a king and the restoration of a patriarchal order whose maintenance is based on violent masculine power, Paulina stands out as offering an alternative to that patriarchal, political order—an alternative that restores the royal family with a female line of inheritance by means of female skills culled from the domestic arena.70 This alternative order is based on feminine principles, as Paulina defines them, of penitence, health, and, finally, reconciliation. Paulina’s decision to cure the king thus works on both a domestic scale and a national one. Paulina’s apparent disobedience of her king can be seen as treason, and Page 76 →the play deals with this problem by making the will of God clearly on Paulina’s side. While a tyrant is a king who acts contrary to God’s will, it would not have been the place of his subjects to remind the king of his duty to God, as he must be thought to be “ordained by God” and therefore always acting in God’s stead and with God’s wisdom and desire, regardless of whether he is “good” or “evil.” According to King James I, in “A Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at Whitehall,” God looked favorably on the kings who ruled in his name: “For kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods.”71 Leontes, however, is called a “tyrant” by the oracle, who delivers the pagan version of God’s word. Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, his innocent babe truly begotten, and the King shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found.

(3.2.130–34)

Leontes’s disobedience to the word of God leads to the death of his only male heir and to the apparent death of his wife. Paulina takes the word of God as the higher law that she will follow. She publicly calls Leontes a tyrant (albeit by apophasis). I’ll not call you tyrant; But this most cruel usage of your queen, Not able to produce more accusation than your weak-hinged fancy, something savours Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you, Yea, scandalous to the world. (2.3.115–20) The king would not have been bound to “produce more accusation” than his “own weak-hinged fancy, ” because theories of kingship held his rule to be ordained by God. King James I claimed, “Yet does God never leave kings unpunished when they transgress these limits.”72 Further, “An Homily against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion,” published under Elizabeth I, makes it clear that the punishment and reformation of a king was up to God exclusively, not to the king’s subjects: “If we will have an evil prince (when God shall send such a one) taken away, and a good in his place, let us take away our wickedness which provoketh God to place such a one over us, and God will either displace him, or of an evil prince, make him a good prince.”73 Paulina Page 77 →sees that there is no justice in the tying of subjects’ hands under a tyrannical ruler, and she points out that even in the patriarchal structure of a monarchy through divine right, there is an authority to which the king must answer—God. A king must always obey the will of God, but it is not for the subjects to question whether the king knows God’s will. Even if Leontes is a tyrant, then, Paulina is still a kind of traitor. According to the ideals of absolute monarchy, Apollo’s judgment of Leontes ought to have occurred solely between Apollo and Leontes, without the involvement of Leontes’s subjects, but here Shakespeare offers us the judgment against Leontes publicly. All can see that God has made his will clear to Leontes, and Leontes has expressly disobeyed that will. In response to the oracle, Leontes says, “There is no truth at all I’th’ oracle. / The sessions shall proceed; this is mere falsehood” (3.2.138–39). Upon expressly denying the truth of the oracle, Leontes is brought the news of the death of his only son (3.2.140–43). At the moment of the receipt of that news, Leontes realizes that he has erred: “Apollo’s angry, and the heavens themselves / Do strike at my injustice” (3.2.144–45). In the presence of the court, Leontes admits his error and the punishment it has brought on him. Leontes’s disobedience is contrasted with Paulina’s, because he is punished while she is not. Leontes’s tyranny leads to the apparent death of his ancestral line to the kingdom; Paulina’s disobedience to the word of her king leads to the reunion of the royal family. Within the context of the play, Paulina’s disobedience is given preference over Leontes’s power as king. Paulina’s disobedience of her king and her husband ought to have been seen as an offense to God in the context of the early modern chain of authority, but it is not. It may be argued that Paulina’s loss of her husband, Antigonus, was the punishment exacted on her by God. However, Antigonus appears to be the one who is punished, for obeying his (tyrant) king. In Antigonus’s dream of Hermione’s ghost, the ghost tells him, “For this ungentle business / Put on thee by my lord, thou ne’er shalt see / Thy wife Paulina more” (3.3.33–35). The death of Antigonus is not the punishment of Paulina; rather, it is the punishment of Antigonus. Paulina’s character in The Winter’s Tale reveals that unquestioning obedience is not the ideal of behavior for women: a woman must use her feminine virtue and domestic skills in such a way as to influence others to do good. Among critics, there has been little to no disagreement about the importance of the character of Paulina in

the play. But there the consensus ends. Some have described Paulina as falling into the stereotype of a shrew or that of a goodnatured servant, and others have described her as Leontes’s counselor.74 Page 78 →Paulina has also been compared to mythical characters, such as Hecate.75 However important the critics may consider Paulina’s character, their respective frameworks fall short of assigning her a function as a subversive element in the play. Yet I argue that she can be seen as subversive precisely because she stands as an example of a woman who uses her feminine virtue to undo the damage of patriarchal tyranny. In this case, Paulina uses her virtue to unwitch Leontes. Chastising him, Paulina tells Leontes there is no hope for him—“nothing but despair”—and that the gods will never again look on him favorably. But O thou tyrant, Do not repent these things, for they are heavier Than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee To nothing but despair. A thousand knees, Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting, Upon a barren mountain, and still winter In storm perpetual could not move the gods To look that way thou wert. (3.2.205–12) Leontes responds by asking for more chastisement. Once he has been unwitched, even Leontes recognizes that his jealousy has caused the death of his family; he is penitent and requests that Paulina not spare words when disciplining him: “Go on, go on. / Thou canst not speak too much; I have deserved / All tongues to their bitt’rest” (3.2.212–14). Unlike before, when he was so taken with his jealousy that he could not see reality, Leontes now understands that the only person he can rely on is Paulina, because she does not flatter him. A lord reminds Paulina that she has still spoken against her king and ought not continue to speak this way to him, even though he has requested it (3.2.214–16), but Leontes wants only the truth from Paulina: “Thou didst speak well / When most the truth, which I receive much better / Than to be pitied of thee” (3.2.230–32). Leontes submits to Paulina’s authority and, by doing so, installs an alternative to his violent masculine use of power. Once again, that alternative becomes based, in The Winter’s Tale, on feminine principles of penitence, health, and, finally, reconciliation. Leontes has the last words of the play, but this does not discredit Paulina. On the contrary, it demonstrates that the goal of the reformative power of feminine virtue is to resubmit the woman to power. However, in this case, that woman has reformed the entire power structure to which she will again Page 79 →become subject. In a speech that begins “O peace, Paulina!” (5.3.135), Leontes matches her with Camillo and asks her to lead the way in discussing the years that have passed since Hermione’s “death.” The end of the play, in which Paulina is placed back under the control of a husband by order of the king, completes the performative/reformative cycle of feminine virtue, because Paulina’s restoration of order means that she too must be restored as subject. Paulina’s counter-magic is used to combat evil but is put aside once order is restored. Shakespeare’s Paulina is, in sum, a sympathetic character whose rebellion against a king saves a kingdom. In the end, Paulina’s alternative to Leontes’s masculine and violent method of rule is given preference in the body of The Winter’s Tale, for it brings about the eventual comedic resolution of the plot. Further, the influence of feminine virtue is not weakened by a resubmission to masculine authority, because that resubmission is its telos. Paulina’s break with the norms of English patriarchy, along with the idea that it may have been the violent masculine power of that patriarchy that “infected” Leontes (which Paulina must “cure”), makes a compelling argument in favor of a serious restructuring of that patriarchy. Shakespeare presents Paulina as one who uses counter-magic to allow her character to have more freedom to ask questions of violent masculine power, while simultaneously showing her to be “good” and therefore not a serious threat to absolute systems of rule.

Conclusion

Ophelia and Paulina are two very different characters from Shakespeare’s stage who together reveal how he works with the complex multivalence of feminine virtue. After ingesting the contradictory advice that her counselors give her, Ophelia cannot resolve the contradictions on her own. In fact, those contradictions drive her mad. Duncan Salkeld’s claim that “madness [is] an effect of contradictions within the ruling ideology” helps us see Ophelia’s madness as a direct result of the “ruling ideology” expressed by the advice she receives.76 The traditional “ideal” of feminine virtue as expounded in early conduct manuals is not only impossible to achieve (as an ideal ought to be) but impossible to comprehend, because it is full of contradictions. Paulina, working within a newer and more flexible post-Reformation model of female conduct, one that can embrace even the principles of counter-magic, is able to employ ideals of female behavior to repair the damage done to her king and kingdom by patriarchal power. She practices domestic “counter-magical remedies,” as defined by Purkiss, through her healing powers designed to Page 80 →restore the king and the kingdom to health; Leontes is “ill” or “bewitched” with jealousy, and Paulina comes to cure him of this jealousy. Following this model of behavior, Paulina shows the power of obedience to reform systems of power, even if the result is her own resubmission to authority. While Ophelia is discouraged from interpreting the expectations placed on her, Paulina is discouraged, by the circumstances of The Winter’s Tale, from obeying without thinking critically about her behavior. These characters illustrate another major difference between earlier and later conduct literature: the former advocates virginity yet encourages marriage, while the latter concentrates on the power of married women to use their obedience within marriage to reform their husbands. If theater offers possible personae for its audience members to emulate, these two female characters encourage thinking critically about behavioral ideals for women.

Page 81 →Four Virtue in Early Modern Women’s Advice Christine de Pizan, sitting one day in her study, discovered that “the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the oratorsВ .В .В . speak from one and the same mouth” against women.1 Thus far, I have been chiefly concerned with that “mouth,” the uniform opinions of men about women. In this chapter, I would like to turn to the women about whom it speaks, examining how women themselves engage with and enforce behavioral prescriptions, particularly through their portrayal and enactment of the circulation of feminine virtue. “Feminine virtue,” as I have been using the phrase, encompasses all of the virtues traditionally associated with early modern femininity, including, but not limited to, chastity, silence, and obedience.2 “Circulation” refers, in this case, to the movement (or transmission) of feminine virtue in and through advice texts. Whereas male authors of advice literature tend to imagine feminine virtue as flowing from the male authority to the female learner, occasionally mediated by a female teacher, female authors demonstrate a much more complicated understanding of how feminine virtue moves through its agents. Texts authored by women tend to represent feminine virtue as circulating through and within groups of women rather than being created and imparted by a single author-teacher. The way female authors write about feminine virtue can offer us a new understanding of early modern representations of feminine virtue, and it can also offer us a new way to look at the writings of early modern women. Early modern women writers are no longer the sought-after lost objects of feminist scholarship, because of the hard work of many scholars in the last few decades.3 For example, most university libraries carry a number of volumes of Ashgate’s Early Modern Englishwoman series, and most researchersPage 82 → looking for some writings by early modern women might need to look no further. There are many print and online editions of women’s manuscript writing from the period and other bibliographical pointers to resources.4 Organizations such as the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and the triennial conference “Attending to Early Modern Women” keep the exciting conversations about the work of early modern women alive and well.5 In this chapter, I propose to build on the excellent work done by a community of scholars interested in the study of early modern women by looking at how early modern women writers figure the circulation of virtue in their works. The category of early modern women writers is not, of course, monolithic. In what follows, I hope to do some justice to the variety of voices that can be heard in early modern writings by women. For all of the excellent work that has been done to bring women’s writing from the early modern period to our libraries, the kinds of women represented and even, in some cases, the kinds of writings by women are limited. While there are many upper-class women whose writings survive, for instance, there are not as many writings from literate women among the lower and middling classes. This limitation makes it impossible to claim to have a way to represent all women’s experiences in early modern England, but I hope to show at least some piece of how the women writers whose works we do have thought about feminine virtue. By focusing on how women write about feminine virtue, I hope to capture variety and similarity among writings by women in early modern England. I am particularly interested in the circulation of feminine virtue—how women writers tend to represent the flow of virtue among women—and the display of feminine virtue through writing. Although all female writers do not represent the circulation of feminine virtue in exactly the same way, they do tend to figure it differently from male authors. As a comparison point, I offer The English Gentlewoman by Richard Brathwaite. This 1631 text, intended as a companion piece to Brathwaite’s 1630 The English Gentleman (the two were sold together in one edition in 1641), suggests that the male author constructs the ideal woman in his text and then offers it to the reader. Brathwaite claims in the prefatory material that the personified book is herself a perfect gentlewoman and is designed to instruct. She is not as loose as those other books who, like prostitutes, are available everywhere.6 Brathwaite offers a particular kind of feminine virtue to his reader; according to Joan Klein, “Brathwaite hopes that his gentlewoman will be virtuous, but he believes that her virtue should be softened by gentility and polished by courtesy.”7 Brathwaite also argues that women must look to the model of behavior: “In a word, conform your selves to such patterns as are imitable;Page 83 →

imitate them in all such actions as are laudable.”8 His book is just such a pattern, according to the prefatory material. In this formulation, the male author builds an idealized woman out of virtue and then offers this perfect woman to his readers as a model to be imitated. The reader is involved only insofar as she either imitates the model correctly or incorrectly; she herself is not an agent in the circulation of virtue. Furthermore, all virtue springs from the male author; there are only ancient examples of women from whom he draws in building his perfect “English Gentlewoman.” Texts about feminine virtue by women, however, must necessarily claim an authority for themselves by involving women in the circulation of feminine virtue. Female writers draw their authority from a range of cultural expectations, and where a writer falls in this range has everything to do with the purpose of her text. One of the more studied categories of early modern advice literature is the genre of “mother’s advice.” These texts take many forms—letters, treatises, legacies, and other prose writing, both for publication and not for publication, and even popular chapbooks. Mother’s advice manuals were published in larger numbers starting in the early seventeenth century. Betty S. Travitsky credits Nicholas Breton with the surge in publication of mother’s advice manuals.9 Breton’s 1602 work The Mother’s Blessing, written in the voice of a mother, may have started the trend, but it certainly did not represent it perfectly.10 Published early seventeenthcentury mother’s advice manuals frequently took the form of the “mother’s legacy,” which were books of advice left to children by mothers who might soon die. Wendy Wall argues persuasively that the genre of the mother’s legacy authorizes women to give advice where they may not have been able to before.11 But Breton’s work is not entirely like these authorizing works that Wall talks about. Although she, too, admits that Breton “establishes” the genre of the mother’s legacy, Jennifer Heller sees in Breton’s work a much more “mild, conformist religio-political bent” than in some other works in the genre.12 In comparison, the female writers of this early period in the genre of legacy writing “express a profound concern with England’s religious trends and a passionate interest in their children’s futures.”13 The newly authorized voice of women is significantly more radical than the voice Breton introduced at the turn of the seventeenth century.14 My interest in mother’s advice—the legacy genre as well as more informal sorts of motherly advice—is in how the advice figures virtue. Mothers, so frequently the target audience of advice manuals written by men, demonstrate their own investment in the circulation of feminine virtue in their legacy writing. Because this circulation is my focus, I am less concerned with the advice that mothers offer their sons except insofar as it might have somethingPage 84 → to say about how the author sees her own feminine virtue. Much of the scholarship on mother’s advice has focused on all advice written by mothers as similar enough to deserve combined study.15 That some mothers write to daughters, some to sons, and some to both sons and daughters matters only in terms of what the topics of the advice are. For a study like this one, however, the gender of the audience is just as important as the gender of the author. How mother-authors advise their daughters demonstrates that mothers saw writing as a form of teaching their daughters about feminine virtue. The stark difference between advice to women and to men can be seen in advice on the action of breast-feeding. Elizabeth Clinton Lincoln’s The Countess of Lincoln’s Nursery takes a particular motherly action—nursing one’s own child—and argues that this motherly action is an outward show of virtue. The work, dedicated to her daughter-in-law “Lady Briget Countesse of Lincolne,” applauds the countess’s decision to nurse her own children, laments Clinton’s mistake in choosing not to nurse her own children, argues that God intended for mothers to nurse their own infants, and chastises any physically able mother who would choose not to nurse her own child. In her dedication, Clinton writes, because your rare example, hath given an excellent approbation to the matter contained in this Booke, for you have passed by all excuses, and have ventured upon, & doe goe on with that loving act of a loving mother; in giving the sweete milke of your owne breasts, to your owne childe; wherein you have gone before the greatest number of honourable Ladies of your place, in these latter times.16 Nursery follows the model of a conduct manual in claiming influence for the dedicatee. However, this example stands out because the virtuous behavior worth imitating is breast-feeding. Unlike many of the virtuous actions

that are associated with women and at which men are perceived to be more skilled, such as appropriately timed silence, breast-feeding is solely the domain of women; moreover, it is solely the domain of mothers. Nursery thus claims a special place for mothers in the movement of virtue among women: it is mothers whose examples ought to be followed. Clinton authorizes her writing by calling on her own experience as a mother: “Because it hath pleased God to blesse me with many children, and so caused me to observe many things falling out to mothers, and to their children.”17 Her subject position as mother grants her the benefit of experience, but it is her own encounter with nursing that really lends authority to her arguments. Page 85 →After presenting and refuting arguments against nursing, Clinton pauses to offer a personal narrative, denying that she wishes to force other women to do as she has done in her life. In fact, she asserts that because she did not nurse her own children, she cannot have been made “bolder” by her own experience with the practice.18 Clinton expresses regret that she chose not to nurse her children, and this regret changes how a reader encounters Clinton’s text. By writing of nursing as a very important motherly action she wishes she had done, Clinton removes herself from the suspicion of wanting everyone to act as she did. Because the countess to whom the work is dedicated does nurse her own children, it is she to whom the reader should turn for guidance by example. In this text, the practical teaching that derives from feminine virtue flows from the dedicatee to the reader, because virtue is active. The countess is both reader and patroness; therefore, she is the source and the object of the text’s virtue. Nursery is an example of the kind of conduct text that only a woman can write, and it authorizes itself as such. The main subject, nursing one’s own child, is an action of mother nourishing paralleled in the text’s advice. Just as a mother can teach you to nurse your own child, your child can be taught by your nursing. In this way, the circulation of virtue is closed—happening only between women. But Clinton’s position as author and authority is complicated by the fact that she did not have the experience about which she writes. Because she did not nurse her own children, Clinton is in a space between mother and nonmother as an author. By her own formulation, choosing not to nurse one’s own child is unnatural because it goes against God’s plan for women as can be seen through natural affection and bodily changes.19 If this is how she sees women who do not nurse, she must think of herself in the same way. She does express extreme regret and also a little bit of selfloathing about her decision, as we see when she blames the death of two of her eighteen children on a failure to nurse: “I feare the death of one or two of my little Babes came by the defalt of their nurses.”20 However, because she is a mother, even if not a perfect one by her own standards, her regret is more meaningful than, for example, Thomas Salter’s prescriptions.21 Clinton also claims that mothers have a special power to convey feminine virtue. There is some evidence that Clinton’s treatise did have an influence on other women. Virginia Brackett, for instance, claims that Clinton’s work was a “sociopolitical influence upon Bradstreet’s writings.”22 According to Brackett, Anne Bradstreet experienced Clinton’s work through her “exposure to the Lincoln library.”23 Ronald Huebert, noting that Clinton’s desire to breast-feed violated social norms, argues that Clinton “deserves credit for having Page 86 →noticed, with dismay, that the female breast is an index of socio-economic status within her society; and for having called on women to value themselves and their children at the expense of the entrenched hierarchy.”24 In Brackett’s and Huebert’s arguments, Clinton’s treatise about breast-feeding becomes a text that encourages women to take a look at their own position in the functioning of society as a whole. In a sense, Clinton’s text makes the circulation of feminine virtue literal through the example of breast-feeding. The image of circulation that Clinton uses also asks women to look at their own virtue in a different way—as something made of substance with the ability to challenge a power structure.25 Huebert’s claims that Nursery is a form of social critique are not completely at odds with the genre of the mother’s legacy. Take, for example, Isabella Whitney’s poem of social critique “Will and Testament.” Wall argues that the poem is a type of legacy writing, even though Whitney does not write as a mother.26 Whitney’s speaker is a London woman without money who has been forced to leave the city. In leaving, the speaker “bequeaths” the city’s characters and institutions. The poem is satiric in its tone, but a sense of warmth and sadness runs throughout its lines. Whitney’s speaker begins by reprimanding London for not deserving her love. Although the city never showed her “pitie,” she still set a “fyxed

fancy” on London, as “many Women foolyshly” tend to do with undeserving men.27 The speaker does not merely “fancy” London, however; she is also willing to “leave to [London] such a Treasurye” in “perfect love and charytie.”28 Whitney’s speaker performs her virtue through her submission to London’s authority over her, but she does so only to critique the city’s cruel treatment of those who are out of service, that is without employment. Because she exists in the margins of the economy of London, Whitney’s speaker is in a unique position to examine and criticize the city.29 Much like the mother of the legacy genre, this speaker’s marginalization is empowering. Although the mother’s legacy is a very prominent example of the circulation of feminine virtue from women authors to their readers, we can see examples of women advising women in the attempt to pass on feminine virtue in other texts as well. Take, for instance, texts written between and among friends. Women are not encouraged to be friends in much of early modern literature. In Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women, for instance, Livia moves from one woman’s life to another while wreaking havoc. Even in less biting texts, women are shown to be competition first and foremost. The Taming of the Shrew, for example, introduces the viewer to the relationship between Bianca and Kate with Kate’s cruelty to her sister, followed quickly by her father’s seeming preferencePage 87 → for Bianca. Authors that portray fruitful friendships between women thus stand out as the exception to the rule. Katherine Philips, Amelia Lanyer, and Lady Mary Wroth are three such exceptional writers. These friendships are not merely ways for women to relate to one another; they are also often the main source of virtue for the women involved. One such friendship can be found in Lady Mary Wroth’s prose romance Urania, which shows a relationship between one of its main female characters, Pamphilia, and the allegorical character Constancy. At the end of the first book, only Pamphilia has the power to receive the key from Constancy and free the prisoners. Constancy becomes part of Pamphilia physically through her demonstration of the virtue: “Constancy stood holding the keyes, which Pamphilia tooke; at which instant Constancy vanished, as metamorphosing her self into her breast.”30 In this scene of the Urania, Wroth illustrates the circulation of feminine virtue in Pamphilia’s absorption of the virtue of constancy. Wroth’s sonnet sequence related to the Urania, “Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,” stands out for its lack of attention to the beloved object (Amphilanthus). Pamphilia’s main foe throughout the sequence is “Love” and her own inability to resist it/him. Urania and the sonnets therefore show a kind of community of women in the development of whose virtue men play little part. Poets such as Amelia Lanyer and Katherine Philips demonstrate that virtue can be multiplied in communities of women because it increases as it flows among and between women. In her eleven dedications to Salve Deus Rex Judaeroum, Lanyer draws a picture of virtue that suggests it can be cultivated uniquely in a closed circle involving only women. Philips similarly portrays relationships among and between women as more divine than those between women and men. For Lanyer, though, the community of women need not necessarily concentrate on building personal relationships female-to-female:31 virtue flows from nature, to virtuous women, to the books they read, to other virtuous women, whose virtue grows through reading. Whereas Philips uses poetry to express the divinity of female friendship, Lanyer employs her writing as a conduit for virtue. Scholars are divided on whether the many dedications to Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum represent a feminist reimagining of an all-female community. Feminist critics such as Elaine Beilin argue that Lanyer “circumvents masculine poetry” by drawing her praise of women from nature rather than art.32 Lanyer surrounds Christ with women in the poem, which suggests that an all-female community can be pious and virtuous. Against this feminist reimagining, other scholars posit the notion that Lanyer actually shows tensions Page 88 →between women in these dedications.33 Lanyer’s dedication to Mary Sidney, for instance, figures the change from night to day as a competition between Diana/Cynthia/ Phoebe/Dictina (all names for the goddess of the moon) and Aurora (the morning), in which Aurora “dims” Phoebe’s light and takes her place. I would like to reconsider these dedications in terms of how they function to set up a learning space for women who want to be virtuous. Each dedication posits a slightly different view of the way in which virtue moves from one person to the next and of what it might take to share that virtue. Mary V. Silcox sees virtue as central to Lanyer’s poetic project. In her discussion of teaching Lanyer, Silcox writes,

Lanyer takes this ideological anxiety about women’s virtue and the activities suitable to a virtuous woman, always submerged in women’s writings of the early seventeenth century, and raises it to be, not just in plain view, but her subject of subjects and her source of defiance. It is essential for students to recognize that her preoccupation with demonstrating that women achieve—indeed, actively realize—virtue in their own lives as well as historically through Christ’s story turns what we would see as a restriction into a source of power and pride.34 For Silcox, Lanyer’s protofeminism has everything to do with her portrayal of feminine virtue. Here, I am interested primarily in how Lanyer paints a picture of the relationships between women in terms of virtue. That Lanyer presents her work only to women is telling, because, as Susanne Woods points out, it “assumes a community of intellectual women, and makes no serious apology for a woman poet publishing her own work.”35 If we consider the prefatory material to Salve Deus to be a kind of conduct manual for women, Lanyer’s exclusion of men suggests that it is women who are most fit to teach other women. Feminine virtue, as Lanyer imagines it, is not static but interactive. The power to discern meaning lies with the reader in many of these dedications. The text, Lanyer admits, is faulty, but the readers’ virtues will make the truth of it shine through. Books of conduct literature written for women by men tend to approach the subject of virtue by suggesting that the books’ content can make a woman virtuous. Brathwaite’s The English Gentlewoman, for instance, claims that the virtue is in the personified book and can spread to the reader. Lanyer complicates this trope by drawing a picture of the way virtue might flow from woman to woman both within and as mediated by her text. Truly virtuous women, Lanyer suggests, draw their virtue from nature, and those virtuous Page 89 →women can, in turn, imbue Lanyer’s text with virtue through reading and interpreting. The first dedication of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum asks Queen Anne to improve the text by reading it: “Reade it faire Queene, though it defective be, / Your Excellence can grace both It and Mee / For you have rifled Nature of her store” (5–7).36 Lanyer’s call for the queen to “grace” her “defective” text is not, in itself, extraordinary for a dedication. Early modern texts often included a modesty topos to this effect.37 Consider, for instance, Spenser’s opening to book 3 of the Faerie Queene, in which he claims to be unable to write of the perfect virtue of Queen Elizabeth I, as he can only “in colourd showesВ .В .В . shadow itt.”38 Spenser’s opening suggests that the queen should look for herself shadowed in the virtuous female characters. Lanyer’s dedication, by comparison, encourages critical reading and interpretation in order to correct the deficiency of her verse. Each time there is a modesty topos in this first dedication, the speaker of the verse claims that the queen can make the poetry better: the claims “That so these rude unpollisht lines of mine, / Graced by you, may seeme the more divine” (35–36) and “my GlasseВ .В .В . for one looke from your faire eyes it su’th” (40, 42) are just a few examples.39 Here, then, the modesty topos is not asking for forgiveness. Rather, it presents an obligation to its virtuous reader: this text can be made better only through the reader’s active reading and interpretation. As a further demonstration of what her poem requires from its reader, Lanyer uses another common metaphor found in conduct literature, that of the mirror. Lanyer’s mirror is not, however, the “Christall Glasse” of Philip Stubbes’s work or even the cautionary “Myrrour for Magistrates” of the mid-sixteenth century. The “Glasse” Lanyer presents to the queen reflects her virtues, rather than demonstrating to the queen virtues ready for imitation. Moreover, for the mirror to work, it must have a virtuous reader.40 It will work even better, Lanyer’s speaker claims, if the queen can read the poem together with her daughter, Elizabeth. Through the shared reading of these two virtuous women, Lanyer’s mirror (this poem) will become “a glorious Skie” with two “glittring Suns” in it (97–98).41 Although Lanyer draws on the mirror of conduct literature, the reigning metaphor of the dedicatory poems is a feast in which the main attraction is the suffering of Christ. Lanyer’s speaker asks “all vertuous Ladies in generall” to attend the queen to the feast: “Let this faire Queene not unattended bee, / When in my Glasse she daines her selfe to see” (6–7).42 Virtue becomes a guide through the work: “for she alone / Can leade you right that you can never fall” (10–11).43 However, not only the Queen can offer the virtue that guides them here; the “vertuous Ladies in generall” can also produce the Page 90 →virtue necessary to

guide others. The speaker calls for them to share so that “others by your virtues may be graced” (70).44 By meditating on the passion of Christ, which they will be able to do by reading this book, they will also be able to transform the world with their virtues. Lanyer’s dedications tell the story of the flow of virtue from nature, to the virtuous, to what they read (with an eye for interpreting it in the fairest way possible, of course), and then back again to other readers of this same text. As the dedications progress, however, Lanyer’s speaker claims more and more authority for the text through the body of Christ. Whereas Brathwaite’s text took its authority from its position as the perfect English gentlewoman, Lanyer presents to her patronesses the suffering of Christ. In her 1664 Poems, Katherine Philips includes a number of poems written to other women in her coterie of female poets. Scholarship on Philips in recent years tends to concentrate either on her royalist politics or on the nature of the relationship between the female members of this coterie surrounding the “Matchless Orinda.” In her study, Carol Barash focuses on Philips’s politics, claiming, “After Philips, вЂfriendship’ also becomes the site of a mythically collective female response to a set of shared political conflicts, and thus a trope of political cohesion and stability.”45 In one of the most cogent and interesting readings of Philips’s poetry, as expressing same-sex desire, Valerie Traub argues, “By deploying an idiom of idealized amicitia heretofore reserved for men, Philips not only usurps some of that tradition’s symbolic capital, but also makes manifest the homoerotic potential lodged within all those chaste female friendships.”46 Although they tend to differ in the choice of poems to read, these two trends in the scholarship on Philips share a concern with one very important aspect of her poetry: the nature of friendship and emotional intimacy between women.47 In her poems to her female friends, Philips also demonstrates a concern for feminine virtue similar to that of the other authors I have been discussing so far. For a poet who has such an interest in politics, Philips limits the sphere of feminine virtue, as it can be transferred from one woman to another only in private. This desire for the expression of a perfect friendship away from the world can be seen all over the Poems. Take, for instance, “A retir’d Friendship, to Ardelia,” in which the poet opens with a request to “innocently spend an hour” (1.3), claiming, “From Bloud and Plots this place is free” (3.3). Removing herself and the subject allows the poet and her companion to “the boisterous World disdain” (9.2). Thus, the feminine virtue we see in these relationships the poet represents is one that can only be perfect insofar as it is removed from the “boisterous World.” Philips’s poetry also occasionally Page 91 →expresses some regret over this retirement, because it hides the perfection of her subject’s virtue. In “Lucasia,” the poet laments that the ancients never had a chance to know this perfect woman. If they had, “from her the Wise would copies draw” (19). Lucasia is such a shining example of feminine virtue “That had she liv’d where Legends were devised, / Rome had been just, and she been canonized” (39–40). Acknowledging that “they admire best who dare imitate,” the poet points to the importance of passing on feminine virtue (69). By focusing on the loss to history of such a paragon, however, Philips’s poet-speaker stops just short of giving her subject the power to influence others outside of their friendship in this life. For Philips, feminine virtue circulates best between living women in private. In death, the subject’s virtue becomes the property of the world, and only then can it be passed on to other women. Philips’s elegy “In Memory of That Excellent Person Mrs. Mary Lloyd of Bodiscist in Denbighshire, Who Died Nov. 13, 1656, After She Came Thither from Pembroke-shire” sets Lloyd’s actions as the example for all to follow. Lloyd was “Meek as a Virgin, Prudent as a Wife” (26); her household government ought to “be a Patern for a Monarchy” (40); she was charitable and civil and had the unique ability “from all other WomenВ .В .В . To draw their good, but nothing of their ill” (85–86). The poem concludes, “A Royal Birth had less advantage been, / ’Tis more to die a Saint then live a Queen” (105–6). Whereas Lucasia serves as only a theoretical model for women to follow, Lloyd becomes a “saint, ” belonging to all. Lucasia’s virtue is closely guarded by the poet-speaker’s private friendship, but in death, Lloyd’s virtue becomes the property of the world.48 One of the most public displays of feminine virtue can be seen in wives advising their husbands. Likewise, the advice of wives is frequently a little more fraught with cultural meaning than the advice of mothers, because the

mothers are advising a subordinate while the wives are advising, at best, an equal or, more commonly, a superior. Rather than circulating feminine virtue between women, wives are tasked with using their feminine virtue to reform husbands or to keep them happy. What one text considers to be good advice leading to an advantageous outcome might be another text’s “nagging” In some ways, wives’ advice illustrates most clearly the need for women to negotiate behavioral expectations. When it is not done well, offering advice can be as damning as behaving inappropriately. However, a wife who offers advice properly can serve other wives as an example of a woman who uses her feminine virtue to “teach” her husband. While writing about chastity might have been considered unchaste, writing about one’s love for a husband was not. As Juan Luis Vives claims, the Page 92 →two most special virtues in a wife are “chastite and great love towarde her husbande” (U3v).49 We can see this in the example of Margaret Tyndal Winthrop’s letters to her husband, John.50 In a letter from 1627, Winthrop writes, I can not expres my love to you as I desire. in these poore livelesse lines, but I doe hartily wish you did see my harte how true and faythfull it is to you, and how much I doe desire to be allwayes with you. to injoy the sweet comfort of your presence, and those helps from you in sperituall and temperall dutyes w[hich] I am so unfite to performe without you. It makes me to see the want of you and wish my selfe with you, but I desire wee may be gided by God in all our wayes who is able to derect us for the best and so I will wayt upon him with pacience who is all sufficient for me. I shall not need to right much to you at this time.51 In a move that resembles the poet’s modesty topos, Winthrop suggests that the words available to her for writing a letter are insufficient to express her love. She argues that “presence” would be the key to demonstrating that she has a “true and faithful” heart. Throughout her letters, Margaret expresses her sadness about her husband’s absence, and this sadness is often accompanied by a sense that physical closeness would be better proof of her wifely devotion than the words of her letters. Margaret cannot demonstrate her virtue to John when he is not around, and she further suggests that she cannot, in fact, be an entirely virtuous wife in his absence. She is “unfit to perform” her duties (both spiritual and earthly) without him. Her virtue as a wife, then, derives directly from her husband. For Winthrop, the most virtuous woman is a married one who has her husband close by. You can see the importance of her husband to her virtue in the very physical language that she uses to express her disappointment at his absence. Because her husband is not there, she cannot express her desire as she would like, nor can she receive the sweet comfort of John’s physical presence. Winthrop portrays her virtue as being tied to the will of God and her husband, as opposed to being generated in a closed community of women. Virtue and happiness are closely related for Winthrop: she can be most virtuous when she is most content. In contrast to Winthrop’s letter, which asserts a special place for wives among the virtuous, Katherine Philips’s “A Married State” presents the possibility that the single life of active virginity can be the happiest and, therefore, the most virtuous. This poem demonstrates one image of the growth of a virtuous woman without a husband or other women to support that Page 93 →growth. She uses violent and worrisome language in her description of marriage: “blustering,” “pangs,” “cares,” “extort,” “offend,” and “distract” are a few examples. These words make the married life sound not only difficult but frightening (her references to “fears” and “tears” help with this as well). Conversely, the virgin life is “crowned with much content” (5). Virginity is not only easier than marriage but more regal (“crowned”). Virginity is topped with happiness, in contrast to the pain and sorrow of marriage. But Philips’s speaker does not figure marriage as something that just accidentally happens: in this poem, the woman’s desire causes marriage. The advice “Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel,” which makes it clear that virginity requires the action of suppressing, challenges the idea that virginity is passive whereas married sexuality is active. Virginity becomes active. But here, “wild nature,” or desire, also becomes the dangerous piece of woman’s nature. The “little ease” (1) that the poem threatens in its opening can also refer to the woman’s desire. The fire of longing, in other words, does not get “put out” by

marriage. Acknowledging that the virgin may want to get married because she feels the desire for a husband (physical and not physical), the speaker follows with reasons why this thinking is wrong. The repetition of “No” in the center of the poem (“No blustering husbands to create your fears; / No pangs of childbirth to extort your tears; / No children’s cries for to offend your ears,” lines 7–9) gives the reader a sense of the joys of virginity from the negative point of view. The single or virgin life is one of lack, according to these lines. What the virgin lacks is trouble, but it is lack nonetheless. Of what she does have, we know only of “content” (5) and nothing else. This can give the impression of freedom: where married life is like being bound or fettered to unhappiness, the single life is like being free from such bonds. The repeating “No” also gives the reader a sense of the urgency of the caution the poem offers. These lines imply that the single woman will necessarily face all of these things if she ignores the poem’s advice to stay away from marriage. But there is also something unspoken here: these fearful things (the “blustering husbands,” “pangs of childbirth,” “children’s cries,” and “worldly crosses” of lines 7–10) might be seen as desirable things as well. Having no “children’s cries,” for instance, means that a woman does not have children’s laughter. Because virginity is a state of lack in this poem’s framework, pieces of a potential life are missing. The virgin state’s happiness comes not only from its lack of cares but also from its position closer to God than the other states of a woman’s life. Marriage presents women with more “worldly crosses” to keep them from their prayers (10), and virginity offers the woman a higher state in a religious sense. Page 94 →This fits with the teachings of the Catholic Church, though the Church of England was much more focused on the value of married women. This doctrinal difference might explain why not too much is made of the piety of the virgin in the poem. In advising women to remain virgins because marriage is full of suffering, Katherine Philips’s “A Married State” demonstrates that virginity can be an active choice for a woman to make. Early modern authors such as Juan Luis Vives treat virginity as guarding against violation, and Philips puts a new twist on that perspective by suggesting that it also guards against a commitment to a life of suffering. Most of the lines of the poem claim that marriage is suffering, but lines 14–15 most clearly show that the poem treats virginity as an active choice. In these two lines, the speaker calls unmarried women to arms: “Turn, turn apostate to love’s levity, / Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel.” According to this poem, married life is filled with husbands and children who act on a wife, whereas the unmarried life is one in which the virgin has the ability to do what she likes (maintain a close relationship to God, keep her desires under control, choose to be free of worry). Philips’s virgin state is thus akin to a closed community of one woman; it is here that a woman can be most virtuous and avoid the trap that her own desire might set for her. Philips’s poem about virginity echoes her sentiments in the friendship poems. Unlike Lanyer, for whom feminine virtue circulates among women in a very public way, Philips sees feminine virtue as best circulated in private between women. Another model of the circulation of feminine virtue can be seen in Giovanni Bruto’s manual composed in 1555 for Marieta (Maria) Catenea, translated as The Necessary, Fit, and Convenient Education of a Young Gentlewoman in 1598.52 This manual suggests that the young woman’s father surround her with women who will be good teachers; it then proceeds to tell the father how he should instruct these women to instruct. Bruto’s position is a difficult one: in convincing this nobleman to educate his daughter to be virtuous, Bruto must avoid saying that she is unvirtuous. He therefore concentrates his argument on a gardening metaphor addressed to Maria herself. And although by so good beginnings hitherto apparant & knowen to be in you, we conceive a certen & most assured hope, that of your self you wil in short time become as vertuous as we desire: notwithstanding, as the fairest plants by the continuall labour and expert hand of the husbandman, procure fruites much more delicate and sweete than otherwise they would, so by adding that care and diligence which is Page 95 →meete and convenient, unto the vertuous minde and nobelnesse of nature, alreadie ingrafted in your heart; wee may expect and persuade ourselves, that the fruites of your vertues will soon be ripened, and become of a most sweete and pleasaunt taste: which

peradventure, not being laboured, would never proove so exquisite.53

For Bruto, virtue is like a seedling that needs cultivation; that cultivation is the duty of fathers and husbands and of teachers chosen by such guardians. This seedling of virtue comes partly from Maria’s noble lineage through her father. If left unattended, such virtue could disappear or become wild. The girl herself is not involved in the growth of her own virtue. There are thus two competing models of the way that feminine virtue can be transferred to a woman. In the model exemplified by Bruto, it takes a male author to convey to a male guardian the virtues that he should teach his daughter. If there is a woman teacher, she is solely the instrument of these teachings, because the conduct author gives virtue to the father, who teaches it to a female guardian, who teaches the daughter. In this model, there are two steps between the origin of the virtue and the intended recipient. Lanyer’s and Clinton’s models, while differing about the details of transmission, remove those intermediaries in the circulation of feminine virtue. Clinton, who did not nurse her own children, uses her writing as a surrogate for that nursing experience. She offers this advice to her daughter-in-law (who is already nursing) as a direct transmission. Clinton’s transmission is steeped in experience, because it was her own experience that made her feel so strongly about this subject. Her writing, then, becomes a kind of mother’s milk of its own, and she uses it to convey the need to nourish one’s own child.54 Lanyer suggests that reading is the way to transmit virtue. Rather than claiming that her writing contains the virtue and that readers will imbibe it, she argues that readers endow her work with feminine virtue.55 In this case, virtue is transmitted through the experience, or even the consumption, of the text. The virtuous women who read the work give it virtue, and then the other women who read it can take that virtue. Lanyer’s modesty topoi throughout the dedications remind us that, as a female writer, she is obligated by modesty to make us think about how imperfect she really believes her text to be. Leaving intention aside, however, her Salve Deus Rex Judaeroum is a text full of assertions of the power of the readers’ virtues alongside assertions of the inadequacy of verse. These dedications suggest that a community of women can teach each other, but this community is bound by a text rather than by a physical space. Page 96 →What I propose in this chapter is a new way of thinking about women’s writing, through looking at their writing about feminine virtue. Texts by the women writers that I have discussed in this chapter—Clinton, Lanyer, Philips, Winthrop, and Whitney—demonstrate a shift in the way readers are supposed to do the work of reading. In Lanyer’s dedications especially, the act of interpreting a text becomes a specific kind of virtueearning virtue-creating activity. Virtue is thus passed on through interpretation. The act of reading becomes a virtuous act in and of itself, one that offers the possibility for working on the margins of the models of behavior proposed by male authors of conduct texts.

Page 97 →Five “Advice to the Ladies of London” Feminine Virtue in English Broadside Ballads Many of us have seen or heard some early modern popular broadside ballads. Printed cheaply and circulated by street sellers who sang their wares, these pieces of literature are known for their entertaining and topical content.1 I would like to conclude my investigation of early modern representations of feminine virtue with a look at this widely available popular literature. Because they are often quite familiar as stereotypes, female characters in ballads might, at first, appear uncomplicated, but I argue that the range of behavior they represent is actually quite complex. This range demonstrates the multivalence of feminine virtue in a way that we have not looked at yet over the course of this book. Vives’s confusing language about chastity shows that the expectation associated with this virtue is contradictory, post-Reformation marriage manuals demonstrate that women were expected to engage critically with the advice they were expected to follow, the plays of Shakespeare that I looked at in chapter 3 dramatize the effects of such expectations, and early modern women writers tend to represent the circulation of feminine virtue through women and the texts addressed to them. In comparison, broadside ballads dramatize women behaving in ways often at odds with what we think of as typical expectations, but it is the purpose of their behavior that the ballads take most seriously. Women in ballads, like Shakespeare’s Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, can remain unpunished for behavior at variance with expectations only if such behavior is in service of restoring patriarchal order. In many ways, broadside ballads are the most straightforward of the texts I have looked at so far, because of their dedication to preserving gendered power relationships, even if they at first disrupt them. Broadside ballads thus have a normalizing function, much like conduct literature. Page 98 →Broadside ballads are a good measure of early modern culture generally, if for no other reason than their proliferation. At the cost of about a penny, ballads were cheap enough to be bought on the street by people who made only meager wages, and they were remarkable enough to be collected by people as financially comfortable as Samuel Pepys. There were thousands of ballads printed and perhaps even millions circulated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.2 Even when copies of the printed ballads were not being exchanged, they were often sung in alehouses and playhouses and on the street. Ballads are therefore perfectly placed as documents of their times. John Selden famously claimed, “Though some make slight of libels, yet you may see by them how the wind sits. As take a straw, and throw it up into the air; you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not show the complexion of the time so well as ballads and libels.”3 Selden’s grouping of ballads with libels shows that they were both considered historical markers that showed “the complexion of the time.” They are therefore most important for understanding early modern culture. The pervasiveness of ballads for reading, singing, buying, or hanging up—not to mention for more lowly uses, such as toilet paper or lining pie pans—suggests that they were accessible to just about everyone. Women were certainly among the consumers and even the sellers of ballads. Sandra Clark examines ballads on the subject of marriage to prove the existence of a female audience for the songs. Ballads are her focus because “their capacity to express and explore communal values was unique in the period; and it is worth remembering that these are the social values of the nonelite, which were characteristically secular, pragmatic, and mundane.”4 Although I disagree with Clark’s characterization of the value system of the nonelite as overly simplistic, her assertion that a lack of evidence for female singers in the early seventeenth century does not constitute a lack of female voices in ballad culture is important to keep in mind. Clark argues convincingly for a female audience and points to the possibilities engendered by our acknowledgment of this audience: “the directness of this appeal to women, as one target group, is worth consideration.”5 Ballads, as we shall see, not only reflect on early modern dominant culture but also offer an insight into that culture’s expectations of women and of women’s strategies for negotiating those expectations. Broadside ballads are a particularly good place to look for popular opinions about women, because women were among the audience for them and were frequently the subjects of their tales. For example, in Pepys’s

collection alone, three of the eleven categories by which he gathers his collected ballads Page 99 →treat themes concerning relationships with women (“Love Pleasant,” “Love Unfortunate,” and “Marriage”). Ballads about women also appear frequently in the other categories (“Devotion & Morality,” “History,” “Tragedy,” “State & Times,” “Sea,” “Drinking & Good Fellowship,” “Humor,” and the various “Supplements”). Indeed, in a way, ballads and women are alike in their nature. In contrast to the male body, which is often taken to be stable and fixed, the female body often works as a marker of a cultural milieu. Female bodies, we might say, are ephemeral, like ballads. Take, for instance, the strong connection between scientific ideas about women’s bodies and cultural attitudes toward women (though I make no claim about the direction of causality here). Medical notions about women’s bodies often take cues from cultural changes.6 Women and broadside ballads are alike in both form and matter. The connections of broadside ballads with women make them useful for studying early modern women. Ballads are important to the study of early modern gender because, like women, they are a good measure of popular culture more generally. Of “street literature,” Joy Wiltenburg asserts, “one of their key aims is to help people solidify their social identity.”7 Women are among those social identities being formed and solidified by ballads imposing, restoring, or enforcing order. As Wiltenburg notes, women’s power is the most troubling to the authors of street literature: “The cultural perception of women’s power as disorder, and of their disorderliness as power, reflects male anxieties about the success of patriarchal rule. At the same time, the partial mirror of popular literature may provide a glimpse, though a distorted one, of some women’s strategies for coping with that rule.”8 Further, I argue, popular literature in the form of broadside ballads portrays women’s power as in service of “solidify[ing] social identity.” The rewarded women in ballads use their power, figured in terms of their feminine virtue, in order to restore the organization of society. In “Custome Is an Idiot”: Jacobean Pamphlet Literature on Women, Susan O’Malley makes a similar claim of the pamphlets she has collected: “Although these six pamphlets flout custom, they ultimately reinscribe it.”9 Any apparent subversion is merely illusory, according to O’Malley: “In some ways their pamphlets pushed against the strictures defining women—for example, there are significant moments in which women may have found space for their speech, camaraderie, and agency—but ultimately they reinscribed women’s nature as chaste, silent, and obedient.”10 Popular literature, then, may seem to “flout custom, ” but it actually “reinscribe[s] it.” Broadside ballads function in a similar way to the conduct literature already examined in the present study, in that they prescribe behavior; however, they use different methods Page 100 →than conduct literature. In particular, they rely on fictional stories as practical exempla—as opposed to the more formal and often legendary exempla traditional to prescriptive literature—which opens up the possible meanings in their teachings. In this chapter, I look at ballads from Samuel Pepys’s collection to uncover some of the richness of the range of behavior available to women and how that richness reveals the multivalence of feminine virtue. Pepys’s collection is especially representative because, according to Hyder Rollins, it is the “largest and oldest collection” of broadside ballads.11 There are over eighteen hundred ballads from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the collection, which represents a little more than a third of the estimated extant ballads.12 My survey of the Roxburghe collection—the second largest, at about thirteen to fifteen hundred ballads—reveals many of the same themes about women that I find in the Pepys ballads. In fact, the Roxburghe collection contains copies of some of the Pepys ballads I look at in this chapter.13 Considered here are one ballad about the “perfect” wife, one about a “shrewish” wife, four about single women, one about a “crafty” married woman, one about a vain fashionable woman, and one about an adulterous woman. The examples reveal the cycle of representing seemingly outrageous behavior by women. Though the range of female behaviors might all appear to undermine authority, the ballads most often employ them in service of restoring order. When we think about the representation of women in popular literature of the seventeenth century such as broadside ballads, we mostly picture the two extremes of womanly behavior: wondrously good and obscenely bad. This dichotomy allows us to divide the women characters of these stories into two clearly delineated groups. The good wife is often especially uninteresting for her conformity. For example, “A Most Excellent and Vertuous Ballad of the Patient Grissell” (Pepys 1.34–35) tells the story of an almost automaton-like good wife.14 The

“patient Grissell,” familiar to us from Boccaccio and Chaucer, among others, as Griselda, also represents, as usual, the impossibly perfect wife. The basic plot of the story remains unchanged in this ballad’s retelling: Grissell is a peasant who marries a man of noble birth; he tests her through a series of increasingly cruel acts, culminating with her banishment from his court; after sixteen years, he brings her back to dress his new wife; he then reveals that everything was a test, and they live happily ever after. From the moment we meet Grissell, we see that she is everything a good wife ought to be: beautiful (“A faire and comely Mayden”) and modest (“simple attire”).15 Her patience and obedience through her husband’s tests, a hallmark of these tales, make her almost superhuman.16 When her husband, the “Noble Marquesse,” Page 101 →orders the murder of their children (which is never carried out), Grissell declares, “My gracious Lord / must have his will obey’d.” When he orders her back to the country, she wishes him “long life.” When, after sixteen years, he brings her back to court to dress his new wife (who is, in fact, their allegedly dead daughter), she does so “Most willingly.” As proof of her patience, Grissell handles her abandonment by her husband with grace. When her husband tells her he must divorce her, she quietly accepts her fate. When gentle Grissell Did heare these wofull tydings, the teares stood in her eyes, Nothing she answered, No words of discontentment did from her lips arise. Grissell does not question the need to obey him, even though his divorce from her is, of course, not exactly legal. Her silence, a marker of what a good woman she is, works in service of her obedience: by remaining silent, she does not express “discontentment.” Grissell’s primary virtue—both in the ballad about her and in the phrase used to discuss her in other stories, “patient Grissell”—is her patience. This patience is derived from obedience, and as I argued in chapter 2 of this study, obedience is not necessarily a straightforward virtue. This story of the perfect wife may seem to fit uncomplicatedly with other rather boring stories of perfect wives, but a further examination of what this tale has to say about the relationship between the couple and community and the mythic proportions of stereotypical women suggests otherwise. In many of the earlier versions of the Griselda story, the marquis chooses his wife after his nobles promise that they will accept his choice, and then he tests her for his own unexplained reasons.17 But the early seventeenth century telling preserved by Pepys tells the story of a marquis who falls in love with Grissell when he spies her working in the field, and the nobles oppose the match.18 The marquis’s tests of Grissell are to prove to his nobles her worth, of which he himself is already quite certain. Those nobles—the community opposed to the union of a peasant woman with their marquis—are the villains of the story. Pamela Allen Brown discusses the political and social implications of a story like this in early modern England, where the family was beginning to be a more important unit of power. She sees an “antagonism between neighborhood values and the ideology of wifely obedience.”19 This “perfect” wife Page 102 →reveals, then, that the community does not necessarily always know what is best for it. The bad judgment of the nobles starkly stands out when they blindly approve the marquis’s marriage to his own daughter merely because she appears to be of noble birth. And at this time through All the Land the speeches went, the Marquesse should married be Unto a Noble Lady great, Of high descent, and to the same all parties did agree, In contrast to their disapproval of the peasant Grissell, the nobles enthusiastically approve of the marquis’s marriage to his own daughter: they “allВ .В .В . did agree.” Their incorrect opinion—in that they condone incest—almost brings them to ruin. However, Grissell will still save them from themselves. The marquis orders his nobles to feel shame once Grissell has proven her worth.

And you that envyed her estate, Whom I have made my loving mate Now blush for shame, and honour vertuous life. Grissell is the one whose “virtuous” life they should honor, and the end of the ballad makes clear that the nobles who opposed the match should be ashamed of their behavior. The revelation of the possibility of incest is part of this shaming. Those who do not encourage the crossing of class lines are portrayed as corrupt—to the extent of unwittingly supporting incest—while the young peasant woman is shown to be good enough to shore up the order to their community that they threatened by resisting the marquis’s will and discouraging his marriage to her. In this ballad, Grissell’s virtue has influence beyond her marriage: her patience brings peace and order and buttresses the marquis’s power by showing him to be right. Grissell’s virtue thus brings about the ostensibly happy ending in which the partners are reunited in a sanctioned marriage, and as the marquis says, it stands as an example to others. The Chronicles of lasting fame Shall evermore extoll the name Page 103 →Of patient Grissell my most constant wife. The opinions of the community are not valued over the importance of the family in this story, but the community will benefit from the marriage, because Grissell stands as an example for all women. A good marriage, in the logic of this ballad, can guide an entire community and keep it ordered. Grissell’s “everlasting fame” has a life in ballad culture, where the example of Griselda comes up again and again as a symbol of virtue—not only personal, but societal. For instance, in “John Armstrong’s Last Good Night” (Pepys 2.133), a nationalistic ballad about the injustice of the Scottish king (James V), Johnny’s loyal horse is named Griselda.20 “Rock the Baby, Joane” uses “Grissel” as an example of the kind of wife Joane should aspire to be.21 Griselda, the “perfect” wife, may be completely outlandish to modern readers, who might also think that she represents the ideal of woman in medieval and early modern Europe. But that is far from the case. As Brown notes, Boccaccio’s version of the story is satirical, and both Petrarch and Chaucer counsel women to follow Griselda’s example in spirit only.22 Even those who hold her up as an example say that wives ought to imitate not her actual deeds but, rather, the principles of them. Other contemporary responses to the Griselda story reveal that she is not anyone’s idea of a real-life “perfect wife.” Brown, who looks at a number of texts that mock the Griselda story by treating it as a ridiculous impossibility, claims, “The name of Griselda has also been used as a shorthand for female submissiveness so close to stupidity as to be indistinguishable from it.”23 Part of the problem with Griselda, of course, is her support of the marquis’s tyranny. Pepys’s ballad tries unsuccessfully to fix that by laying a lot of the blame on the gossipy court. Still, the stress in our Griselda story is on the love her husband feels for her and on how the combination of her beauty and her patient obedience inspires that love. The ballad ends with the sentiment that her virtue ought to be imitated: her daughter is on her knees, and those who opposed her are ordered to “blush for shame.” However, Griselda’s support of the marquis, especially when he apparently commits infanticide, is troubling and undermines any effort to make this story a more palatable version of the legendarily perfect wife Griselda. As Albrecht Classen notes, in Chaucer’s version of the Griselda story, infanticide “depicts something a mother should in her basic nature find repulsive, but under Walter’s control, Griselda does not react normally.”24 Griselda’s story echoes the story of Medea, an echoing that undermines any practical application her deeds might have to the lives of other women. Page 104 →Like Medea, Griselda marries a man who is off-limits to her by virtue of his class, approves (or at least accepts) the murder of her children, is present as her husband is about to marry another, and is in charge of dressing the new bride. Because Griselda brooks with patience all of the situations that anger Medea, the echo here further strengthens Griselda’s position as the perfect wife. But it also makes us think of Medea, who starts out as a very good wife, extremely constant and loving, but does not

respond to her husband’s casting her aside with patience or obedience, as Griselda does in the many versions of the Griselda tale. Medea personally murders their two children and dresses Jason’s new bride in an outfit of consuming fire. Each time Griselda “proves” herself to her husband by being patiently obedient, we are reminded of her predecessor’s ill-fated constancy. The good wife is thus necessarily a myth, as Brown writes: “Early modern readers may have sensed they should treat Griselda’s story as a wonderful fable rather than a practical model for reasons not often mentioned by later commentators: her approval of tyranny, her complicity in infanticide, and her latent heresy.”25 Griselda’s connection to the myths of women—even to the myths of “evil” women like Medea—is a constant reminder of her own status as myth, in all its impossible complexities. In these tales, however, reconciliation and the restoration of patriarchal order are the objects of the behavior of mythic and less-than-mythic “shrews” as much as of the “good” wives. Many of the narrative ballads about marriage (i.e., those that do not take the form of debates but tell stories) lead to reconciliation. In popular broadsides, the family unit is enough of an institution to be worthy of protection. Thus, husbands and wives are often taught to get along with one another despite their differences. In a number of ballads, a wife successfully counsels her no-good husband to be thriftier with his money, and because she reforms him, they are able to live happily ever after.26 There are also ballads about wives who were once constant nags and complainers but become reformed by either their husbands or an intervening mediator. In general, only the most excessive shrews are expected to change. The “justified” complaints of wives are taken seriously, and the two spouses are taught to live together peacefully. In sum, the marital harmony that the Grissell story advocates, especially through the work of the woman’s virtue, is also the goal of ballads that do not seem to be about perfect women in any way. Shrews get special attention as the obscenely bad wives that occupy the other pole of the mythic dichotomy between good and bad women. If Griselda is the extreme example of obedience, her opposite might be seen as the extreme example of disobedience. However, most interestingly, these examples often function to restore order as well. A comical story of marriagePage 105 → that figures a shrew—though one whose nature is more “everyday” than mythic—can be found in “Dead and Alive” (Pepys 4.118).27 In this ballad, Simon’s wife embodies many of the criticisms of “bad” wives: she drinks, is abusive, and is in charge. Simon can in no way please his wife, and he is often punished for that. For instance, his wife abuses him physically when she learns that he has allowed the sow to “burst her belly” by eating too much cream. In an act that speaks to the offense she believes he has committed, “she kickt him on the belly.” Thus, for allowing damage to come to her sow via the stomach, the wife punishes Simon’s stomach. Presumably fed up with her husband’s incompetence, the wife drinks frequently; the narrator tells us, she “would tipple soundly, / behind her Husbands back,” because she loved sack, which is a kind of white wine. Simon eventually becomes dejected by his own inability to please his wife and drinks the “poison” his wife keeps behind the door. The poison that she has warned him not to touch is, of course, her sack. As Simon becomes drunk, he is more and more convinced of his impending death. When his wife finds him writhing around in her room, she “revives” the drunken Simon with smelling salts, after which he runs through the streets praising her cure while she beats him “with a basting Cudgel.” Only when a neighbor gets involved and helps the spouses get along is Simon able, that evening, to “well please his Wife.” Neither Simon nor his wife had been living up to the standards of marriage: he could not please her, and she was abusive. The end of the ballad asserts, “For ever since that time he / hath liv’d a quiet Life,” which suggests that their strife ended with this public display and intervention. The marriage of Simon and his abusive wife in “Dead and Alive” does not sound ideal. In fact, we might expect a tale like this one to signal some form of rebellion against social norms.28 The resolution of this comical ballad, however, is an ideal marriage in which both partners are happy. Along the way, the author skewers two social types—an inept husband and a shrewish wife. Nonetheless, the resolution is a happy one. That happy ending would not have been possible if the wife had merely accepted what the ballad showed to be her husband’s ineptitude. Through her seemingly “shrewish” actions, their lives can be “quiet.”29 As the example of Simon and his wife suggests, achieving the marital ideal may sometimes take forms that are not

very obvious at first. Ben Jonson’s poem “On Giles and Joan” (1616) mocks marital ideals by proposing that if the aim of marriage is to be in agreement, a couple could certainly agree to be miserable.30 The husband who is put upon by his wife’s indiscretions and general “shrewish” nature is a common figure of ridicule in popular literature in the seventeenth century, and the humor of Jonson’s poem comes from Page 106 →both the irony of Jonson’s advice and the humiliation of Giles in the relationship. Jonson’s poem also shows the very public nature of marital happiness or unhappiness. The first line—“Who says that Giles and Joan at discord be?”—indicates that their potential misery is a thing of public discussion. The “neighbors” see the odd “concord” that the poet relates. For example, the couple agrees that they should not be married at all: “Indeed, poor Giles repents he married ever. / But that his Joan doth too” (3–4). Both wish Giles would be “blind”: “Ofttimes, when Giles doth find / Harsh sights at home, Giles wisheth he were blind: / All this doth Joan” (9–11). The poem’s speaker claims that these similar thoughts bring them into accord. In all his affections she concurreth still. If now, with man and wife, to will and nill The self-same things a note of concord be, I know no couple better can agree. (15–18) Giles and Joan achieve the marital ideal of accordance better in their misery than many do in happiness. It is ironic that Ben Jonson famously said, “A poet should detest a ballad maker,” for his theme here is very similar to that of the balladmongers he supposedly detested.31 Like Jonson’s poem, comical marital ballads derive humor from their engagement with stereotypes. As David Atkinson claims, In the ballad confrontations between husbands and wives, the unsuccessful characters are those who remain most obviously confined within their gender-specific stereotypes. The corollary is that those who are successful are those who manage to transcend the relevant stereotype and/or who impose a stereotypical role on the other character.32 These ballads do not completely escape stereotypes. In fact, the ballads usually end up returning to traditional gender roles. The stereotype transgressions take place in the process of achieving the goal of marital bliss in which each partner can be happily how they are “supposed” to be. The ultimate resolution of these stories, however, is a return to the authority of the husband. One of the most ridiculed stereotypes is that of the cuckold—the husband of an unfaithful wife. Infidelity, or “cuckoldry,” can sometimes appear to be the most straightforwardly disobedient behavior women can engage in; however, even the stories of infidelity have male-dominated order as their goal. In Page 107 →particular, responsibility for children conceived outside of the marriage falls on the shoulders of the cheated spouse (male or female). For example, John is very happy in “Rock the Cradle, John” (Pepys 1.404–5), even though he has clearly been cuckolded.33 The refrain expresses his blissful ignorance. Rocke the cradle, Jog the cradle, thus Ile have it knowne, I love to rocke the cradle, the children be mine owne. John is content in his innocence or, more accurately, ignorance: “Soe well content this foole was found, / he leapt for joy above the ground.” The ballad mocks him: “take heed with wives how you doe sit ye”; “And now this simple woodkocke, / the cradle is constrained to rocke, / His neighbours doth deride and mocke.” Despite this mocking, however, John is clearly perfectly satisfied in his marriage. The beginning of the ballad makes clear that he had wasted a lot of time as a youth and then finally needed to go wooing: “There

was a country galland / that wasted had his tallent.”34 His potential wife “had wondrous need” because she was pregnant and looking for a husband, but he is also in need because he has not yet made something of himself. He gains a wife and financial stability at the same time. Perhaps the ballad is also a warning not to waste your time diddling about and to get down to work lest something like this happen to you. Although John’s situation may seem a really pitiful one because everyone knows what a fool he is, things have, in fact, turned out well for him; he has acquired good money, two children, and a wife. The overriding value here is one of the conservation of marriage at all costs. The ballad ends with a warning to other men not to be taken in by women who want to fool them, but it shows a perfectly happy man who thinks he is married to a very fertile wife. She’s happy because her children have a father, and he’s happy because he has children. Another story of raising the child of another man, “The Innocent Maid Deceiv’d by a Dissembling Bachelor; or, The Mother’s Advice to Her Wanton Daughter” (Pepys 3.82), is told with the young woman’s circumstances in mind. The “innocent maid” becomes pregnant, and her mother is angry but then advises her daughter that she marry her old sweetheart, in the hope that maybe he will not realize that the baby is not his. While the ballad worries that he will be very angry if he figures it out, everything goes according to the plan. The man who seduces her does so by getting her to dance a great dance with him, after which she “lovingly” has sex with him on the corn in Page 108 →the barn. The repetition of the phrase “I lost my own” shows that the young woman sees her virginity as “lost” to a man who has “cozen’d [her] of [her] own.” The ending, in which the mother advises against disposing of the infant and in favor of marrying Ned, an old sweetheart, shows that there is support for conventional marriage, even if not reached by conventional means; it does not matter if her husband later becomes incensed, because he cannot get out of the marriage once he has agreed. The stress here is on keeping the child with one natural parent and forming a family around it. Just as in the case of cuckoldry tales, “ruined” woman tales stress the importance of not abandoning children. The ballad makes it clear that the “innocent maid” did not guard her chastity as was her duty, but it also expects us to laugh at Ned’s predicament as if we understand. This marriage may be gained by a trap, but it is something with which the listeners can identify. The range of behaviors available to women has another role for the unmarried woman, as a kind of predator. The dangers of (and to) the unmarried woman come up again and again in broadside ballads in the form of stories and advice. “A Caveat or Warning for All Sorts of Men” (Pepys 1.46–47) tells the story of a young man who falls for a woman only to discover that her love is feigned and that she is interested only in worldly goods.35 The male narrator opens by warning that not everything is what it seems. The fairest apple to the eye, May have a rotten core: And young men all now by myВ .В .В . fall, take heed trust not a whore. According to this opening, appearances are deceptive: all young single women are potentially whores, and men ought to be careful of women’s predatory nature. In the story this ballad’s speaker tells, the young man becomes involved with a woman he wrongly believed loved him. The woman gave many signs that she did indeed care for him, but she left him once his money had run out. He warns other young men of London to avoid his fate. You young men that in London live, Take heed by this my fall: For if you still will follow whores, they will devoure you all: Your quoine, your states, your health and friends, Then turne you out of doore: Page 109 →Oh Young men all by this my fall, take heed trust not a whore. According to the speaker of this ballad, trusting a woman is the same as trusting a “whore,” and no good

can come of it. These “whores,” moreover, are portrayed as animal-like predators who “devour” men whole. Women who are shown to be predators are often shown to be victims as well. Although the speaker of “A Caveat or Warning” may think them singularly wicked, the historical reality of single women makes their motives more complicated. The single woman in the early modern period is a very interesting case, because she is often shown to need her wits to survive. That creative survival, while it can be seen in literary works, is not always part of the historical record. Laurel Amtower and Dorothea Kehler note, “If we cannot entirely recoup the experiences of single women, we can at least trace the presence of those experiences by exposing the various mechanisms of their erasure.”36 Scholars have noted an increase in the historical presence of single women from the late fourteenth through the early eighteenth centuries in northern Europe, “where women usually delayed marriage until their mid-twenties.”37 However, it is “[n]ot until the sixteenth century [that] single women begin to take their place in literature as individuals whose interest and philosophy derive at least in part from their single status and its concerns.”38 The literature of the period under discussion here is thus a particularly rich site for tracing the “mechanisms of erasure” that Amtower and Kehler posit, because it was written during the time when the single woman was emerging as a subject of literature. Literature’s portrayal of single women as predatory reflects widespread social anxiety about the historical increase in the number of single women. The voice of a ruined woman or a “wise” man offering advice typically expresses the dangers to single women. We can learn a lot about the situation of single women from the advice they receive in texts; even if this advice is not meant to be followed exactly, it expresses the culture’s expectations and desires in a unique way. That advice often shows how a culture relies on women to support its survival, while simultaneously fearing their capacity to ruin its chances of survival. The speaker of “Advice to the Ladies of London, in the Choice of Their Husbands” (Pepys 4.85) opens by addressing the “wealthy and fair” women of London, “whom every Town Fop is pursuing.”39 The ballad, as the opening makes clear, is meant for women who are being wooed and do not know what to do about their choices. It promises to reveal the “Vices” of the “bonny brisk sparks,” to give these women all of the informationPage 110 → they need to make right decisions. By listing the faults of men, the ballad also makes assumptions about the nature and desires of women. For example, the speaker advises, Chuse not a spark that has known the Town, who makes it his Practice to Bully, You’d better take up with a Country Clown he’l make an officious Cully;40 You with a word may his Passion appease and make him a Cuckold at leasure; Give him but money to live at his ease, you may follow Intregues at your Pleasure. According to this speaker, a woman should marry not a man who will bully her but one whom she can trick so that she can have a lover on the side without trouble. Later, the speaker tells the woman not to marry a smart man, because he will beat her to the cuckolding. The assumption here is that a woman seeking a husband is looking not for a partner but for someone over whom she can have power. The stereotype of the shrew is just this—a woman who seeks to control her husband and gets away with whatever she pleases. The ballad can be read as a satirical look at young women. To be happy, according to this speaker, a woman deserves a man who will pay at least some attention to her. The dull “Country Clown” who loves his animals a little too much is not likely to see to his wife’s needs. The perfect husband, in the end, is an old man with money, because he has the potential to beget other lovers; that is, by being with an old man, a woman can have him and all of the young men she wants, since they will be attracted to her money. The last words of the ballad are “if this don’t please, Old Nick is in you.” “Old Nick,” a nickname for the devil and presumably also for the aging husband here, still has the potential to satisfy her sexually. Thus, women come across as both financially and sexually needy.

Throughout the ballad, there are sets of desires paired together, and we can see this very clearly with the help of a phrase net.41 Figure 2 shows all of the words in the ballad joined together by the conjunction and. In this visualization, we can see that about half of the uses of and combine words of action (“huffing and ranting,” “bristles and toping,” “devise and trap,” “appease and make”). “Persons and purses” draws a connection between wealth and potential mates, as does “wealthy and fair,” which refers to the women. “Bombast and noise” and “plots and intrigues” are negative pairs that suggest Page 111 →the methods used in finding an appropriate husband. The woman will gain “favors and places” from a good match. These pairs of words do not cast the woman in a good light, which might lead us to read the ballad straightforwardly as a satirical condemnation of women.

Fig. 2. Many Eyes phrase net (with modernized spelling) of Pepys 4.85, “Advice to the Ladies of London,” showing words connected by the conjunction and Our understanding of the ballad shifts when we note that the speaker also reveals the precariousness of single women’s financial situations in the seventeenth century. Men who use women for advancement come in for criticism. The lawyer, for example, might take away any land that the woman has gained through her family, and she will be bound to him forever: “But if the Lawyer touch your Copy-hold / the Devil can ne’r bring you from him.” The single woman’s economic situation also underlies the story that the young man tells in “A Caveat” (previously discussed), which appears to be a critique of women. Although the young man in that ballad characterizes the woman as a “whore” and a predator, we also know that her living depends on the “generosity” of her suitors. Scholars such as Judith Spicksley have shown that, at least for the middle orders, the situation of a single woman in the Page 112 →early modern period was not as bleak as we once thought. For example, while women were not welcome in guilds, they could engage in money lending and other professions.42 However, ballads show that, at least to a certain extent, single women—and especially lowerorder single women—had to rely on their inventiveness to get by. We can see the distribution of agency in “Advice to the Ladies of London” more clearly through the use of the second-person pronoun you, which occurs quite frequently in the original ballad—granting some amount of agency to the women at whom it is aimed. Figure 3 shows that the words with which you is networked are typically verbs (“can produce,” “intend,” “would thrive”). The speaker of this ballad continually grants apparent agency to his audience. However, by presuming to grant such agency, the speaker exerts authority over the women who are his audience. The male speaker here is “allowing” the “you” to engage in these activities. If I switch the networks to show where you appears at the end of a set of words, the actions taken against the you are clearer (see fig. 4). Here, the woman is, for example, bullied, trapped, courted, spited, and slighted. The word trees show the presumption of authority on the part of the speaker. You occurs about half as many times in “Advice to Young Gentlemen” (see fig. 5). The word tree for this ballad suggests that, unlike the male speaking to the female audience in the previous ballad, the male speaker of “Advice to Young Gentlemen” is not interested in having power over his male audience. In this ballad, you is associated more directly with verbs. For example, the first two occurrences listed for “Advice to the Ladies of London” in figure 3 are “you may choose” and “you may have,” but in figure 5, listing the occurrences in “Advice to Young Gentlemen,” you connects directly with “have” (in the sense of

ownership) in the seventh occurrence, and the lack of an intermediary verb makes the agency more active. In the tree for “Advice to Young Gentlemen,” words such as behavior are always associated with women’s behavior, not with the men’s, which shows a kind of activity on the women’s part. However, this is not a positive use of agency, for the activity of women’s behavior is usually meant to trick or in some other way ensnare the young man (although not figured here, the pronoun she precedes, for instance, such phrases as “makes an oration” and “will endeavor”). Reading the word trees of “Advice to Young Gentlemen” alongside those for “Advice to the Ladies of London” thus reveals a major difference between the two kinds of advice. In particular, in the advice to the ladies, a more powerful speaker grants an illusory agency, and in the advice to young gentlemen, the speaker is on par with his male audience and thus strikes a conspiratorial tone.

Page 113 →Fig. 3. Many Eyes word tree of Pepys 4.85 highlighting instances of the pronoun you at the beginning of a phrase

Fig. 4. Many Eyes word tree of Pepys 4.85 highlighting

instances of the pronoun you at the end of a phrase Fig. 5. Many Eyes word tree of Pepys 4.87, “Advice to Young Gentlemen,” highlighting instances of the pronoun you at the beginning of a phrase Page 114 →Not only single women faced danger and had precarious financial situations in the early modern period; married women also had to use their feminine performance to get along in the world. Responding to “Advice to the Ladies of London” as if it were a vitriolic critique of men, “An Answer to the Advice to the Ladies of London” (Pepys 4.86) is cruel in tone and tells the story of a young “fop” who was cheated by a woman and her husband.43 The advice to the ladies of London was to marry men who will let them take their pleasure elsewhere. The woman in the “Answer” uses that economic relationship to make money,

in partnership with her husband. Told in the voice of the cheated young man, this ballad paints a seemingly grim view of women interested in tricking men. As early as the title, the ballad refers to women as predators (“they make a prey of Men”) and tricksters (“their Craft and Subtilty”). These two ballads are in dialogue with one another, but they are talking about very different situations. In the first, a presumably “regular” woman is given advice about whom to marry, and in the second, a coney-catcher, posing as a courtesan, tricks a man into giving her money. In the role of courtesan, the woman coyly performs a certain kind of desirability: she pretends that she is not interested, protests, then finally gives in. The man sees the purpose of Page 115 →her behavior as “the more to encourage my passion.” But he knows how to counter and “wittily sounded her temper” by putting money in her hand. The money works, and she agrees to be his mate—that is, to sleep with him. He accepts her invitation and then finds that the husband is waiting for just such a sucker as he. The speaker claims that the wife then escapes punishment by her husband because of her “humble submission.” The young man sees her use of feminine virtue as crafty and deceitful. The range of behavior in which a woman must engage to survive is thus varied. Her survival is not, however, figured as happening despite the patriarchal order; it is very much a part of it. The narrator of the “Answer” claims that the woman used her stereotypical female behavior to trick him, but we can also read her as using this coney-catching trick to escape a possibly dangerous encounter. Seemingly unaware that the story he tells casts him in a negative light, the speaker tells us that he wanted to violate a woman who told him no, and when her no did not work, she used the only means at her disposal to stop him. He does not see the connection between his own actions and hers, but the reader/listener certainly does. His position of power seems to come from his physical strength, persistence, and his purse strings, and her power derives from sex. Her word, as this ballad makes clear, will not help her in this situation. Some might say it is part of the wooing process for a woman initially to protest a man’s advances. Nevertheless, in the majority of the ballad instances that I can think of, someone always gets hurt when a woman finally gives in after rejecting advances. Sometimes the woman, who is virtuous, is ruined by an unwanted pregnancy, and sometimes the young man is ruined by the woman’s tricks.44 Although we typically think of the act of protesting against a lover’s advances as belonging to the virtuous woman, those women to whom ballads refer as “whore” or loose also engage in such protesting. Perhaps the social problem that these instances should make us think about is not that women go around tricking men through their false modesty but that men do not take no for an answer. The lesson for women, moreover, is to avoid falling into the trap of persuasion, which brings with it ill consequences not only for the women but also for the society at large, because the effect on society of ruined women—especially for a society with no local convents to send them to—is detrimental and, when children result, costly. Once more, I employ a word tree, to illustrate the position that the “Answer” ballad takes with regard to the woman who is its subject. The word tree of instances of the pronoun her in this ballad runs counter to the suggestion that this woman deserves our scorn, in that the words associated with her sound mostly positive (see fig. 6), as in, for example, “her beauty shined,” Page 116 →“her beauty admire,” “her humble submission,” and “her glory.” These positive words may hint at an underlying sympathy for the woman’s situation.

Fig. 6. Many Eyes word tree of Pepys 4.86, “An Answer to the Advice to the Ladies of London,” highlighting instances of the pronoun her at the beginning of a phrase

Women’s behavior, then, can have far-reaching and varied consequences according to the tales and the advice in broadside ballads—from reforming a bad husband to destroying a young man. One behavior that stands out as especially topical and controversial is women’s use of fashion. The young man in “A Caveat” warns that “the fairest appleВ .В .В . may have a rotten core,” and this is not only a warning about natural beauty. In ballads, conduct literature, and misogynistic pamphlets, being fashionable (or not) is portrayed as a behavior that can reveal a truth about a woman’s virtue. How a woman dresses tells us about who she is. In this way, a woman’s manner of dressing, fixing her hair, or wearing makeup corresponds to how she behaves toward her husband, her family, and others: it reveals an inner truth about her virtue (or lack thereof). It does not matter how good you are on the inside if you appear as other, bad women do (however fashionable they might be); being fair by all appearances is more usually a sign that you might be foul on the inside. As T.H. writes in his A Looking Glass for Women, “And truly those godly women that do use this outward adorning of laying forth the hair, a man can hardly know them from the women of the world.”45 The mirror is here the Page 117 →physical symbol of vanity and pride, but it is also the symbol that authors advising against vanity and pride in women use to encourage imitation. Many of the treatises about how women adorn themselves and how they should be happier with what nature has given them have the term looking glass in the title. In fact, in titles, that term seems to serve two contradictory purposes—instruction of those as yet ignorant (in, e.g., religious and governmental conduct literature) and admonition of those who have gone wrong.46 To be considered “good,” a woman must paradoxically both look into the mirror (in the sense of modeling herself on advice literature) and turn away from the mirror (in the sense of admiring her own reflection). Married women were expected to dress well enough to delight their husbands but not so well as to be desired by other men. As Juan Luis Vives summarizes, Arayment in lyke wyse as all other thynges oughte to be referred unto the husbandes wyll , if he lyke symple arayment, let her be content to weare it. For if she desyre more goodly and costly, than it appereth that she trymmeth nat her selfe so moche for her husbandes eies as other mennes: whiche is no poynt of an honest woman. (g1r)47 Unmarried women have to negotiate fashion a little bit more carefully, because they must try to attract a mate but not deceive him. For example, Vives argues against painting and fashion in women, admitting that their attempts to please are misguided. If it be to please Christe it is a foly: if hit be to delyte men hit is an ungratious dede. Thou haste but one spouse & to please hym with [sic] make thy soule gay with vertue and he shall kysse the for thy beautyВ .В .В . Thou arte but in il case if thou have nothyng elles to please hym with that shal be thy husbande but onely peyntyng: howe shalt thou please hym when thou lackest thy peyntyng? Excepte thou wylte never wasshe out that cruste but go so with a crust of peyntyng to bed & to rise & be so within & a brode amonge folkes. (I1r) Richard Brathwaite argues that there is nothing at all appealing about what a woman wears because “ambition” led Eve “to sin, sin brought her to shame, shame to her shroudВ .В .В . How is it then that these ragges of sinne, these robes of shame, should make you idolize yourselves?”48 For Brathwaite, the English gentlewoman should not take any pride in her appearance. A woman’s appearance can be used to judge both her inner virtue and her natural beauty. Page 118 →Vives warns young women that makeup is a deception and that a young man who becomes her husband will be disappointed by what nature has given her if she covers it up during the courtship. Women’s appearance has implications beyond just their bodies, not only because it stands for behavior personally and for the quality of marriage, but also because it can affect the well-being of an entire country. Just as a woman’s virtue has an effect on the world beyond her household, as we have seen in the case of Griselda and in the examples discussed in chapter 2, so does her “unvirtuous” behavior. The effects of excessive fashion are figured as devastating and widespread—women’s fashion choices are responsible for all kinds of catastrophes in the world. T.H. tells his “Christian Reader” that people are always eager to bring about

their own doom (“there is nothing wanting in them to make up their destruction”) and that he is moved to write because even godly women have started to dress in fashions.49 In his view, fashion is not good for society, because it does not bring about any good through its practice. T.H. argues that there is no use value in vain fashions: “laying forth of the hair, or any such like outward adorning, it is a vain attire, it is of no substantial use, but to please the fancy, it is so far from drawing men to see God in you by it, as it provokes them more to lust, by seeing such wear it.”50 Pleasure does not have any value in itself according to T.H., because it merely leads to lust, which he sees as detrimental. F.S., in his didactic dialogue about a reformed man who tries to reform his mistress, agrees that misbehaving women can ruin men: addressing “the Christian Reader,” he declares that “harlots” and “whores” are ruinous: “For because of the whorish Woman: a man is brought to a morsel of Bread.”51 The implication here is that “whorish” women can cause the loss of money. A sign of the conservatism of broadside ballads is how they engage in the debate about women’s fashion. We have seen that how a woman dresses, how she styles her hair, and whether she wears makeup are all outward signs of inner corruption or virtue. The fashions adopted by women have an effect not only on their personal experiences and marriages but also on society at large. The ballad “Pride’s Fall; or, A Warning for all English Women, by the Example of a Strange Monster, Born Late in Germany, by a Merchant’s Proud Wife at Geneva” (Pepys 2.66–67) warns Englishwomen to stay away from the fashions that are trendy, lest they may turn out like the speaker of the ballad. The German wife who narrates the ballad about her “fall” urges Englishwomen to “Wantonness leave in time.” Her reformation, the ballad proposes, ought to be an inspiration for others to reform. Page 119 → And you fair English Dames, that in pride do excel, This woful misery, in your hearts print full well. The Englishwomen “excel” in “pride” already, and the narrator cautions them against falling into the same trap as she. In respect to the goal that England not become like Germany, the ballad firmly places the burden on the behavior of women. The ballad appeals to the fear of the monstrous in order to drive home its point that Englishwomen are responsible for saving England from the menace of pride. The proud woman’s child, a monster who has “About his neck a flaunting Ruff,” is the one who issues the moralistic messages of the ballad. He is the product of his mother’s pride and so stands as an example of the dangers of sin. I am a Messenger, now sent from God on high, To bid you all repent, Christ coming draweth nigh. Repent you all with speed, this is a Message sure, The world seems at an end, and cannot long endure. Pride is the Prince of sin, which is our chief delight. Man-kind repent with speed, before the Lord doth smite; This is my last adieu, repentance soon provide: This speech, the “message” of the ballad, stands out in Roman font against black-letter text. The message

figures pride as the worst of sins. Ballads about monsters often include an admonition of sorts, usually from the monster, and these admonitions are often topical, specific, and moralistic. Indeed, as Julie Crawford notes, “not only were many of the writers of pamphlets about monstrous births ministers or Protestant activists themselves, but many of the mothers, midwives, justices, and witnesses featured in the pamphlets were based on real people involved in real controversies in real towns.”52 In this case, Page 120 →the monster speaks to the controversy over the behavior of women’s fashion. “Pride’s Fall” stresses the role of the monstrous in representing women fallen into vanity. While it hints that Englishwomen are already prideful (they “do excel” at pride, after all), the ballad still claims that the menace is one from abroad rather than local. Some authors believe, however, that the menace has already arrived in England. For example, Barnabe Rich discusses the presence of monsters in Africa and England in his My Lady’s Looking Glasse. It is said that Africa, bringeth forth every yeare a new Monster, the reason is, that in the desarts of that countrey, the wilde and savage beasts, that are both diverse in nature, and contrarie in kinde, will yet ingender the one with the other: but England hatcheth up every moneth a new Monster, every weeke a new Sinne, and every day a new Fashion: our Monsters are not bred in the Desarts, as those in Africa, but in every Towne and Citty: where they are so chearely fostered, & so daintily cherished that they multiply on heapes, by hundreds and by thousands.53 One would expect that women who behave improperly would have an effect on an extremely local level. But they could affect other women as well, as claimed in a marginal printing in a section of Rich’s text warning women to be careful whom they befriend: “Many good women defamed by conversing with harlots.”54 In the passage previously quoted, Rich expresses an anxiety because monsters “multiply” in local towns and cities until filling the country. He here extends the reach of “harlots” from the extremely local to the widespread. The monsters permeate every corner of the country, “every Town and City”; they are frighteningly pervasive. The bad or monstrous behavior of women could possibly hurt everyone—other women and society at large. Like T.H., the author of “Pride’s Fall” argues that women’s fashion is of great concern to society; however, the strategies of the two texts are quite different. Their two kinds of argument attack the “problem” of women’s fashion by appealing to ethos and pathos. T.H. makes his argument from the authority of scripture, while the author of “Pride’s Fall” (like Rich) uses the possibility of real monsters to inspire fear. T.H. spends the majority of his treatise discussing the way that women wear their hair and arguing against their choices. One of the main reasons he can do this, he says, is because no one can support from scripture the “laying forth” of hair. Only his position Page 121 →against fixing one’s hair has scripture on its side. T.H. claims there is no good argument in favor of wearing your hair fixed up. If you shall aske any of them upon what ground they do were [sic] it, they can give you no Scripture for it, but one of these two reasons, or some other such like carnall reasons, either they will say it was a fashion that I was brought up in from my parents, who went in the same fashion before me, or else they will say, why may not I wear it as well as such and such women, poor answers to satisfie conscience in such a case.55 Interestingly, T.H. grants that someone can accuse him of not using scripture, since there is no specific passage on the laying forth of hair, but at least, he claims, Paul does not like it.56 “Pride’s Fall” represents the stakes a little more dramatically. The reformation of the narrator stands as an example to Englishwomen to avoid her predicament: “England’s fair dainty Dames, / see here the fall of Pride.” Crossing national boundaries is a way for this message to be disseminated widely. The menace, the story suggests, has not yet reached England but is very close. Like conduct literature, the ballad “Pride’s Fall” is very concerned with what is and what is not natural, contending that a woman should be happy with what God has given her.

My beauty made me think, my self an Angel bright, Framed of heavenly mold, and not an earthly wight. According to T.H., nature and God’s commandment should dictate what women wear: for “attire and outward adorning to be after the fashions of the world” is “contrary to the glorious light of God.”57 The pamphlet wars epitomized by the works of Joseph Swetnam, Esther Sowernam, and Rachel Speght, reveal some of the arguments about the “nature” and worth of women. They also reveal the people’s desire for misogyny, because while Speght and Sowernam’s pamphlets in defense of women had their printing and then were done, Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women went through twenty-three editions, reaching into the eighteenth century. Portraying women as the cause of men’s worldly troubles, Page 122 →then, was popular. The call for “natural” appearance also expresses the anxiety about gender crossing. For example, T.H. suggests that there is something masculine about trendy fashion: “for if you do but look upon it, you are in your apparell more like an Hermophrodite, that is to say halfe man and halfe woman, that is, when as you shall be like to a woman downward in your apparell, and you should be like to a man upward in your Hat, and haire.”58 This tradition in which “Pride’s Fall” participates stands in stark contrast both to the patient Griselda tales and the practical everyday women who work with what they have in order to restore order and who subject themselves to patriarchal authority. Stories like that of “Pride’s Fall” use the fear of God’s destruction to impose, restore, and enforce order. There is a range of behaviors in which women can and even must engage to ensure their survival—from patiently obedient wife to inventive single woman—and although the ballads’ values are often more conservative than not, that conservatism is directed toward peace in the household, on the streets, and in the partnership of marriage. Thus, in a sense, feminine virtue is figured as important to survival. But that virtue is not just aimed toward survival; it engages with archetypes and cultural expectations. Real women cannot be Griselda; most versions of her story agree with that fact. But from her example, women can learn not simply wifely obedience but also the potential danger of complicity with tyranny, as well as the potential danger of the rule of many. Women do not stand alone as potential dangers. We also learn from these ballads that women themselves are often in danger of economic and physical violation. For instance, Griselda’s vulnerability in the fields echoes Chaucer’s maiden who is raped at the beginning of the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” by the knight. Recall as well that the married woman who could not get the young “fop” to take no for an answer is threatened with rape—as are countless virgins whose purity is under attack. Broadside ballads are a very important resource for scholars of the literature and history of women, because they reveal a lot about the complicated understanding authors had of feminine virtue. Although nothing can be said to give us the truest picture of the real lived experience of early modern women, broadside ballads allow us some insight into the cultural expectations with which women dealt daily. Work done on women in broadside ballads is often structuralist, tracing interrelated types and themes, which is very fruitful.59 But I suggest that the relationship between these ballads and the advice literature of the time shows just how interpretive such ballads are in terms of their relationship to feminine virtue. There is a range of behavior that qualifies as “virtuous,” and Page 123 →these ballads, rather than being very one-dimensional, reveal that range—often paradoxically. Giles Bergel once told me that broadside ballads are “the true common law of England with all the conservatism that implies.”60 If so, common law is often contradictory law. Even more than conduct literature, popular literature such as broadside ballads strives to “solidify” the “social identity” of women, through contradiction and even through embrace.

Page 124 →Epilogue Early modern conduct literature often concludes in odd ways. For example, Thomas Salter’s Mirror of Modesty ends with a dialogue between Mercury and Virtue in which Mercury convinces Virtue to hide out for a while because she is not very popular. I would like to conclude this study of early modern women’s behavioral expectations by taking a look at some of those endings and their implications for our understanding of conduct literature more generally. What we should take away from looking at these texts is not the idea that, in the end, they are just a mishmash of misogyny and ideals about virtue. Rather, these texts demonstrate that our moment is not as far away from the early modern moment as it may at first appear. Both the contradictions inherent in early modern conduct literature and the negotiations required from the women who act as its subjects suggest that expectations of women’s behavior in the early modern period are complicated and open to interpretation. Salter’s “A pretie pithie Dialogue betwene Mercurie, & Vertue” that concludes his translation of Giovanni Bruto’s Institutione di una fanciulla nata nobilmente shows the banishment of Virtue, who will “hide [her]self for ever as one disdained and rejected of all.”1 The dialogue begins with Virtue’s request for assurance from Mercury that she is “not yet forsaken of all the gods.”2 Sensing that she is not really welcome among the gods, Virtue seeks a champion of her cause: “who shall I have to bee revengers of my cause and injuries, if libertie and facultie bee denied me.”3 According to the story Virtue tells, her exclusion by the gods was caused by an argument she had with Fortune, her natural enemy. As a result of this dispute, Virtue’s main champion, Cicero, was injured, and all of her other supporters deserted her. The supporters of Fortune followed up this humiliation by stripping Virtue and throwing her in a river.4 Since that time, Virtue has been denied entrance Page 125 →into the presence of the gods. She complains, “No one of the Gods, or men, have anie care or remembraunce of me and mine affaires.”5 Virtue pleads with Mercury to intervene on her behalf so that she is not “uncharitably forsaken and separated from the Gods” while at the same time being held “in derision and ignomie among men.”6 But Mercury sees no way to help her; he advises merely that she lie low until Fortune is no longer angry. The very last words of this text are “Vertue Adiew.”7 Virtue’s banishment can serve a number of purposes. For one, it may be intended as a call to arms for people to begin defending virtue again. It may also indicate a tendency toward the cynical strain that we often see in misogynist literature of the period, such as Joseph Swetnam’s Arraignment.8 Because this is a text intended to prescribe women’s behavior, we might assume that it expects women to act on Virtue’s behalf and that the men who are supposed to teach the women how to behave ought to be outraged by the treatment of virtue and should recommend that their charges take up her cause. But such a reading is problematic because, in this case, women are not alone in ignoring the naked and hungry Virtue. If we read Salter’s added dialogue as a plea for more virtue in the world, we must admit that it is written not only to women. This dialogue may be meant to suggest that if we leave it to women to rescue Virtue, she might as well go into hiding for a while. This cynical reading is supported by the story of the dispute between two female goddesses—one virtuous and one “proude.”9 Salter’s text opens with the idea that there are some who can benefit from reading it and others who should be considered lost causes, but he ends on a note suggesting that all people are lost causes. How are we to take this conclusion to a text about women’s behavior? In my opinion, the connection between the treatment of Virtue and the culpability of men would not surprise Salter, who concludes his text this way to explicitly tie the wellbeing of society to the behavior of men and women—not only the behavior of women. I do not disagree that misogyny is present in his text, especially as a rhetorical form, but I think the conclusion is not engaging in straightforward misogyny. Richard Brathwaite’s The English Gentlewoman opens with a comparison of the material book to the ideal gentlewoman. The conclusion of this work, in which he lists all of the qualities of the perfect gentlewoman, should therefore be taken as a claim that is simultaneously about the perfect gentlewoman and his text. Brathwaite sees authenticity as crucial to the character of the ideal gentlewoman: “Her desire is to be, rather than to

seeme.”10 Through this authenticity, she impresses others: “All shee doth is her owne; All her owne doth incomparably please.”11 The perfect gentlewoman does not spend any Page 126 →time thinking about her self and her looks, for “Her Glasse is not halfe so usefull to her selfe, as the glasse of her life is to others.”12 Brathwaite’s claims for the ideal gentlewoman are thus also claims for his own text and perhaps even for himself as an author. This text that you hold in your hands, the conclusion seems to say, is authentic and trustworthy. Even more clearly than Salter, Brathwaite claims that men’s behavior and women’s behavior are inextricably linked. Before the “Embleme” that concludes the work as a whole, Brathwaite writes that the husband of the gentlewoman “cannot stay long behind, seeing his better part is gone before.”13 Once again, the purpose of virtuous women seems to be that they make virtuous men possible. When I teach my course on the “ideal” woman in early modern England, I usually end with Jane Austen’s Emma, because we there begin to see the education of a woman explicitly tied to the education of a man. Claudia L. Johnson argues that Emma not only shows its main character being taught how to be the perfect wife but also shows Mr. Knightley learning how to be the perfect husband. Further, Johnson asserts that Emma is more interested in constructing masculinity than femininity, as the novel “persistently asks how a man should behave and what he ought to do.”14 Following Johnson’s astute reading demonstrates that we see the link between feminine and masculine virtues more clearly in Emma. However, there is a problem with the expectation that men and women have the same opportunities to acquire virtue. Early modern conduct literature offers strategies for negotiation as a way to create more opportunities, as we have seen, but the end of the eighteenth century saw a shift in approach to this problem. In The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft argues that one must have reason, developed through proper education, in order to be virtuous. Women, therefore, must be offered the same quality of education as men if we expect them to be virtuous; there can be no virtue without reason. “In fact,” Wollstonecraft writes, “it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseau’s opinion respecting men: I extend it to women, and confidently assert that they have been drawn out of their sphere by false refinement, and not by an endeavour to acquire masculine qualities.”15 Wollstonecraft is speaking to something that we see in the early modern texts I have looked at in the present study: women must be able to engage critically with behavioral expectations in order to perform them properly. But Wollstonecraft takes it a step further by arguing that texts about women’s education have hampered the possibility of reasonable women. Page 127 →I may be accused of arrogance; still I must declare what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners from Rousseau to Dr. Gregory, have contributed to render women more artificial, weak characters, than they would otherwise have been; and, consequently, more useless members of society.16 Wollstonecraft turns the focus to the writers of texts about women’s education, much in the same way Christine de Pizan (discussed in chapter 4) points to the problems of misogynist writing. If the field is dominated by men who write this way about women’s learning, it is unlikely that women will be able to become reasoning subjects capable of true virtue. Wollstonecraft seems to mark a very important shift in thinking about feminine virtue and the texts that engage with the behavioral expectations of women. As a topic of interest, feminine virtue has never quite faded from view. In some ways, it took on a more deliberate purpose in didacticism after the early modern period. Take, for example, Samuel Richardson’s novels Pamela and Clarissa, which treat feminine virtue as their main theme. Given what I have discussed here and the representations of feminine virtue that continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one might expect our twenty-first-century culture—British and American—to take for granted such complicated ideas. The problem, though, is that our culture becomes measured more each day by popular culture that inherits its ideas about women’s behavior from the broadside ballads I discussed in the last chapter. Simultaneously conservative and provocative in its values, popular culture gives us a picture of women’s virtue that begins to look a lot like the misguided straightforwardly good and bad. We are not looking back on some historical moment

of the “Angel” and the “Monster” that Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar discuss in their pathbreaking The Madwoman in the Attic.17 Rather, we are living a more exaggerated and polarized version of it. One need only to turn on the television or open a popular magazine to recognize the draining of any concept of informed feminine virtue. For instance, popular singer Taylor Swift was recently humiliated publicly for her relationship troubles. The language used around her makes it clear that she is now firmly ensconced as a “monster.” Michael J. Fox, an actor who is rarely attached to scandal, even “publicly said Swift should вЂback off’ [from his twenty-three-year-old son] and blasted her use of break-ups as fodder for songs.”18 Unlike the ballads, however, popular stories about the lives of stars do not tend toward reconciliation and peace in the community. The focus of these stories is more often about laying down dividing lines and setting up territories.

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Notes Introduction 1. I am borrowing this perfect phrase from Karen Newman, “Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew,” English Literary Renaissance 16, no. 1 (1986): 100. 2. Walter Lynne, A vvatch-vvord for vvilfull vvomen an excellent pithie dialogue betvveene two sisters, of contrary dispositio[n]s: the one a vertuous matrone: fearing God: the other a vvilfull husvvife: of disordered behauioure. Wherein is righte Christianly discoursed, what singuler commodity commeth by vertuous educatio[n], as otherwise what torment to a quiet man, a skowlding [and] vndiscrete woman is (London: Thomas Marshe, 1581), A4r. 3. Ibid., A4v. 4. John Brinsley, A looking-glasse for good vvomen, held forth by way of counsell and advice to such of that sex and quality, as in the simplicity of their hearts, are led away to the imbracing or looking towards any of the dangerous errors of the times, specially that of the separation. As it was lately presented to the Church of God at Great-Yarmouth, by John Brinsley. Octob. 9. 1645 (London: Ralph Smith, 1645), prefatory material. 5. Robert Snawsel, A looking-glasse for married folkes, wherein they may plainly see their deformities; and also how to behaue themselues one to another, and both of them towards God. Set forth dialogue-wise for the more tastable and plainnesse sake (London: Henry Bell, 1631), A3v. 6. Giovanni Michele Bruto, The necessarie, fit, and conuenient education of a yong gentlewoman written both in French and Italian, and translated into English by W.P. And now printed with the three languages togither in one volume, for the better instruction of such as are desirous to studie those tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1598), A2r–A2v. 7. Thomas Salter, A mirrhor mete for all mothers, matrones, and maidens, intituled the Mirrhor of Modestie, no lesse profitable and pleasant, then necessarie to bee read and practiced (London: Edward White, 1579), A2v. 8. Ibid., A3r. 9. William St. Clair and Irmgard Maassen, eds., Conduct Literature for Women, 1500 to 1640, 6 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 5:2. Page 130 →10. Ibid. 11. Salter, Mirrhor of Modestie, A4r. 12. Richard Hyrde, preface to Instruction of a Christen Woman, by Juan Luis Vives (London, 1529), A2v. Tatchis means “fig. A moral spot or blemish; a fault or vice; a bad quality or habit” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “tatchis,” def. 2a). 13. Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982), 35. 14. Ann Rosalind Jones, “Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Sixteenth-Century Women’s Lyrics,” in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, Essays in Literature and Society (New York: Methuen, 1987), 39. 15. Chilton Powell (English Domestic Relations: 1487–1653 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1917]) sees these two kinds of writing as one—both intend to instruct women on proper behavior. 16. Kate Aughterson, Renaissance Woman: Constructions of Femininity in England; A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1995), 67–68. 17. See, for example, ibid., 68–69. 18. Ibid., 69.

19. Karen Raber, “Gender and the Political Subject in Tragedy of Mariam,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 35, no. 2 (1995): 327. 20. I use the term feminine virtue here and throughout quite deliberately. The virtue with which I am concerned here is not an inborn one but, rather, a learned one. It thus derives from a constructed gender and is “feminine” rather than “female.” 21. Christina Luckyj, “A Moving Rhetoricke”: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). 22. Kathryn Schwarz, What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 1. 23. St. Clair and Maassen, Conduct Literature, 1:xvii. 24. Salter, Mirrhor of Modestie, B2v–B3r. 25. Erica Longfellow, Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7. 26. CoppГ©lia Kahn, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Larry S. Champion, The Evolution of Shakespeare’s Comedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). See Barbara Freedman, Staging the Gaze: Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, and Shakespearean Comedy (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1991), 119. For a more recent summary, see Helga Ramsey-Kurz, “Rising above the Bait: Kate’s Transformation from Bear to Falcon,” English Studies 88, no. 3 (2007): 262–63. 27. Newman, “Renaissance Family Politics,” 100. 28. Holly Crocker, “Affective Resistance: Performing Passivity and Playing A-Part in The Taming of the Shrew,” Shakespeare Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2003): 159. 29. All references to The Taming of the Shrew are to William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Robert Heilman, Signet Classic Shakespeare (New York: Page 131 →Penguin, 1999). I include the act, scene, and line numbers as in-text parenthetical citations for ease of reading. 30. In particular, he deprived her of food, drink, and sleep; removed her from familiar surroundings; and disoriented her by contradicting the facts she believed to be true about her experience. 31. The killing of a husband, as many have noted, was tried as petty treason in early modern England. For a discussion of crime and gender, see Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender, and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially 138–48. See also the essays by Frances E. Dolan and Simone Chess in Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800, ed. Patricia Fumerton, Anita Guerrini, and Kris McAbee (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2010). 32. Ramsey-Kurz, “Rising above the Bait,” 262. These readings are beginning to notice that Kate might not be straightforwardly either truly reformed angel or pretending shrew.

Chapter 1 1. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 3.proem.1. All citations of The Faerie Queene in this chapter are to the edition by A. C. Hamilton (London: Longman, 1977). I have maintained Hamilton’s preservation of Spenser’s spelling in quotations throughout except where I have changed u to v and i to j for ease of reading. Two examples of conduct manuals with sections on chastity are Juan Luis Vives’s Instruction of a Christian Woman (1529) and Jacques DuBosc’s The Complete Woman (1639). 2. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “chastity,” def. 1a. 3. See, for example, chapter 4 of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. 4. Peter G. Platt, Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2009), 16. 5. As an example of the argument that relies on evolutionary psychology, see David M. Buss, The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love

and Sex (New York: Free Press, 2000). Buss argues, “From an ancestral man’s perspective, the single most damaging form of infidelity his partner could commit, in the currency of reproduction, would have been a sexual infidelity. A woman’s sexual infidelity jeopardizes a man’s confidence that he is the genetic father of her children” (4). One criticism of such approaches to literature and culture can be found in Bradley Bankston, “Against Biopoetics: On the Use and Misuse of the Concept of Evolution in Contemporary Literary Theory” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2004), iii. Bankston argues “that biopoetics, conceived from a dissatisfaction with other contemporary literary theories—and in particular with such theories’ politicization of literature—is more dubious in its assumptions and reasoning, and more programmatically political, than the approaches that it seeks to replace” (abstract). 6. Theodora A. Jankowski, Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama, New Cultural Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 26. Page 132 →7. Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London: Routledge, 1989), 10. 8. Kathryn Schwarz, “Chastity, Militant and Married: Cavendish’s Romance, Milton’s Masque,” PMLA 118, no. 2 (2003): 270, 282. 9. Kathryn Schwarz, What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 179. 10. See, for example, Margaret Mikesell’s “The Place of Vives’s Instruction of a Christen Woman in Early Modern English Domestic Book Literature,” in Contextualizing the Renaissance: Returns to History; Selected Proceedings from the 28th Annual CEMERS Conference, ed. Albert H. Tricomi (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1994), 105–18. Juan Luis Vives composed the Latin De Institutione Foeminae Christianae in 1523, while he was under the patronage of Catherine of Aragon. Soon after, Richard Hyrde, a fellow humanist and frequent visitor to Thomas More’s household, translated the work into English. Hyrde’s English translation of Vives’s work, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, was popular enough to go through nine editions in the sixteenth century (two editions in 1529 and additional editions in 1531, 1541, 1547, 1557, 1567, 1585, and 1592). That Vives wrote his text in Latin gives us an indication that he intended and tailored it for an elite English audience. The curricula of English grammar schools included Latin instruction—both writing and speaking—and education was restricted mainly to elites. Many have claimed that English translation made the text available to a wider variety of readers. For example, see Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Margaret Mikesell, introduction to The Instruction of a Christen Woman, by Juan Luis Vives (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002). Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell write, “Hyrde’s prefatory statement that he translated Vives’s treatise вЂfor the commodite and profite of our owne countre’ (A3r) suggests an intent to reach a wider audience” (lxxvii). We need not assume that the “wider audience” is composed of women in different classes, however. Hyrde’s choice of English is related more to making the work available to Englishwomen than to making it available to other classes. In his preface, Hyrde expresses this desire: “I wisshed in my mynde that eyther in every countre women were lerned in the latin tonge, or the boke out of latin translated in to every tonge” (A2v). Hyrde argues that women should be educated and ordered well for the good of humankind, as the education and good behavior of women is “fruitful” for all of humanity, not just for the good of the women themselves or their immediate family. In this statement, Hyrde also reminds us that the behavior of women has a direct bearing on the good of men and their country. Therefore, the English translation is meant to improve England, participating (as many translations do) in a project to strengthen England as a nation-state. 11. I have maintained Vives’s early modern spelling in quotations throughout except where I have changed u to v and i to j for ease of reading. All in-text parenthetical references to Vives’s text are from Juan Luis Vives, A very frutefull and pleasant boke called the Instructio[n] of a Christen woma[n] made fyrst in Laten and dedicated vnto the quenes good grace by the right famous clerke mayster Lewes Uiues ; and Page 133 →turned out of Laten into Englysshe

by Rycharde Hyrd. Whiche boke who so redeth diligently shall haue knowlege [sic] of many thynges wherin he shal take great pleasure and specially women shal take great co[m]modyte and frute towarde the[n]crease of vertue & good maners (London, 1529). 12. Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell, introduction to The Instruction of a Christen Woman, xliv. 13. Ibid., lv. 14. Ibid., xxiv. 15. Ibid., ixl. Conversos were Jewish people who converted to Christianity in Spain. 16. Ibid., ixl. 17. Ibid., xliv. 18. Nancy Weitz Miller, “Metaphor and the Mystification of Chastity in Vives’s Instruction of a Christen Woman,” in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 135. 19. Ibid. 20. I borrow the terms in quotation marks here from Platt, Culture of Paradox, 16. 21. Cary’s closet drama is credited with being the first published play in English written by a woman, and much is made of Cary’s “speech” and therefore unchastity through publication. More recently, however, there have been challenges to the assumption that print was inherently lower than other forms. For example, Marta Straznicky argues in Privacy, Playreading, and Women’s Closet Drama, 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) that The Tragedy of Mariam was composed for an elite audience and that print was intellectually superior to performance. The genre in which it is written—the closet drama—suggests resistance to publicity. Straznicky discusses how the silence in the closet is very difficult to control. Cary’s play thus enacts the problematic that preoccupies its treatment of chastity as a variably defined, slippery concept. 22. All references to Cary’s play are to Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry, with “The Lady Falkland: Her Life,” by One of Her Daughters, ed. Barry Weller and Margaret W. Ferguson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). For ease of reading, I supply act, scene, and line numbers in parenthetical in-text citations rather than in the notes. 23. Alexandra Bennett, “Female Performativity in The Tragedy of Mariam,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900В 40, no. 2 (2000): 302–3. 24. Christina Luckyj, “A Moving Rhetoricke”: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 153. For discussions of Mariam’s speech, see Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London: Methuen, 1985), especially 164–75; Margaret W. Ferguson, “Running On with Almost Public Voice: The Case of E.C.,” in Tradition and the Talents of Women, ed. Florence Howe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 37–67;Ferguson, “The Spectre of Resistance: The Tragedy of Mariam (1613),” in Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, ed. David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (New York: Routledge, 1991), 235–50. Page 134 →25. Edmund Tilney, A briefe and pleasant discourse of duties in mariage, called the flower of friendship (London, 1568), C3r. 26. Boyd M. Berry, “Feminine Construction of Patriarchy; or, What’s Comic in the Tragedy of Mariam,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews 7 (1995): 257–58, 270. 27. 1 Cor. 7:4. 28. 1 Cor. 7:6, 7:1. 29. One might ask here why women are working out the more complicated issues behind the virtue of chastity in this instance. Herod sees things in a very clear-cut way: Mariam’s attitude is proof that she has been unfaithful, and she must die for that. Doris and Mariam have competing notions of what it

means to be chaste. Perhaps this is because the women who are expected to live up to the constructions of womanhood are the ones on whom the burden of figuring out the details falls. Women must understand how to navigate the prescriptions for their behavior in order to follow them. Salome uses her understanding to circumvent these prescriptions rather than live up to them. 30. Spenser, Faerie Queene, 3.proem.3. Throughout this section, I supply in-text parenthetical references to the poem for ease of reading. 31. Carol V. Kaske, “Chastity,” in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 142. 32. See Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book; or, The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered, ed. Elaine Hobby (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41, 131. According to Sharp, “the chief pleasure of loves delight” lies in the clitoris, “yet Child-bearing is so dangerous that the pain must needs be great.” 33. Spenser, Faerie Queene, 3.6.28. See Patricia Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 50–66, for a discussion of the taking up of Chrysogone’s babes in terms of the practice of gift exchange. 34. One suggestion that Belphoebe’s reputation might not be perfectly immune to gossip is when Timias is bitten by the Blatant Beast and attacked by Despetto, Decetto, and Defetto in Spenser, Faerie Queene, 6.5.12–24. The report of Amoret’s torture is in 3.11.9–17. See Susan Frye, “Of Chastity and Rape: Edmund Spenser Confronts Elizabeth I in The Faerie Queene,” in Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 353–79, for a discussion of what Frye sees as the rape of Amoret. 35. See Lesley W. Brill, “Chastity as Ideal Sexuality in the Third Book of The Faerie Queene,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 11, no. 1 (1971): 15–26, for a discussion of Spenser’s ideal sexuality. On his criticism of Elizabeth, see Andrew Hadfield, “Politics,” in A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies, ed. Bart van Es (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 47; Hadfield, “Duessa’s Trial and Elizabeth’s Error: Judging Elizabeth in Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doren and Thomas S. Freeman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 56–76. See also David Scott Wilson-Okamura, “Spenser and the Two Queens,” English Literary Renaissance 32, no. 1 (2002): 62–84; Jessica C. Murphy, “вЂOf the Sicke Page 135 →Virgin’: Britomart, Greensickness, and the Man in the Mirror,” Spenser Studies 25 (2010): 109–27. 36. See Murphy, “Of the Sicke Virgin,” concluding paragraphs. 37. P. Berry, Of Chastity, 1. See also Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), especially the introduction. 38. Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 147. 39. Louis Montrose, “Idols of the Queen: Policy, Gender, and the Picturing of Elizabeth I,” Representations 68 (1999): 131. See Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Random House, 1999); Frances Yates, “Queen Elizabeth as Astraea,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 10 (1947): 27–82. 40. I refer here to a special issue of Milton Quarterly entitled “The Faerie Queene at Ludlow,” in which multiple authors explore Milton’s reworking of Spenserian chastity. See Andrew Escobedo and Beth Quitslund, “Sage and Serious: Milton’s Chaste Original,” introduction to special issue, Milton Quarterly 37, no. 4 (2003): 179–83. 41. In particular, see William Shullenberger, “Girl Interrupted: Spenserian Bondage and Release in Milton’s Ludlow Mask,” Milton Quarterly 37, no. 4 (2003): 184–204; E. M. W. Tillyard, “The Action of Comus,” 82-99, In Studies in Milton (New York: Macmillan, 1951). 42. Lauren Shohet, “Figuring Chastity: Milton’s Ludlow Masque,” in Kelly and Leslie, Menacing Virgins, 147–48. 43. Schwarz, “Chastity,” 272. 44. For an explanation of the differences between different manuscripts and the printed text, see C. S. Lewis, “A Note on вЂComus,’” Review of

English Studies 8, no. 30 (1932): 170–76. While he claims that the addition of lines 779–806 “is an alterationВ .В .В . in the gnomic and ethical direction” (174) that changes the tone of the masque, he does not elaborate. 45. All references to Comus are from John Milton, The Complete Poems, ed. John Leonard (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 46–75 For ease of reading, I supply the line numbers in in-text parenthetical citations. 46. Hugh Plat, Delightes for ladies, to adorne their persons, tables, closets, and distillatories. With beauties, banquets, perfumes and waters. (London, 1603). This text was reprinted into the twentieth century. 47. Walter Lynne, A vvatch-vvord for vvilfull vvomen. An excellent pithie dialogue betvveene two sisters, of contrary dispositio[n]s: the one a vertuous matrone: fearing God: the other a vvilfull husvvife: of disordered behauioure. Wherein is righte Christianly discoursed, what singuler commodity commeth by vertuous educatio[n], as otherwise what torment to a quiet man, a skowlding [and] vndiscrete woman is (London: Thomas Marshe, 1581), A4r. 48. See, for example, Lewis, “A Note on вЂComus.’” 49. Stephen Orgel, “The Case for Comus,” Representations 81 (2003): 39. 50. Rev. 11:13. Page 136 →51. Catherine Thomas, “Chaste Bodies and Poisonous Desires in Milton’s Mask,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 46, no. 2 (2006): 435. 52. Ibid., 456. 53. For a good discussion of Milton’s possible real-life intentions for changing his language about chastity, see Cynthia Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law, and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 54. For example, his revisions to Paradise Lost were intended to bring the epic more in line with Virgilian epic.

Chapter 2 1. A version of this chapter was published as Jessica C. Murphy, “Feminine Virtue’s Network of Influence in Early Modern England,” Studies in Philology 109, no. 2 (2012): 258–78. 2. Robert Greene, Penelopes vveb vvherein a christall myrror of faeminine perfection represents to the viewe of euery one those vertues and graces, which more curiously beautifies the mynd of women, then eyther sumptuous apparell, or iewels of inestimable valew: the one buying fame with honour, the other breeding a kynd of delight, but with repentance. In three seuerall discourses also are three especiall vertues, necessary to be incident in euery vertuous woman, pithely discussed: namely obedience, chastitie, and sylence: interlaced with three seuerall and comicall histories. By Robert Greene Maister of Artes in Cambridge (London, 1587), B4v–C1r. I have preserved Greene’s early modern spelling in quotations throughout except where I have changed u to v and i to j for ease of reading. 3. Robert Snawsel, A looking-glasse for married folkes, wherein they may plainly see their deformities; and also how to behaue themselues one to another, and both of them towards God. Set forth dialogue-wise for the more tastable and plainnesse sake (London: Henry Bell, 1631), C4v–C5r. 4. Akiko Kusunoki, “вЂTheir Testament at Their Apron-Strings’: The Representation of Puritan Women in Early-Seventeenth-Century England,” in Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 187. 5. For example, see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 195. Fletcher claims, “It is clearly the case that the contemporary ideal of conjugal relations was predicated on women’s ultimate submissionВ .В .В . Theory, legal precept and the rhetoric of puritan clerics in their conduct literature, despite its lyrical passages about conjugal love, were all stacked against women’s

being allowed to contemplate the realization of loving mutuality in their marriages. Yet we cannot dismiss all the anecdotal evidence of wills, monuments, letters, memoirs and diaries which testifies to many people’s happiness in the married state at this time” (190). I contend that the anecdotal evidence and the conduct literature are not as much at odds as Fletcher suggests. 6. Kathryn Schwarz, What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 1. Page 137 →7. Ibid., 214. 8. Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Margaret Mikesell, introduction to The Instruction of a Christen Woman, by Juan Luis Vives (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), xliv, xlv. 9. For an excellent discussion of the position of household subordinates in the relationship between spouses, see Frances E. Dolan, Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy (Philadelphia,: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), especially chapter 3. 10. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 1–30. 11. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 22; original emphasis. 12. Ibid., 177. 13. For two good examples of reading feminine virtue this way, see Holly Crocker, “The Rhetoric of Feminine Virtue: Fashioning Femininity, Stabilizing Masculinity, 1350–1603” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1999), especially 15, 22, 178, 185; Crocker, “The Tamer as Shrewd in John Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize: or, The Tamer Tam’d,” SEL Studies In English Literature 1500–1900 51, no. 2 (2011): 409–26. 14. William St. Clair and Irmgard Maassen, eds., Conduct Literature for Women, 1500–1640, 6 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 4:4. 15. The ladies to whom she is talking may very well have been among those lying with the suitors in Homer’s Odyssey. Through their characters, we are reminded that feminine virtue is crucial to a woman’s survival (Odysseus killed them when he found out) and that it is possible for anyone to benefit from good teaching if they would only listen. 16. I use the name “Odysseus” here for consistency’s sake because I refer to Homer’s Odyssey in my discussion. In Greene’s text, Penelope’s husband is usually called “Ulysses.” 17. Georgianna Ziegler, “Penelope and the Politics of Woman’s Place in the Renaissance,” in Cerasano and Wynne-Davies, Gloriana’s Face, 32. 18. Ibid., 35. 19. Greene, Penelope’s Web, E4r–E4v. 20. Ibid., G3v. 21. Ibid., H2r. 22. Ibid. 23. For an excellent study of early modern women’s use of silence, see Christina Luckyj, вЂA Moving Rhetoricke’: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). 24. Greene, Penelope’s Web, H2v. 25. Ibid. 26. Megan Palmer Browne pointed out to me that Ismena may have a cultural resonance too, as she was Antigone’s obedient and quiet sister in Sophocles’s Oedipus plays. In this case, then, the irony of her outspoken behavior would make her an even more comical character to Greene’s readers. 27. Greene, Penelope’s Web, C1r. In a 2003 e-mail, James Hankins of the DepartmentPage 138 → of History at Harvard University concluded that a

dialogue by the name Androgina did not exist. Hankins suspected that Greene was referring to the famous passage in the Symposium (193ff.) in which Aristophanes describes the origins of love and the word androgyne. However, not long after our e-mail exchange, Hankins came across a French forgery claiming to be by Plato and called L’Androgyne de Platon, mis en francais par Antoine Heroet, printed at Lyons in 1547. 28. Greene, Penelope’s Web, C2r. 29. Ibid., C2v–C3r. 30. Ibid., B3r–v. 31. Ibid., A4r. 32. For more about Gamon, see Anne Duffin, “Gamon, Hannibal,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 33. Hanniball Gamon, The praise of a godly vvoman A sermon preached at the solemne funerall of the right honourable ladie, the Ladie Frances Roberts, at Lanhide-rock-Church in Cornwall, the tenth of August, 1626. By Hanniball Gamon, minister of the word of God, at St. Maugan in the same countie (London: John Grismond, 1627), A3v. 34. Ibid., B2r. 35. Ibid., B2v. 36. Ibid,, E3v. 37. Retha M. Warnicke, “Eulogies for Women: Public Testimony of Their Godly Example and Leadership,” in Attending to Early Modern Women, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 169–70. 38. Ibid., 170. 39. Gamon, Praise, F2r–v. 40. Warnicke, “Eulogies,” 170–71. 41. Snawsel, Looking-glasse, A3v. In his translation, Snawsel expands on Erasmus mainly through the addition of some characters, including the husband. 42. For particularly interesting discussions on this topic, see Ruby Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially chapter 1; Kenneth Sayre, Plato’s Literary Garden: How to Read a Platonic Dialogue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), introduction and chapter 1. 43. Snawsel, Looking-glasse, C3v. 44. Ibid., D6v. 45. Dolan, Marriage and Violence, 4. 46. Ibid., 101. 47. Snawsel, Looking-glasse, E2v–E3r. 48. This is an alternative to the fantasy of the elimination of the spouse that Dolan notes (Marriage and Violence, 64). 49. Gamon, Praise, E4r. 50. Snawsel, Looking-glasse, E8r. 51. Ibid., E8r–E8v. 52. Ibid., E8v. 53. Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200–1830 (London: Longman, 1983), 13. Page 139 →54. Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, for example, reveals how entertaining her husband’s friends too well can have disastrous results for a wife.

55. Snawsel, Looking-glasse, E8v. 56. Ibid., E5v. 57. Ibid., F5r. 58. Ibid., E3v. 59. Ibid., H5v. 60. Phillip Stubbes, A christal glasse for christian vvomen containing, a most excellent discourse, of the godly life and Christian death of Mistresse Katherine Stubs, who departed this life in Burton vpon Trent, in Staffordshire the 14. day of December. 1590. With a most heauenly confession of the Christian faith, which shee made a little before her departure: as also a wonderfull combate betwixt Sathan and her soule: worthie to be imprinted in letters of golde, and are to be engrauen in the tables of euery Christian heart. Set downe word for word, as she spake it, as neere as could be gathered: by Phillip Stubbes Gent. (London, 1592). 61. The text continued to be printed in various forms until 1664. 62. For a discussion of the authorization of a woman’s voice after death, see Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), especially chapter 5. 63. Stubbes, Christal glasse, A2r. 64. The phrase “I believe” is used thirty-seven times in her confession. 65. Stubbes, Christal glasse, B1r. 66. Ibid. 67. Peter Stallybrass, “Reading the Body: The Revenger’s Tragedy and the Jacobean Theater of Consumption,” Renaissance Drama 18 (1987): 122. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., 123. 70. Stubbes, Christal glasse, A4r. 71. Ibid., A4v. 72. Dolan, Marriage and Violence, 4.

Chapter 3 1. William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 3rd ed. (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1980), 160–90. 2. For examples of some of this excellent work, see Cristina LeГІn Alfar, Fantasies of Female Evil: The Dynamics of Gender and Power in Shakespearean Tragedy (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003); Katherine Eggert, Showing Like a Queen: Female Authority and Literary Experiment in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Phyllis Rackin, Shakespeare and Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Carol Chillington Rutter, Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare’s Stage (London: Routledge, 2001); Kathryn Schwarz, What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Page 140 →3. Charles Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2. Whitney examines responses to Renaissance drama and argues that offering moral and practical material is deliberate on the part of the players. See especially his introduction. See also his chapter 5, “Playgoing and Play-Reading Gentlewomen,” for his assertion that women engage with “drama to help identify and assert their interests

in relation to male-dominated public arenas and institutions” (203). 4. Ronald Bedford, “On Being a Person: Elizabethan Acting and the Art of Self-Representation,” in Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices, ed. Ronald Bedford, Lloyd Davis, and Philippa Kelly (Ann Arbor:В University of Michigan Press,В 2006), 49. See also Robert Weimann, Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Weimann argues for the authority that players possessed in Shakespeare’s theater. 5. The observation that the theater participated in the construction of gender is not new. For instance, Karen Newman’s Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991) examines the discourses around the female body and the notion of femininity in early modern drama. Newman’s poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, new historicist, and feminist readings of such texts as Dekker’s The Witch of Edmonton are elegant and enlightening. Conduct literature for women undergirds a lot of Newman’s historical work, but these texts are not part of her main focus. Rather, they are classed along with legal documents, for their evidentiary value. The present chapter’s focus on the nuanced concepts in early modern conduct literature for women—specifically on discussions of chastity and obedience—thus adds a deeper understanding of early modern drama in the context of complex issues surrounding feminine virtue. 6. That Ophelia is receiving this advice now suggests that she is on the verge of sexual maturity, even if she is already sexually active. There are a number of productions in which Ophelia is having a sexual relationship with Hamlet (and maybe with her brother too?), but she is not yet a “woman” even there. Her counselors take it upon themselves to help her to womanhood, which they can interpret only as sexual maturity (perhaps because that is the only way they can offer her advice). 7. For a discussion of Portia as wife, see Corinne S. Abate, “вЂNerissa Teaches Me What to Believe’: Portia’s Wifely Empowerment in The Merchant of Venice,” in The Merchant of Venice: New Critical Essays, edited by John W. Mahon and Ellen Macleod Mahon, Shakespeare Criticism 26 (London: Routledge, 2002), 283–304. 8. For an excellent and now classic reading of gift exchange in The Merchant of Venice, see Karen Newman, “Portia’s Ring: Unruly Women and Structures of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1987): 19–33. For a reading of the legal issues in the courtroom scene, see Thomas C. Bilello, “Accomplished with What She Lacks: Law, Equity, and Portia’s Con,” in The Law in Shakespeare, ed. Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham, Early Modern Literature in History (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 109–26. 9. For a look at how one feminist adaptation preserves Desdemona’s tragedy Page 141 →and why, see Elizabeth Gruber, “Erotic Politics Reconsidered: Desdemona’s Challenge to Othello,” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3, no. 2 (2008): n.p. http://www.borrowers.uga.edu/781790/show. 10. For a reading of Cordelia’s silence as a demonstration of the presence of the female body, see Emma L. E. Rees, “Cordelia’s Can’t: Rhetorics of Reticence and (Dis)ease in King Lear,” in Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and Early Modern England, Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010), 105–16. 11. Neil Diamond, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” Gold (Los Angeles: Geffen Records, 2005) MP3 file, downloaded May 2007, iTunes. 12. Carol Thomas Neely, Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 3. 13. All references to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet are to the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition by Philip Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 14. In the 1950s, Bennett and others debated whether Polonius gave good or bad advice: see Josephine Waters Bennett, “These Few Precepts,” Shakespeare Quarterly 7, no. 2 (1956): 275–76; Bennett, “Characterization in Polonius’ Advice to Laertes,” Shakespeare Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1953): 3–9. More recently, Steven Doloff pointed out a parallel for Polonius’s advice in a 1573 almanac, which makes the advice familiar: see Doloff,

“Polonius’s Precepts and Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandrie,” Review of English Studies, n.s., 42, no. 166 (1991): 227–28. 15. Here, of course, I am talking about Shakespeare’s moment, not the historical moment of the play. 16. Linda Welshimer Wagner, “Ophelia: Shakespeare’s Pathetic Plot Device,” Shakespeare Quarterly 14, no.1 (1963): 96. 17. For a discussion of Vives’s views on chastity, see Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Margaret Mikesell, introduction to The Instruction of a Christen Woman, by Juan Luis Vives, xv–cxiii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002). 18. For a study of the representations of greensickness in early modern texts, see Helen King, The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of Puberty (London: Routledge, 2004). 19. Laurence Olivier, Hamlet (1948) DVD (New York: The Criterion Collection, 2000). 20. Michael Almereyda, Hamlet (2000) DVD (Burbank, CA: Miramax Home Entertainment: Distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2001). 21. The issue of what, exactly, it meant to be subject to the law was a vexed issue in the early modern period. For a discussion of theories of the monarchy, see Alan Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642, Ideas in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially the introduction and 4–32. 22. OED Online, s.v. “rede,” def. 1, accessed June 17, 2014, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/160221. Page 142 →23. Philip Edwards notes, “Q2 marks these lines with inverted commas, the signs of вЂsentences,’ or improving moral generalities” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 108n36, 108nn38–39). 24. All in-text parenthetical references to Vives’s text are from Juan Luis Vives, A very frutefull and pleasant boke called the Instructio[n] of a Christen woma[n] made fyrst in Laten and dedicated vnto the quenes good grace by the right famous clerke mayster Lewes Uiues ; and turned out of Laten into Englysshe by Rycharde Hyrd. Whiche boke who so redeth diligently shall haue knowlege [sic] of many thynges wherin he shal take great pleasure and specially women shal take great co[m]modyte and frute towarde the[n]crease of vertue & good maners (London, 1529). 25. Lagretta Tallent Lenker, Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare and Shaw, Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies 95 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), 54. 26. Philip Edwards in Shakespeare, Hamlet, 96n34. 27. Compare Edward Samuel Farrow, A Dictionary of Military Terms (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1918), 494: “Rear. In the general acceptation of the word, anything situated or placed behind another”; “Rear Guard. A detachment detailed to protect the main body from attack in the rear.” 28. See Nancy Weitz Miller, “Metaphor and the Mystification of Chastity in Vives’s Instruction of a Christen Woman,” in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 132–45. 29. Sharon Hamilton, Shakespeare’s Daughters (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 92. 30. OED Online, s.v. “woodcock,” accessed June 17, 2014, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/230020. 31. The signature page is incorrectly marked N2r; it is actually O2r. The page number is 50. 32. Hamilton, Shakespeare’s Daughters, 80. 33. In this passage, Vives discusses how meats and wine can heat up young people’s lust. 34. Miller, “Metaphor and the Mystification,” 135. 35. There may be a power problem here: answering her brother is different from answering her father. However, dismissing the differences between her responses would be hasty, because her language distances her from engaging with the advice directly. Whereas she refers directly to what Laertes advises, she

here agrees only to obey. 36. There is some disagreement about whether Ophelia is indeed a virgin. Kenneth Branagh’s and Michael Almereyda’s film versions both envision Ophelia and Hamlet as lovers. Polonius uses confusing sexual imagery to warn her away from men, and Laertes may want her to stay away from Hamlet for reasons other than her honor. 37. For a discussion of the virgin as more than a woman who does not have sex, see Theodora A. Jankowski, Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), especially the Page 143 →first chapter, “Queer(y)ing Virginity: Virgins, Lesbians, and Queers of All Types,” and p. 26. 38. Carol Thomas Neely, “вЂDocuments in Madness’: Reading Madness and Gender in Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Early Modern Culture,” in Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender, ed. Shirley Nelson Garner and Madelon Sprengnether (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 80. 39. Edwards claims that this is “obviously a recollection of the famous Walsingham ballad, which brings together a lonely pilgrim and a deserted lover” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 206nn23–26. 40. For a good discussion of the relationship between these songs and the play’s engagement with gender and class, see Caralyn Bialo, “Popular Performance, the Broadside Ballad, and Ophelia’s Madness,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 53, no. 2 (2013): 293–309. 41. For example, John Symon, A pleasant posie, or Sweete nosegay of fragrant smellyng flowers: gathered in the garden of heaunely pleasure, the holy and blessed bible (London: Richard Jones, 1572); Gabriel Meurier, The nosegay of morall philosophie, lately dispersed amongst many Italian authours, and now newely and succinctly drawne together into questions and answers, and translated into Englishe by T.C. (London: Thomas Dawson, 1580); F.L., The virgin’s nosegay, or the duties of Christian virgins: digested into succinct chapters (London: M. Cooper, 1744). 42. Neely, Distracted Subjects, 56. 43. For an excellent look at the ways in which scholarly criticism of Ophelia mirrors developments in scholarly approaches, see R. S. White, “Ophelia’s Sisters,” in The Impact of Feminism in English Renaissance Studies, ed. Dympna Callaghan and Gail Kern Paster (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 93–113. 44. For a response to Mary Pipher’s book, see Sara Shandler, Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write about Their Search for Self, 1st ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999). 45. Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), 20. 46. White, “Ophelia’s Sisters,” 111. 47. See, as an example, Vives, Instruction, especially book 2. Also see my discussion of marriage manuals in chapter 2 of the present study. 48. See Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (New York: Routledge, 1996), 121. 49. Kirstie Gulick Rosenfield, “Nursing Nothing: Witchcraft and Female Sexuality in The Winter’s Tale,” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 35, no. 1 (2002): 96. 50. Ibid., 105. 51. Purkiss, Witch in History, 120. 52. The cases in the category called “countermagic” in the Witches in Early Modern England database are mixed between the unwitching performed by suspected witches and the kind Purkiss discusses. For a full list of the events in that category, see Witches in Early Modern England, “Event Type: Countermagic,” Witches in Early Modern England: A Digital Humanities Project for UnveilingPage 144 → Witchcraft Narratives, accessed July 12, 2012, http://witching.org/throwing-bones/#eventType-41. 53. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Witch Hunters, Professional Prickers, Unwitchers, and Witch Finders of the Renaissance (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), chapter 3.

54. Purkiss, Witch in History, 145. 55. This and all subsequent references to The Winter’s Tale are to William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, ed. Susan Snyder and Deborah T. CurrenAquino, The New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 56. See especially the multiple references to Paulina’s “magic” in act 5. 57. David Schalkwyk, “вЂA Lady’s Verily Is as Potent as a Lord’s’: Women, Word, and Witchcraft in The Winter’s Tale,” English Literary Renaissance 22, no. 2 (1992): 259. 58. Ibid., 268. 59. See also D’Orsay W. Pearson, “Witchcraft in The Winter’s Tale: Paulina as вЂAlcahueta y un Poquito Hechizera,’” Shakespeare Studies 12 (1979): 195–213. Pearson claims that Paulina’s witchcraft does have a function within the play, above excusing her questioning authority. Pearson sees Paulina as an “urban witch.” 60. Purkiss, Witch in History, 127. 61. Ibid., 119. 62. Ibid., 121. 63. Ibid., 123. 64. Ibid., 123. 65. Ibid., 96. 66. We can safely assume that Paulina’s daily visits, reported by the Second Gentleman, are for this purpose. 67. Purkiss, Witch in History, 125. 68. For a reading of this scene as one about mourning and death, see Kirby Farrell, “Witchcraft and Wonder in The Winter’s Tale,” in Renaissance Historicisms: Essays in Honor of Arthur F. Kinney (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 159. 69. Here I mean to imply not that England is an absolute monarchy but that the theories of absolute rule were very much under discussion during James I’s reign. For a look at some of the debates about absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century, see James Daly, “The Idea of Absolute Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century England,” Historical Journal 21, no. 2 (June 1, 1978): 227–50. 70. Although the play is dated after her reign, there may be a bit of Elizabeth in this plot. 71. King James I, “A Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at Whitehall (March 21, 1610),” in The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents ed. Russ McDonald, 2nd ed. (New York: Bedford, 2001), 329. 72. Ibid, 330. 73. “An Homily Against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion, 1570” in The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents ed. Russ McDonald 1st ed. (New York: Bedford, 1996), 338. 74. For discussion of Paulina as a stereotype of a shrew, see Joan Hartwig, “The Page 145 →Tragicomic Perspective of The Winter’s Tale,” in The Winter’s Tale: Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Hunt (New York: Garland, 1995), 175. Hartwig discusses Paulina’s dramatic purpose and argues that Paulina plays the parts of “shrew” and “confessor” to Leontes’ “tyrant” and “penitent,” respectively, in order to soften Leontes’ character for the audience. For discussion of Paulina as a stereotype of a good-natured servant, see Myles Hurd, “Shakespeare’s Paulina: Characterization and Craftsmanship in The Winter’s Tale,” College Language Association Journal 26, no. 3 (March 1983): 303, 307. Hurd advises that a professor teaching The Winter’s

Tale to undergraduates ought to point out that Paulina’s role is “crucially important.” He characterizes Paulina as the recognizable stereotype of “the good-natured servant who oversteps her authority to restore order in her employer’s house.” For discussion of Paulina as counselor, see Angela Pitt, Shakespeare’s Women (London: David and Charles, 1991), 130. Pitt claims that Paulina’s “function in the play is primarily to act as the voice of truth and reason to Leontes.” See also Carolyn Asp, “Shakespeare’s Paulina and the Consolatio Tradition,” Shakespeare Studies 11 (1978): 147, 149: Asp takes the dimension of “truth and reason” in Paulina’s character to a different level, asserting that Paulina can be seen as following the consolatio tradition of medieval literature. 75. See Janet S. Wolf, “вЂLike an Old Tale Still’: Paulina, вЂTriple Hecate,’ and the Persephone Myth in The Winter’s Tale,” in Images of Persephone: Feminist Readings in Western Literature, ed. Elizabeth T. Hayes (Florida: University of Florida Press, 1994), 42. Wolf discusses the similarities between the relationship between Paulina, Hermione, and Perdita and the relationship between Hecate, Demeter, and Persephone in the Homeric myth of Persephone. Wolf illuminates many similarities and claims that “the triad of Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate underpins and enriches the portraits of three of Shakespeare’s strongest, most attractive, and most triumphantly successful women.” 76. Duncan Salkeld, Madness and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 3.

Chapter 4 1. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, 1st ed. (New York: Persea Books, 1982). 4. 2. My thinking about virtue draws from OED definition 2a: “Conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality; voluntary observance of the recognized moral laws or standards of right conduct; abstention on moral grounds from any form of wrong-doing or vice.” However, also applicable in the case of feminine virtue is definition 3a: “A particular moral excellence; a special manifestation of the influence of moral principles in life or conduct.” Of course, with women, “virtue” can simply mean sexual chastity (def. 2c). The problem of virtue for women is exactly the problem of definition: one must follow the rules to have virtue, but a woman must also have innate virtue to be virtuous. In other words, virtue is both in her and something external that she must earn. Page 146 → 3. Since the 1970s, there have been a number of very important feminist scholars of early modern literature, to whom we owe our familiarity with women writers from the period. Megan Matchinske covers previous work very well in Writing, Gender, and State in Early Modern England: Identity Formation and the Female Subject, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 5–8, especially nn. 16–24. 4. Examples include the website of the Women Writers Project, accessed July 9, 2014, http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/. 5. “Society for the Study of Early Modern Women—Home,” accessed July 9, 2014, http://ssemw.org/. 6. Richard Brathwaite, The English gentlewoman, drawne out to the full body expressing, what habilliments doe best attire her, what ornaments doe best adorne her, what complements doe best accomplish her. By Richard Brathvvait Esq. (London: printed by B. Alsop and T. Favvcet for Michaell Sparke, 1631), sec. Epistle Dedicatorie. 7. Joan Klein, Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500–1640 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 234.

8. Brathwaite, English Gentlevvoman, 30. 9. Betty Travitsky, Mother’s Advice Books (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), x. 10. Nicholas Breton, The Mothers Blessing (London: T[homas] C[reede] for Iohn Smethick, 1602). 11. Wendy Wall, “Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy,” ELH 58, no. 1 (1991): 35–62. For a fuller discussion of the authorization of the female voice near/after death, see Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 279–340. 12. Jennifer Louise Heller, The Mother’s Legacy in Early Modern England (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2011), 115. 13. Ibid., 116. 14. For a look at mothers’ advice as devotional writing, see Susan E. Hrach, “Maternal Admonition as Devotional Practice: Letters of Mary Fane, Countess of Westmorland,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 24, nos. 1–2 (2011): 63–74. 15. See, for instance, Heller, The Mother’s Legacy in Early Modern England; Travitsky, Mother’s Advice Books; Marsha Urban, Seventeenth-Century Mother’s Advice Books (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 16. Elizabeth Clinton Lincoln, The Countesse of Lincolnes nurserie (Oxford, 1622), sig. A2r. 17. Ibid., sig. B1r. 18. Ibid., 15. 19. Ibid., 10, 20. 20. Ibid., 18. 21. For Salter’s prescriptions, discussed in the introduction to the present study, see Thomas Salter, A mirrhor mete for all mothers, matrones, and maidens, intituled the Mirrhor of Modestie no lesse profitable and pleasant, then necessarie to bee read and practiced (London: Edward White, 1579). Page 147 → 22. Virginia Brackett, “The Countesse of Lincolne’s Nurserie as Inspiration for Anne Bradstreet,” Notes and Queries 42, no. 3 (September 1995): 364+ Literature Resource Center. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE% 7CA17474476&v=2.1&u=txshracd2602&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=0b990ff6c11751861a707bdb798f7dfe. 23. Ibid., n.p. 24. Ronald Huebert, “The Female Breast in Reformation Culture,” Dalhousie Review 87, no. 2 (2007): 212. 25. Thinking of breast-feeding as a model for the circulation of feminine virtue brings to mind Cixous’s famous claim that woman “writes in white ink.” See HГ©lГЁne Cixous, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Signs 1, no. 4 (Summer 1976): 881. 26. Wall, “Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy.” 27. Isabella Whitney, “Will and Testament” (1573), lines 4, 7, 9, Representative Poetry Online, http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/will-and-testament. 28. Ibid., lines 29, 31. 29. For an excellent discussion of the ways in which Whitney uses her solitary “I” position throughout her poetry, see Laurie Ellinghausen, “Literary Property and the Single Woman in Isabella Whitney’s A Sweet Nosegay,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 45, no. 1 (2005): 1–22. 30. Mary Wroth, The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, ed. Josephine A. Roberts. (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1995), 169. 31. See also Lanyer’s poem “Description of Cookham,” which presents the destruction of a community of women by the loss of an estate (Aemilia Lanyer, The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, ed. Susanne Woods, Women Writers in English 1350–1850 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 130–38).

32. Elaine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 187. 33. Su Fang Ng, “Aemilia Lanyer and the Politics of Praise,” ELH 67, no. 2 (2000): 433–51. 34. Mary V. Silcox, “Aemilia Lanyer and Virtue,” in Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers, Options for Teaching 17 (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2000), 296. 35. Lanyer, Poems, xxxi. 36. Ibid., 3. 37. For a discussion of how women writers use the modesty topos, see Patricia Pender, Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Pender treats Lanyer specifically in her chapter 5. 38. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton (London: Longman, 1977), 3.proem.3. 39. Lanyer, Poems, 4–5. 40. Ibid., 5. 41. Ibid., 7. 42. Ibid., 12. Page 148 → 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 15. 45. Carol Barash, English Women’s Poetry, 1649–1714 : Politics, Community, and Linguistic Authority (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 15. 46. Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 300. 47. For other interesting work on Philips, see Celia A. Easton, “Excusing the Breach of Nature’s Laws: The Discourse of Denial and Disguise in Katherine Philips’ Friendship Poetry,” in Early Women Writers, 1600–1720, ed. Anita Pacheco, Longman Critical Readers (London: Longman, 1998), 89–107; Susan Wiseman, “вЂPublic,’ вЂPrivate,’ вЂPolitics’: Elizabeth Poole, the Duke of Monmouth, вЂPolitical Thought,’ and вЂLiterary Evidence,’“ Women’s Writing 14, no. 2 (2007): 338–62; Harriette Andreadis, “Re-Configuring Early Modern Friendship: Katherine Philips and Homoerotic Desire,” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 46, no. 3 (2006): 523–42; Sarah Prescott, “вЂThat Private Shade, Wherein My Muse Was Bred’: Katherine Philips and the Poetic Spaces of Welsh Retirement,” Philological Quarterly 88, no. 4 (2009): 345–64; Dorothy Mermin, “Women Becoming Poets: Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch,” ELH 57, no. 2 (1990): 335–55. 48. I understand that, based on biographical information, there is a substantial difference between Lloyd and the woman referred to as “Lucasia” in the poems. Here, however, I am looking only at the way virtue is represented in Philips’s Poems. Much has been written about Katherine Philips’s life as a poet and a citizen: see, for instance, Barash, English Women’s Poetry; Traub, Renaissance of Lesbianism; Andreadis, “Re-Configuring Early Modern Friendship.” 49. Juan Luis Vives, A very frutefull and pleasant boke called the Instructio[n] of a Christen woma[n] made fyrst in Laten and dedicated vnto the quenes good grace by the right famous clerke mayster Lewes Uiues ; and turned out of Laten into Englysshe by Rycharde Hyrd. Whiche boke who so redeth diligently shall haue knowlege [sic] of many thynges wherin he shal take great pleasure and specially women shal take great co[m]modyte and frute towarde the[n]crease of vertue & good maners (London, 1529), U3v. 50. Margaret Tyndal Winthrop and John Winthrop, Some Old Puritan Love Letters: John and Margaret Winthrop, 1618–1638, ed. Joseph Hopkins Twichell (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1893). 51. Ibid., 72.

52. See also Thomas Salter’s 1579 translation, Mirrhor of Modestie. 53. Giovanni Michele Bruto, The necessarie, fit, and conuenient education of a yong gentlewoman written both in French and Italian, and translated into English by W.P. And now printed with the three languages togither in one volume, for the better instruction of such as are desirous to studie those tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1598), A2r–A2v. 54. See Cixous, Cohen, and Cohen, “Laugh of the Medusa,” 881. 55. Of course, as Simone Chess has pointed out to me (private communication), Lanyer would also like her readers to monetarily endow the work. Thus, the feminine virtue works as a stand-in for patronage.

Page 149 →Chapter 5 1. I rely here on Hyder Rollins’s definition of the broadside ballad as “a rimed composition written by a professional versifier printed on one side of a single sheet and intended to be sung on the streets” (“The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad,” PMLA 34, no. 2 [1919]: 261). 2. Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11. 3. John Selden, Table Talk: Being the Discourses of John Selden (London: Printed for E. Smith, 1689), 76. 4. Sandra Clark, “The Broadside Ballad and the Woman’s Voice,” in Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500–1700, ed. Cristina Malcolmson and Mihoko Suzuki (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 116. 5. Ibid. 6. Perceptions of “greensickness,” hysteria, and postpartum depression are good examples of this. 7. Joy Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 4. 8. Ibid., 7. 9. Susan O’Malley, вЂCustome Is an Idiot’: Jacobean Pamphlet Literature on Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 2. 10. Ibid., 7. 11. Rollins, “Black-Letter,” 262. 12. Rollins (ibid.) claims that there are about ten thousand extant copies of broadside ballads and that “perhaps at least half of these are duplicates.” 13. For example, “Advice to the Ladies of London” can also be found in the Roxburghe collection. 14. Also attributed to Thomas Deloney, “An Excellent New Ballad of Patient Grissel” (Pepys 1.520–21) and “A most excellent and vertuous Ballad of the patient Grissell” (Roxburghe 1.302–3) tell the same story. 15. In citing from ballads in the Pepys collection, I rely on the images and texts of the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA) at the University of California Santa Barbara, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/. I provide diplomatic titles for the ballads, and when a title is extremely long or the spelling is particularly cumbersome, I provide the diplomatic title in a note rather than in the text. All quotations from the bodies of the ballads follow EBBA’s transcription rules, which can be found at http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/transcriptions. In keeping with convention, I use the Pepys volume and page numbers to indicate where the ballads can be found. 16. The Griselda story is a version of what Lois E. Bueler calls the “Tested Woman Plot.” For a discussion of that plot structure and its tradition, see Bueler, The Tested Woman Plot: Women’s Choices, Men’s Judgments, and the Shaping of Stories (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001). 17. For an excellent history of the Griselda story, see Judith Bronfman, Chaucer’sPage 150 → “Clerk’s Tale”: The Griselda Story Received,

Rewritten, Illustrated (New York: Garland, 1994). 18. The date of first composition may be a little earlier, but 1624 or 1625 is the date of publication of this broadside. The moment in the story when the knight first spies Grissell is reminiscent of the knight’s first glimpse of the maiden he rapes in the opening of Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The description of this first sighting may be intended to call Chaucer’s Wife’s knight to mind and could be the remnant of the evil Walter from the earlier versions of the Griselda story. 19. Pamela Allen Brown, Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 212. 20. “John Armstrong’s Last Good-Night. declaring how Iohn Armstrong and his eightscore men fought a bloody bout with the Scot-tish King at Edinborough” (1686–88), Pepys 2.133. 21. “Rocke the Babie Joane: Or, Iohn his Petition to his louing Wife Ioane, To suckle the Babe that was none of her owne” (1632?), Pepys 1.396–97. 22. Brown, Better a Shrew, 184–85. 23. Ibid., 178–79. 24. Albrecht Classen, Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality (GГ¶ttingen: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 299. 25. Brown, Better a Shrew, 189. 26. For example, see “The Good VVives Humble Petition; Or, The Extravegant Spend-thrift’s Thorough reformation, by the prevailing Arguments of his kind and loving wife,” Pepys 4.75; “A Looking glass for all Good-fellows; or, The Provident Wives Directions to her Husband: To turn him to be a good Careful thrifty Man to make much of his Wife and Children; She strives with him the truth is so, At last she brought him to her Bow; Some Womens Counsel if Men take heed God gives blessing with it indeed; Therefore let Men be wise I say, And loves their Wives and ne’r go astray,” Pepys 4.79. 27. Lawrence Price, “Dead and Alive. This Ditty out of Glocester=shire was sent, To London for to have it put in Print: Therefore draw near, and listen unto this, It doth concern a man that did amiss, And so to shun the anger of his Wife, He thought with poyson for to end his life: But in the stead of poyson he drank Sack, For which his Wife did soundly pay his Back,” Pepys 4.118. 28. For a more detailed discussion about jest literature and women’s rebellion, see Brown, Better a Shrew. 29. For a discussion of the punishments for people who violate the expectations of gender, see Jean Howard, “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1988): 418–40. 30. Ben Jonson, “On Giles and Joan,” Norton Anthology of English Literature, ed. M. H. Abrams et al., 8th ed. (New York: Norton, 2000), 1:1429. I cite the line numbers of the poem with in-text parenthetical citations for ease of reading. 31. William Gifford, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson, vol. 9 (London: Bickers and Son, 1875), 404. 32. David Atkinson, “вЂ.В .В . The Wit of a Woman It Comes in Handy, / At Times Page 151 →in an Hour of Need’: Some Comic Ballads of Married Life,” Western Folklore 58, no. 1 (1999): 69. 33. Lawrence Price, “Rocke the cradle Iohn, or Children after the rate of 24 in a yeare, Thats 2 euery month as plaine doth appeare, Let no man at this strang story wonder,” Pepys 1.404–5. 34. “Galland” is an alternate spelling of “gallant.” 35. “A Caueat or VVarning. For all sortes of Men both young and olde, to auoid the Company of lewd and wicked Woemen,” Pepys 1.46–47. 36. Laurel Amtower and Dorothea Kehler, The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), xi.

37. Maryanne Kowaleski, “Singlewomen in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: The Demographic Perspective,” in Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800, ed. Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 52. 38. Amtower and Kehler, Single Woman, x. 39. Thomas D’Urfey, “Advice to the Ladies of London, in the Choice of Their Husbands” (London, 1687), Pepys 4.85. 40. A “cully” is “one who is cheated or imposed uponВ .В .В . a dupe, gull” (OED Online, accessed August 8, 2012, http://www.oed.com/view /Entry/45668). 41. The visualizations I include here are part of my work on early modern representations of gender that uses digital humanities methods. For a full explanation of the method and its justification, please see the archived version of the website that I developed based on this project, http://www.utdallas.edu/~jxm092000 /advice/. 42. See Amtower and Kehler, Single Woman, especially Judith M. Spicksley’s “To Be or Not to Be Married: Single Women, Money-Lending, and the Question of Choice in Late Tudor and Stuart England” (65–96). 43. “An Answer to the Advice to the Ladies of London, Wherein is set forth a Glance of their Craft and Subtilty: Or, The Fop well fitted by one of their late Stratagems. Behold and see the Subtitlty of London Misses, when They can compleat a Crafty Cheat, they make a prey of Men,” Pepys 4.86. Robert Greene explains the trick in his rogue pamphlet A Notable Discovery of Cozenage (1591), reprinted in Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars: A New Gallery of Tudor and Early Stuart Rogue Literature, ed. Arthur Kinney (Barre: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 155–82; see 177–82 for the explanation. Greene’s coney-catchers also talk about it in A Dispvtation Betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher (1592), available online through Renascence Editions, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/greene6.html. Another answer, “Advice To Young Gentlemen; Or, An Answer to the Ladies of London” (Pepys 4.87), tells men not to marry at all but to trick women into sleeping with them and then move on when they are all used up. The contrast between this advice and the advice that women receive is interesting, because men are here warned off committing to women. 44. See, for example, “The Politick Maids Device; Or, The Maids distrust in Cupid’s play. Here Counsel is to all the rest Of Maidens fair to chuse the best, And Page 152 →let the worst of Youg-men stay a while, They are apt young maidens to beguile, But if Maidens will be rul’d by she, She’l fit them in their own degree: And make them spend their breath and strength, He should be an honest man that gain’d a wench,” Pepys 3.166; Richard Barnfield, “A Louers newest Curranto or the Lamentation of a young man’s folly,” Pepys 1.341. 45. T.H., A looking-glasse for women, or, A spie for pride: shewing the unlawfulnesse of any outward adorning of any attire of haire, either in laying forth the haire, or in crisping of the haire, or in broidered haire in all women, but especially in godly women, declared fully by the Scripture. Also those Scriptures and carnall objections answered which are seemingly made for it (London, 1644), A4v. 46. For examples of the former, see Anonymous, A looking-glas for the Presbitary government, establishing in the Church of England (London, 1644); John Andrewes, A celestiall looking-glasse, to behold the beauty of heaven (London, 1635). For an example of the latter, see Anonymous, A looking-glasse for all proud, ambitious, covetous and corrupt lavvyers (London, 1646). 47. All in-text parenthetical references to Vives’s text are to Juan Luis Vives, A very frutefull and pleasant boke called the Instructio[n] of a Christen woma[n] made fyrst in Laten and dedicated vnto the quenes good grace by the right famous clerke mayster Lewes Uiues ; and turned out of Laten into Englysshe by Rycharde Hyrd. Whiche boke who so redeth diligently shall haue knowlege [sic] of many thynges wherin he shal take great pleasure and specially women shal take great co[m]modyte and frute towarde the[n]crease of vertue & good maners (London, 1529). 48. Richard Brathwaite, The English gentlewoman, drawne out to the full body expressing, what habilliments doe best attire her, what ornaments doe best adorne her, what complements doe best accomplish her. By Richard Brathvvait Esq. (London: printed by B. Alsop and T. Favvcet for Michaell Sparke, 1631), B2r.

49. T.H. Looking-glasse, A2r–A2v. 50. Ibid., B1r. 51. F.S., The picture of a vvanton her leawdnesse discouered (London: T.P., 1615), A2v. 52. Julie Crawford, Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 10. 53. Barnabe Rich, My ladies looking glasse VVherein may be discerned a wise man from a foole, a good woman from a bad: and the true resemblance of vice, masked vnder the vizard of vertue. By Barnabe Rich Gentleman, seruant to the Kings most excellent Maiestie (London: Thomas Adams, 1616), B3r. 54. Ibid., E2v. 55. T.H., Looking-glasse, B3r. 56. Ibid., B3r. 57. Ibid., A4v. 58. Ibid., B4r. 59. For an example of such a structuralist reading, see Dianne Dugaw’s extremely influential and important “Balladry’s Female Warriors: Women, Warfare, and Disguise in the Eighteenth Century,” Eighteenth-Century Life 9, no. 2 (1985): 1–20; see also Dugaw, “Structural Analysis of the Female Warrior Ballads: The Page 153 →Landscape of the World Turned Upside Down,” Journal of Folklore Research 23, no. 1 (1986): 23–42. 60. Personal communication, July 2008.

Epilogue 1. Thomas Salter, A mirrhor mete for all mothers, matrones, and maidens, intituled the Mirrhor of Modestie no lesse profitable and pleasant, then necessarie to bee read and practiced (London: Edward White, 1579), E3r. The dialogue may be original to Salter, since this ending does not occur in another translation of Bruto’s text, The necessarie, fit, and conuenient education of a yong gentlewoman written both in French and Italian, and translated into English by W.P. And now printed with the three languages togither in one volume, for the better instruction of such as are desirous to studie those tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1598). 2. Salter, Mirrhor of Modestie, D3r. 3. Ibid., D3v. 4. Ibid., E1v. 5. Ibid., E2r. 6. Ibid., E2v. 7. Ibid., E3r. 8. Joseph Swetnam, The araignment of leuud, idle, froward, and vnconstant women or the vanitie of them, choose you whether : with a commendation of wise, vertuous and honest women : pleasant for married men, profitable for young men, and hurtfull to none (London, 1615). 9. Salter, Mirrhor of Modestie, D4v. 10. Richard Brathwaite, The English gentlevvoman, drawne out to the full body expressing, what habilliments doe best attire her, what ornaments doe best adorne her, what complements doe best accomplish her. By Richard Brathvvait Esq. (London: printed by B. Alsop and T. Favvcet for Michaell Sparke, 1631), Gg2v. 11. Ibid., Gg2r.

12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., Gg3v. 14. Claudia L. Johnson, “вЂNot at All What a Man Should Be!’: Remaking English Manhood in Emma,” in Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s—Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen, Women in Culture and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 197. 15. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 2nd ed., Dover Thrift Editions (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996), 20. 16. Ibid., 21. 17. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 18. “Taylor Swift Humiliated by the Jokes: The Pop Star Starts to Crack after Suffering Public Jabs,” US Weekly, February 4, 2013.

Page 154 → Page 155 →

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Index Page numbers in italics denote a figure. abuse, marital, 44–45, 105, 131n30 advice literature: male-authored, 81, 82–83, 88, 90; “mother’s advice,” 83–84; relation to other genres, 6; role in transmission of virtue, 88–89; women’s interaction with, 88–89, 95, 96, 126. See also conduct literature advice texts, female authors of: authority sources invoked by, 83, 90; empowered voice of, 85, 86; vs. male authors, 82–83; male vs. female audiences, 84; scholarship about, 81–82; socioeconomic status of, 82. See also feminine virtue, circulation of advice texts, male authors of, 81, 82–83, 88, 90. See also Brathwaite; conduct literature; Vives “Advice to the Ladies of London, in the Choice of their Husbands” (ballad), 109–14, 111, 113 “Advice to Young Gentlemen” (ballad), 112, 115 agency, feminine: in broadside ballads, 112, 113; marital submission as, 35, 44; of virtue, 16, 52 Almereyda, Michael, 59, 142n36 Amoret (Faerie Queene), 26, 27 Amtower, Laurel, 109 Anatomie of Abuses (Stubbes), 50–51 “Androgina” (Plato), 40, 137n27 “An Answer to the Advice to the Ladies of London” (ballad), 114–16, 116 Antigonus (Winter’s Tale), 74, 77 Armada Portrait (Gower), 28–29, 29 Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (Swetnam), 121–22, 125 Atkinson, David, 106 Attendant Spirit (Comus), 30, 31 Aughterson, Kate, 5 Austen, Jane, 126 authors, female. See advice texts, female authors of “bad wives.” See also shrews: among models for women, 6, 43, 54, 100; vs. good wives, 13; Griselda, 100, 101, 103–4, 122; infidelity, 106–8; men humiliated by, 105–6 Barash, Carol, 90

Beauchamp, Virginia Walcott, 16–17, 36, 132n10 Bedford, Ronald, 53–54 Beilin, Elaine, 87 Belphoebe (Faerie Queene), 26, 27, 134n34 Ben-ezar (Looking Glass for Married Folks), 48–49 Page 172 →Berry, Boyd, 23 Berry, Philippa, 16, 28 bird metaphors, 62–63 Brackett, Virginia, 85, 86 Bradstreet, Anne, 85 Brathwaite, Richard, 82–83, 90, 117–18, 125–26 breast-feeding texts, 84–85, 95 Breton, Nicholas, 83 Brief and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Marriage (Tilney), 23 Brinsley, John, 2 Britomart (Faerie Queene), 26, 27 broadside ballads: agency in, 112, 113; assumptions in, 110; conduct literature contrasted with, 99–100; deceitful women modeled in, 114–15; fashion debated in, 116, 117–20; “good”/“bad” behavior extremes in, 100–104; infidelity in, 106–8; language in, 112, 113, 114; as measure of early modern culture, 98–99, 122; multivalence of feminine virtue represented in, 97, 100; patriarchal order preserved in, 97, 99, 104, 105, 106–8; range of behavior represented in, 97, 100–101, 108–9, 115, 122–23; shrews modeled in, 104–6; similarities to women, 99; single women modeled in, 108–12; stereotypes in, 106–7 Brown, Pamela Allen, 101–2, 103, 104 Browne, Megan Palmer, 137n26 Bruto, Giovanni, 2–3, 94–95, 124 Butler, Judith, 37 Camillo (Winter’s Tale), 74 Cary, Elizabeth. See Tragedy of Mariam Catena, Maria, 2–3 Catherine of Aragon, 4 “A Caveat or Warning for All Sorts of Men” (ballad), 108, 111, 116 Champion, Larry, 8

Chaste, Silent, and Obedient (Hull), 5 chastity: appearance of, 21–22, 23–24, 26, 66, 67; authors’ preoccupation with, 15, 16–17, 31–32, 55, 67; as both innate and cultivated, 14, 145n2; vs. celibacy, 16, 25–26; honesty tied to, 65; instability of, 28–29, 29, 57–58, 62; loss of, 18–20, 65–66, 108; within marriage, 25–26, 36; as most important feminine virtue, 14, 15, 16; multivalent nature of, 14–16, 21–22, 26–33, 64; performance of, 39; power of, 31–32; virginity as form of, 15, 26, 27, 32. See also virginity chastity, contradictions within: assumed consent and rejection for rape, 19, 20; attempts to harmonize, 15, 17, 21, 33, 57, 67; idealized in death, 19–20; Mariam as simultaneously chaste and unchaste, 24–26; protection vs. vulnerability, 17–21, 30–33, 62, 64; purity vs. desire, 32–33, 62, 64; sexually inactive and sexually active, 15, 25–26, 62; speech vs. silence, 22–23, 26, 32–33. See also chastity, language of; Ophelia chastity, language of: as sexual, 15, 20, 28, 32–33; as unstable, 15, 16, 28, 29–33, 29; as violent, 17, 19–21, 33 chastity, women’s negotiation with: constraint and will, 16; critical thinking and engagement, 62, 65, 74; difficulty living up to, 27, 33; madness, 55, 57, 65, 67–69, 79; presentation of self, 21–22; self-definition, 15; self-inflicted violence, 19–20; withholding of marriage “debt,” 24–26 children, commitment to, 106–8 Christ, suffering of, 89–90 Chrysogone (Faerie Queene), 27 Clarissa (Richardson), 127 Clark, Sandra, 98 Classen, Albrecht, 103 Clinton (Lincoln), Elizabeth, 84–86, 95 Comus (Milton), 15, 29–33 Page 173 →conduct literature. See also advice literature; contradictions in conduct literature and related genres; feminine virtue, circulation of; metaphors in advice literature: audience for, 3, 5; “bad” women necessary in, 6; broadside ballads contrasted with, 99–100; construction of “virtuous woman” in, 1–6; growth of, during sixteenth century, 5; as multivalent, 5–7, 8–9; purpose of, 1–2, 7; reflected in Hamlet, 54–55, 56, 60–61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69; reflected in Two Gentlemen of Verona, 53; reflected in Winter’s Tale, 55, 74; relation to other genres, 6–8; shifts in focus of, 55, 58, 74, 79, 80, 97; theater as extension of, 53–54 Constabarus (Tragedy of Mariam), 23 Constancy (Urania), 87 continence, chastity and, 14 contradictions in conduct literature and related genres: attempts to resolve, 12, 15, 17, 21, 33, 57; failure to resolve, 20, 54–55, 67–70; gullibility vs. intelligence, 64–65; in Hamlet’s advice to Ophelia (Hamlet), 56, 57, 65–66; inherent in chastity, 15, 18–20, 58–59, 62, 65–66; in Kate’s character (Taming of the Shrew), 1, 8–9, 11; in Laertes’ advice to Ophelia (Hamlet), 56, 57, 58–62; men’s authority vs. untrustworthiness, 67–68; men’s paradoxical power, 59–60; paradoxical metaphors, 61–62; in Polonius’ advice to Ophelia (Hamlet), 56, 57, 62–65; weakness vs. influence of women, 4;

women’s power of negotiation not to be used, 65 Cordelia (King Lear), 56 counter-magic: as reformative disobedience, 55, 71, 72–75, 73, 79; as “unwitching,” 71–72, 73, 74, 143n52; vs. witchcraft, 70–71, 72 Countess of Lincoln’s Nursery, The (Clinton), 84 Crawford, Julie, 119 Crocker, Holly, 8 Crystal Glass for Christian Women, A (Stubbes), 36, 49–52, 89 cuckoldry, 106–8, 131n5 “Custome Is an Idiot”: Jacobean Pamphlet Literature on Women (O’Malley), 99 “Dead and Alive” (ballad), 105 death: appearance of chastity and, 23–24; as culmination of feminine virtue, 20, 51–52; influence of virtue through, 36, 45–46, 49–50, 51–52, 91. See also “mother’s legacy” texts Delight for Ladies (Plat), 31 de Pizan, Christine, 81, 127 Desdemona (Othello), 56 desire, complexity of, 32–33, 62–63 Diamond, Neil, 56 disobedience: consequences of, 9–10, 56, 116; patriarchal order restored through, 55–56, 70–72, 77, 97, 106–8; as properly performed obedience, 12, 55; to word of God, 76–77 Dolan, Frances, 44, 51 Doris (Tragedy of Mariam), 24 economic metaphors, 17 “economy of scarcity,” 44, 51 Elizabeth I, 28–29 Emma (Austen), 126 English Gentlewoman, The (Brathwaite), 82–83, 90, 125–26 Erasmus, 43, 49 Eulaly (Looking Glass for Married Folks), 34, 43, 44–45, 46–48 eulogies, 34–35, 36, 41–43

evolutionary psychology, 15, 131n5 Faerie Queene, The (Spenser), 15, 26–28, 33, 89 fashion, virtue and, 116, 117–20, 122 Page 174 →Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama (Newman), 140n5 feast metaphors, 89–90 feminine virtue: active nature of, 52; as cultural construct, 1–6, 7–8; deceitful use of, 115; derived from husband, 92; difficulty defining, 145n2; fashion and, 116, 117–20, 122; impossible standards of, 33, 70, 79; multivalence of, 79, 97, 100; nature as source of, 87, 88–89; performance of, 36, 37–40; Shakespeare’s portrayal of, 53–56; subversiveness of, 8, 35, 37, 38, 52; in twenty-first century, 13, 127. See also chastity; obedience; silence; women’s behavior feminine virtue, circulation of: men advising women, 81, 94–95; women advising men, 91; women advising women, 81–89, 85, 91–96 feminine virtue, transformative power of: genres modeling, 34–35; influence after death, 36, 45–46, 49–50, 51–52, 91; influence outside marriage, 35, 36, 46, 49–50, 119; reform in marriages, 34, 36, 46–47, 105, 107; reform of husbands, 41, 43–45, 46, 47–49, 91 feminism: vs. behavioral codes in conduct literature, 6; in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, 87, 88; Taming of the Shrew and, 11 Ferguson, Margaret, 21 Fletcher, Anthony, 136n5 Fox, Michael J., 127 friendship between women: discouraged in early modern literature, 86; positive examples in early modern literature, 87–88, 90–91, 94, 95 F. S. (ballad author), 118 funeral sermons, 34–35, 36, 41–43 Gamon, Hannibal, 34–35, 41–42, 43, 45–46 gardening metaphors, 94–95 gender identity and norms, 37, 57, 99, 122 Gender Trouble (Butler), 37 Gilbert, Sandra, 127 “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” (Diamond), 56 God’s will, virtue and, 76–77, 92, 121 “good” wives. See feminine virtue; “perfect wives”/“good wives” Gower, George, 28, 29f

Greene, Robert, 34, 37–40. See also Penelope’s Web “greensickness,” 27, 58 Griselda, 100, 101, 103–4, 122 Grissell, 100–103, 150n18 Gubar, Susan, 127 Hageman, Elizabeth, 16–17, 36, 132n10 Hamilton, Sharon, 62, 63 Hamlet (Hamlet): appearance of chastity valued by, 66; contradictory advice given by, 56, 57, 65–66; paradox of power, 59–60; rejection of Ophelia, 65–66 Hamlet (Shakespeare). See also Ophelia: conduct literature reflected in, 54–55, 56, 60–61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69; conflicted advice in, 56, 57, 65–66; film versions of, 59 Hankins, James, 137n27 Hawke, Ethan, 59 heat, as metaphor, 63 Heller, Jennifer, 83 Hermione (Winter’s Tale), 56, 72, 74, 75, 76 Herod (Tragedy of Mariam), 23, 24, 134n29 Homer, 38, 137n15 honesty, 38, 65 Huebert, Ronald, 85–86 Hull, Suzanne, 4–5 husbands: choice of, 109–12; feminine virtue derived from husband, 92; reformation of, 41, 43–45, 46, 47–49, 91 Hyrde, Richard, 4, 132n10 Page 175 →infidelity, 106–8, 131n5 “In Memory of That Excellent Person Mrs. Mary Lloyd” (Philips), 91 “Innocent Maid Deceiv’d by a Dissembling Bachelor” (ballad), 107 Instruction of a Christian Woman (Vives): history of, 132n10; influence of virtuous woman, 4; language of chastity, 15, 16–21, 33, 62; unworkable chastity advice in, 58 Ismena (Penelope’s Web), 40, 137n26 Jankowski, Theodora, 15

“John Armstrong’s Last Good Night” (ballad), 103 Johnson, Claudia, 126 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 5 Jonson, Ben, 105–6 Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), 56 Kahn, Coppélia, 8 Kaske, Carol, 26 Kate (Taming of the Shrew), 1, 8–11, 86–87 Kehler, Dorothea, 109 King Lear (Shakespeare), 56 Klein, Joan, 82 Lady (Comus), 29–33 Laertes (Hamlet): appearance of chastity valued by, 66; contradictory advice given by, 56, 57, 58–62, 67, 142n36; paradoxical description of Hamlet’s power, 59–60 Lanyer, Amelia, 87–89, 94, 95 legacy genre, 83, 86 Lenker, Lagretta Tallent, 61 Leontes (Winter’s Tale), 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78 Longfellow, Erica, 7 Looking Glass for Good Women, A (Brinsley), 2, 34, 36 Looking Glass for Married Folks, A (Snawsell), 34, 43–44 Looking Glass for Women, A (T. H.), 116–17 “Lucasia” (Philips), 91 Luckyj, Christina, 6, 22–23 Lucrece, 19–20 Lynne, Walter, 1–2, 31 Maassen, Irmgard, 4, 37 Madwoman in the Attic, The (Gilbert and Gubar), 127 Mariam. See Tragedy of Mariam, The (Cary) marriage. See also obedience: abuse in, 44–45; vs. active virginity, 92–94; chastity in, 25–26, 36;

infidelity in, 106–8, 131n5; influence on community, 103; reform and conservation of, 34, 36, 46–47, 105, 107; submission in, 34, 35, 36, 44, 100–103, 150n18 Marriage and Violence (Dolan), 44 “A Married State” (Philips), 92–93 masque genre, 30 Maxwell-Stuart, P. G., 71–72 Measure for Measure (Shakespeare), 16 Medea, 103–4 men’s behavior: assumption of consent for rape, 19, 20; authority and untrustworthiness, 67–68; influence on society, 125; linked to women’s behavior, 126; reformation of, 41, 43–45, 46, 47–49, 91 Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare), 55–56 Mercury (Mirror of Modesty), 124–25 metaphors in advice literature: birds, 62–63; economic metaphors, 17; feast, 89–90; gardening, 94–95; heat, 63; military metaphors, 17, 18, 61–62, 64, 65; mirror, 89, 116–17 Middleton, Thomas, 86 Mikesell, Margaret, 16–17, 36, 132n10 military metaphors, 17, 18, 61–62, 64, 65 Miller, Nancy Weitz, 17, 18, 65 Milton, John, 15, 29–33 Page 176 →mirror metaphors, 89, 116–17, 126. See also Looking Glass for Good Women; Looking Glass for Women Mirror of Modesty (Salter), 3–4, 124 misogyny, 81, 121, 125, 127 monarchy, absolute, 75, 77, 78, 144n69 monsters, women as, 54, 119–20, 127 Montrose, Louis, 28–29 Morgan, Terence, 59 “Most Excellent and Vertuous Ballad of the Patient Grissell” (ballad), 100–103 “mother’s advice” genre, 83–84, 86 Mother’s Blessing, The (Breton), 83 My Lady’s Looking Glasse (Rich), 120

nature: fashion guided by, 121, 122; virtue flowing from, 87, 88, 90 Necessary, Fit, and Convenient Education of a Young Gentlewoman, The (Bruto), 2–3, 94–95 Neely, Carol Thomas, 56, 67, 69 Newman, Karen, 8, 140n5 “nunnery,” 66 obedience: as active engagement, 11, 52; as debt wives owe husbands, 9; as doing/undoing, 9; as focus in Protestant marriage manuals, 55; of Grissell, 100–103; happiness through, 43, 47–48, 52; husbands reformed through, 41, 43–45, 46, 47–49, 91; influence of feminine virtue through, 11, 34–36, 41–42; patience derived from, 101; performative nature of, 10, 35–39, 40–42, 43–49, 52; taught by women, 41; unquestioning, 65, 77. See also disobedience; submission in marriage Odyssey (Homer), 38, 137n15 Olivier, Laurence, 59 O’Malley, Susan, 99 “On Giles and Joan” (Jonson), 105–6 Ophelia (Hamlet): critical thinking discouraged, 62, 65; engagement with advice, 60–61; Hamlet’s contradictory advice to, 56, 57, 65–66; Laertes’ contradictory advice to, 56, 57, 58–62, 142n36; madness resulting from advice, 55, 57, 65, 67–69, 79; obedience of, 142n35; Polonius’ contradictory advice to, 56, 57, 62–65, 142n36; sexual maturity/activity of, 140n6, 142n36; value determined by approval, 69; view of self in conflict with advice, 67 Orgel, Stephen, 32 Othello (Shakespeare), 56 Pamela (Richardson), 127 Pamphilia (Urania), 87 paradoxes, 15 patriarchal order: alternatives to, 75, 77, 78; male anxiety about women’s power in, 99; restored by good wives, 13; restored by range of behaviors, 100, 104, 115; restored by shrews, 13, 104–5; restored in broadside ballads, 97, 99, 100, 104, 105, 106, 122; restored through disobedience, 55–56, 70–72, 77, 79, 97; restored through infidelity, 106–8 Paulina (Winter’s Tale): absolute monarchy challenged by, 72; alternative to patriarchal political order offered by, 75, 77, 78; counter-magic as reformative disobedience, 55, 70, 72–75, 77, 79–80, 97; engagement with advice, 74 Penelope’s Web (Greene), 34, 36, 37–40 Pepys, Samuel, 98, 100, 149n15 “perfect wives”/“good wives”: Grissell and Griselda, 100, 101–4, 122; male construction of, 82–83; Penelope, 34, 36, 37–40; self-erasure and death of, 20, 51–52 performance: of chastity, 39; in feminine virtue, 36, 37–40; in gender Page 177 →identity, 8, 37; of obedience,

10, 35–39, 40–42, 43–49, 52; of silence, 39–40, 51 Philips, Katherine, 87, 90–91, 92–94 phrase net, 110–11, 111f Pipher, Mary, 69–70 Plat, Hugh, 31 Plato, 40 Platt, Peter, 14–15 poetry, 7–8. See also Milton; Spenser Polonius (Hamlet), 56, 57, 63, 65, 67, 142n36 popular culture, feminine virtue measured by, 127 Portia (Merchant of Venice), 55–56 Praise of a Godly Woman, The (Gamon), 34–35, 36, 41–42, 43 predators, women as, 108–9, 111, 114, 122 pregnancy in unmarried women, 107–8 “A pretie pithie Dialogue betwene Mercurie, & Vertue” (Salter), 124–25 “Pride’s Fall” (ballad), 118–21, 122 Psychic Life of Power, The (Butler), 37 purity, chastity associated with, 14 Purkiss, Diane, 70–71, 72, 143n52 “queer virginity,” 15 Raber, Karen, 6 Ramsey-Kurz, Helga, 11 rape: chastity’s inability to protect from, 17, 18, 122; women blamed for, 19, 20 religious writing, virtue in, 8 “A retir’d Friendship, to Ardelia” (Philips), 90 Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Pipher), 69–70 Rich, Barnabe, 120 Richardson, Samuel, 127 Robartes, Frances, 41–42, 43, 45–46. See also Praise of a Godly Woman

“Rock the Baby, Joane” (ballad), 103 “Rock the Cradle, John” (ballad), 107 Rollins, Hyder, 100 romances, prose, 37–38 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 56 Rosenfield, Kirstie Gulick, 71 Roxburghe collection of broadside ballads, 100 St. Clair, William, 4, 37 Salkeld, Duncan, 79 Salter, Thomas, 3–4, 7, 85, 124, 125 Salve Deus Rex Judaeroum (Lanyer), 87–88, 89, 95 Schalkwyk, David, 72 Schreiber, Liev, 59 Schwarz, Kathryn, 6, 16, 30, 35 Selden, John, 98 self-erasure in feminine virtue, 51–52 sermons, virtue in, 34–35, 36. See also eulogies sexuality: questionable control of, 66; undertones in Hamlet, 57, 59; as women’s power, 115. See also chastity; virginity Shakespeare, William: conforming women as threat in works of, 6, 35; King Lear, 56; Measure for Measure, 16; Merchant of Venice, 55–56; Othello, 56; portrayal of feminine virtue, 8, 53, 54–56, 97; Romeo and Juliet, 56; Taming of the Shrew, 1, 8–9, 11, 86–87; Two Gentlemen of Verona, 53. See also Hamlet; Winter’s Tale Shohet, Lauren, 30 shrews: among models for women, 43, 54, 100; assumed motives of, 110; vs. good wives, 13; men humiliated by, 105–6; patriarchal order restored by, 13, 104–5 Sidney, Mary, 88 Silcox, Mary, 88 silence: performative nature of, 39–40, 51; range of meanings for, 22–23; Shakespeare’s portrayal of, 56; vs. speech, 6, 22–23, 26, 32–33, 51; as virtue, 32, 34 Page 178 →Simmons, Jean, 59 single women: advice to, 109–12; in early modern literature, 109; fashion advice for, 117; as financially and sexually needy, 110, 111–12; as predators, 109

Snawsel, Robert, 2, 34. See also Looking Glass for Married Folks Sohemus (Tragedy of Mariam), 22, 23 Sowernam, Esther, 121 speech, of men, 23 speech, of women: vs. chastity, 22, 32–33; vs. silence, 6, 22–23, 26, 32–33, 51; in teaching virtue, 51 Speght, Rachel, 121 Spenser, Edmund, 14, 26. See also Faerie Queene Spenser Encyclopedia, The (Kaske), 26 Spicksley, Judith, 111–12 Stallybrass, Peter, 50 Stiles, Julia, 59 Stubbes, Katherine, 49–51 Stubbes, Philip, 35. See also Crystal Glass for Christian Women submission in marriage: as agency, 35, 44; Grissell’s modeling of, 100–103, 150n18; transformative power of, 34, 36. See also obedience subversion: Paulina’s undoing of patriarchal tyranny, 78; of women’s influence, 8, 35, 37, 38, 52 Swetnam, Joseph, 121–22, 125 Swift, Taylor, 127 Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare): Kate’s admonitions for women, 8–11; Kate’s contradictory characteristics, 1, 8–9, 11; women’s friendships in, 86–87 T. H. (ballad author), 116–17, 120–21, 122 theater, women’s behavior modeled by, 53–54, 140n5. See also Hamlet; Winter’s Tale Thomas, Catherine, 32–33 Tilney, Edmund, 23 Tragedy of Mariam, The (Cary): appearance of chastity, 21–22, 23–24, 26, 67; language of chastity, 15, 21–26, 33; as representative of conduct literature, 6; scholarship on, 133n21 Traub, Valerie, 90 Travitsky, Betty, 83 twenty-first century, cultural paradoxes in, 13, 127 Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare), 53 “unwitching,” 71–72, 73, 74, 78

Urania (Wroth), 87 Vindication of the Right of Women (Wollstonecraft), 126 violence, of chastity, 17, 19–21, 33 virginity: as active choice, 92–94; anxiety in advice about, 57–58; confusing advice regarding, 68; described in terms of desire, 32; eroticization of, 15; “greensickness” and, 27, 57; as guarding against violation, 94; loss of, 18–20, 65–66, 108; as type of chastity, 15, 27. See also chastity Virtue (Mirror of Modesty), 124–25 Vives, Juan Luis: in early conduct literature, 55, 97; on fashion and feminine virtue, 117; on highest virtues of wives, 91–92; metaphors used by, 62–63; military and economic metaphors, 17, 18, 62, 65; restrictive virtue espoused by, 73; virginity as guarding against violation, 94. See also Instruction of a Christian Woman Wagner, Linda, 57 Wall, Wendy, 83 Warnicke, Retha, 42–43 Watchword for Willful women, A (Lynne), 1–2, 31 Weller, Barry, 21 White, R. S., 70 Whitney, Isabella, 86 Page 179 →“whores”: fashion behavior, 118; lover’s advances protested by, 115; as predators, 109, 111; suspicion of single women, 108–9 “Will and Testament” (Whitney), 86 Wiltenburg, Joy, 99 Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare). See also Paulina: counter-magic as performance of femininity, 74, 75, 77; portrayal of feminine virtue, 54, 55; reflections of conduct literature in, 55, 74; reformative disobedience in, 55, 70–72, 77; resubmission to masculine authority, 78–79 Winthrop, Margaret Tyndal, 92 witchcraft, 70–71, 74 Witch in History, The (Purkiss), 71 wives. See “bad wives”; ”perfect wives”/“good wives”; shrews Wollstonecraft, Mary, 126–27 women authors. See advice texts, female authors of Women Beware Women (Middleton), 86 women’s behavior, appearance of: chastity, 21, 22, 23–24, 26, 66, 67; fashion, 116, 117–20, 122; worthiness as reformer and, 45

women’s behavior, codes of conduct for. See advice literature; broadside ballads; conduct literature; feminine virtue women’s behavior, influence of. See also under obedience: after death, 36, 45–46, 49–50, 51–52, 91; on men’s behavior/experience, 4, 34, 41, 43–49, 91, 116, 126; on society, 4, 34–35, 49–50, 103, 119, 120, 125 women’s behavior, range of. See also disobedience; “perfect wives”/“good wives”: in constructing feminine virtue ideal, 6–7; deceit, 114–15; disobedience, 55, 70, 72–75, 77, 79–80, 97; “good”/“bad” extremes, 101–4; infidelity, 106–8; modeled in broadside ballads, 97, 100–101, 108–9, 115, 122–23; modeled in theater, 53–54; predators, 108–9, 111, 114 women’s friendships. See friendship between women women’s negotiation with cultural ideals. See also chastity, women’s negotiation with: engagement with advice literature, 60–61, 65, 74, 80, 88–89, 95, 96, 126; Mariam’s failure to negotiate, 21, 134n29; obedience as active engagement, 11, 52; revealed by multivalence of conduct models, 7; Salome’s circumvention of prescriptions, 21, 134n29 Woods, Susanne, 88 word trees, 112, 113f, 114f, 115, 116f Wroth, Mary, 87 Xantip (Looking Glass for Married Folks), 46, 48–49 “you,” use of, 112, 113f Ziegler, Georgianna, 38