“TO BE TERMED MEN”: WOMEN’S REPRESENTATIONS OF MEN AND MASCULINITY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND By Janet Lynn Bartholomew A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of English—Doctor of Philosophy 2018 ABSTRACT “TO BE TERMED MEN”: WOMEN’S REPRESENTATIONS OF MEN AND MASCULINITY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND By Janet Lynn Bartholomew As social gender dynamics require all sexes to define, critique, and police the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, the definition of “man” in early modern England remains incomplete if only men’s writing is consulted; women’s writing, therefore, is essential to our understanding of early modern definitions of manliness and manhood. To isolate men as a subject, a survey of writing by nine English women—Margaret Roper, Anne Clifford, Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Cary, Elizabeth Grymeston, Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Jocelin, Rachel Speght, and Aemilia Lanyer—spanning from 1557 to 1676 was conducted across multiple genres such as letters, autobiographical writings, closet dramas, mothers’ advice manuals, poetry, and polemical tracts. By organizing the subject of men and masculinity through the lens of a woman’s experiences of patriarchy throughout her life, male experience was thus decentralized, ultimately placing an emphasis on women’s relationship with men throughout her life-cycle: daughters and fathers, wives and husbands, mothers and sons, and female citizens and larger patriarchal structures within the community. The results of the study indicate that women were both validating some manly characteristics defined by the dominant male-authored discourses, such as men being patriarchal heads of households in companionate and affectionate relationships toward their wives, as well as rejecting some dominant tropes as markers of manliness, such as martial bravery generally, and specific practices such dueling. Thus women were active participants—rather than passive recipients—in the discursive and cultural constructions of masculinity, critiquing, and policing of early modern definitions of men and manliness, as men were navigating their own struggle between masculine codes of moderation and dominance, evident in male writings. To Clinton and Cara iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As this dissertation was a product of many helping hands, I would like to acknowledge and thank all of those who assisted me through this journey. I would like to thank my dissertation committee members, Dr. Steven Deng and Dr. Ellen McCallum, for their unwavering support of this project, their invaluable advice on gender and masculinities, and their constant encouragement of not only this study but also me as a student. Thank you for all of the last-minute office visits, your willingness to delve into uncharted literary waters, and the incredibly insightful comments and questions you posed from day one. This project is all the better for it. I am in deep gratitude for Dr. Mihoko Suzuki, who graciously accepted a late invitation to this project and has tirelessly supplied me with editing and revision advice. I have learned so much from you as a writer but also as an early modern scholar. Thank you for so generously sharing your time and wisdom with me from many miles away; I am in awe of the depth of your knowledge and experience, and you have the patience of a saint. Of course, words cannot express how deeply indebted I am to Dr. Jyotsna Singh who directed this dissertation. When I chose you as my director, I knew you were an excellent early modern women’s scholar, but at the time I had no idea truly what a truly incredible mentor you would be. Your consistent patience, overwhelming generosity, and enthusiastic encouragement over the years is what truly made this project possible. Thank you for taking me on me as your student. I am not only a better scholar but also a better person for having known you. I would like to thank all of those who supported me behind the scenes. A big thank you goes out to the Newberry Library and the role their collections played in the early part of this project; another big thank you goes out to the Michigan State University librarians, who v generously let me test the checkout and late fee limits. A special thanks goes out to my sisters at Changing Woman and the Jackson Ladies’ Phoenix Society for their many years of personal support, milestone celebrations, and advice. I especially have to thank my friends and family members who were willing to lend a sympathetic ear and a helping hand. A big thank you goes out to my parents, Virginia and Richard, who never hesitated to hop in the car and drive nine hours to help me when I needed it. I’d also like to thank my husband, Clinton, for his unfaltering love and support. Thank you for being my rock over the years; you are the ideal man and helpmeet that women imagined even in the early modern period. I’d especially like to thank my daughter, Cara, who has never known me outside of being a graduate student mom. The “book” is finally done, honey. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ……………………………………………..…………………………...… viii INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………...1 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………..………………………………26 CHAPTER 1: DAUGHTERS AND FATHERS .….…………………………………………… 30 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………… 52 CHAPTER 2: WIVES AND HUSBANDS …………………………………………………… 56 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………… 78 CHAPTER 3: MOTHERS AND SONS ……...……………………………………………........ 81 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………....... 103 CHAPTER 4: WOMEN AND PATRIARCHAL POLEMICS…………………….………….. 106 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………….. 128 EPILOGUE …………………………………………………………………………................ 132 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Letter from Lady Anne Clifford to Her Father, George Clifford, on January 31st, 1598..………………………………………………………………………………………...….38 viii INTRODUCTION1 Background and Scope When Queen Elizabeth I gave her speech dissolving Parliament on January 2, 1567, the question of her marriage was at the forefront of her subjects’ minds. As a woman, she was expected to marry; the queen's status as a single woman was supposed to be temporary. As she declined to heed Parliament's repeated petitioning her to wed, the nobility worried about the stability of the country without a patriarch to guide it or an heir to ensure a seamless transfer of power.2 In response to their persistent questioning, Elizabeth issued an order barring Parliament from speaking about her marital state.3 Her injunction to silence did not last long; the outcry forced her to lift the ban a few weeks later.4 When she dissolved Parliament soon afterwards, she addressed their complaints in her speech: As to liberties, who is so simple that doubts whether a prince that is head of all the body may not command the feet not to stray when they would slip? God forbid that your liberty should make my bondage or that your lawful liberties should any ways have been infringed. No, no—my commandment tended no whit to that end. You were sore seduced. You have met with a gentle prince […]. (105) 1 “To be termed men” is found in Speght, sig. E3v. 2 Parliament issued formal petitions urging Elizabeth I to marry in 1559, 1563, and 1576. For her responses to these petitions, see Elizabeth I, 56-108. 3 Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose write, “On November 9 [1566], the queen sent a verbal ‘gag order’ to Parliament, forbidding them to debate matters of the succession” (100). 4 Marcus, Mueller, and Rose note, “On November 9 and 11, the House angrily debated whether or not her order was a violation of the liberties of the House” (100). Elizabeth I lifted the ban on debating her marriage and succession on November 24, 1566. For more on Elizabeth I’s marriage debate, see Tudor 56-108. 1 In this statement, she refers to herself as a “prince” rather than a queen or princess. Elizabeth's reference to herself as a head of state in implicitly masculine terms is found elsewhere her writing and speeches.5 Within her frequent rhetorical manipulations, Elizabeth often constructed her body politic6 as masculine while her physical body remained concretely female.7 Her reference to herself as the “head” echoes 1 Corinthians 11:3, a Pauline scripture used in multiple polemical tracts to justify gender hierarchy, which states, “the head of the woman is the man” (Q3iiir), further solidifying her self-fashioning as masculine.8 As a “prince,” Elizabeth further embraces a masculine persona, thus granting herself authority as the “head” to rule over her subjects as the "body." Her rhetorically autonomous “male” authority as a “gentle prince” thus trumps her female body, placing her as a masculine ruler at the top of a gender hierarchy.9 Elizabeth I’s use of masculinity in her self-fashioning has been noted as a mechanism to navigate the issue of being a female monarch in a traditionally male role.10 However, this instance of an early modern woman’s construction of masculinity, I argue, lends itself to larger questions: Did other early modern women imagine and construct masculinities, and if so, did women articulate an ideal or desired masculinity, one based on female experiences? If an ideal 5 In her speech on November 5, 1566, she refers to herself more than once as “the prince” (Tudor 93-5). In a letter to George Talbot sent on September 5, 1582, she refers to herself as “prince and sovereign” (257). In her Golden Speech, she refers to herself as “princely” (338). 6She was aware of the concept of the king’s two bodies: the body natural and the body politic. In her speech at Hatfield on November 20, 1558, Elizabeth I states, “I am but one body naturally considered, though by His [God’s] permission a body politic to govern” (Tudor 52). Marcus, Mueller, and Rose note that this was the earliest of her references to “the king’s two bodies” (52). 7 For instance, when she spoke her famous line at Tilbury, “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too” (326), she was not only referencing her father, King Henry VIII, but also her two bodies. 8 This chapter uses Cornelius Bol’s first 1611 edition of The Holy Bible, the Authorized Version of King James I. 9 Perhaps one of the most memorable moments where she projects a masculine body politic is at Tilbury where she physically dons armor, hiding her feminine breasts under a chest plate, to appear as the (male) commander of the army rather than a queen. 10 See Baseotto p. 68. 2 male is articulated in their writing, of what characteristics did this new definition of “man” comprise? Did the early modern women define the early modern man differently than the one defined in the male-dominated cultural, social, and moral discourses? If women did articulate their own ideal man, one based on their female experience, what are the broader implications of such a finding for a more complex view of gender roles and identities in early modern England? Through an analysis of writings by nine early modern women—Margaret Roper, Anne Clifford, Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Cary, Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Jocelin, Elizabeth Grymeston, Aemilia Lanyer, and Rachel Speght—I argue that yes, many women were instrumental in defining and critiquing masculinities and men’s roles in society. Through these constructions—and deconstructions—ranging from 1557 to 1676, a “new” early modern man arises, one who is not preoccupied with proving his manliness amongst other men, but rather, one who is a helpmeet to women in domestic spaces, eschews violence in varied situations, and respects and nurtures the women in his life. By the term, “early modern man,” I don’t mean a singular or static figure, but rather, a constellation of attributes and characteristics that run counter to or expand the conventional, and often binary, demarcations of masculinity and femininity set out in cultural discourses of the period. These new definitions of manliness emerging in women’s writings stood in contrast to the masculine ideals set forth in male-written texts by authors such as Richard Brathwaite, who articulates an ideal courtier with athletic prowess in dueling and combat, or Joseph Swetnam, whose masculinity depends on his authoritarian subjugation and general hatred of women, among several others, discussed through this project. Rather, these women re-envisioned ideal men who consistently thought of the desires and fears of the women in their lives, and used this understanding of female experience to shape their masculinity not as a contrasting half of a 3 masculine-feminine binary that embraced stereotypical —and sexist—stereotypes of men and women, but as a complementary sex. For instance, Margaret Roper’s hagiographical representation of her father, Thomas More, disproved the misogynist belief in the intellectual inferiority of women by showing how More acted as her academic mentor when it became clear that she possessed a superior intellect. He acknowledged her brilliance, unlike Anne Clifford’s father, who ended her foreign language lessons because of his closely held belief that women need not be educated beyond the basics of reading, writing, and theology; thus, Clifford envisioned a father who supported her intellectual pursuits and was present, rather than absent, in her mother’s life. In another instance, Arbella Stuart in her letters creates a fictional suitor, an ideal man who defies authority to pursue her love at great risk to himself; he sees her loneliness and lack of freedom, and offers her a solution, even if it means he defies the wishes of a queen. Elizabeth Cary’s represents a flawed Herod, revealing women’s desire for a man who is not violent, jealous, or absent; instead, he considers his wife’s opinions and protects the ones she loves. Elizabeth Jocelin’s advice manual to her unborn child articulates a son who lives up to her ideal by becoming a member of the clergy, whereas Elizabeth Grymeston’s perfect son is pious and her ideal husband is one who puts the concerns of his wife first and refuses to duel. Dorothy Leigh’s ideal son is one who will choose a wife he not only loves, but will love his whole life; he honors his mother by keeping his wife happy, even after his wife’s beauty fades. Rachel Speght and Aemilia Lanyer reconstruct Adam as a new kind of Everyman, one who recognizes his own flaws and his contributions to the Fall of humankind; this Everyman does not hold all women responsible for Eve’s transgression but rather sees women as they are, treating them with kindness and respect while judging them based on their merits. 4 Following these varied imaginings and re-definitions of “man,” we can observe how women were active participants in challenging the dominant narratives of women as subjects and often victims of gender hierarchies; instead, this body of women’s writings posit the authors as powerful co-creators of gender structures whether they upheld, interrogated, or reconfigured dominant definitions of manliness. These new criteria posited by women, in some instances led men to reconsider a moderation of affection and the policing of domestic gender-power structures as desirable masculine attributes. Furthermore, it must be noted that in refashioning the image of man, with their accompanying critique of some male behaviors, women did not reject all dominant male-created masculine traits; rather, they tempered them to best complement women during the various stages of their life-cycle. As a whole, the idea of a man as a God- ordained patriarch was generally not denied; however, how individual men fulfilled this role was what they interrogated and challenged. This new patriarch was one not shaped by men’s desire, but rather women’s affective needs and expectations. Adam may have named Eve, but Eve was the mother of all men, and in a sense women, in giving birth to and raising sons, were able to shape a son’s masculinity as he grew, and continue to influence his performance as a man throughout his life. All these women’s perspectives, therefore, offered an important and complex view on the societal pressures and moral precepts that shaped the sex/gender dynamic in early modern England. Collectively, women’s writings in this dissertation demonstrate how a woman continued to influence the creation of “men” at all stages of her life as a daughter, lover, wife, mother, neighbor, ruler, and friend. As a shaper of masculinity, she did, as Rachel Speght argued, have the power to decide if certain males could ultimately be “termed men.” Finally, and importantly, what emerges in this body of writings is a set of exhortations and guidelines for 5 men to follow, potentially resulting in new kinds of behavior patterns and allowing for more flexibility within socially constructed gendered norms. My methodology for this study draws on existing critical frameworks and histories of women’s writings as well as on new analyses of this body of writing and its far-reaching cultural and social impact, as I outline in the sections below: Critical Framework: Early Modern Women’s Writing To justify the study of early modern women’s writing as distinct from men’s, I frame my argument in Joan Kelly Gadol’s question: Did women have a Renaissance? Accepting that women experienced life differently than men—a “contraction” rather than a flourishing of “social and personal options”—under the sex/gender system in early modern Europe, she proposed the need to study women separately from men in order to understand the complexity of human experience in the Renaissance (Kelly Gadol 20). What emerged was the revelation that the previous homogenous discussions of “man” as synonymous with “humanity” did not articulate the dynamic, shifting matrix of gendered human experience, one where men and women are defined in relation to one another, not only as stereotypical binaries, but as social beings who created, policed, upheld, and challenged these gendered definitions. As a part of this sex/gender system, Kelly Gadol posited, women were a subjugated, but essential, part of this patriarchal structure, but differences in class, power, sex, education, and religion impacted the lives of men and women differently, thus justifying the study of women as a subject separate from men. From Kelly-Gadol’s revolutionary assertion that identified women’s experiences as different from men’s, a wave of anthologies featuring women writers appeared from the mid 6 1980’s onwards, further illuminating the effects of gender difference on the lives of early modern women. For instance, Katherine Henderson and Barbara McManus’s Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts about the Controversy about Women in England, 1540-1640 (1985), based on the pamphlet “wars,” explored writing by both women and men to present a complex and dynamic discussion about the gender debate over the nature of “women.” This collection of pamphlets presented side by side with contemporary texts, such as Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women (1615) and the anonymously published Hic Mulier (1620) and Haec Vir (1620), revolutionized the discussion of early modern women and gender. By positioning these pamphlets as part of a larger gender discourse found in plays and poetry, one can bring widely utilized stereotypes of men and women to the forefront. The result was one of the first comprehensive presentations of the sex/gender debate in early the early modern period using extant texts. Similarly, Katherina Wilson’s Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation (1987) also addressed women’s writing, but broadened the scope of its study by drawing more widely from throughout Europe, ultimately analyzing the intellectual contributions of women writers in response to Kelly-Gadol’s question of whether women had a Renaissance (xi). By examining the broader gender discourses throughout Europe, we can see a new polemical landscape emerging, one in which the production and reproduction of arguments advocating and condemning women becomes visible, thus demonstrating how the transfer of ideas across political, religious, and class borders was a constant—but sometimes destabilizing— influence in the lives of early modern men and women. Later, Randall Martin’s anthology, Women Writers in Renaissance England (1997), emerges as another text that decentralizes the traditional male canon typically found in Renaissance anthologies and instead shifts the focus to women by anthologizing early their texts with critical historical context before each piece. 7 Martin’s edited collection of early modern women’s writings was compiled specifically to “[invite] readers to re-evaluate [women’s] work from a distinct female perspective, rather than collapsing it into historical narratives governed by assumptions and interests that remain dominantly masculine” (1). This archive of early modern women’s writing pioneered by the above authors is one important source for my study of women’s writings about men. These critical perspectives were crucial in revealing women’s experiences and relationship as mediated by their own self-representations, rather than through second-hand accounts of male writers. As women’s writing from the period continued to be anthologized and treated as an independent subject worthy of its own study rather than just as supplemental to writings by canonical male authors, several scholars built upon this emerging archive as they investigated the effects of these gendered experiences on women’s writing and subjectivity. For instance, Barbara Lewalski, in Writing Women in Jacobean England (1993), examined the literary output of nine women writers, noting how previous scholarship on women’s writing analyzed their work in relation to each other but not yet with the scholarly rigor afforded to works written by men (2). Her study concludes that “the dominant ideology does not always define women’s place and women’s speech with the rigid determinism seen by some theorists—at least it does not when women take up the pen and write their own texts” (314). Her findings challenged previous studies that relied on male representations of women. Women as a subject was also examined through different theoretical lenses. For example, the early modern women's historian Merry Wiesner, deployed sex/gender theory to study women as gendered subjects in Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (1993). First introduced by Gayle Rubin in her 1975 essay “The Traffic in Women,” the sex/gender system “transform[s] males and females into ‘men’ and ‘women’” (40). Because gender is a socially assigned set of 8 characteristics and performances expected of each sex, a sex/gender system, as Rubin notes, “requires repression: in men, of whatever the local version of ‘feminine’ traits; in women, of the local definition of ‘masculine’ traits” (40). In other words, it requires the participation—whether conscious or unconscious—of men and women to work. Wiesner thus explores early modern perceptions of gender, relying on writings by both men and women to shed light on the early modern concept of “woman.” She concludes that “the changes which occurred in the early modern period are even more complex than we had previously assumed, and that at no time or place did they mean the same for men and women” (311). In other words, definitions of what constitutes a “woman” or “womanly” were dynamic, in flux, and dependent on a matrix of factors that made possible a generalized, stable definition of “woman” during the early modern period. Wiesner focuses women, using men as a supplemental—but essential—context for women’s writing, a methodology I follow as I use male authors to provide the context to which women were responding. Combining literary and historical scholarship, Cristina Malcolmson and Mihoko Suzuki broadened the discussion of the gender debate in Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 (2002), by calling attention to the implications of this debate on “women writers and their literary relations, […] cultural ideology and the family, and […] political discourse and ideas of nationhood” (1). This collection of essays explore a wide range of English authors, such as Elizabeth I and Anne Southwell, while also investigating women as subjects in the writings of male authors of ballads, pamphlets, and poems. Malcolmson and Suzuki importantly note, “[s]tudies of the literary relationships between women are more precise when they acknowledge that […] women writers did not always agree or support each other, especially when they were of different classes” (3-4). Moreover, the critics within this collection do not always agree with 9 one another, thus demonstrating how fruitful a robust, dynamic—and at times paradoxical— discussion of early modern definitions of “woman” can be for our understanding of early modern gender formations. From these previous studies, new elucidations of the shifting and negotiable roles of early modern women emerge. For instance, early modern women did not openly question man’s role as the divinely appointed head of the household; however, women often challenged man’s infallibility in the role, and asserted that women were granted authority by God at times to act as leaders, teachers, or prophets. Women writers such as Rachel Speght and Aemilia Lanyer, for instance, claim a God-given authority to write in a public capacity deploying biblical texts as argumentative proof or, in the case of Lanyer, claiming God inspired her in a dream-vision. These authors did not always agree with one another on how a “woman” is defined: some were preoccupied with challenging patriarchal representations of Eve and other biblical women who were traditionally used as examples of women’s sinfulness. Others sought to uphold or embrace many of the definitions of “women” as the “second”—and thus subjugated—sex. They thus assigned a dynamic rather than static set of attributes to the female sex. Frances Dolan notes, “there are many differences (of race, class or status; of religion, region, age or marital status) within [the] category ‘woman’ or ‘women’”(8); each of these factors, as well as individual women’s experiences, shaped these dynamic definitions of gender. As a corollary to the way we have come to understand the multifaceted constructions of "woman" in the early modern period, by focusing on women’s own definition of themselves, including their responses to men’s definition, we need to shift the focus yet again to examine a similarly multifaceted constructions of "man," not simply as defined by men themselves, but as 10 viewed through the lens of women’s experiences, and in many instances, of his relationships with women as well as with men. Masculinity Studies and Gender Roles As the dominant voice of the early modern period, men’s writings have been widely anthologized and accepted into the literary canon. Scholars drawing on these writings and on sex-gender theory, have explored what it meant to be a man in the context of early modern social structures. In Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture (2006), Todd Reeser focuses on print culture to examine “the implications of moderation as a defining aspect of male subjectivity” (15). As a key marker of early modern manliness, moderation of one’s emotions, thoughts, and actions comprised a masculine ideal; if men were considered the “moderate” sex, as Reeser argues, then women were “coded as inherently nonmoderate” (15). Drawing on tracts written by men for a male readership, Jennifer Low’s Manhood and the Duel (2008) focuses on the duel, a martial practice that exemplified manliness, mostly among the middle and upper classes, which was considered essential to defend one’s honor as a male. Alexandra Shepard similarly investigates how men were defining other men in her extensive survey of of texts such as medical manuals and conduct manuals, entitled Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (2003). Shepard observes that collectively, men were defining “discretion, reason, moderation, self-sufficiency, strength, self-control, and honest respectability” as masculine traits (9). The difficulty in achieving such ideals led men to experience a complex array of strains; such tensions are the subject of Mark Breitenberg’s Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (1996), in which he observes that writings by men “reveal[] the fissures and contradictions of patriarchal systems” (2). Patriarchy, he argues, is a system where anxiety is 11 produced and reproduced both as an “internal discord” within men but also as an “instrument” through which men can “contain, appropriate, and return” anxiety towards others—men and women—within their own social and gender hierarchies to maintain their positions of power (2). Masculinity studies such as these, based on texts writings by men, provide a necessary context within which to investigate representations of masculinity in women’s writings. How were men defining themselves in the period? What anxieties shaped the patriarchal values they idealized? Within the context of such questions, I elucidate how women were “writing men” by engaging with and interrogating male attributes idealized by men. As a result, my project builds on but diverges from exiting masculinity studies by bringing to the foreground women’s writing as a new source for studies about men. Scholarship about men in relation to women within prevailing sex/gender and class hierarchies has also emerged from feminist perspectives. I am indebted to Mihoko Suzuki’s bold rereading of women’s writing within the context of the English Civil War and how aristocratic and middle-class women and male apprentices fashioned autonomous voices in their writings while negotiating their subaltern subject positions; in her book Subordinate Subjects (2003), she argues that these women and apprentices were “political agents” rather than merely defined by their subordinate status (3). While these men and women both petitioned Parliament, an audacious move to express their subaltern political voice, Suzuki illuminates areas in which apprentices, although subjugated in the larger power hierarchy of men, still defined themselves in opposition to women (21). My study maintains that because women also defined themselves in relation to men, part of women's “political agency” was expressed through the creation—and deconstruction—of men and masculinity in their writing. While the hegemony of patriarchy did not permit women as a whole to subjugate men, they could, however, imaginatively create men, 12 while often challenging their conventional manliness within the relative safety of fictional genres, such as drama or poetry. Furthermore, women could justify their writing by citing biblical authority, such as Rachel Speght did, or by claiming it was inspired by a dream-vision, in the case of Aemilia Lanyer, or by stating that a greater good was at stake, as did Dorothy Leigh, when her sons might be left without parental guidance upon her death. The masculine identities constructed by men— and to which the women responded -- permeated early modern literary and cultural texts across a wide range of genres and subjects. For instance, in Discourses of Warre and Single Combat (1591), dueling is identified as an essential crucible for masculine identity: if a man is offended by another, “to the field they must man to man, to trie their manhood” (A3iv). I will show, that women such as Elizabeth Grymeston, however, envisioned ideal men who resisted such violent acts; from a woman's perspective, the refusal to duel was not an abrogation of masculinity but rather a sign of a man who took seriously his role and responsibility as the patriarch of a family. Tracts such as Richard Brathwaite’s The English Gentleman (1630) discussed the sports, dances, and educational achievements that define the ideal gentleman, emphasizing intelligence and reason, along with the suppression of the bodily desires, as the attributes that raised a gentleman from being a mere animal to being an actual “man” (437). As mentioned earlier, early modern men were constantly reminded that moderation of emotion was essential to being a man and retaining patriarchal power; by contrast, emotional instability was considered a womanly trait— threatening to one’s family and community. Plays such as Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great I and II (1590), in addition to William Shakespeare’s King Lear (1608) and Othello (1622), featured male characters who did not moderate and temper their feelings of anger, jealousy, or revenge with reason, thus resulting in 13 tragic endings. In The Tragedie of Mariam (date), Elizabeth Cary comments on such tragic heroes in her Herod, whose jealousy (like Othello) and tyranny (like Tamburlaine) brings about Mariam’s death, which overwhelms him with guilt and remorse. Unlike Marlowe and Shakespeare, however, Cary does not accord the status of a tragic hero to Herod. While these plays dramatize the disastrous consequences of men’s failures to moderate their emotions to fit the offices of father and husbands, the tract by Joseph Swetnam entitled The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (1615) demonstrates some of the conflicting advice men were receiving during this period. Sermons and tragedies cautioned men against excessive violence as “unmanly” because it indicated a loss of control, but Swetnam stressed the overwhelmingly sinful nature of women, to the point of praising examples of violence against women, suggesting that the loss of a woman’s life is no loss at all. Legal texts like Thomas Edgar’s The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights (1632) advocated love between fathers and daughters as well as husbands and wives, providing counsel on divorce as a response to excessive violence, but it also outlined the conditions under which a man could use corporal punishment on his wife as a necessary patriarchal tool for her instruction and discipline. Women writers inevitably wrote in response to these patriarchal ideologies; some women’s texts, such as Rachel Speght’s A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617) which directly responded to Joseph Swetnam’s tract, offered direct counterarguments to identified misogynists, while other women’s writing, such as Arbella Stuart’s fictional suitor, offered less violent and more affectionate models of patriarchy. Just as women writers differed in their depictions of men what they considered “manly,” so too did men who were writing about men and masculinity. This archive of men’s writing produced a dynamic, and sometimes contradictory, definition of “man,” with the differing 14 representations ultimately shaped by the framework of each genre. The archive of women writing about men in turn also took shape within the varying contours of a range of different genres. Below I offer a brief description of these genres, my aim being to extract a more precise definition of “man” by early modern women: Genres and Forms in Early Modern Women's Writing Both men and women deployed various genres to write about masculinity, genres which shaped the differing constructions of masculinity. My study therefore draws upon a range of genres of women's writings, in order to understand how the conventions of genres such as drama, autobiography, letter-writing, polemical pamphlets, etc. inevitably shaped their conceptions of masculinity. Did particular genres constrain women’s representations of masculinity and manhood? Did a specific genre suit a particular stage in a woman’s life cycle as a vehicle to prescribe or correct certain male behaviors? Such questions, I believe, are useful in revealing how particular representational practices articulated women’s efforts to mediate their varied relationships with men, while giving shape to different kinds of male figures that emerge in their writings. For instance, letter writing demanded the open praise of a father in the formal salutation when written by his daughter. As a convention, these opening lines of praise to and about fathers may be an unreliable source for women’s inner feelings and opinions of their fathers. Rather, by understanding this convention, we can see past the opening salutation and look to how the body of the letter articulates her expectations of her father according a more idealized masculinity. While the form of a letter was prescribed, the content was shaped by the author based on her personal relationship with the recipient. This allowed for a more intimate, candid discussion, 15 one where women could represent and critique masculinity in ways not possible in public; the content of a letter also changed with a woman’s age. The short, shy, formal, and uncertain letter written by a very young Anne Clifford differs greatly from Margaret Roper’s lengthy and intimate letter to her father, one informed by many years of a close, affectionate relationship. Compare this to Arbella Stuart’s letter, whose fictional suitor “performs” masculinity for her aunt, but is shaped with her understanding that it will be read and circulated at court. In creating a letter that would be read by her grandmother Bess of Hardwick, as well as Queen Elizabeth I, Lord Robert Cecil, and others, Stuart constructed herself as a subordinate writing for an audience of superiors ranging from senior family members to powerful political figures. In Arbella Stuart’s case, the ruse is successful; her fabricated suitor performed his masculinity effectively enough to warrant a court-ordered investigation into this supposed clandestine match. While each genre through its conventions shapes and often constrains women’s writing, it can prove enabling to the writer. For example, Anne Clifford’s autobiographical writing calls for a chronological organization of information in order to construct the biographies of her parents and the story of her life. We can more clearly understand the evolution of her relationship with her father through her account of how her experiences with her father evolved over time; we are also provided access to her retrospective reflection on his presence in her life from her perspective as an older widow. Elizabeth Cary’s closet drama enables her to critique male behavior through the character of Herod--his (mis)use of authority and power--but she is also constrained by the dramatic genre that necessitates the expression of her views through the characters she creates. At the same time, the genre enables the articulation of a variety of voices and perspectives, following how others react to—and are affected by—Herod’s destructive masculinity. As a grown, married 16 woman, Cary is able to inform her play with her lifetime of experience both as a daughter and as a wife. Mother’s advice manuals, by Elizabeth Grymeston, Dorothy Leigh, and Elizabeth Jocelin, address their children in a didactic and prescriptive manner; thus, as mothers who have been daughters and wives, these women are able to instruct their sons in how to “be men” based on years of relationships with men and on observing their performance of masculinity. While the publication of these texts required some moral justification, the didactic teaching of the manuals themselves necessitated their authors to organize their advice topically and succinctly, as opposed to the lengthy moral narratives that characterized other forms such as sermons. Rachel Speght’s writing in the form of polemical tract also presents a moral construction of "man,", but in this instance she writes in response to the Joseph Swetnam’s attack on women; Speght was compelled to address widely circulating misogynist tropes and stereotypes, and as a participant in this heated gender debate, her tone effectively reflects the anger and frustration of a defender of women. However, Aemilia Lanyer’s volume was constrained by the conventions of poetry, especially poems that were dedicated to royal and aristocratic women. While she could not directly confront misogynists nor show the overt anger women polemicists expressed in the querelle des femmes --as did "Jane Anger" in Her Protection of Women (1599)--she could express her general frustration through Adam as an avatar for the failings of men, but she also provides the solution through Christ as a model of ideal masculinity. Since women’s virtue was commonly based on the promotion of modesty and silence, all forms of writing posed some kind of risk, though published writings were considered to be more transgressive. While family documents, such as Margaret Roper’s letters and Ann Clifford’s genealogical biographies, were meant for private, intimate audiences, women’s writing intended 17 specifically for publication, such as Aemilia Lanyer’s poetry and Dorothy Leigh’s mother advice manual, violated codes of gender and modesty that mandated women stay silent and in domestic spaces. However, women deftly negotiated these constraints to their literary freedom, by using different genres to articulate their thoughts within the confines of conventions and propriety. They could praise men through letters or condemn them in autobiographies. They could directly challenge patriarchy through pamphlets or indirectly through poems, closet dramas, and mother’s advice manuals. Every genre women chose served a purpose in how she wished to convey her message to the people around her. These genres, however, could also serve as a public mediation between female authorship and codes of femininity. Wendy Wall notes, “Women might have been caught in legal, social, and economic nets, but some found a way to dance within them quite visibly, to piece together discursive forms the circumvented restrictions on their public appearances” (283). For example, one way to “circumvent” the question of modesty was for women to justify their publication through the embracing of another traditionally feminine trait, such as motherhood. Wall uses the example of Elizabeth Jocelin’s writing an advice manual to her child to demonstrate this point; by writing a manual, Jocelin was “merely doing her duty” as a mother who needed to instruct her child in the event of her death, thus giving her the authority to break her silence (284).11 To conclude, while genres typically dictated and constrained the way women could construct and critique men and masculinity, their conventions afford certain benefits to those who sought to address the subject of “man.” Letters and autobiographies that remained in 11 Jocelin herself demonstrates anxiety over her writing this manual for her child, and thus is apologetic for writing and explains that her possible death in childbirth necessitates it. The tract, however, is not published until after her death. Thomas Goad, the publisher, further justifies the publication by placing emphasis on Jocelin as a devoted mother and wife, and also explaining that she is dead and her husband gave permission for the publication, thus safeguarding her against further reproof. For more on the polemics of Goad’s preface, see Wall, pp.284-5. 18 manuscript allowed writers to construct masculinity in the context of intimate spaces: while pamphlets, mother's advice manuals, and closed drama (if published, as was the case with Cary's Mariam), enabled the circulation of these constructions in public spaces. Although I will be calling attention to the importance of these generic differences throughout my study, my discussion will be organized following to the life-cycle of women writers themselves. Bringing the arc of women’s shared experiences to the forefront, enables me to map how women’s evolving relationships with men as well as their experiences with the institutions and practices of patriarchy helped inform their critiques and creations of “men” in their writing. Women’s Life Cycle and Chapter Summaries The life-cycle of a woman in the early modern era—from daughter to wife to mother—is essentially the same for many women today, which is why it is useful to organize this study of women “writing men” by the arc of a woman’s life. In All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics, and the False Universal in England 1640-1832, in writing about representations of the life-cycle of men in early modern literature, Hilda Smith notes that “in many works discussing personal development, education, and the nature of childhood and adulthood, it became clear that women were indeed as missing from false universals that readers or viewers assumed included them—such as child, youth, adult, old age—as they were from political false universals” (4). Thus, the early modern universal life cycle, by failing to integrate women’s experience, necessitates studies grounded in the physical life-cycle of the early modern woman. Merry Wiesner, in Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (2000), also reflects on these differences as she considers the woman’s life-cycle as a helpful lens, for “corporeal accidents such as births and deaths not only shaped a woman’s physical state, but her emotional health, 19 economic position, opportunities for education, and status in the community” (52). In other words, the physical changes of a woman’s body throughout her lifecycle had broader implications on her entire life. A woman losing her virginity before marriage, for instance, had significant ramifications in terms of her marriageability. Likewise, a woman having her first child entered into a completely new world where her daily routine and domestic duties would be forever altered. By grounding this study in the physical female body, a shared symmetry between the early modern woman and contemporary woman is achieved; both then and now, a woman’s relationship with patriarchal structures and prevailing social arrangements changes as her body matures, becomes sexually active, gives birth, and raises children. This arrangement of the male subject as bracketed and subjugated to women’s experience allows us to “turn the tables” on the previous trope of women as the “second” sex who function as a subjugated complement to men. Using a woman’s life-cycle as an organizational and conceptual frame also allows us to witness how women used their bodies to navigate their sex-gender system, as well as how they responded to shifting, patriarchal figures of male authority in their lives, such as fathers, husbands, and in some instances, sons. In the case of mothers, women were creators of men— both physically and literarily—and in other roles, were an undeniably influential force in shaping, challenging, and reframing early modern male identity. By arranging men as a subject in a time line that aligns with women’s life experiences, this study de-centers men’s dominant roles, and instead, brings to the forefront women’s personal, relational expectations of male behavior, where men are valued in terms of their familial roles more than in their worldly power and physical prowess. 20 An early modern woman’s life began as a daughter, and her first understanding of men and gender hierarchy was within the home, where her father was the patriarch. Chapter 1 focuses on women as daughters who write to and about fathers. Drawing on letters of Margaret Roper and the autobiographical writings of Anne Clifford, I show how women were preoccupied with the roles of fathers within their writing– representing, creating, and imagining ideal fathers. In Margaret Roper’s letters, a wise, pious, loving father takes shape, one who revels in his daughter’s achievements and considers her a close friend and confidant. The Thomas More who emerges from these letters is shaped by Roper’s loving relationship with him, as he is crafted with tremendous adoration nearly to the point of veneration. These letters have been deliberately paired with Anne Clifford’s autobiographical writing to provide a counterbalance to Clifford’s critical portrait of her father. In condemning her father’s extended absences, poor treatment of her mother, and general disregard for the women’s opinions around him, Clifford consequently suggests an ideal father who is active in his daughter’s life and education, who listens to his daughter and wife, and who treats the women around him with respect. These desired positive traits are akin to the ideals praised in Roper’s letters to and about her father. As women grew they were expected to marry, and learning how to navigate this domestic power structure as a daughter with a father ultimately prepared her for becoming a wife under the guidance of a husband. In Chapter 2 the letters of Arbella Stuart offer an example of a woman constructing an ideal, fictional suitor. And Elizabeth Cary’s closet drama The Tragedie of Mariam (1611) highlights the role of female dramatists in creating complex male characters on stage, often to interrogate masculinity in novel ways, in this instance in a man’s role as husband and ruler. Stuart’s letters offer a unique look at a woman creating a fabricated suitor intended to function as if he were real; unlike Elizabeth Cary’s Herod, who was performed by actors for an 21 audience fully aware of his fictional status, Arbella Stuart’s unnamed suitor is presented as a real person, as he performs his role as Stuart’s paramour for her unsuspecting audience. His performance of masculinity was ideal for a courtier, while also serving the purpose of drawing the attention of the court to Stuart’s plight of being isolated from the court against her will. Her perfect suitor was introduced in a series of letters, where he was depicted as being gallant, self- sacrificing, loyal to the queen, and careful with his relationships. This fake suitor stands in sharp contrast to Elizabeth Cary’s play in which Mariam’s husband, Herod, is the opposite of an ideal husband. He is violent, coercive, and ignores the wishes of his wife. Additionally, Herod does not show moderation in his emotions, acting rashly out of jealousy and anger. He is quick to judge others without validating the truth. As a character, Mariam serves as a powerful critic of her husband, demonstrating how women were not accepting a so-called ideal masculinity as proven through military prowess or men’s dominance over women. Rather, the ideal mate would be one who considers the needs and desires of his family first, who listens to women rather than silence them, and who is attentive rather than neglectful. Having lived as both a daughter and a wife, women’s understanding of patriarchy inevitably influenced how she raised her sons and informed their developing masculinity as they grappled with the demands and expectations of manhood. As women married and had children, their experiences often entailed varying levels of subjugation in roles of a daughters and wives, frequently informing their understanding of an ideal patriarch. In the next stage as mothers, however, they could form new relationships of limited power with their sons, ones in which they could have a direct impact in implementing their vision of an ideal man. Chapter 3 focuses on women writing to and about their sons in mother’s advice manuals; I use Elizabeth Grymeston’s Miscelanea. Meditations. Memoratives. (1604), Elizabeth Jocelin’s The Mothers Legacie: Her 22 Unborne Childe (1624), and Dorothy Leigh’s The Mothers Blessing (1616) to examine how women were representing, critiquing, and instructing their male offspring. While all three manuals reflect similar concerns, such as the inclusion of prayer in life’s activities and the mother’s concern for her child, the three differ in their focus and advice. Elizabeth Jocelin, for instance, expresses a desire for her son to join the clergy, is brief in its advice, and does not intend her manual to be published.12 Dorothy Leigh’s lengthy manual, however, was written specifically for publication and contains extensive practical advice to her son on how to run a household as well as on how to treat a wife. Elizabeth Grymeston’s advice mostly consists of exercises in prayerful contemplation and advice to her son about on Christian morality and religious devotion. Read together, it seems, these women’s writings craft an ideal son who is conscientious about how he treats the women in his life. He considers his position as the patriarch not only in terms of power and authority over women but rather in the context of his various duties toward her. This son not only honors his mother, but he also extends that behavior to honoring and respecting the other women in his life. He takes his role as a community and family leader seriously, leading with an open heart and Godly piety. This man’s Christianity is a central part of his identity, and he looks to his mother as well to his father for guidance and advice. Finally, I consider women more than just figures in a domestic space, but also as members of a wider community. These were women who dared to publish their writing so that they may engage their communities in wider discussions of masculinity and men’s roles in society. Consequently, they had to navigate the larger patriarchal structures, directly responding to male attitudes towards women as well as male writings about women, which in turn shaped 12 Her work was written to her unborn child; it wasn’t until after her death in childbirth in 1622 that her husband, Tourell Jocelin, published her work. 23 their discussions of men as a subject. Chapter 4 focuses on women as members of a larger community, looking to Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) and Rachel Speght’s A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617) in terms of their critique of men and constructing a new Everyman through their versions of Adam, informed and shaped by female experience in larger patriarchal structures. Both written for publication, these two works feature Adam. Lanyer’s poems reframe Adam who is deeply flawed, whereby through him, she criticizes all men for blaming all women for the Fall from Eden. Thus, it is Christ who emerges as the ideal man, for he not only listens to women, but is also willing to show compassion to them in public and sacrifice himself for their well-being. In a similar vein, Speght reinterprets the creation of Adam as well as the Fall, positing that all men were created to be companions and helpmeets to women. She also evokes Christ as embodying an exemplary manhood and as a champion of women; he recognizes women’s virtue and worth, and thus he does not blame all women for Eve’s transgression. Both women articulate a new kind of Everyman reminiscent of the figure of Christ, one who judges women based on their individual merits, acknowledges their struggles, and attempts to alleviate women’s suffering through kindness and self-sacrifice. It is important to note that these new men appear both in domestic spaces, with Speght going as far as to criticize men who do not help women with their labor at home, as well as in public spaces, such as when Lanyer notes that Christ observes his mother’s public grief and offers her comfort. Holding up Christ’s concern of women as an ideal, Speght, for instance, questions whether men as husbands who blatantly ignore women’s needs can even be “termed men.” In the above chapters, I outline how women’s representations of men and masculinity critique various male behaviors, while illuminating what women sought in a perfect father, suitor, son, and male member of the community. From this arrangement of texts, in telling a 24 story of the early modern gendered social and familial arrangements, a complex, dynamic early modern “man” emerges, one who, in many instances, is reconstructed as an ideal patriarch at every stage of a woman’s life-cycle, even while individual women recognize many male failings. If being considered a “man” is a matter of how well a male conforms to the dominant definitions of manliness, we are forced to ask what does it take “to be termed men” by these early modern women? The following chapters will present the voices of several women writers as they articulate their own definitions of manliness, ones grounded in the female experience, beginning with an examination of Anne Clifford and Margaret Roper constructions and criticisms of their fathers. 25 BIBLIOGRAPHY 26 BIBLIOGRAPHY Baseotto, Paola. “Mary Stuart’s Execution and Queen Elizabeth’s Divided Self.” Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture. Edited by A. Patrina and L. Tosi, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 66-82. Beilin, Elaine V. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton UP, 1987. Belsey, Catherine. The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama. Methuen, 1985. Brathwaite, Richard. The English Gentleman. 1630. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id= xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:4869. Breitenberg, Mark. Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England. Cambridge UP, 1996. Cary, Elizabeth. The Tragedy of Mariam. 1613. Renaissance Drama by Women. Edited by S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies, Routledge, 1996, pp. 43-75. Castiglione, Baldassarre. The Courtier of Count Baldessar Castilio. Translated byThomas Hobby. 1588. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/openurl? ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:22892 Clifford, Anne. Clifford’s Great Book of Record. Edited by Jessica L. Malay, Manchester UP, 2015. Crawford, Patricia and Sara Mendelson. Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720. Clarendon P, 1998. Dolan, Frances. “Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern England.” Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Jessica Munns and Penny Richards, Pearson Longman, 2003, pp. 7-20. Edgar, Thomas. T. E. The Lawes Resolutions of Women’s Rights; Or, The Lawes Provision for Women. 1632. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/openurl? ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:307. Elizabeth I. 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All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics, and the False Universal in England 1640-1832. Pennsylvania State UP, 2002. Speght, Rachel. A Mouzell for Melastomus. 1617. Early English Books Online, gateway. proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri: eebo:image:18300. 28 Stuart, Arbella. The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart. Edited by Sara Jayne Steen, Oxford UP, 1994. Suzuki, Mihoko. Subordinate Subjects: Gender, the Political Nation, and Literary Form in England, 1588 – 1688. Ashgate, 2003. Swetnam, Joseph. The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women. 1615. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003 &res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:25624. Wall, Wendy. The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. Cornell UP, 1993. Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edition. Cambridge UP, 2000. Wilson, Katherina, editor. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. U of Georgia P, 1987. 29 CHAPTER 1: DAUGHTERS AND FATHERS The first and primary male figure in a woman’s life was her father. As the head of the household, the father was responsible for the well-being as well as guidance of all the women (and men) under his roof. Early modern children were raised with the understanding that fathers were to be treated with a particular deference, as god-ordained heads of the household, and were told often to “honor and obey” them. Additionally, parents and children were constantly enjoined through sermons and advice manuals to love each other. How these interactions played out, however, differed family to family. While the letter-writing conventions of the time stipulated that upper-class daughters write carefully worded supplications to their fathers regardless of the level of affection between them, some daughters and fathers were more openly casual or intimate in their writing. Take, for instance, this formal letter written by a young Anne Clifford to her father (fig. 1).13 At eight years old, Clifford uses her best penmanship and illustration to formally greet her father. She tells him, “I humbly intreate your blessing and ever Figure 1. Letter from Lady Anne Clifford to Her Father, George Clifford, on January 31st, 1598. From Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke & Montgomery. 1590-1676. Her Life, Letters, and Work Extracted from All the Original Documents Available, by Dr. George C. Williamson, published in Kendal by Titus Wilson and Son, 1922. 13 Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke & Montgomery. 1590-1676. Her Life, Letters, and Work Extracted from All the Original Documents Available by Dr. George C. Williamson, published in Kendal by Titus Wilson and Son in 1922, is in public domain. 30 comend my duety and sarvice to your Lo[rd]” (qtd. in Williamson 408). Compare this, however, to a shockingly candid poem written by the Welsh poet Alis Ferch Gruffyd Ab Ieuan Ap Lleyelyn Fychan (also known as Alis Wen) to her widower father who asked her thoughts on his marrying a young lady: […] chwithe nhad aethoch yn hen Yn gleiriach bellach heb allu—duw n borth on or barth ir gwelu Gwanwr ai ben un gwnnu Ni thale dim ich ael ddu […]you my father have got old Decrepit you can hardly without God’s help get from hearth to bed a weak man his head going white wouldn’t satisfy your black-browed one14 Here we see Gruffyd bluntly holding a mirror up to her father, describing him as “old,” “decrepit,” “weak,” with a “head going white,” quite the opposite of the paragon of youthful masculinity. Gruffyd’s criticism of her elderly father trying to pair his waning masculinity with the waxing femininity of a young bride does not show the courtly deference of young Clifford’s letter to her father, but Gruffyd still demonstrates her love and concern for her father by daring to answer him honestly. Gruffyd’s witty description of her father exposes readers to a comfortable, intimate relationship between the two, written with the confidence of a grown daughter to a 14 Translation by Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson. For both the Welsh transcription and English, see Stevenson and Davidson, p. 14. 31 father whose love, we assume, is strong enough to withstand some chiding. Clifford’s letter, on the other hand, reveals a more uncertain bond between the two as she practices building the expected connection between a father and daughter through an exercise of formal letter writing. While class, age, genre, and personal relationship between the father and daughter shaped the language of how young women wrote to and about their fathers, this archive of daughters writing to or about their fathers can provide a glimpse into how girls (and women) were constructing and critiquing the masculine performance of the head of their household. Young Women Writing The English Renaissance marked a time where many noblewomen, and later, many of the women from upper and even middle class, were educated to read and write to a certain degree. At the time, reading and writing were considered separate subjects, albeit complementary, and some women may have been able to read more than write. Literacy for a woman generally meant that she was educated enough to read the Bible and other appropriate texts, as well as write enough to keep up household accounts and perhaps familial correspondence. Women’s education was generally focused on the gender-specific tasks she would be performing as an adult, namely as wife, mother, and domestic worker. Of course, a young woman’s class also defined the parameters of her education. Richard Mulcaster, a reknowned tutor of the late sixteenth century, described in Positions Wherin Those Primitive Circumstances Be Examined, Which Are Necessarie for the Training Up of Children (1581) how young women’s literary education was based on their gendered roles as well as rank in early modern England: If a yong maiden be to be trained in respect of mariage, obedience to her head, & the qualities which looke that way, must needes be her best way:[ 32 ]if in regard of necessitie to learne how to live, artificiall traine must furnish out her made:[ ]if in resepect of ornament to beawitfie her birth, & to honour her place, rareties in that kinde and seemely for that kinde do best beseeme such: if for government, not denyed them by God, and devised them by men, the greatnes of their calling doth call for great giftes, and generall excellencies for generall occurrences. (174-5) In other words, a young woman was trained to first and foremost be a submissive wife to her husband, the head of the household. Her first exposure to this gender dynamic was her relationship with her father, and by learning her place in the family, she would be ready for her future role as a helpmeet to her husband. Additionally, her education must be in alignment with “her birth” and “her place.” If she was to run a grand estate, her education needed to train her to that end; if she was to help in the family business, then it was her parents’ duty to prepare her for that life. Noblewomen, as were the majority of Richard Mulcaster’s female pupils, would need to be trained in additional skills, such as how to “ornament” herself with courtly manners, dress, hobbies, literary expertise, and languages. This would allow them to not only navigate the intricacies of courtly life, but also make them more attractive when it came to making a good match. In the rare case of a female monarch, such as Elizabeth I, “the greatnes of their calling doth call for great giftes, and generall excellencies for generall occurrences” (Mulcaster 192). Because they would be the head of a nation, these princesses needed to be educated in areas that would generally be reserved for the offices of men, such as international diplomacy and martial history. Because of the way women were generally educated, it is essential that we examine how women as a group talked to and about the men in their households. A man could not be a head 33 of a household unless he was, or had been, married to a woman. His ultimate performance as a man, as the head of a household, relied on women, and because women were essential to this marker and performance of early modern masculinity, it is imperative that women’s writing is consulted to better understand how men were percieved in this role. While marriage was the necessary component to a man being elevated in society to that of the head of the household, it was solidified by his having offspring. It was the duty of a married man to procreate just as it was for a daughter to honor her father and mother. Children, therefore, held an important role in the development of a father's manhood, providing dependents that were raised from infancy to be submissive to his rule. Unlike a wife, who was seen as the “weaker” sex and also subject to his authority, children were not considered partners or equals with parents. A true test of a man’s masculinity and how well he performs his manhood was in how he raised his children in the patriarchal world. They were extensions of his gendered role, evidence to the world outside of the home, of his effective guidance as head of the household. The Anatomy of a Letter We see the deference for their fathers expected from young women in epistolary conventions.15 Letter writing was an art, and multiple manuals on the subject prescribed the careful attendance to social rank and deference expected in Elizabethan and Jacobean courtly circles. For example, the popular manual The English Secretorie (1586) outlined the anatomy of the ideal letter for its readers. After the salutation (the formal greeting), there was the exordium (an introduction to “winne favour”), the narratio or propositio (containing “the very substaunce 15 Letters written by unwed daughters to their fathers are rarer than letters written by daughters who were married. Barbara J. Harris posits that this was because young women tended to live at home and did not have the same duties as a married woman who may have to write letters to conduct family business. See Daybell and Gordon, pp. 23-35, 24. 34 of the matter”), the confirmatio (consisting of “manye reasons” and “proofe”), the confutatio (that which should be “diminished, disprooved or avoided”), and finally the peroratio (a “recapituation” and conclusion) (Day 38). After this, an author would put a subscription (closing address) and an epithet if needed (Day 39-40). In The English Secretorie (1586), writers were given several examples of appropriate salutations and subscriptions, the majority of which were designed for male letter writers and recipients. There is, however, the occasional acknowledgement of a female hand, as one of the suggessions is to sign the letter “Your Lad[y’s] loving and obedient Daughter” (Day 44). This line in particular echoes the formality of Lady Anne Clifford’s early letter to her father as she signs it, “Daughter in all obedient duety” (see fig. 1). While the prescribed affection in the recommended salutations and subscriptions of an early modern letter might problematize our understanding of the level of true congeniality a woman writer might have for her epistle’s audience, the range of examples reveals that despite the constraints of letter-writing conventions, women had a wide variety of choices available to them. In another letter-writing manual, The Enemy of Idlenesse (1607), the Jacobean author is given exemplary letters on a wide range of topics from condolences to congratulations to confessions to admonishments. The writing conventions, albeit formal, were fluid, and even if a woman was circumscribed by the pleasantries demanded of espistlary writing, her choice from amongst the phrasing suggested can reveal her frame of mind when writing. For example, The Enemy of Idlenesse (1607) lays out the format of a domestic letter’s salutation, beginning with an inquiry into the recipient’s health, an indication of the author’s health, and an aknowledgement or commendation of God’s will (Fullwood 124-27). One example given for a domestic letter was to begin it with “If you be in helth and merry, I am verie glad, for (thankes be given to God, 35 on my behalfe) I finde my selfe in verie good health and welfare” (Fullwood 125). Compare this to another example of a domestic letter, but one “of familiar businesse”: “If it bee well with you (my singular friend) then it is very wel with me: for even as I am (God be praised) in good health, so would I desire that it shold be likewise with you” (Fullwood 127). While the same three salutation conventions are present, the latter epistle is more simple in its diction and syntactical construction. To a contemporary reader, the lack of ornate saluations (i.e., “bee wel with you” vs. “be in helth and merry”, etc.) may seem less affectionate, but according to early modern letter conventions, this lack may signify that a woman's addressee was an intimate acquaintance or one to whom she was emotionally connected. According to William Fullwood, even letters containing “merry jests or taunts” must follow a formal protocol (135), but the choice to include such protocols can reveal an affectionate relationship between a daughter and her father--as seen in Alis Wen’s taunting of her father’s old age in her letter mentioned earlier in this chapter. When examining letter-writing manuals, however, we must remember that these rules and suggestions are the opinions of their authors and constitute prescriptions that may or may not be attained in everyday letter writing. While early modern daughters were instructed to include language expressing love, honor, duty, or obedience in their letters, the lack of these conventions may have been an acceptable deviation from the ideal. Conventions of early modern letter writing may have dictated that daughters include customary greetings and farewells, and that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century epistolary protocols may gleaned through women’s choices within the conventions as well as in her decisions to break them. As we shall see in the letters of Margaret Roper, the private intimacy between daughter and father as well as sister and step-sister allowed for more literary affection than what convention may have required. 36 Autobiography and Autobiographical Elements Early modern autobiographical writing spanned many different forms, from letters to diaries to household ledgers. The term “autobiography” suggests a narrative of the self, in which the fashioning of the individual’s experience, as well as the construction of the people and events involved in these experiences, is dictated by literary choice and thus subjective. As Helen Fulton asserts, “[f]ar from being metonymic and syntagmatic, the autobiography is metaphoric and paradigmatic, like a fictional work: the writer, as authorized narrator, deliberately selects events and outcomes from what is available and creates metaphorical images that lead to a preferred interpretation of those events” (193). Therefore, the autobiographies of early modern women, as well as other autobiographical forms such as letters, can reveal not merely the details of a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century woman’s everyday life, but actually can convey her perception of her world and its inhabitants. By looking at how women crafted the images of their fathers in their autobiographical writings, an intimate and richly diverse tapestry of fathers and fatherhood is revealed, as well as how these women interpreted the performance of masculinity. Unlike letter-writing, which was a form that was not only popular but essential to the early modern literate class, autobiography was not the subject of readily available manuals. Rather, authors had to look at other autobiographies, as well as biographies, if they wanted a pattern to follow. 16 Journals, another type of autobiographical writing, were widely kept. As Barbara Lewalski notes, “Most extant diaries record the external duties and activities pertaining to men’s public roles—travel diaries, military diaries, sea logs, astrologers’ diaries, political records” (140). The journal as a daily ledger or almanac was a practical means of record- keeping, and one so popular that publishers printed and sold blank, lined, and dated books 16 On the fashioning of the self in early modern autobiography, see Bedford, Davis and Kelly. On fashioning identity in biographies, see Sharpe and Zwicker. 37 marketed to merchants. In the mid sixteenth century, the line between keeping a daily ledger and a diary recording personal thoughts and events was blurred in the print materials. One such example, A Blanke and Perpetuall Almanack (1566), for instance, is marketed “for al Marchaunts and occupiers, to note what debtes they have to paie or receive, in any moneth or daie of the yeare: But also for any other that will make & keepe notes for any actes, deedes, or thinges that passeth from time to time (worthy of memory)” (Anon. 1). The domestic diary or journal, however, focused on the personal lives of the authors (Lewalski 141). In the case of Lady Anne Clifford, she wrote in a wide range of autobiographical forms. She leaves behind not just an assortment of her letters, but also fragments of her diary and a carefully crafted autobiography. Fathers in the Writing of Margaret Roper and Lady Anne Clifford When Sir Thomas More was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534 for failing to swear Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremecy, he was visited by and received letters from his daughter Margaret Roper (Turner 14). While a number of More’s letters to his daughter Margaret are extant, most of Margaret’s letters to which he was responding are lost. Fortunately, a few of Margaret’s letters have survived that discuss her father in detail: one written to Alice Arlington, her stepsister, and one to Thomas More himself. While William Rastell, who published the Roper-Arlington letter in 1557, has argued that it was too well-written to be Margaret’s work, modern scholars generally agree that the letter penned in her hand and concluded with her signature was, in fact, her creation.17 As a well-educated woman raised in a humanist home reknowned for its intellectual rigor, Margaret Roper had the opportunity to study with great 17 See Kaufman, pp. 443-56. 38 humanist educators such as Juan Luis Vives, Richard Hyrde, and Desiderius Erasmus (Goodrich 1026). Even though Roper received a more academically rigorous education than most women during the English Renaissance, she was still raised as a woman in an intensely patriarchal society, and her deference to her father’s authority is prominent in her writing. Some have speculated that, as the offspring of a very public figure, Roper’s performance as an ideal daughter further solidified More’s own reputation: he was both a revered scholar in the public sphere as well as an effective patriarchal leader in his private household.18 His performance of early modern masculinity was accentuated by Roper’s performance as the ideal daughter who lovingly submits to her father’s guidance and authority. The two letters written by Margaret Roper depict a father who excels in both the public and private spheres. Her love and dedication to her father is evident, and her writing produces a patriarch who is not only a philosophical and pious man but also one full of wit and fatherly affection. In her letter to Alice Alington, which informs her stepsister of her recent visit to see him in the Tower, Roper gives a physical description of her father. He is suffering from “diseases […] in his breste of olde” and “of the crampe also that dyvers nights grypeth hym in hys legges” (Roper 129). Here Roper is depicting an older father, suffering for his faith just like a Catholic saint. Yet, despite his afflictions, Roper tells us that she found him “out of payn” and that he bid her “to sit and talke and be merye” (129). More than once, Roper describes her father's humor and teasing, depicting him as a loving, affectionate man. She brings More a letter she received from Alice Arlington, and More suspects that his daughters are conspiring again to persuade him to take the oath. “What, maistres Eve,” he chides Margaret, “hath my daughter 18 For more on how Margaret Roper functioned as a public symbol for More’s domestic life, see Jaime Goodrich, “Thomas More and Margaret More Roper: A Case for Rethinking Women's Participation in the Early Modern Public Sphere” Sixteenth Century Journal, 39.4 (2008): 1021-40. 39 Alington plaid the serpent with you, and with a letter set you a worke to come tempte your father again, and for the favour that you beare him, labour to make him sweare against his conscience, and send him to the devil?” (130). Roper records his humorous characterization of Alington, deliberately painting More as the affectionate, witty father. Additionally, his open affection is emphasized when she records him saying that he takes Alice “verely for mine own too, sith I have married her mother, and brought up her of a child, as I have brought up you” (132). Margaret’s father is one who is loving to each of his daughters equally, regardless of whether they are related to him by blood or not. The majority of the Roper's letter to Alington recounts Margaret’s conversation with her father. Alington thereby receives an image of her stepfather who is as wise as he is virtuous. Roper pays particular attention to the rationale he gives to his refusal to take the oath that would recognize the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s second marriage. When asked if he would not take the advice of wise men who tell him to take the oath, Roper’s More responds, “Verely daughter, I never entend […] to pynne my soule at another manne’s backe, not even the best man that I know this day living: for I knowe not whither he may happe to cary it” (136). [you need to follow this quotation with analysis: "another man" is Henry, so More is saying that he is willing to go against the king in matters of conscience.] At the same time, her father is also a loyal subject to the crown, despite his imprisonment in the Tower, for she reports More's statement that he has “good hope, that God shal never suffer so good and wyse a prince in such wyse to requyte the long service of his true faythfull servuante” (145). Roper’s More is aware of his duties as a man living under the reign of a king: “Mystruste him, Megge, will I not,” though refusal to submit to 40 Henry's Oath, Roper’s More nevertheless praises the king (146).19 His deference for hierarchy is clear, but More is ultimately loyal to God, the highest patriarch of all. Roper is very careful to emphasize her father's piety and steadfast faith. He says to her, “I cannot, I saye […] mistruste the grace of God” (146). In this letter, Roper reports his many references to God’s will, wisdom, and mercy. While Roper’s More is passionate about his faith, he is more temperate in expressing his own emotions regarding his circumstances,20 focusing instead, on assuaging his daughter’s distress. He tells her, “never trouble thy mind,for anye thyng that ever shall happe me in this world” (147). Despite wishing his daughters to not worry so much about him, he wants them to know how much they occupy his thoughts. Roper’s More tells her to “Commende me to theym all, and to my good daughter Alington, and to all my other frendes, sisters, neces, nephews, and alies, and unto all our servaunts, man, woman, and chylde, and all my good neyghbours, and oure acquayntance abrode” (147). More tells her that he will “hartely, praye both you and them, to serve God, and be mery and rejoyce in hym” (147). He not only wants his loved ones to be happy, but he wants to see them live moral lives so that they “maye meete together once in heaven, where we shall make merye for ever, and never have trouble hereafter” (147). The ultimate goal as a Christian patriarch was to guide his family towards eternal salvation. If More could succeed in this, he would be an ideal father, husband, and master of his household. Margaret Roper's depiction of her father is just as affectionate in her letter addressed to him, maintaining an emphasis on affirming his saintly devotion. This letter is a bit more formal in its construction than the Alington letter. Unlike the Alington letter, which is more focused on 19 Thomas More’s faith in the king is also present in many of his letters, including a later letter written on May 2/3, 1535, just weeks before his execution. He writes, “my poore bodye is at the Kynge’s pleasure […] Woulde God my death might doo hym good” (153). 20 For more on moderation a defining characteristic of early modern masculinity, see Reeser. 41 preserving and reporting the conversation Roper had with her father than adhering to sixteenth- century epistolary conventions, this letter anticipates the outline recommended in the The English Secretorie (1586). She opens with a formal saluation (“Myne own good father”), an exordium to win favor (“to delight my selfe among in thys bytter time of your absens […] by as often writing to you, as shal be expedient”), a narratio conveying the central message (“[God] preserve you both body and soule”), and a closing subscription (“Your owne most loving obedient daughter and bedes-woman”) (Roper 150). The letter is brief; Roper is letting her father know that she is thinking of him. While the Alington letter shows both the religious and philosophical Thomas More, focusing on his rationale behind his refusal to swear the Oath, this letter projects a more hagiographical father figure. Roper calls his “most fruitfull and delectable letter” the “messenger” of his “very verteous and ghostly minde” (150). His mind is “rid from all corrupt love of worldely thinges, and fast knitte onely in the love of God and desire of heaven, as becommeth a very true worshipper and a faithfull servant of God” (150). Roper’s letter acts as a mirror for More; she reflects back to him a flattering but heartfelt image of himself.21 Her open affection for her father is evident as well as reciprocal in the More-Roper letters. In Margaret Roper’s letter to her father, her performance as a daughter depends upon his performance as a father. She is deferential to him who performs a patriarchal role in her life as well as in her writing. Roper ends her letter as More’s “owne most loving obedient daughter and bedes-woman” (150). She recognizes his authority as the male head of the family; part of More’s 21 Thomas More also provided a flattering and heartfelt mirror for Margaret Roper in many of his letters to her. His last letter, written the day before his execution, is addressed to her. He tells her, “I never liked your maner toward me better, than when you kissed me laste: for I love when doughterly love and deere charitye hath no leisure to loke to worldlye curtesy” (161). Both father and daughter had an openly affectionate relationship. 42 patriarchal role is to guide his family morally and spiritually. Her willingness to play a subordinate role to his dominant one is evident when she identifies herself as his “moste obedient daughter and handmaide” (Roper 150). Like most early modern women, Roper accepts her father’s role as superior in the family hierarchy. Roper’s father is so great a patriarch that she prays that she, along with her family and friends, “folow that that we praise in you [father]” (150), reflecting back to him the praiseworthy attributes she sees. She asks him a rhetorical question about what he thinks has been their comfort since he has been imprisoned; her answer is her memories of him. Here we see how she chooses to remember her father, through his attributes. She, along with her family, think back fondly on their “experiens” of his “life past” as well as his “godly conversacion and wholesome counsail, and vertuous example” (150). In this letter, she does not admonish her father in any way. Rather, Roper acknowledges his having played the part of both the "godly" and "vertuous” man as well as the part of the ideal patriarch well. She is confident that he lived his life in such a way that he will see “the blysse of heaven,” the ultimate goal of a Christian (150). Lady Anne Clifford’s accounts of her father could not be more different. First of all, George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland and Anne Clifford’s father, died in 1605 when Anne was only fifteen, and he spent a great deal of that time away from Anne and her mother.22 She therefore lacked the opportunity to form a deep attachment to him as Margaret Roper did with her father Thomas More. However, even if time and proximity were on her side, the temperment of George Clifford may have prevented a deep, loving relationship with his daughter. He was widely known to have had many extramarital affairs,23 and at his death he disinherited his wife, 22 For more on the life of George Clifford, see "Introduction," D.J.H. Clifford. 23 For more on this and how these affairs may have affected Anne’s design of his burial monument, see Myers. 43 Margaret Russell, and stripped Anne, his only surviving heir, of his titles and estates until the death of his male relatives.24 Is is not surprising, then, that Anne Clifford paints a critical portrait of her father in her writing. In her diaries, her father’s death is described with indifference, and in her biography of her mother, George Clifford is depicted as a cruel, neglectful patriarch. Her description of her father is also utilitarian. Anne Clifford and her mother fought for her inheritance, and to further solidify her claim as heir, she offers a physical description of her father to assert her likenness to him. We see through her writing the darker side of masculine performance in a patriarchal world. Unlike Margaret Roper’s father, who is a benevolent and loving authority in her life, Anne Clifford’s father embodies the abuse that occurs within a gender hierarchy. Most of Anne Clifford’s writing about her father occurs in the biographies of her parents as well as her own autobiographical entries in her Book of Records. However, she also mentions him in her Knole diary. The earliest entries date to 1603 when her father was still alive. Unlike Margaret Roper’s letter to Alice Alington, there is no affection evident; rather, George Clifford is one of many names listed in her day-to-day activities. She does, however, make a note of the discord between her father and mother: “My Mother & he did meet, when their countenance did shew the dislike they had one of the other” (Knole 26). The genre of diary-writing may attest for some of the scarcity of affection in her account, as this was a record of events to be kept private instead of offering a narrative of events to a specific audience as found in the Roper-Alington letter. However, Anne appears unimpressed with her father’s behavior towards her. She writes, “he would speak to me in a slight fashion & give me his Blessing” (Knole 26). Here is a distant father, courteous but detached, performing the role of the father at the bare minimum. 24 Anne Clifford records the many legal battles resulting from her father’s will. For a complete transcription of these documents, please see Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford’s Great Book of Record. 44 As we see in Anne Clifford’s Book of Record, her father fails in his performance of an ideal patriarchal masculinity. Men were taught to use moderation in their emotions, but to love their families, provide for them, and to act as their moral and spiritual guide. The patriarchy in the household was a microcosm of the patriarchal state; if a father failed in his duty to his family, it had the potential to disrupt the social fabric of society.25 Marriage and fatherhood were critical to fulfilling one’s gendered role as an early modern male; marriage was considered an antidote to the sexually damanding and immoderate impulses inherent in men.26 Anne Clifford is clear in her records that her father did not adequately fulfill his role as a husband. She writes how her mother, the “verteous Margaret,” at first felt the “extreame love and affection of her husband,” but that this only “lasted about nyne or tenne yeares towards her and but little more” (“Married Womman” 722). Anne’s great admiration and affection for her mother is just as clear in her records as her disapproval of her father.27 The father in Anne Clifford’s records is void of the affectionate expressions and playfullness seen in Margaret Roper’s depiction of Thomas More. In one of Anne Clifford’s passages, the stark contrast between her depiction of her mother and the depiction of her father is clearly visible. Her father is made to appear even more cruel in his lack of affection by her mother’s dutiful love towards George Clifford: She did with too much deare and passionate affection love her husband and her children so as itt proved a cause of much affliction unto her by 25 E. J. Kent describes the negative effect of a failed patriarchy in the home on the surrounding community, as well as how masculine performance failures could disrupt the nuclear family, in the article, “Raiding the Patriarch’s Toolbox: Reading Masculine Governance in Cases of Male Witchcraft, 1592- 1692,” Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period, edited by Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent, Routledge, 2011, pp. 173-188. 26 For more about how marriage was seen as a “remedy” to men’s inclination towards sexual sin, see Todd Reeser’s Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture, U of North Carolina P, 2006. 27 Anne Clifford lavishes her mother with great praise throughout both sections in her Great Book entitled “The Course of her Life from the Time that Shee Came First to Bee a Widow Till Her Death” and “The Course of Her Life Whyle Shee Lived a Marryed Womman and of Her Children.” 45 […] the unkyndnesses of her husband towards her for some yeares before his death, which was the cause of much bitter griefe to her […] Yett when her husband parted howses with her for two or three yeares before his death and more yt went very nere her heart, for shee was a womman full of kynde affections. (“Married Womman” 724) While Margaret Russell had “passionate affection” for her husband, George Clifford reciprocated with behavior that “was the cause of much bitter griefe to her” (“Married Womman” 724). According to this account, George Clifford was emotionally abusive towards his wife. Anne does not detail the “unkyndnesses,” but the offenses were serious enough to allude to in the record. George Clifford officially separated from his wife around 1603 but he previously had abandoned her as he went on several sea voyages28 and traveled extensively without her. While travel was a common enough practice for early modern noblemen who were busy cultivating their investments and doing service for the crown, the withdrawal of his affections as well as his physical removal from the household during the last years of his marriage made George Clifford a failure as a husband and father. Anne Clifford’s description of her father, however, changes when it serves a legal purpose. She uses the image of her father to further her claim to her inheritance. Her construction of her father then becomes utilitarian as she represents him as an affectionate father when it came to his bequeething of properties on his deathbed, a performance essential to Anne’s claim on the Clifford estates: he may have failed as an actual father, but at least his image in her writing could convey this masculine performance as loving patriarch. In what appears to be a change of heart on his death bed, Anne Clifford writes that he “expressed high testimony of the 28 Records of his multiple sea voyages and naval battles can be found in Clifford’s Great Book, ed. Malay, 639-55. 46 vertue and goodness of his wife” (“Bee a Widow” 726). This uncharacteristic moment of praise is essential to establish why, despite his will placing his male relatives above both Margaret and Anne, George Clifford may have had a change of heart. Anne then recalls how he told them about “his beliefe thatt the antient lands of his interitance would returne to their onely daughter the Lady Anne Clifford for want of heires males of his brother” (“Bee a Widow” 726). His will leaves his wife, Margaret, nothing, and he leaves the entirety of his estates to his brother Francis; Anne, his only surviving child, was to receive £15,000 upon his death (D.J.H. Clifford 2). The estates that Anne Clifford and her mother fought to regain after his death were vast. According to D.J.H. Clifford, the estates included nearly 90,000 acres in Westmoreland and Craven, which also included the castles of Broughman, Skipton, Appleby, and Pendragon (3). The legal battle to regain these lands was one of the main reasons Margaret Russell worked tirelessly to compile many of the legal documents found in Anne Clifford’s Book of Records, and it was a powerful factor in the shaping of Anne’s father in her writing. As the family historiographer, Anne Clifford strove to leave behind an accurate depiction of her own life, including the people in it, but also to solidify her claims to the Clifford estates as the only possible heir. This emphasized her blood relation to him while also granting the reader some insight into how he may have looked. Anne Clifford writes, “The collour of my eyes was black lyk my father’s” and that she had “a peake of haire on my forehead and a dimple in my chinne like [her] father’s full cheekes” (“Summary of the Records” 798). She also mentions having “an exquisite shape of body resembleing my father” (“Summary of the Records” 798). Physically, there was no question that she was his daughter. In a time when paternity could be questioned, the close physical resemblance of Anne to her father was essential in squelching any doubts to her blood connection. 47 Anne Clifford provides another description of her father in her biography of him, but in a less flattering light. Just as Margaret Roper painted her father as a saint, so too did Anne Clifford paint a saintly image of her mother. Clifford, however, was just as extreme in her veneration of her mother as she was in her condemnation of her father. She conveys then, the image of a sinner and neglectful patriarch. Like many biographies during this period, however, Anne is clear to note that he was “a very penitent man” on his deathbed (“George Clifford” 710). At first, she describes him in his biography as an ideal male courtier: “This Earle George was endowed with many perfections of nature befitting soe noble a personage as an excellent quickness of witt and apprehension, an active and strong body and an affable disposition and behavior” (“George Clifford 710). Here he is seen as bright, athletic, and charming, but tempered with caution; in short, he possessed many of the ideal masculine traits of the early modern period. He was also Elizabeth I’s Champion, which denotes manly activities such as combat, weapons training, and war. In fact, Anne’s father embodies the courtly manliness described by Baldassarre Castiglione, who should have the strength, speed, knowledge of weapons, and military prowess of a “man of warre” (sig. Diir-Diiiv). However, Anne Clifford does not see these ideal masculine traits as defined by the courts to be a full definition of what would make an exemplary man and father. She follows the above description with a list of behaviors that Anne considers to be reprehensible: Butt as good natures through humaine frailty are often times misled, soe he fell to love a ladey of quality, which did by degrees draw and alienate his love and affection from his soe verteous and and well discerveing wife, it being the cause of many discontents between them for many yeares togeather soe thatt att the length for two or three yeares together before his 48 death they parted houses, to her extreame griefe and sorry, and also to his extreame sorrow at the tyme of his deathe… (“George Clifford” 710) For Anne, an ideal father would have remained loyal to his wife. His conjugal love, which he withdrew from his wife, and by extension, his daughter, was an essential component to his being an ideal father. She disapproved of his physical separation from his family in the last few years of his life. Anne is additionally critical of her father’s intellectual capabilities. As a nobleman, the Third Earl of Cumberland would have received a typical humanist education, but according to Anne, in this regard he fell short. While Margaret Roper and her father were able to communicate to eatch other in Latin, Anne pointedly notes her father’s lack in this accomplishment. “Hee never attayned to any greate perfection in the Lattin tongue,” she writes, “yett he had a generall knowledge and insight into all the Artes and especiallie into the Mathemetiques” (“George Clifford” 710). She acknowledges that he enjoyed mathematics so much that “it was thought to bee one principall cause of his applyeing himselfe afterwards to sea voyages” (“George Clifford” 710). There was no denying that her father was revered for his many successful navigations, and she writes that he became “the most knowing and eminent man of a Lord in his tyme” regarding the passages to the West Indies and other “new found lands” (“George Clifford” 710). Despite her predominantly critical description of her father, she gives him credit where it is due, and discusses at length the many places her father had sailed as he was neglecting his family (“George Clifford” 710). As the description of her father was useful to Anne Clifford in solidifying her inheritance, she once again retells the story of her father on his death bed. Unlike in her other tellings, however, in her biographical writings of her father, she acknowledges that he had left his lands to 49 his brother and his male heirs, but that his intent was to ultimately have them pass to Anne, who was only fifteen years old at his death (“George Clifford” 712). Here Anne Clifford casts her description of this scene to read more like a legal document than a heartfelt remembrance of her father. At his deathbed, she writes, “a few howres before hee dyed hee tould them two and the companie thatt was there presentt thatt hee was confident all his landes wold come to his said only daughter and heire for want of heires male of his brother” (“George Clifford” 712). If he failed to provide her with her due inheritance while alive, his authority as a subject in her writing could. Anne further asserts, “This noble George Earle of Cumbreland left but one legitimate childe behinde him, which was his daughter and sole heire the Lady Anne Clifford” (“George Clifford” 713). Even if he fell short of being an ideal father in life, she could fashion a more ideal father in her writing, one with many flaws, but one worthy of remembering as well as one who truly intended for his daughter to inherit his estates despite the evidence that indicated otherwise. While Margaret Roper perhaps evokes an ideal father in her writing, Anne Clifford crafts a terribly flawed father, one who is complicated by his mix of ideal masculine attributes and failure to suitably guide his family as their patriarch. If we view the family as a microcosm of the state, the outcomes for these two fathers remains in conflict with how the state responded to their two performances as men. While both men enjoyed great successes in the courts, the affectionate and religious Thomas More would be executed by the king for his beliefs, whereas George Clifford enjoyed accolades29 and praise from both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I as first the Queen’s Champion and later as a Knight of the Garter despite his failure as a father and husband. While both 29 For a list of his accomplishments, see “The Course of the life of this George Clifford Third Earle of Cumbreland.” Great Book of Record, ed. Malay, 709-13. 50 men had patriarchal authority over their daughters, and where Thomas More may have used this authority in a positive manner toward his daughter and George Clifford may have done the opposite, both men’s legacies as fathers were preserved as their daughters saw fit, thus raising the question of to what extent women contributed to the construction of masculinity, shaping them for future generations. 51 BIBLIOGRAPHY 52 BIBLIOGRAPHY A Blanke and Perpetuall Almanack. 1566. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/ openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:180705. Bedford, Ronald, Lloyd Davis and Philippa Kelly, eds. Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices. U of Michigan P, 2006. Castiglione, Baldassarre. The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio. 1556. Translated by Thomas Hoby. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver =Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:22866. Clifford, D.J.H. The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford. Alan Sutton P, 1990. Clifford, Anne. “The Course of the life of this George Clifford Third Earle of Cumbreland.” Anne Clifford’s Great Book of Record. Edited by Jessica L. Malay, Manchester UP, 2015, pp. 709-13. --. “The Course of her Life from the Time that Shee Came First to Bee a Widow Till Her Death.” Anne Clifford’s Great Book of Record. Edited by Jessica L. Malay, Manchester UP, 2015. pp. 726-731. --. “The Course of Her Life Whyle Shee Lived a Marryed Womman and of Her Children.” Anne Clifford’s Great Book of Record. Edited by Jessica L. Malay, Manchester UP, 2015, pp. 721-726. --. “The Knole Diary: 1603.” The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford. Ed. by D.J.H. Clifford, Alan Sutton P, 1990, pp. 21-27. --. “Letter from Lady Anne Clifford to Her Father, George Clifford, on January 31st, 1598.” Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke & Montgomery. 1590-1676. Her Life, Letters, and Work Extracted from All the Original Documents Available. Edited by Dr. George C. Williamson, Titus Wilson and Son, 1922, p. 409v. Day, Angel. The English Secretorie. 1586. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/ openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:19624. Fullwood, Thomas. The Enemy of Idlenesse. 1607. Early English Books Online, gateway. proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo: image:180785. Fulton, Helen. “Autobiography and Discourse of Urban Subjectivity: The Paston Letters.” Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices. Edited by Ronald Bedford and Philippa Kelly, U of Michigan P, 2006, pp.191-216. 53 Goodrich, Jaime. “Thomas More and Margaret More Roper: A Case for Rethinking Women's Participation in the Early Modern Public Sphere.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, Is. 39, No. 4, 2008, pp. 1021-40. Kaufman, Paul. “Absolute Margaret: Margaret More Roper and ‘Well Learned’ Men.” Sixteenth Century Journal, Is. 20, No. 3, 1989, pp. 443-456. Kent, E.J. “Raiding the Patriarch’s Toolbox: Reading Masculine Governance in Cases of Male Witchcraft, 1592-1692,” Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period. Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent, editors. Routledge, 2011, pp. 173-188. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Writing Women in Jacobean England. U of Cambridge P, 1993. Malay, Jessica L., editor. Anne Clifford’s Great Book of Record. Manchester UP, 2015. More, Thomas. “Letter No. XII To His Daughter Maystres Roper.” 2/3 May 1535. The Life of Sir Thomas More by his Son-In-Law, William Roper, Esq. Edited by Samuel Weller Singer, Whittingham P, 1822, pp. 151-154. --. “Letter No. XV To His Daughter Maystresse Roper.” 6 July 1535. The Life of Sir Thomas More by his Son-In-Law, William Roper, Esq. Edited by Samuel Weller Singer. C. Whittingham P, 1822, pp. 161-162. Mulcaster, Richard. Positions Wherin Those Primitive Circumstances Be Examined, Which Are Necessarie for the Training Up of Children. 1581. Early English Books Online, gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo: image:13247. Myers, Anne M. “Construction Sites: The Architecture of Anne Clifford’s Diaries.” ELH. Vol. 73, No. 3, Fall, 2006, pp. 581-600. Reeser, Todd. Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2006. Roper, Margaret. “Letter No. VIII To Ladye Alington.” The Life of Sir Thomas More by his Son- In-Law, William Roper, Esq. Edited by Samuel Weller Singer, C. Whittingham P, 1822, pp. 129-147. --. “Letter No. XI To Sir Thomas More.” The Life of Sir Thomas More by his Son-In-Law, William Roper, Esq. Samuel Weller Singer, editor. C. Whittingham P, 1822, pp. 150-151. Sharpe, Kevin and Steven N. Zwicker, editors. Writing Lives: Biography and Textuality, Identity and Representation in Early Modern England (reprint edition), Oxford UP, 2012. 54 Singer, Samuel Weller, editor. The Life of Sir Thomas More by his Son-In-Law, William Roper, Esq. C. Whittingham P, 1822. Turner, Paul. “Introduction.” Utopia. Penguin Books, 1965, pp. 7-23. 55 CHAPTER 2: WIVES AND HUSBANDS Unpublished until 1806, Lucy Hutchinson’s biography of her husband, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (1671), provides a very detailed, intimate view of her husband and married life. Included in this two-volume text is a brief autobiography entitled “The Life of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson” (1671) where Hutchinson addresses her progeny and provides a detailed and laudatory description of Colonel John Hutchinson as a husband: [N]ever man had a greater passion for a woman, nor a more honourable esteem of a wife; yet he was not uxorious, nor remitted he that just rule which it was her honour to obey […]. He governed by persuasion, which he never employed but to things honourable and profitable for herself ; he loved her soul and her honour more than her outside […] So liberal was he to her, and of so generous a temper, that he hated the mention of severed purses […] so constant was he in his love, that when she ceased to be young and lovely, he began to show most fondness ; he loved her at such a kind and generous rate as words cannot express, yet even this, which was the highest love he or any man could have, was yet bounded by a superior, he loved her in the Lord as his fellow-creature […]. (30) According to Lucy Hutchinson, Colonel John Hutchinson was an ideal spouse. Although he fulfilled conventional ideals of masculinity, such as being the head of the household (“which it was her honour to obey”) as well as being a loving husband (“he loved her soul”), he also deviated from this norm in many ways. For one, “[he] governed by persuasion,” even though it was perfectly legal for him to govern by force, as Thomas Edgar stated in Lawes Resolutions 56 Women’s Rights (1630): “He shall neither doe nor procure to be done to her (marke I pray you) any bodily damage, otherwise then appertaines to the office of a Husband for lawfull and reasonable correction” (126-7). In other words, domestic violence was frowned upon if unprovoked, but was permitted if the husband used it for “corrective” or instructional purposes. As head of households, men also advised one another to be moderate in their spending,30 such as in A Godlie Form of Householde Government (1598) where husbands are told they “must be frugall” and “sparing and saving” (Cleaver 76). However, Colonel Hutchinson was, as his wife Lucy describes him, “[s]o liberal […] and of so generous a temper, that he hated the mention of severed purses” (30). Lucy Hutchinson therefore praises her husband in ways in which he deviated from the male-defined role of husband, declining to exercise the power to which he was entitled. In this chapter, I argue that Lucy Hutchinson was not alone in envisioning a new early modern masculine ideal in a spouse and suitor. Such imaginings of course, were accompanied by critiques of the failures of husbands to fulfill their roles to the satisfaction of women. Among other such wishful, though complex, imaginings of perfect husbands, I draw on the writings of two other women, Arbella Stuart and Elizabeth Cary, who also envision husbands that deviate from the male-dominated discourses about the emotional needs of women. Arbella Stuart fashions a fictional ideal lover in her letters, one letter (1602-03) created specifically to convince her intended audience that she had a suitor; whereas in The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), Elizabeth Cary re-envisions the character of Herod in her closet drama, challenging previous representations of him as a man above reproach, to render him a man who fails as a husband as 30 In a time when misogynist tracts like Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Women (1615) warned men that “a woman will pick thy pocket, and empty thy purse, laugh in thy face and cut thy throat” (14), men were thus encouraged to keep tight control of their wives’ behavior and access to money. For more about Joseph Swetnam and misogyny, see chapter 4. 57 well as a ruler. While they were both imagined characters, they illuminate the workings of masculinity in both its negative and positive aspects within courtship and marriage, as seen through the aspirations of women in early modern society, specifically among aristocratic circles. These two fictional representations of an ideal lover/potential suitor and of a failed husband illuminate not only women’s desires, but in doing so, offer a multifaceted view of early modern masculinity in relation to courtship and marriage, as I elaborate below. Early Modern Closet Drama When Elizabeth Cary published The Tragedie of Mariam (1613), women’s closet drama was beginning to merge with Senecan tragedy (Cerasano and Wynne-Davies 45). This “neo- Senecan” drama in early modern England contained most of the same characteristics of a Senecan tragedy such as the five-act structure, violence and revenge as a theme, the use of asides by the characters, a marked absence of the gods, choruses featuring “detached” voices, and less emphasis on social themes with more focus on morality, philosophy, and fortune (Ker and Winston 11). For women, whose virtue would be compromised by participating in public performances of theater, Senecan drama provided an opportunity for a more “chaste” theatrical outlet. As Greco-Roman tragedy was an essential part of a Renaissance education for both sexes, Senecan drama was read, as well as translated, by most of the educated elite. For instance, Queen Elizabeth I translated Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus as a private writing exercise (Cerasano and Wynne-Davies 9). For other women authors, Senecan drama as a translation exercise was intended to result in a closet drama, a play meant to be read aloud in the home among a small group of intimate acquaintances. Mary Sidney, for example, translated Robert Garnier’s Senecan tragedy Marc Antoine (1593) to produce The Tragedie of Antonie (1595) (Cerasano and 58 Wynne-Davies 15-7).31 Closet dramas allowed women a way to preserve their virtue by eschewing the public stage while engaging in dramatic performance within the confines of their homes. The early modern closet drama was a popular genre among aristocratic women writers for several reasons. As stated earlier, female performance on the stage was considered immodest during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. Women were ideally silent and chaste, thus relegating women to private, domestic spaces. Not only did the public nature of the theater problematize the concept of a woman playwright, but so did the act of printing. “Constrained by the norms of acceptable feminine behavior,” Wendy Wall notes in Imprints of Gender (1993), “women were specifically discouraged from tapping into the newly popular channel of print; to do so threatened the cornerstone of their moral and social well-being” (280). Printing a text for public circulation for a woman posed a risk to her moral reputation. Publication itself was considered an immodest act for women, which may account for Elizabeth Cary’s claim that her manuscript was stolen and published against her will (Cerasano and Wynne-Davies 47). However, closet drama offered more than just a means of preserving modesty for early modern women; it also allowed them to grapple with political, theological, and gender hierarchies in a completely imaginative space. In Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class, and Genre in Early Modern Closet Drama (2001), Karen Raber discusses the usefulness of closet drama for women whose voices were otherwise circumscribed by standards of decorum: As a genre, closet drama gave space for the analysis of dysfunction within marriages, families, and governments. Women writers could thus appropriate the genre to critique gender relations in each of these domains. For women writers, 31 S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies suggest that Mary Sidney finished her translation around 1590 (17). 59 […] closet drama could function as a tool for achieving what was unobtainable in other genres more commonly adopted by women—an authoritative, public presence, and access to powerful commentary on the ideological uses of representation. (14) The nature of closet drama, as both a performance yet private activity, lent itself to exploring the public versus private spaces, and thus allowed women to explore the “dysfunction” of both; in that fictional space, women could criticize institutions of power such as patriarchy, the monarchy, and religion, which was normally not possible due to their subordinate status within these systems; closet dramas also gave women a safe space to vocalize their own social concerns through characters who served as avatars to the males in their lives. Thus, we can see why this dramatic mode would prove an effective vehicle for a play such as The Tragedy of Mariam (1613). As Raber further suggests, other genres deemed acceptable for women prevented them from constructing men and masculinity within a three-dimensional imaginative space. Here, we can see how as characters in a play, men could have encounters with a variety of people and challenges; the fluidity and possible permutations, the shifting from prose to poetry to song, created a dynamic matrix in which women could explore various models of masculinity and male archetypes with more creative freedom than what another genre may allow. For instance, religious poetry, such as Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), limited women to biblical themes and characters. While women like Lanyer could use poetry to challenge patriarchy,32 the conventions of the genre prevented women from creating few, if any, characters that deviated from the standard Christian canon. Likewise, polemicists such as Rachel Speght, in 32 For more on Aemilia Lanyer, see Chapter 4. 60 directly addressing their target audience, wrote mostly in prose and generally relied upon logic, biblical exegesis, and classical references to challenge hegemonic ideologies; in the case of A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617), Speght’s mode was nearly entirely discursive, with the exception of a few poems in praise of the author and one vilifying her adversary, Joseph Swetnam. With drama, however, women could comment on ideologies and representations of men and women within an “authoritative, public presence” (Raber 14). In plays, the characters could function as avatars or antitypes for the authors, acting in a myriad of ways to best serve the rhetorical intentions of the author. When Elizabeth Cary wrote The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), she became the first33 Englishwoman to write a closet drama that was a tragedy and history play (Cerasano and Wynne-Davies 45). Before I discuss the two specific examples of women’s representations of men as husbands and suitors, I further examine male writings on the subject. Dominant cultural constructions of male roles provide an important contextual framework for understanding how patriarchal power intersected with or deviated from marital and romantic affections. And in turn, we can learn more about women’s negotiations of these networks of power. Men, Masculinity, and Marriage Early modern writing by men dictated how men ought to behave as lovers and husbands. However, not all advice manuals were in agreement, and even within a single manual there could be contradictions regarding how men should assert their authority within marriage, while balancing affection and discipline. Jared van Duinen, in “The Obligations of Governing Masculinity in the Early Stuart Gentry Family: The Barringtons of Hatfield Broad Oak,” notes 33 Cerasano and Wynne-Davies estimate that the play was written from 1602 to 1604 (45). 61 that “although the patriarch’s right to absolute authority was a given, men were also warned against too tyrannical an implementation of this right” (115). As seen earlier in Lucy Hutchinson’s description of her husband, husbands were expected to exercise firm authority in the home, responsible for the guidance and “correction” of their wives, and to temper their authority with love. Domestic violence, therefore, was generally frowned upon, as evidenced in pamphlets such as the anonymous The Bloody Husband, and Cruell Neighbour (1653) and A Most Horrible & Detestable Murther Committed by a Bloudie Minded Man Upon his Owne Wife (1595) that publically condemned husbands' murders of their wives. In The Bloody Husband, for instance, readers are reminded that “Against this sin of Murther, the wrath of God hath been revealed from heaven, by his just and daily revengings of innocent blood upon Murtherers” (1). These pamphlets, which usually ended with a public execution as well as a reminder of “the wrath of God,” served as exhortations against male violence. In A Most Horrible & Detestable Murther, the reader is instructed that such publications functioned as an “example to the world, thereby to put us in mind of our duties to God, & withhold us from like trespasses, by viewing their shamefull ends” (1). Husbands should love their wives, and in their “corrections” of their wives' behavior, they should restrain their violence lest they meet with a “shameful end.” If one “trespasses” against God’s will, he may ultimately be publicly shamed and upheld as a poor example of a husband. However, this public condemnation of cruelty by husbands did not prevent men from fantasizing about violence that could even lead to the death of their spouses. Such a fantasy is clearly evident in Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Women (1615): “a married man hath but two good daies to bee looked for, that was the marriage day, and the day of his wives death” (5). Naturally, the fear of a brutal husband was most likely experienced by many early modern women, for its prevalence can be gauged in contemporary 62 drama. Shakespeare’s Othello strangles to death his wife Desdemona; his antagonist Iago also stabs to death his wife Emilia. While Marlowe's Tamburlaine may not physically assault Zenocrate, he threatens her with slavery should she refuse him. Her response to his proposal, “I must be pleased perforce” (1.2.259), clearly indicates that she was not willing, but coerced. Suspicious of his wife Mariam's loyalty, Elizabeth Cary's Herod executes her, in accordance with his history of murdering her brother and father. In a counter example, Arbella Stuart seems to repress the shadow of domestic, marital violence at the hands of men, fashioning her imagined ideal lover as respectful of her, “teaching” her gently (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 126). While men were accorded power as heads of families, for the most part, men were also consistently enjoined by other men to love their wives and treat them with a degree of care. Genesis was often quoted as the rationale, for example in Thomas Edgar’s The Lawes Resolutions of Women’s Rights (1632): God brought Woman to Man to bée named by him, hée found straight way that shée was bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, giving her a name, testifying shée was taken out of Man, and he pronounced that for her sake man should leave Father and Mother and adhere to his Wife which should be with him one. (4) As husbands and wives were considered one flesh, if a man were to abuse his spouse, it would be the same as harming himself. In Protestant England, despite patriarchal strictures, marriage was defined in companionate terms: a wife was an extension of her husband, not only being “flesh of his flesh,” but also in the taking of his name. However, as he was also the “head of the woman,” as stipulated by the Pauline epistle discussed in the Introduction, it was within his right to guide and correct her behavior, extending to corporal punishment, provided it was for the benefit of her 63 soul. Merry Wiesner notes that in “in both continental and English marriage manuals, the authors use the metaphor of breaking a horse for teaching a wife obedience” (28). Thus a man was provided with conflicting advice: to love his wife as he loves himself, as well as to exert physical punishment when appropriate. Therefore, it is no surprise that early modern women would construct an ideal husband as one who would not only love them but also one who would refrain from physically harming them. Unlike in men’s manuals to each other recommending moderation in their corporal punishments to their wives, as in the Lawes Resolutions already discussed, women like Arbella Stuart and Lucy Hutchinson evoked men who completely eschewed violence toward women. Unlike men who praised other men for their military prowess, women did not seem to value this quality as a marker of manliness. Rather, men’s ability to care for and respect their wives seemed to dominate women’s construction of ideal men. Cary’s Herod In Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), Herod is less than an ideal husband. Having been written between 1602 and 1604, Cary’s dramatization of Herod’s story became the first shift in print from Herod as the centralized character to Mariam as the main protagonist, thus re-telling Herod’s story found in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (1602) from a woman’s perspective (Cerasano and Wynn-Davies 45-6). 34 Herod’s failings as a husband and Mariam’s subsequent unhappiness echoed Cary’s own experiences at the time. As a young bride in an arranged marriage, Cary struggled in her new role as a wife; her new husband, Sir Henry Cary, immediately left to fight in the Netherlands, leaving Elizabeth in the care of relatives (Cerasano 34 Cary uses Thomas Lodge’s 1602 translation as her source. See Cerasano and Wynn-Davies, p. 46. 64 and Wynn-Davies 43). Like Mariam, Elizabeth didn’t marry for love; it was arranged for the financial and political benefit of others, namely for the benefit of her Tanfield family and the Carys. Like Herod, Elizabeth’s husband was absent during a portion of these early married years; Henry left to fight abroad, whereas Herod leaves Mariam to go to Rome. It is during this absence that Cary opens her Senecan drama. With Herod away, Mariam is given the space to take stock of her feelings towards her husband. Although Cary’s play is far from autobiographical, a certain catharsis can be seen through her creation of Mariam, where both author and character can ruminate over their lives as wives of absent husbands. In the opening act of the play, Mariam confronts her feelings towards Herod, who is falsely reported to be dead. Her response to the news is complicated. While Mariam admits how she “wished his carcass dead to see,” his death brings to her mind “The tender love that he to Mariam bare, / And mine to him” (1.1.18; 1.1.32-3). As a new wife, we can imagine Cary struggling with her feelings towards her arranged marriage; in a woman’s life cycle, the shift from daughter to wife, and subsequent shift from one household to another, could be abrupt and fraught with uncertainty over her new role in the home, a sense of loss through the leaving of childhood friends and family, and even a sense of fear as she faced the prospect of pregnancy and possible death in childbirth. It is from this vantage point, one grounded in women’s experience, that Cary fashions Herod. In some ways, his failings as a husband are a result of his adherence to dominant ideals of masculinity, while others are in alignment with what the male-authored discourses labeled as unmanly behaviors. For instance, Herod’s absence and therefore negligence of Mariam is merely one of several flaws he embodies. Throughout the play, Mariam is critical of Herod’s brutality. While dominant discourses on manliness encouraged men to be moderate in their behavior, in war this 65 moderation was not an eschewing of violence but rather a tempering of it. According to Todd Reeser, “the moderate man” was one who “did not rush into battle rashly, nor should he hold back from a necessary battle in fear” (14). However, Herod acts rashly and violently throughout the play. As part of a new dynasty established by his father, Antipater an Idumean, Herod needed to solidify his power; this he achieved by marrying Mariam, the daughter of the rightful king and priest, Hyrcanus; and slaying Mariam’s brother, Aristobolus as well as Mariam’s grandfather, also named Hyrcanus (Cerasano and Wynn-Davies 49). While the death of enemies is the usual outcome of war and subsequent shifts in political power, Cary illuminates how these deaths particularly affected women. The death of her brother and grandfather helps solidify Mariam’s hate for Herod. While Aristobolus and Hyrcanus may be considered casualties of a political war by male readers, the manner of their deaths was an affront to masculine honor.35 Where the duel, for instance, was considered an important marker of manliness and an acceptable form of violence, Herod’s unnecessary cruelty and subterfuge casts his slaying of his enemies in a brutal light. For instance, rather than showing mercy to the father of a defeated enemy, Herod charges Mariam’s grandfather with treason and executes him; later, Herod invites Mariam’s brother to go swimming then drowns him (Cerasano and Wynn-Davies 49). The lack of honor in his actions and his brutality in killing his wife’s relatives undermines his masculinity, and his continual acting on raging emotions rather than reason casts him as more effeminate to early modern audiences.36 His continual lack of self-control further undermines his performance as an ideal man. 35 Jennifer Low, in Manhood and the Duel (2003), notes, “In circles where fencing was values, skill in its performance was linked to honor; the chivalric ideal underlay the implication that duellying was a necessary skill for military men because their honor was so valuable to them” (187). 36 In Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (1996), Mark Brietenberg notes that jealousy is a trait associated with the female body, for “The jealous or cuckolded man becomes what he most fears about 66 Herod is also driven by jealousy rather than reason or moderation, making him a less than ideal husband. His jealousy is so extreme that Mariam notes his “Jealousie / Had power even constancie it selfe to change” (1.1.23-4). Her observation is justified, for we learn in the opening argument of the play that Herod previously told his uncle, Josephus, to kill Mariam should he die while in Rome, because he is “unwilling any should enjoy her after him” (Cary 49). When Herod returns and discovers Josephus had told Mariam about Herod’s arrangement for her death, he does not moderate his temper nor use his reason to uncover the motivation behind Josephus’ action. Had he acted in an ideally masculine way, Herod would have discovered that Josephus told Mariam about the arrangement to prove how much Herod loved her. Instead, Herod kills Josephus, whom Mariam considered a friend, further demonstrating his brutality and lack of empathy for Mariam and her relatives (Cary 4). Importantly, Cary does not draw a distinction between what was considered honorable violence, such as found in dueling or in battle, and the violence of an unjustified murder. Rather, Cary refrains from praising violence performed by men; even when Constabarus and Silleus duel within the play, Constabarus refuses to fight over Salome, and when he is finally persuaded to engage in the duel, the fight is concluded not with death but with a benign injury and an overture of friendship (2.1.284-400). Cary’s ideal masculinity diverges from the dominant gendered norm that embraces combat as a means of honor or politics as a manly pursuit; for the women in the play, manly concepts of honor mean little. Mariam shows more interest towards men who are willing to support her braving danger to themselves rather than absent on military and political campaigns. As a counter-example to Herod, Josephus’ son, Sohemus, becomes a close confidant to Mariam during the most recent departure of Herod and exemplifies a perfect companion in many love in the first place: the loss of self-control, potency, and castration; in short, he fears becoming like ‘woman’” (54). 67 ways. Like his father, Sohemus was also charged with killing Mariam should Herod die to prevent her loving another. We discover, however, that Sohemus cares for Mariam so deeply that he could not kill her when the rumor of Herod’s death reached Jerusalem. In a soliloquy after Mariam exits, Sohemus demonstrates the kind of self-sacrificing platonic love for a woman Mariam is missing in Herod. He states that he is willing to defy Herod alongside his friend, for he will “forfeit [his life] for her” gladly, thus declaring, “And if I die, it shall my soul content, / My breath in Mariam’s service shall be spent” (3.1.203; 3.1.13-14). In his willingness to die for Mariam Sohemus provides a stark contrast to Herod, who commands that Mariam be killed in the event of his death. Sohemus’ manliness is not grounded in his honor and duty to the crown, nor in his courage on a battlefield; rather, it is in his honor and duty to act selflessly, and his courage is demonstrated in his defiance of Herod’s cruel orders.37 In other words, as an ideal man, Sohemus is willing to stand up to his fellow men, and even to men in power, if it means supporting the women he loves. Sohemus also acts in ways that provide counterpoints to Herod’s cruel, jealousy-driven masculinity. While Herod is passionate towards Mariam—even obsessive—and loses control of his emotions, Sohemus is moderate in his relationship with Mariam. In an insightful study, Virtue's Friends": The Politics of Friendship in Early Modern English Women's Writing (2010), Allison Johnson notes, “Sohemus claims that Mariam’s extraordinary beauty inspires in him not lust, but respect” (149). For Herod, however, his preoccupation with Mariam’s beauty drives his desire to see her; when he finally arrives in Act IV, he wishes to see his wife, stating to Nunito, “I all your Roman beauties have beheld […] Yet saw no miracle like Mariam rare” (4.1.25-8). 37 Allison Johnson notes, “Mariam and Sohemus also form a friendship based on their common refusal to remain silent in the face of the king’s injustice” (128). For more on the friendship of Mariam and Sohemus, see Johnson, pp. 123-77. 68 Herod views Mariam as a beautiful possession, one that he owns completely to the point of destroying her so no other man can have her. She exists for his pleasure, and when it is suggested that Mariam was unfaithful and perhaps enjoyed by another, Herod acts impulsively on his jealousy and sends her to her death. He tells Nunito, “I had but one inestimable jewel,/ […] And therefore may I curse myself as cruel,/ ‘Twas broken by a blow myself did strike” (5.1.119-22). Unlike Herod who sees Mariam as a beautiful “jewel” to possess and destroy at will, Sohemus not only marks Mariam’s beauty, but he also notes her additional qualities. Her “eyes’ grave majesty keeps all in awe,” but she also is “chaste,” “modest,” and “so pure a heart” (3.1.205-11). As an example of a masculine ideal, Sohemus sees Mariam as a complex individual with several merits. He is also sure to temper any desire he might have for her, not because he fears Herod or knows she is married, but because he genuinely respects her. Mariam’s “grave majesty” is what “cuts the wings of every loose desire,” and thus Sohemus states, “Yet though we dare not love, we may admire” (3.1.209; 3.1. 212). In other words, Sohemus does not lust after Mariam despite her beauty; rather, he admires her for her chastity, and when faced with her virtue, any thoughts of physical desire are “clipped” short. The thought of a man not physically desiring Mariam, or not making him a cuckold given the chance, is incomprehensible to Herod. Again, as Allison Johnson aptly notes, “Mariam’s husband, Herod, cannot conceive of friendship between a man and a woman and therefore reads her relationship with Sohemus as adulterous” (17). Therefore, according to Cary, men should ideally recognize friendship between men and the women in their lives not as a threat or attempt at adultery, but rather as a fulfilling component of an adult woman’s life. 69 Arbella Stuart’s Mystery Lover Now let us turn to another fictional representation of a suitor, in this case, constructed in terms of an ideal, potential husband by Arbella Stuart. The circumstances surrounding this fictional paramour are complex, and to understand the dynamic, and the somewhat contradictory traits of her ideal mate, we must first elucidate Stuart’s embattled situation and the events in her life preceding the creation of these letters. Sara Jayne Steen, the editor of The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, explains why Stuart was sequestered at Hardwick Hall under the watchful eye of her grandmother: As a claimant who could bring the dowry of a crown, [Lady Arbella Stuart] was a commodity, one of high worth on the matrimonial market […] Elizabeth could pressure [King James VI of Scotland] by favoring Arbella, and she could use Arbella as a bargaining chip in foreign policy, tantalizing continental nobility with the prospect of marriage accompanied by the declaration of succession. (19) In other words, Queen Elizabeth I had no intention of letting Stuart marry, and Stuart’s position as a potential successor to the queen necessitated the tight control over the people surrounding her at all times (Steen 27). As a vibrant young woman, Stuart found life with her grandmother, Elizabeth “Bess” Talbot, lonely and dull. Steen aptly remarks how Arbella was “buried in the northern countryside, a virtual state prisoner” and by the end of 1602 “had not visited court in a decade” (27). Stuart found her life not only dull but also oppressive. The minutiae of her life were under the scrutiny of her authoritative grandmother as well as Sir Robert Cecil, who had been charged by Elizabeth to copy and forward to her all correspondences sent to and by Stuart. Arbella had no intention of living a perpetually single life isolated from the social circles at 70 court, and thus she made an attempt to escape just prior to writing the letter featuring her fictional lover. Near the end of December of 1601/2, with the help of loyal servants, Arbella Stuart sent a letter to the Earl of Hertford that divulged her plot to escape to marry Hertford’s grandson, Edward Seymour. Not only would she flee Hardwick and her grandmother’s oppressive watch, but she would be elevating her status from daughter to wife, which would ultimately grant her more freedom. The plot, however, was discovered and foiled; the queen, as a result, was not pleased with Stuart’s attempt to defy her commands. To help calm the situation, Arbella Stuart wrote a letter to Elizabeth in mid-January of 1602/3, apologizing for her attempted escape and clandestine marriage. This apology was not enough to satisfy the queen: Elizabeth pressured Sir Robert Cecil and Bess Talbot to explain in detail precisely what happened. Bess Talbot, mortified at her grandchild’s disobedience, demanded that Arbella Stuart herself also write a truthful account of the plot for her, and it is in this letter written in late January or early February of 1602/3 that the obstinate Arbella Stuart first mentions her fictional suitor. This suitor served the primary purpose of creating a scandal that would result in Stuart’s “freedom from her grandmother’s domination, the right to live where she chose, and the opportunity to marry” (Steen 30). Stuart had no intention of explaining her failed escape from Hardwick and attempted marriage. Rather, she saw the queen’s interest in this event as an opportunity to draw attention to her plight and even elicit some sympathy from the court. She knew, for instance, that her letters at this point were being read by Robert Cecil and copied for Elizabeth's benefit. Stuart’s suitor, therefore, had to be believable to both men like Cecil who most likely held male-defined, conventional expectations of masculine behavior as well as women like Elizabeth who would have been aware of what a woman might find appealing in a 71 man. The need to compose letters for multiple audiences was an essential part of navigating communication pathways between those in different social strata (Daybell 145). Ladies using an intermediary between themselves and heads of state, and especially their monarch, was a common practice. James Daybell explains this process as follows: “In the case of letters intended for the monarch, to whom access was most strictly controlled, suitors [i.e., petitioners] regularly used courtiers ‘near to the throne’ epistles directly to the sovereign’s hands” (148). Thus, Stuart’s letter had to be believed by Cecil if he was going to press the urgency of the matter to the queen as Stuart hoped. Additionally, Stuart also had to navigate questions of modesty and propriety, which meant her suitor not only had to follow the courtly customs of courtship but he also pose enough danger to cause Elizabeth some alarm. The result is an ideal suitor who is unwavering in his attention to Stuart and constant in his love, one who loves her in spite of her mistreatment of him. He is well educated and wise, offering advice and guidance as a patriarch would, but who also hints transgression in his suggestions to Stuart. He concerns himself with the protection of her chastity, so he does not pressure her into sex or marriage, but he is also clear in his admiration and deep desire for her. Her anonymous suitor is not concerned with dueling or martial campaigns; instead, his time is spent in courting Stuart and attending to her emotional needs. Above all, he is fiercely loyal to the queen, but also poses a threat to her authority over Stuart. In order to preserve her chastity, Stuart’s unnamed suitor had to be an ideal gentleman, following the courtship rituals and standards of propriety. Stuart tells her audience how her suitor has “never requested anything but was more for my good an honour then his owne” (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 129). He embodies the self-sacrifice of a chivalrous lover, but also seeks to keep his own honor intact. Arbella Stuart says that she hopes “hir Majesty be acquainted and 72 fully satisfied that I have donne nothing foolishly, rashly, or falsely, or unworthy of my selfe” (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 131). In fact, she is careful to note that their clandestine meetings have been mediated by one who also served as a chaperone (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 131). As an object of romantic interest, her ideal fiancé must demonstrate his unwavering love for Stuart if he were to pose a credible risk to Stuart’s virginity and single status. To Arbella, her perfect man “knoweth ,” and keeps his vow to love Stuart against all odds (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 129). Stuart explains that she has been won over by his love, and that his love was like “gold which hath binne so often purified that [she] cannot finde one fault” (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 129). At one point in the letter, however, Stuart claims that she had mistakenly thought that he no longer loved her. Arbella writes, “When I though his love converted into hate for I did him the wrong to thinck so a great while, or make him weary of his Jelousy by letting him see it was the onely way to make me fall out with him and anger him in the highest degree I could imagine” (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 130)). Here Stuart condemns jealousy, although she never fully explains the circumstances that would have inspired such an emotion in her suitor. In her fervor to create a fictional suitor, Stuart frequently fails to give the reader a context for her statements. We know her lover is constant in his dedication to her, for she writes that despite all the things in “rude and uncivill manner” she asked him to do, he still took “nothing ill at [her] hand” (“To Elizabeth Talbot” 130). Sadly, Arbella never reveals what these tasks were, but the inclusion of this statement is significant. Overall, her suitor moderates his emotions, not letting Stuart’s ill treatment of him frustrate him nor lower his opinion of her, thus embodying the emotional stability, aside from the occasional flattering jealousy, found in the dominant discourses on love. 73 While her suitor is loyal to her and her well-being, her ideal suitor is also loyal to the crown. He seems to comply with her unspecified demands given in her “rude” manner, but there is a moral line that not even his beloved can persuade him to cross: defying the queen. Stuart confesses to her addressee that she had requested “that he would procure me remove from out of [my] your Ladyships custody” (“To Elizabeth Talbot,” 129, Stuart emphasis added). However, this is the one request that her fictional suitor “protesteth;” he may have courted her, but he will not defy the queen’s order and remove her from her grandmother’s care. Arbella envisions this escape as an elopement, something that her fictional lover refuses to do; he will not marry her without the queen’s consent. Instead of becoming an accomplice in Arbella’s defiant aspirations, he takes on the role of the traditional patriarch, becoming Arbella’s moral compass and teacher to which she accedes. Through this description, Stuart proves that he is a “worthy” suitor. He is prepared to act as the “head” of the partnership, reminding Stuart of her duties to the crown, while tempering her impulses with his reason. Ultimately, Stuart’s suitor is one who also supports her emotionally. In perhaps a departure from stoic masculine stereotypes, he affirms his emotional connection to her, in his willingness to divulge his heart and mind to her. She writes how he “trusts me with more than I would have him even the secretes thoughts of his heart hath not