Duffy about Women's Suffering in Medieval and Modern Periods - Literature review Example

A comparative study of women’s suffering in medieval and modern periods Introduction Women’s suffering is a debatable topic that has been dealt withextensively in literature ever since man started to write. An analysis of the literature concerning representations of the female brings to light the fact that most of them are socially, culturally and religiously constructed and that disparity in gender power relations have culminated in such representations of the female body. Gender power relations, misconceived notions regarding female sexuality and religious interpretations of the female body in both the medieval and modern periods have immensely added to the misery and sufferings of females. This paper seeks to explore how female identity and female body were represented during the medieval and modern periods with specific focus on women’s sufferings. Two of the following texts namely Ancrene Wisse (medieval) and The Worlds Wife (modern) by Duffy will be reviewed in some detail for the assignment. It will review the above under three themes namely gender, sexuality and religion. Gender: It could be said that the anchorites had been subject to gender discrimination based on social practices in the medieval periods. Hugh White (1993) in his translated version of Ancrene Wisse elaborates on the lives of the anchoresses and sets down a set of monastic rules (or manual) for the exterior and interior lives of the anchoresses in the 13th century. The outer rules for the anchoresses exhorted them not to nibble or talk between meals whereas their maids did not have the right to ask for wages, except food and clothing. The anchoress was supposed to intervene when any strife or dispute occurs between the women and offer them the necessary penance for their follies (195).The maids were supposed to wear plain dresses without any adornments when they go out; similarly, on her way she should not chant her prayers, engage in conversations with either men or women, or sit or stand. The codes of conduct for the maids also involved strict obedience to the mistress; without her consent they were not supposed to accept or give anything. The right behaviour also necessitated that the younger of the maids should neither talk to men nor go out of the village without a reliable companion. There were also clear cut monastic codes to keep the anchoresses away from material life and worldliness. They were not supposed to indulge in worldly talk, laugh or fool around. Some of them like Mary and Christina were forced to dress as men as a protection from sexual advances from men (Gilchrist 181). Others went to the extent of cutting their hair in addition to wearing male costumes. Gender power relations have immensely contributed to the understanding as well as constructions of the female body and identity. The monastic codes propagated by the author of Ancrene Wisse during the medieval period offered submissive roles to women and their power was marginalised in the medieval society. Women on the whole were never supposed to go beyond the space allotted to her and very often her allotted space was limited to the “domestic sphere, and as such constituted the location within which she would carry out the necessary-and traditionally female-social activities of child-bearing, child-rearing and nurture; any independent movement outside this sphere of activity would often be suspect and open to accusations of transgressive behaviour” (McAvoy 3). The author cites the example of the transgressive Margery Kempe who was “physically enclosed under house arrest on several occasions because of her insistence on occupying a public space outside the domestic one” and purports that there were conscious efforts to restrict women’s movements and to regulate a code of suitable behaviour for women as wife and mother (McAvoy 5). Kempe seen as deviating from expected social, cultural and religious norms have often been the subject of ridicule and suffering (Beckwith 105). Gilchrist states that even the status of nuns were considered inferior to priests during the medieval period. As such, nunneries were reliant on administrative and religious function on priests or the ‘male part’ of the Church (Gilchrist 24). There was even a belief that only males were capable of real spirituality and any one who is so capable is in effect a male and not a female (Jantzen 52). This could also be an additional reason why anchorites dressed up as men as mentioned in the earlier section. The attitude is not at all surprising since medieval society was quite misogynistic. Women in general were considered to be inferior “medically, socially, and spiritually” (Rubin & Kay 79). Thus the medieval space allotted for women obviously stemmed from cultural meanings, social relations, and gender power relations. The medieval theories associated with representation of the female body in the medieval period also deserve attention. It was Aristotle who argued that ‘females are weaker and colder in their nature; and we should look upon the female state as it were a deformity’ (McAvoy 9). Representations of the gender power relations in the modern period are evident in Carrol Ann Duffy’s poetry. Grindrod observes that Carrol Ann Duffy’s themes include “language and the representation of reality; the construction of the self; gender issues; contemporary culture; and many different forms of alienation, oppression and social inequality” (Grindrod). In her The Worlds Wife, she represents the suppressed voices of women in history. Even though Duffy’s poems use women history, fiction, and mythology, the events in their lives can be representative of women’s’ suffering even today. This accounts for her popularity as a poet in modern society. The propensity for using monologues to get her points across is apparent in this collection as well. She is well-known for addressing women’s sufferings but without overtly sentimental or political. She also clearly puts across the message that the society is patriarchal and insensitive to women’s feelings and emotions. The poems undoubtedly mark a period of social transition from the medieval period in terms of representation of gender, sexuality and power relations. The imagined speaker in Mrs. Midas is the wife of Midas, King of Phrygia who was granted the power by Dionysus to convert anything he touched to gold. Mrs. Midas understands that she has lost her husband as she could no longer experience the touch of his warm hands due to his selfish actions and she regrets her loss. The poet shows the poignant image of the wife of Midas who dreams of giving birth to his children and feeding them with breast milk which she now never fulfil. Midas, in his quest for wealth does not take into account the needs of his spouse. There is ample literature that shows the anguish of King Midas came about due to greed; he is finally repentant because of the inability to have a meaningful relationship with his wife and children. But Duffy has the sensibility and sensitivity to stand in the shoes of the king’s wife, something which nobody has really thought of. The poem has the ability to make one think of the suffering that a spouse will have due to the attitude of her husband or due to situations brought about by him. Workaholic husbands who are insensitive to the physical and emotional needs of their wives are illustrated in her poem Mrs Sisyphus. While devotion to one’s profession is commendable, taking it to extremes is not advisable. There could be many modern comparisons to this attitude that existed even during the medieval periods. Medusa looks at the point of view of the protagonist in the sense that she was cursed by a man. The man (Poseidon not mentioned) gave her the power to turn any person into stone. This power was in reality, a curse that made her a feared and hated figure in mythology. The poem Mrs. Beast contrasts physical beauty with the inner beauty of the person; at the house of the Beast the wife is able to transform him into a human with her kiss which highlights the need for man’s transformation from his beast like existence. It is also interesting to note that practically all the poems has a title that is related to either a wife (the use of Mrs.) or at least has the name of a woman character. Duffy could have intentionally used this tactic to stress the point of women’s suffering to her readers. Moi, referring to Cixous’s works attest to the fact that society still considers women to be inferior to men through what he calls ‘patriarchal binary thought’. For example activity is masculine and passivity is feminine. Moon is the woman and sun represents man. Man thinks while women are ruled by emotions. As Moi suggests these “binary oppositions are heavily imprecated in the patriarchal value system: each opposition can be analyzed as a hierarchy where the feminine side is always seen as the negative, powerless instance” (Moi 102). But there are winds of change as seen from literature in the modern period. Jackson and Winterson are examples of a new breed, who is stepping out of the patriarchal society which has continued on from the medieval period to the modern one. Their bold stance of for example illustrates this point. Their viewpoints will be reviewed later in this paper. Sexuality: A close analysis of the medieval and modern texts on representations of the female body convinces one of the immense influences of notions regarding female sexuality. During the medieval period female sexuality was associated with seductively, impurity, and sensuality. Hugh White, in his introduction to Ancrene Wisse, states that medievalism gave predominance to the spiritual world and subsequently contempt for the flesh and the world characterises in medieval texts. Ancrene Wisse aims at fulfilling the primary purpose of asceticism: “the mortification of the flesh and the subjugation of the will in renunciation of worldly pleasure”. McAvoy suggests, the Christian notion that there was alliance between Satan and Eve resulted in the common belief in the Middle Ages, which manifests itself in much of its literature, that “woman was ‘the devil’s gateway’, in effect, the portal to an anarchic and degenerate location of lust and uncontrolled appetite” (McAvoy 2). Once again referring to Mrs Midas by Duffy, she laments over the ‘separate beds’, cherishes those ‘halcyon days’ where they had passionate relations and she now has to fear “his honeyed embrace, the kiss that would turn my [her] lips to a work of art” (Mrs. Midas).. Similarly, in Mrs Aesop the wife of Aesop is completely resentful of her marriage with Aesop who was renowned for his entertaining and instructive tales. However, the wife feels him as bore, feels that her marriage has turned out to be an ‘Asshole’, and admits that even her sexual life was ‘diabolical’. The sexual impotence of Aesop is echoed in her fable ‘about a little cock that wouldn’t crow’ (Mrs Aesop). Aesop’s Fables have entertained and informed millions of children (and adults) around the world. But his lack of caring in his personal life is again something that is not well known. Assuming what Duffy writes about Aesop’s boring nature and impotence is true; the attempt to illustrate the anguish and suffering of his wife caught in a loveless and sexless marriage is commendable. In Mrs Icarus the wife considers her ambitious husband as nothing but ‘a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock’ and states that she is neither the first nor the last women to have experienced similar feelings about the men they have married (Mrs Icarus). In Mrs Quasimodo the wife gets mad and her madly outbursts and anger are resulted from ‘the loss of trust she placed on him. Mrs Quasimodo narrates how her husband fucked her underneath the gaping, and how she kissed each part of him and even gave ‘his cock/a private name’ and how he finally proved to be infidel by going after other bellringers and the hunchbacks wife (Mrs Quasimodo). This results in hacking his beloved bells into pieces by an operation that resembled castration. The poem Little Red Cap is supposedly based on an illicit relationship the poet had with poet Adrian Henri when she was in her teens. The title is an obvious reference to the classic work, Little Red Riding Hood. The white dove which flies into the wolf’s mouth and is killed could be a reference to how young girls can be sexually corrupted by older men. Even in instances where women hold power, Duffy brings in elements of helplessness of the fairer sex. For example, in Queen Herod, the protagonist orders her soldiers to kill boys that could become potential suitors (dangers) for her infant daughter. In spite of her power as a monarch, the queen fears for her daughter’s future in terms of sexual exploitation. Even the use of humour and sarcasm as seen in Mrs Darwin does not really help in reducing the status of women in society. It is true that Mrs Darwin is contemptuously equating her husband with a chimpanzee. There is no literature that shows Darwin to be physically similar to an ape. But Duffy probably indicates that the male dominated society is serious about the evolution of the human race, but not about the needs and wants of women. They do not think that women are an important component for the survival of the human race. Queen Kong is a satire on the King Kong where the roles are reversed and a female (giant) gorilla falls in love with a man. This indicates the poet’s view on asserting a certain level of dominance by women in a male dominated society. Mrs Freud is not satisfied with her famous husband’s libido in Frau Freud. Again the truth in this case is debatable, but what Duffy tries to portray here is the lack of sexual intimacy between in the lives of famous male characters and their spouses. Each of her poems in the book portrays suffering of women either due to male dominance or sexuality. She has taken women characters from mythology and history and has used them to portray her views on how the women in lives of those characters have suffered due to various reasons. In her article ‘The house [....] has cancer’ Hughes-Edwards states that Duffy’s use of ‘dramatic monologues’ indicate elements of personal experience or observation of women’s suffering (Hughes-Edwards 124). Duffy’s poems may not be shocking to readers in a modern society, but the British government was prudish enough not to honour her with the title of Poet Laureate, probably because of her sexual preferences and the explicitness of her poetry. Shelley Jackson and Jeanette Winterson (as mentioned above) are the two prominent women writers of the modern era whose works deal with the theme of representation of the female body. In her interview with Megan Lynch she states that she wants to depict ‘the resistance as well as the collusion’ of the female body in her writings; for her, “the body is the original magnetic object: it has both a bumptious physicality and a metaphoric life, but usually we move easily between the two and think nothing of it” (Lynch). In her hypertext fiction Patchwork Girl she makes conscious efforts to bring out the plural voices of women. She enforces on the relation between the body and the soul and states that the stuff the body sheds or oozes such as hair, milk, blood are no longer viewed as part of the body. Both write boldly on women’s views and not just their sufferings. “No one asks Iris Murdoch about her sex life. Every interviewer I meet asks me about mine and what they do not ask they invent. I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write” (Conley). Religion: The anchoresses were accountable before God even for the sins of their servants and their teachings ought to be ‘loving and gentle and seldom stern’. The implication of this medieval belief on the lives of medieval women were varied and many; the social and religious role of women was thus understood as a transgressor and violator who tried to cross the medieval space allotted to her. The monastic code asks the anchoresses to “cover her shame as sinful Eves daughter in remembrance of the sin which destroyed us all at the beginning, and not turn the covering into adornment and finery” (Hugh White 193). Similarly, the anchoresses are warned against the temptations of the flesh, of wealth, possessions and livestock, and of the stomach. The anchoresses are allowed to take communion only fifteen times a year with clean confessions and are asked to take vegetable meals rather than meat or fat. In this respect Bynum states that perception of women on a totally different level also caused them suffering, in this case, self-inflicted. Women’s bodies as providers of milk and its fleshy nature resulted in equating it with food. Spiritually inclined women often fasted, sometimes for years at a stretch in order to identify with Christ’s sufferings (Bynum 113). Christian religious beliefs also contributed to the understanding of the female body; one such belief showed the connection between women’s pain at childbirth and the sins of Eve for having eaten the forbidden fruit. During the 15th century “female body was seen as having a cold, moist complexion and lacked the perfection attained by that of the male” and as a result medical writers of the period paid a great deal of attention to various female diseases whereas women were conceived to be inferior physicians to their male counterparts (Images of the Female Body: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance). The images of female practitioners depicted as witches were also present during the period. Conclusion It has been observed that the public loves Duffy’s works and her as there are articles which say that her readers include even people who are not poetry lovers. This could be so because her messages are relevant even in modern times and women could identify themselves with the sufferings and frustration experienced by the ladies in her poems. Duffy is no doubt a talented poet and has the ability to write for both children and adults. She also has held the position of an editor of the poetry magazine Ambit and regularly reviews other literary works (Grindrod). She is popular both with her readers and critics and has received numerous awards for her work over the years. It is true that a lot of women have become social, religious, and political leaders over the past decades. There are influential authors and social reformers who have made a mark in society. But the fact remains that women still do suffer for the same reasons as well as additional ones when compared to the past. Gender issues, sexuality, religion, and a male dominated society still stands in the way of constructive changes in the sufferings of women. Women have come up in many fields; however, female body is always understood in relation to the male dominated theoretical perspectives which depict it as seductive, evil and something to be regulated and control. Women have become more active in society, politics, and the workplace when compared to the medieval period. But they continue to suffer in these fields as well. The popularity of Duffy’s poems is a testimonial to this. The emergence of a new breed of writers like Jackson and Winterson may well be a harbinger of change when they focus on putting across bold feminine views rather than tales of sufferings. Works Cited Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses, Translated with an introduction and notes by Hugh White, 1993, London, Penguin books Beckwith, Sarah. Christ’s body: identity, culture and society in later medieval writings. Routledge, 1996 Bynum, Caroline W. Holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women. University of California Press. 1988 Conley, Tim. The Scriptorium on Jeanette Winterson. 12 Dec. 09 < http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/winterson.html> Gilchrist, Roberta. Gender and material culture: the archaeology of religious women. Routledge, 1994. Grindrod, C. British Council Arts: Contemporary Writers, Carol Ann Duffy Page. 12 Dec. 09 Jantzen, Grace. Power, gender, and Christian mysticism. Cambridge University Press, 1995 Lynch, Megan. A Conversation with Shelley Jackson. 12 Dec. 09 < http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0402/jackson/interview.html> M. Hughes-Edwards, ‘“The house ... has cancer”: Representations of Domestic Space in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy’ in G. Smyth & J. Croft (eds.), Our House: Representations of Domestic Space in Modern Culture (Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, 2006), pp. 121 – 139 McAvoy, L.H. Authority and the female body in the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Volume 5 of Studies in medieval mysticism. Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004. Moi, Torl. Sexual/textual politics. Routledge, 2000 Rubin, Sarah & Kay, Miri. Framing medieval bodies. Manchester University Press, 1996. Read More