Female Authorship in the Play Tragedy of Mariam - Book Report/Review Example

An analysis of issues of female hip and female duty/honor to her husband and how this is reflected in Mariams behavior and speech in the play "Tragedy of Mariam" Today many wives always want to have same position with their husband, so that they always have conflict with each other. Why they always have conflict? There are number of answers for this question, but it very difficult for us to come on a final conclusion. When we look towards sixteenth centurys society or even before that time it is seen wife and husband lived together very well. They had lesser conflicts. Many wives would obey their husband when their husbands order them to do everything. What different images of the wife between sixteenth centuries and today? In most societies during the twentieth Century, new ways of analyzing traditional gender roles have begun to evolve out of a variety of movements both within art and culture studies and communications. Semiotics, or the study of signs has emerged as one of the most "powerful cultural analysis tools of the twentieth Century”. Semiotics has been used to document and support traditional gender roles within a variety of cultures. The signs of Husband and Wife respectively, have undergone huge ideological shifts in some parts of the world, however within American society they still often used to represent a system of values and a distribution of power that have remained relatively unchanged despite recent eras of social progress. This is illustrated fairly well in the movie "Amores Perros" as the terms Husband and Wife are utilized throughout the movie as signs that represent and suggest traditional values and gender roles that are still based on signified characteristics from the time of the Conquistadors. The power of language and symbolism is often overlooked within societies trying to bring about major cultural changes, in areas that have long been dominated by traditional views. The signifiers and the signified are used as examples of traditional behavioral characteristics and belief systems that have not paralleled womans advances within other areas of American society. In the "Tragedy of Mariam", I have chosen to observe the dynamics of "domestic politics" or challenging structures of familial authority, I am mainly concerned to place my analysis of Mariam in relation both to the representations of family ties which obvious the contemporary biographical account, The Lady Falkland: Her Life, authored by one of Carys daughters, and to one of the key sources for Carys play, Josephuss Antiquities of the Jews. These texts bear witness to the power of familial bonds not only to contextualize but also even to shape narratives of spousal relations. Particularly, my examination of domestic politics in Mariam addresses womens ties within the household, particularly as manifest in maternal conflicts and bonds, which provide alternative speaking positions for the women from which to contest or refigure their publicly prescribed relations to their "ruling" spouses. Earlier serious studies have focused the gendered conflicts in the play with reference to the hot effects of patriarchal authority upon the female characters within marriage. Different writers have different perspective. For example, Catherine Belsey, has analyzed "the plays identification of a wife as a subject, Barbara K. Lewalski has paying attention upon "the situation of queen-wives subjected at once to state and domestic tyranny";"; Elaine V. Beilin has discussed marriage as "the battlefield of the play" ,Maureen Quilligan has attended to discourses which define "wifeliness"; and Dympna Callaghan has investigated the "racialized" circumstances of Mariams "wifely rebellion" (Belsey 174) Margaret Ferguson, whose recent edition of The Tragedy of Mariam and The Lady Falkland: Her Life, co-edited with Carys voice and life has prepared by Berry Weller, reachable for the first time to a large selection of readers, has also observed the plays difficult handling of questions of female respect to male power in a number of illuminating essays which point to Carys instantaneous imitation and questioning of cultural mandates regarding womens speech and silence. (Weller 1-59) So, in all above, we noticed that significant attention has given to spousal relations in the play, with female characters as wives, former wives and wives -to-be ranging from Mariam and Salome to Doris and Graphina. (Rose 291-314) In The Tragedy of Mariam, I have not only look upon the construction of women as a wives but also the force of Carys creation as mother upon the gendered dynamics of domestic authority. , It seems that marginalized and often domesticized relations among the female characters themselves work constantly to define the scope of manly authority. Even if the domination of the patriarch and his male subordinates shapes many of the womens roles within the dramatic boundaries of Carys play. Though, in The Tragedy of Mariam, the speeches of the mothers cannot displace the centrality of the male ruler, on the other hand they can be seen to redraw the limitations of domestic authority which frame the patriarchs power. Gayatri Spivak has pointed out that margins have served historically as "the place for the argument, the place for the critical moment." (Spivak 281) Margins can also be viewed as boundaries, which include as well as exclude, at once circumscribing and defining what is at the center. By the same time, where Cary represents equally helpful and positive relationship between mothers, She also exposes the differences and competition, which can mark womens attempts to build their differing relations to the social center of power without losing their voices. In The Tragedy of Mariam, women speak against each other again and again in the act of asserting their insolence of patriarchal authority. In fact, representation of domestic politics can be seen to improve both potential and constraints linked with gentle speaking positions away from the example offered by the narratives of her life and of her source attesting to the compelling significance of maternity within her constructions of female speech and subjectivity. Interestingly, it is when the feminized margins of significance of maternity within her constructions of female speech and subjectivity. Fascinatingly, it is when the feminized margins of family power in Mariam function as a place for argument that the voices of the dramas mothers resonate most clearly across the social constraints intended to produce their quietness. In The Lady Falkland: Her Life, authored by one of the four of Elizabeth Carys daughters--Anne, Elizabeth, Lucy, and Mary--who followed their mothers example in acceptance Catholicism and finally became nuns in the Benedictine convent in Cambray, (Weller 47-8) the relationship between mother and daughter repetitively marks the narratives construction of Elizabeth Cary as a subject. Commencing from the opening passages of Lady Falkland, Elizabeth Carys daughter emphasizes the importance of her mothers upbringing in shaping her amazing learning and nurturing her gifts of expression. As the only child of Laurence Tanfield and Elizabeth Symondes, Elizabeth Cary seems to have received every attention from her parents throughout her childhood, experiencing a motivating and nurturing educative environment which parallels Linda Pollocks explanation of general nurture practices among the upper classes. Schooled to speak her mind, the young Elizabeth evidently was not cautious to use her voice on public occasions, as attested to by her bold remark at a witchcraft trial presided over by her father which averted the death of an innocent woman. (Weller 183-275) Carys daughter described frequently relationships with her own mother as well as her mother-in -law at a number of different moments in biography. As a child, Elizabeth regularly engaged in behavior, which elicited her mothers displeasure, such as staying up all night to read. When her mother consequently forbade the servants to let her have candles, Elizabeth actually resorted to bribing the servants for the candles in personal. At the same time, given that Elizabeths father "loved much to have her read, and she as much to please him," her defiance of her mothers orders regarding reading after dark may have functioned less as deliberate daughterly defiance than as an ongoing effort to please the ruling patriarch in her family (Falkland, pp. 187-8). After her wedding, Cary found herself in yet in more wide conflict with her mother-in-law, who removed all her books in revenge for Carys denial to "humor" her. Conditioned by her childhood to follow autonomous action, Cary took to writing her own verses (Falkland, p. 189). During the same period, endeavoring to please her husband even while resisting his mothers attempts to dominate her, Cary wrote him such expressive letters that he "esteemed her more" (Falkland, p. 189). Some of the conflict that marked female ties in Carys life can thus be read as competition between women to build differing relations to the masculine center of power in the family. On the other hand, Carys adaption to Catholicism, directly disobey her husbands will for the first time, displaced the power of the more local patriarchs in her life with the "judgement of God”. When Carys husband disowned her upon her conversion, she found herself cast out of her mothers house as well, her mother "being so disappointed with her for being a Catholic that in all this time she was neither willing to help her nor hear of her" (Falkland, p. 212). Carys daughter observes pointedly that especially after Carys conversion to Catholicism, "her mother was never kind to her" (Falkland, p. 199). Nevertheless, Cary remained respectful both to her parents and to her husbands relations throughout her life, most particularly maintaining her practice of kneeling whenever she spoke to her mother (Falkland, p. 199). Regardless of her choice of an alternate structure of religious and domestic authority, then, Cary continued to honor the importance of the maternal bond. In her daughters transcript, Carys bond with her own children receives a fair amount of discussion and also shedding light upon the loving constructions in The Tragedy of Mariam. Written before the birth of her first child, Carys play can be seen to predict some of the fundamental issues regarding womens speech, which were to engage her most consistently over the course of her life. The biography records how, confronting the possibility of her death after bearing the first few of her eleven children, Cary wrote what might be termed a "mothers advice letter" for her eldest two children, "to be given them when they were come to a more capable age" (Falkland, pp. 192-3). Carys advice actually had a particularly powerful effect on her firstborn daughter, who told her mother later in life that "she had been careful to observe, as exactly as she could, the rule she had given her, when she took her leave of her at her first going from her: that whosesoever ethics and reason would permit her, she should prefer the will of another before her own" (Falkland, p. 193). Although at first look such suggestion may seem to fit the usually modest mode of conduct prescribed for women in early modern England, the bottom of the precept, as Ferguson has pointed out, lies in the qualifier: "whosesoever conscience and reason would permit." (Ferguson 54-5) Carys "mothers advice" attributes to women, in the person of her daughter, not simply qualities of physical and emotional nurturance, but also the ability for both conscience and reason. Speaking with the authority of a mother, Cary thus locates a site for potential feminine resistance to coercion both in an individuals right to religious dispute and, more pointedly, in a womans capability to determine the occasion for that dissent on her own. Carys motherly advice to her eldest daughter, Lady Catherine Home, achieves extra poignancy in the biography when the narrator notes that Cary brought that daughter (as well as Carys three youngest children) out of Ireland into England in preparation for the birth of her first child, only to see the grandchild delivered unsuccessfully three months early, while her daughter died in her arms (Falkland, p. 202). Carys another daughter remarks in the biography that had the grandchild lived, Elizabeth Cary "was resolved to have nursed her daughters child jointly with her own, not yet weaned" (Falkland, p. 202). The combination of Carys "mothers advice letter," addressed in part to this very daughter, with her willingness to nurse her daughters child, points to what might be termed a Cixousian link between "that good mothers milk" and the "white ink" of a womans writing voice, in both cases connecting mother and daughter beyond the phallic reason of masculine texts and conventions. (Cixous 245-64) Even after her forced separation from children due to her husbands disapproval of her adoption to Catholicism, her devotion to her maternal responsibilities in all right and wrong terms is acknowledged in the biographys account. Cary in fact endured her social and familial separate with stoic independence, concerning herself consistently with how to be reunited with her kids. Eventually, with cautious planning, Cary arranged for her two youngest children to be conveyed secretly to her in France, and lived to see all four of her daughters and two of her sons converted to Catholicism. Carys author-daughter observes, concisely, that what Cary underwent to keep her children with her, "both from and for them, may well give them cause to acknowledge she was their mother in belief as well as in nature" (Falkland, p. 227)--and, one might add, in words as well as body. In Carys case, defiance of the "ruling supremacy" of her spouse at once necessitated and fostered her authority as a mother. So from the Carys life, narrated by her daughter. One can easily parallel sets of concern with gendered dynamics of family bonds. The main source for "the tragedy of MARIAM", Josephuss Antiquites of the Jews, contains a number of problematic representation of bond between womens voices and patriarchal authority which provided rich ground for Carys attention to domestic politics. Josephus margins his construction of maternity primarily to the figure of Alexandra, occasionally complemented by references to Herods mother, both of whom appear as meddlers first and matriarchs second. Alexandra in particular emerges in Josephuss text as a selective and power-hungry female who uses her children as excuses to oppose herself to Herod. Josephus describes a number of occasions where Alexandra writes to Cleopatra, requesting aid in avenging the indignities offered to herself and her son by Herod. (Wikgren 1-14) Alongside parallel lines, yet as Alexandra is consistently foiled in her attempts to challenge Herods authority, so also Cleopatra is frequently rebuffed by Antony in her requests, and on one occasion even directly rebuked for her attempted interventions on behalf of Alexandra, which "meddle in the affairs of the ruler" (Antiquities, 15.3.7). The combination of Alexandra and Cleopatra in Josephuss Antiquities functions to de-emphasize the maternal importance of Alexandras role, highlighting instead the normally disruptive effects of female "meddling" in political affairs. Also, other pairings of women in the Antiquities, from Alexandra and Mariam to Herods mother and his sister, Salome, are represented less in terms of mother-daughter bonding or conflict than along the lines of generalized feminine interference in affairs best governed by men. Thus Mariam and Alexandra often are linked accidentally in their dissatisfaction with Herods treatment of them, leading him to manufacture excuses for his behavior "not thoughtlessly but with design and due deliberation, in order to deceive the women" (Antiquities, 15.1.7). Repeatedly Josephus refers to Mariam and Alexandra simply as "the women," and describes them behaving predictably "in womens fashion"--both in their demands and their "feminine flatteries"--so that they appear more consistently as "other" to the individually drawn (and competing) patriarchs than as particularly distinguishable in themselves (Antiquities, 15.3.6, 15.6.5, 15.7.1). Mariam herself is characterized in terms of "a certain womanly imperfection and natural forwardness" which causes her to disregard Herods "power and authorities over others," and "entertain" him "very outrageously." Far from acting on qualities such as the "conscience and reason" cited in Carys advice to her own daughter as suitable justification for feminine self-assertion, Josephuss Mariam is in motivation by her imperfect and forward womanly tendencies to engage in "a great and intemperate liberties in her discourse." Furthermore, Mariams situation in the Antiquities is limited to her role as Herods wife, with no consideration of her maternal responsibilities and bonds. Also of note is the fact that the figure of Doris, so important in Carys play as a maternal foil to both Mariam and Alexandra, exists only by default on the margins of Josephuss narrative, her position implicit just in the historical fact that Mariam was Herods second wife. Ultimately, even as Josephuss Mariam entertains Herod "outrageously" due to the "great and intemperate liberties in her discourse," leaving herself vulnerable to the accusations of infidelity which result in her death sentence, so Alexandra engages in an oddly parallel excess of discourse when she entertains her own daughter "injuriously" with reproaches as Mariam is led to execution. Such parallels indicate that "womanly imperfection and natural forwardness" can be connected to intemperate speech on a multitude of equally indefensible occasions in Josephuss narrative. When Alexandra attempts to take advantage of Herods illness and despondency after Mariams death by plotting to seize control of the fortified places in the city, Herod summarily executes her, unsurprisingly disposing of the distraction of both "the women" in the same way after all (Antiquities, 15.7.8). Along similar lines, Herod effectively disembodies Alexandras maternity over the course of the Antiquities in arranging for the deaths of both her son and her daughter, even as he subsequently erases Mariams maternal legacy by killing the two sons she had borne him. Missing consistently sovereign voices to distinguish them from one another, the women in Josephuss narrative finally serve more to illustrate the extent of Herods ruling supremacy than to define speaking positions for themselves, whether as daughters or mothers, rivals or friends. Elizabeth Cary accords feminine ties a central rather than peripheral place in The Tragedy of Mariam, representing the impact of homo-social bonds between women upon spousal relations in more developed terms than Josephuss Antiquities or even The Lady Falkland: Her Life. The mothers in Carys play speak to and against one another with voices whose passion and eloquence serve implicitly to dissenter standard early modern notions of fatherly authority. Mary Beth Rose has convincingly demonstrated the extent to which, within many of the dramatic and sexual discourses of the period, "maternal desire and agency... can be represented visibly (corporeally) only as hazardous, subordinate, or peripheral in relation to public, adult life," so that "the best mother is an absent or a dead mother." In Carys Mariam, on the other hand, mothers are neither absent nor dead. On the dissimilar, most of the central feminine protagonists are in fact mothers, whose relation to their kids directly shapes their interaction with each other and whose voices challenge fatherly authority from a range of positions. The double-edged potential of motherly discourse is immediately clear in Carys representation of Mariams mother, Alexandra. The first exchange between Mariam and her mother, for instance, is a combative discussion over the appropriateness of Mariams mourning for "the tyrants end," revealing the extent to which, even in "death," the figure of Herod has the power to vague their bond (I.ii.80). Following the initial news of Herods death, Alexandra urges Mariam to cast off Herods patriarchal authority, declaring: "My curse pursue his breathless trunk and spirit" (I.ii.83). Although Alexandra is hardly the idealized mother-figure of some of the pamphlet eulogies of the period, neither can she be termed simply a meddler who, as in the Antiquities, treats her children primarily as weapons in a power struggle with Herod. Indeed, it is with the united voice of a mother and a daughter that Alexandra curses Herod for the deaths of Mariams brother, Aristobolus, and grandfather, Hircanus. Furthermore, Alexandras speech underscores how her ambitions for her own daughter, whom she believes could have outmatched Cleopatra in becoming the bride of Antony and "empress of aspiring Rome" (I.ii.199), were foiled by Herods aggressively preemptive wedding to Mariam. In railing against Herods powers, Alexandra laments the possession of her daughter--whom she calls "my Mariam" (I.ii.79, 180)--by Herod, in effect registering the loss of both her children to Herod, the one through marriage as surely as the other through death. While Belsey suggests that the drama of the period typically represents mothers, if at all, as negotiators between fathers and children, in Mariam patriarchal authority has the potential to obstruct the mothering process itself, particularly in removing children from the scope of maternal authority, as in the case of Alexandra. Interestingly, even as Carys play represents a mothers loss of her children to a male tyrant, The Lady Falkland subsequently describes Carys battle with her husband in order not to lose her children. Both in Carys fictive drama and in her life, maternal investment in the rearing of children can be seen to exert an incipient counterforce, whether ultimately successful or not, to masculine supremacy in the household. Recognizing her daughter with herself in family terms, Alexandra observes to Mariam that "this his hate to thee may justly prove, / That sure he hates Hircanus family" (I.ii.125-6). Significantly, it is in the discursive liberty afforded by Herods presumed demise that Alexandra voices her estimation of Herods capacity to wish "that Mariam might be slain" (I.ii.130), unexpectedly adumbrating the outcome of the play. In the meantime, Mariams only defense of Herod to her mother emphasizes his decision to take her children for his heirs, rather than those of Doris, his former wife. Mariams speech suggests that some measure of her loyalty can be explained by Herods decision to privilege her maternity not simply over that of Doris--"Nor did I glory in her overthrow"--but over his own paternal investment in his firstborn son as well: He not a whit his first-born son esteemd, Because as well as his he was not mine: My children only for his own he deemd, These boys that did descend from royal line. These did he style his heirs to Davids throne, My Alexander, if he live, shall sit In the majestic seat of Solomon; To will it so, did Herod think it fit. (I.ii. 134-42) Rather than pointing her tears at Herods demise to her wifely duty, Mariam emphasizes the fruition of her motherly hope and pride through Herods "will." Mariams use of the possessive pronoun in referring to her son as "my Alexander" serves as a further echo of her own mother Alexandras investment in "my Mariam." And her relation to Doris emerges as directly competitive in maternal rather than sexual terms, when she moves from a description of the present insignificance of Herods past passion for Doris--"Those coals were rakd in embers long ago" (I.ii. 132)--to a consideration of Doris primarily as a mother whose neglected son bears witness to the privileged position of Mariams own sons. While Weller and Ferguson suggest that "Mariam is implicated in Herods tyranny by her indifference to the misfortunes of Doris and her children," I would argue that Cary underscores the significance of Mariams maternity by representing her far-from-indifferent relation to Doris as a rival mother. Even though relegated in Josephuss text to the subsidiary position of a castoff former wife who has no voice, Doris proves to be a very present mother in Carys reconstruction of ties that bind. Returning to Jerusalem with her own son, Antipater, in The Tragedy of Mariam, Doris attempts to repossess for her son the honor which she herself has been denied as a wife. In claiming a speaking position for herself as a mother, Doris even professes herself willing to disregard Herods cruelty to her within marriage should he agree to advance the fortunes of her son: Let him but prove as natural to thee, As cruel to thy miserable mother: His cruelty shall not upbraided be But in thy fortunes. I his faults will smother. (II.iii.267-70) The oral combination of "mother" and "smother" here suggests what might be termed, in Belseys words, "a discontinuity of being," in that Doris is willing to "smother" her potential subjectivity as an abused wife in return for recognition of the fruits of her maternity. The speaking positions of wife and mother thus prove discontinuous in the examples of both Doris and Mariam, when maternal ambition subsumes the effects of wifely subordination to tyranny. Even as Mariams own first discursive engagement with another woman is a argumentative discussion with her mother, so her final scene in the play consists of yet another argumentative dialogue with a mother, in this case Doris, who closes their exchange by delivering a curse upon Mariam and her offspring. When Doris confronts Mariam before her execution, Cary represents their interaction as a striking standoff not simply between two competing wives, but more compellingly between two rival mothers. Given both mothers preoccupation with their sons, Doriss complaint that Mariam "robbd from me the glory of my life" (IV. viii.586) may as likely refer to the fate of her son as herself. In revenge, Doris extends her curse, as one mother upon another, from Mariam to her children. When Mariam seeks to protect her children ("Curse not mine infants" [IV. viii.606]), Doris responds by redoubling her curses ("plague the mother much: the children worse" [IV. viii.616]) and declaring to Mariam: "I do hope this boy of mine / Shall one day come to be the death of thine" (IV. viii.623-4). Even in rivalry, then, Mariam and Doris are concerned less with the man to whom they both have been married than with their children, whose fates will reflect posthumously upon their own. Works Cited Belsey, Catherine, The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), p. 174 Cixous, Helene, "The Laugh of the Medusa," in New French Feminisms: An Anthology, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1980), pp. 245-64 Ferguson, "Running On with Almost Public Voice," pp. 54-5 Rose, Mary Beth. "Where Are the Mothers in Shakespeare? Options for Gender Representation in the English Renaissance," SQ 42, 3 (Fall 1991): 291-314 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, "The New Historicism: Political Commitment and the Postmodern Critic," in The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 281. Weller and Ferguson., The Lady Falkland: Her Life By One of Her Daughters, ed., pp. 183-275 Weller and Fergusons extensive introduction for a more detailed discussion of the question of authorship, esp. pp. 1-2, 47-8. Weller, Barry and Margaret W. Ferguson, introduction to their joint edition of The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry with The Lady Falkland: Her Life By One of Her Daughters (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994), pp. 1-59 Wikgren, Allen., Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. Ralph Marcus, completed and edited, vol. 8 Read More