Renaissance depictions of love and romance are naturally very varied, but a general movement can be seen from early idealisations of women based on Petrarchan and courtly love influences, to analyses of female power and virtue during the reign of Elizabeth I, to cynical litanies of women's failings in Jacobean theatre. I shall be concentrating on the latter, specifically the plays of Thomas Middleton (I include The Revenger's Tragedy under this definition). Middleton has been acclaimed for 'his discernment of the minds of women,' and certainly his female characters have a psychological realism not found elsewhere in the period, while his plays are, at least ostensibly, about women, as shown by titles such as A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. They have much to say about the commodification of marriage, sex and even love in nascent capitalist society; they combine, sometimes paradoxically, sympathetic and realistic portrayal of female characters with a Puritan distaste for desire and disorder; and they reveal, in their obsession with dysfunctional relationships from incest to rape, the era's underlying misogyny and uneasiness with female sexuality.
A central theme is the treatment of women as possessions. This view allows fathers to limit their daughters' choice of husband, as is the catalytic situation at the start of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and The Changeling; Vindice's beloved, Gloriana, has also been denied her right to choose, as the 'father' of the state, the Duke, has her murdered for her failure to comply. Beatrice-Joanna changes her allegiance but is forced into a further role as a 'changeling' because she must resort to wickedness in order to marry for love; Moll Yellowhammer retains her virtue but narrowly avoids being married to the lascivious and greedy Sir Walter Whorehound, who can speak of her only in terms of sex and money:
I shall receive two thousand pound in gold
And a sweet maidenhead
Worth forty.
(IV.iii.58-60)
The forty pounds is a reference to the price of a virgin prostitute, showing how basely Sir Walter views his future wife and how little distance there is in Jacobean society between respectable ladies and common whores: all are dependent on men and therefore powerless.
The objectification of women is so all-pervading that it even extends to loving relationships. Leantio adores his new wife, but feels quite comfortable saying of her:
O you have named the most unvalued'st purchase
That youth of man had ever knowledge of.
As often as I look upon that treasure...
(I.i.12-14)
Because, having married her, he thinks of Bianca as a possession, he also thinks that he can forget about her to some extent, and leaves her in the house as one might leave a purchase in the cupboard until it is needed; it is this disregard for her as an emotional being that leads to her infidelity and their eventual downfall.
A Chaste Maid in Cheapsidehas several portrayals of sex as a commodity, though none are as cynical as the Yellowhammers' wish to marry their children into money. Allwit is content to ignore his wife's adultery since it brings in financial support; effectively, he is selling his conjugal rights. He does appear to want to reclaim her - he is prepared to dress as Sir Walter to deceive her - yet he actively tries to retain his patronage. However, he eventually takes the decision to throw Sir Walter out of his house, and he and his wife plan together how they will lease it to make a profit, both financially and in regaining their married state. Touchwood Senior's feelings for his wife are also ambivalent. Their parting seems genuinely affectionate: 'Thou art a matchless wife; farewell, my joy'(II.i.37), and he seems pleased when Sir Oliver Kix makes it possible for them to be reunited by offering to support their children: even legitimate sex must be paid for. Despite his seemingly happy marriage, however, Touchwood is promiscuously adulterous, having as many as seven lovers at once:
I has no less than seven lay in last Progress,
Within three weeks of one another's time.
(II.i.62-3)
The most notable of these is Lady Kix, whose husband unwittingly pays Touchwood to seduce her. The casual nature of many of the play's relationships contrasts with the deal the two men strike, which shows the conventional attitude of Jacobean society towards sex, that it should be for procreation:
You must receive, sir, four hundred pounds of me at four several payments: one hundred pound now in hand...Another hundred when my wife is quick; the third when she's brought a-bed; and the last hundred when the child cries, for if it should be stillborn, it doth no good, sir.
(III.iii.137-143)
The emphasis on a live and healthy child demonstrates the aristocrat's obsession with producing an heir; this need to pass on and increase one's wealth is aptly summarised by Susan Wells:
Commerce controls sex, not only in prostitution, but in all erotic relations...the relations of love and of exchange have been mutually contaminated.
When a Jacobean gentleman marries a woman he assumes that one of the things he is buying is her virginity, and much emphasis is placed on 'maidenhead' in the plays, though with different implications. Loughrey and Turner observe of Moll:
She may be a chaste maid, but chastity is valued, not as a spiritual state but as a rare commodity to be traded for profit. The competition for a woman in each plot's 'Oedipal' triangle reflects not only the operation of desire but also the social reality of male property rights in an acquisitive society.
Sir Walter looks forward to enjoying Moll's virginity; for him it is a way of exerting power over her and marking her as his. Isabella in Women Beware Womenmarries the idiotic Ward so that she can begin an affair with her uncle: 'This marriage shall go forward...'Twould be ill for us else'(II.ii.206-7). Unbeknownst to her, her aunt Livia is plotting the affair and sees her virginity as an inconvenient obstacle: 'Who shows more craft t'undo a maidenhead, / I'll resign my part to her'(II.ii.178-9). In The Revenger's Tragedy it is Castiza's chastity that comes under attack, though, true to her name, she resists it:
A virgin honour is a crystal tower
Which, being weak, is guarded with good spirits;
Until she basely yields no ill inherits.
(IV.iv.151-3)
The most elaborate treatment of virginity is in The Changeling, where the relationship between De Flores (the 'deflowerer') and Beatrice-Joanna leads to her substituting her maid Diaphanta on her wedding night. Alsemero's obsession with purity is such that he tests his new wife with potions, and she is forced to feign her own reactions and test those of her maid. Yet society condones these demands, as Beatrice knows: 'He cannot but in justice strangle me'(IV.i.14).
The women in Middleton's plays are frequently manipulative and scheme to achieve their goals; for Beatrice this is repaid as De Flores is just as willing to blackmail her. Although she claims not to have encouraged him, she gives linguistic signals that his loyalty will be rewarded with sex: 'How lovely now dost thou appear to me! / Never was man dearlier rewarded'(II.ii.136-7). It has been suggested that her repulsion for De Flores masks a subconscious attraction to him, or that he is a manifestation of her wanton side - the dangerous 'Joanna,' a servant or slattern, to her socially acceptable 'Beatrice,' Dante's saintly mistress. In fact both The Changeling and Women Beware Women hinge on the suppression of female sexuality: Beatrice-Joanna and Isabella in the former and Bianca, Livia and Isabella in the latter are all forced to choose between immorality and unhappiness because of their limited control over their lives. This repressive on-stage attitude is a reflection of Jacobean society and the extremely dysfunctional relationships that arise as a result serve as a warning.
Lord and Lady Kix in A Chaste Maid in Cheapsidehave a difficult relationship due to his impotence. Lady Kix seems to lack sexual satisfaction as well as a child, judging by her histrionic pronouncements: 'O! O! O! / To be seven years a wife and not a child! O not a child!'(II.i.136-7). This dysfunction has spread from the bedroom to all parts of their life together, resulting in the bizarre alternation of quarrelling and doting that Touchwood Senior witnesses in Act Three Scene Three. This being a comedy, however the behaviour is much better than in the tragedies.
The Changeling sees the governor's daughter first transferring her affections from one nobleman to another, then, much worse, having a sexual affair with a man of much lower station, to whom she is bound by murder. Similarly, noblemen stoop to disguising themselves as madmen to woo an asylum-keeper's wife. Beatrice and De Flores' relationship is characterised by manipulation, unrequitedness and lust and it ends in violence: the oppressed woman's attempt to take control of her own destiny results only in more oppression and unnaturalness because she must rely on a man to achieve her aims.
Women Beware Women carries a parade of illicit relationships, starting with the marriage of Leantio and Bianca which, however sympathetically one might be disposed to the young lovers, is still an elopement and condemned by society. Bianca is neglected by a husband who does not understand her needs and this unhappy situation results in extramarital affairs for both of them. Eventually this relationship, damned from the start in the eyes of society, is ended by one lover arranging the death of the other. Bianca's seduction by the Duke may or may not be rape, but she certainly has very little control over her situation; it is important to note that he leads her away with talk of the riches he will give her for her compliance, a typical sex-as-trade attitude: 'But I give better in exchange: wealth, honour' (II.ii.371). He thinks not only that he can buy her but that, as a Duke, he has every right to do so. Their meeting is engineered by Livia, who seems to be an experienced bawd; this is shocking not just for its immorality but because she chooses personal advancement over the unity of the oppressed. Livia also procures Isabella for Hippolito by lying to her niece; furthermore she advises a loveless marriage as cover for this incestuous affair, which goes on to produce children.
The relationship between the Duchess and Spurio in The Revenger's Tragedy is socially incestuous even if they are not blood-related: 'I would 'twere love, but 't'as a fouler name / Than lust'(I.ii.130-1). The Duchess has feelings for Spurio but he simply wants revenge:
Stepmother, I consent to thy desires,
I love thy mischief well, but I hate thee.
(I.ii.191-2)
One-sided relationships are common in this play: the Duchess for Spurio, Lussurioso for Castiza and the Duke for Gloriana, both in life and for the country courtesan her skull is dressed as. This is symbolic of the inequality of male-female relations, where the powerful try to take advantage of the powerless and usually succeed. Only the Duchess and the Duke's bastard son have roughly equal status, but even here sex is for political advancement, not for love. The proliferation of illegitimate relationships is embodied by Spurio the Bastard, as he himself says:
For indeed a bastard by nature should make cuckolds
Because he is the son of a cuckold-maker.
(I.ii.201-2)
Vindice retains an unnatural attachment to the skull of Gloriana - why has he not allowed it to be buried? - and it is central to the gruesome episode of the Duke's murder. Karin S. Coddon suggests that the sexualisation of the literally disembodied skull creates a semiotic vacuum:
Bodies of desire, bodies of death, the bodies of actual actors playing roles that have no ultimate reference to subjectivity - the enabling distinctions that divide mind from corporeality, licit from illicit desires, subjects from objects, are disintegrated.
Necrophilia is the ultimate objectification of women, whereby they are not free from the sexual advances of men even when they are merely bones with no trace of humanity.
This incident is just one of many where the audience anticipates sex happening on-stage: Act Three of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside ends with Touchwood Senior taking Lady Kix to bed and Act Three of The Changeling with De Flores leading Beatrice away to deflower her; the Duke and Duchess' marital bed is 'discovered' to the audience and to Lussurioso in The Revenger's Tragedy; and in Women Beware Women Bianca's rape is symbolically re-enacted by the chess game just a few yards from where it is actually taking place: 'Has not my duke bestirr'd himself?'(II.ii.417). This is of course partly to satisfy the sensationalist sensibilities of a Jacobean audience but also contributes to the representation of women as (on the whole) passive objects, to whom things are done, and makes explicit for the audience the uncomfortable sexual undercurrent of their own society.
Middleton places women at the centre of his plays' titles and thus in the centre of the action, although it tends to happen around them without their being able to control it. Their centrality to these domestic plots reflects the contemporary idea of women as the pivot on which the household, and thus the larger economy, turns. This explains to some extent the pervasive fear of female sexuality, as it was thought that giving it free rein could bring down society. The problems of the women in Middleton's tragedies cannot be blamed entirely on the oppressive patriarchal society, however: they fail on the major moral decision that is allowed to them, namely, choosing marriage and remaining faithful to it. That being said, it is society that forces them to follow this wrong decision through to the extremes of murder and the perceptive satire in these plays forces it to recognise its faults.
Bibliography
Coddon, Karin S., '"For Show or Useless Property": Necrophilia and The Revenger's Tragedy,' English Literary History, Vol. 61 (1994)
Loughrey, Bryan and Neil Taylor (ed.), Five Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1988
Wells, Susan, 'Jacobean City Comedy and the Ideology of the City,' English Literary History, Vol. 48 (1981)
