Feminine Virtues in Elizabethan England

The sixteenth century saw a renaissance of learning in England and the spread of humanism. Humanists supported education for both men and women in part so that virtue could be encouraged. One humanist, Baldesar Castiglione, suggested that virtue was not a natural trait, in that vice also existed, and hence could be learned.² Thus Castiglione and other humanists wrote instructive texts to encourage the acquisition of virtue via learning.³ Some humanists were intent on demonstrating that virtue was not gendered but was found equally in both men and women.⁴ These writers argued for a single model of virtue to be applied to both men and women; an argument that can also be found in the writings of Plato and Socrates.⁵ Others wrote within gendered boundaries, focusing on silence, obedience, and chastity as the primary virtues for women. Men, on the other hand, were expected to lead active lives and demonstrate active virtues, such as courage, fortitude, and justice.

Of the three feminine virtues, silence was considered central.⁶ The most striking evidence of this is often in the structure of the writing. Men in sixteenth-century texts often are the actual speakers and the figures of action, whereas the women are merely spectators, demonstrating the appropriate silent and obedient behavior.⁷ In many ways, William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew fits this model. The female characters in the play are not the primary movers of the action in the play–things happen to them and people speak of them. Readers learn from others that Katharine does not demonstrate appropriate womanly virtues, particularly in her inability to hold her tongue.⁸ Yet the character of Katharine can be read in a number of ways. Katharine can be viewed as having been tamed, or she can be viewed as having merely learned to play the game. Her final speech demonstrates her understanding of the game and ties her reformed view of woman's place and responsibilities to the social hierarchy of England: "Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper/ Thy head, thy sovereign; one who cares for thee, ... Such duty as the subject owes the prince, / Even such a women oweth her husband;" (lines 146-147; 155-156). Feminine virtue cannot be considered without also considering that in Shakespeare's time the head of this hierarchical society was a woman. Hence what was orderly and natural was in many ways being challenged and redefined.

   Elizabeth ascended the throne of England as a woman, which would normally mean that she occupied an inferior position to virtually every male. However, she also ascended the throne as the sovereign, which meant she held the most superior position in the realm. This division between Elizabeth's private and public bodies meant that only to a limited extent could she be considered useful as a model of virtue for other women. The only typically feminine virtue that Elizabeth openly embraced throughout her reign was chastity. This virtue was so intertwined with her role as England's virgin queen that it should not necessarily be considered a private virtue of Elizabeth. Her virginity was of national interest and any suggestion that she was not chaste was an attack on not only her honor and her ability to rule but also on the nation. In Elizabeth's time, the identity of state and the monarch were intertwined.⁹ A male ruler might similarly be challenged by an attack on his courage or his honesty.¹⁰ The remaining two central feminine virtues—silence and obedience—were not and could not be reconciled as virtues in the public body of a sovereign queen.

  Elizabeth recognized herself as having two bodies, that of a woman and that of a queen. The private body of the king was the one that was subjected to the ravages of time and eventually gave way to a successor. It is in this ritual of succession that one can best understand the public body of the sovereign. The public body houses the authority of the state and as such it never dies; hence "The King is dead. Long live the King."¹¹ Elizabeth's private body was that of a lowly woman and as such, she normally would have been expected to obey the men in her life. Traditionally that would have included her father or other male guardian in her younger years and her husband thereafter. Elizabeth, however, avoided the entanglements of matrimony throughout her life and thus was not subjected to the authority of a husband. In many ways, this allowed her public body to dominate. As queen, she was not always held to the usual model of femininity, and in exercising her voice, she acknowledged that she was in a unique position. In her accession speech, Elizabeth declared that although she was "but one Body naturally considered," she was now also by God's "permission a Body Politic to govern."¹² In other words, she naturally had the body of a woman but was also endowed with a princely male body. Although the public and private bodies of the sovereign were intermingled, in Elizabeth's case the dominant persona was her public image as "prince."¹³ Elizabeth often referred to herself as prince rather than as queen, perhaps to downplay her private (feminine) body in favor of her public (masculine) body.¹⁴ She was in a unique position in that her two bodies allowed her to be praised on two counts—for behaving in a masculine manner in her public body and for following feminine norms appropriate for her private body.

As the century drew to a close, writers increasingly made exceptions to the gendered model of virtue in deference to Elizabeth.¹⁵ As queen, Elizabeth was the strongest female role model available in England. Yet despite her success in operating outside gender-prescribed roles, Elizabeth did not advocate for other women to follow her lead.¹⁶ Thus the question of her place as a role model must be evaluated carefully. It is arguable that even without Elizabeth's express approval of other women following her example, the example remained to be followed. Elizabeth illustrated that the boundaries of gender were not as natural and clearly defined as many believed. What constituted appropriate feminine virtue changed during the sixteenth century as women exercising political power became almost commonplace not only in England but in Scotland and France as well. Hence, one must consider carefully whether or not Shakespeare's shrew was really "tamed" or was a representation of the changing times in Elizabethan England.

ENDNOTES

2. Castiglione, Baldesar: The Book of the Courtier. Translated by George Bull. London: Penguin Books, 1967, pages 290-292.

3.  For a discussion of humanists and their goals in encouraging education see Beauregard, David N: Virtue's Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995, pages 22-23 and Singh, Sarup: The Double Standard in Shakespeare and Related Essays: Changing Status of Women in 16th and 17th Century England. Delhi: Knark Publishers, 1988, pages 53-85.

4. Thomas Elyot, for example, argues this in his The Defence of Good Women.

5. Jordan, Constance: “Feminism and the Humanists: The Case of Sir Thomas Elyot’s Defence of Good Women,” Renaissance Quarterly 36(2):181-201, 1983, page 190.

6. See, for example, the introductory quote to this paper from The Defence of Good Women.

7. The Book of the Courtier is a good example of this. In Castiglione’s court of Urbino, the women are the caretakers not the policy makers.

8. See Act II, scene 1, lines 45-50.

9. For further discussion of Elizabeth as the personification of England, see Miller, David Lee: The Poem’s Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 Faerie Queene. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, page 18.

10. Levin, Carole: “The Heart and Stomach of King:” Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, page 76.

11. In addition to Kantorowicz, Ernst H: The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957, see also Levin; Miller; and Frye, Susan: Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 for discussions of gender and its role in defining Elizabeth’s two bodies.

12. Montrose, Louis Adrian: “The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text.” In Parker, Patricia and Quint, David, editors: Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, pages 303-340. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, page 307.

13. For a discussion of the problem of Elizabeth’s public/masculine and private/female bodies, see Frye, particularly pages 4-13.

14. Levin, pages 140-148.

15. Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is perhaps the premiere example of a text in which female virtue is not limited to silence, obedience, and chastity.

16. Frye, page 21.