The Intensity of Love and Friendship in the English Renaissance

Silberman 1

Holly Silberman

May 5, 2006

English 125

Professor Dugan

The Intensity of Love and Friendship in the English Renaissance

“Book III” of The Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser is an intense and lengthy epic that helps to uncover themes of desire and love in the Renaissance. This is obviously an important topic while looking at gender in the Sixteenth Century as Spenser expresses love and desire as the same physical ailment for both sexes, but genders the cures. For a course in English Renaissance Literature, it is imperative to look further and discover that these same themes are expressed when concerning same sex friendship; an unusual topic because it is not often thought of when studying the concept of love.

However, upon close examination of Aemilia Lanyer’s “The Description of Cooke-ham,” it is clear that the loss of a friend to marriage, a friend loved by Lanyer, creates a similar distress to that experienced by the characters in The Fairie Queene. Once again, this is surprising because when reading her poem, one might immediately assume, because of our own socialization and ingrained hierarchy of relationships, that the author or poetic voice, so filled with love, is not speaking about a friendship but about a romantic interaction.

Spenser should remain on a course syllabus for gender in the English Renaissance for his valuable insights on desire between men and women and its affects on the body.

However, in my opinion more emphasis should be placed on friendship and same-sex Silberman 2 desire found in Aemilia Lanyer’s “The Description of Cooke-ham.” This is because it challenges perceptions that marriages were the most important and desired relationships in the English Renaissance. Instead, it introduces a different kind of longing between women friends. If a syllabus or anthology were to focus on The Fairie Queene and works like it, we might lose a sense of what friendship and desire within that relationship meant for women in the English Renaissance.

Just as with Spenser, ideas of bodily ailment can be found in Lanyer’s work, making it of equal value in that respect. Therefore, if a class would like to focus on love and gender and how it affects the body, “The Description of Cooke-ham” is also a valuable work to study. Instead of using the body itself, Lanyer diffuses the body into a garden scene, a radical idea even for our time and therefore a fascinating point to study.

Women’s friendship and the effects of bodily desire, like those expressed in Lanyer’s work, might become eclipsed by Spenser’s epic and his themes of gender and love. His heteronormative form prompts his use in anthologies and classrooms. If Lanyer was more included in these anthologies or class syllabi, our awareness and insights into the

Renaissance might change. As readers and scholars, we may begin to understand that there were relationships in the Eighteenth century outside the realm of men with women and that friendship played an extremely significant role in the lives of women.

In Book III of Spenser’s Fairie Queene, Britomart and the Hag’s son both fall ill to the same disease of longing and love, which is cured through different means. One relief comes from a search for the desired, and the other through dark magic. In this way,

Spenser does not make a clear delineation between the genders and how they are affected by love. Instead, both sexes fall victim to love in the same way and experience similarly Silberman 3 intense physical pain. However, the cures are gendered as to who is capable of creating them. The treatments that work to alleviate Britomart and the son also give an interesting glance into the role gender played in the Renaissance as they are unexpectedly reversed.

Britomart, Spenser’s warrior maiden, first becomes ill in the second and third cantos of Book III of the Fairie Queene after discovering her first love and desire. Her father possesses a magic mirror of Merlin’s, and when Britomart peers into it, she sees

Arthegall, a mysterious knight who she does not know. After viewing him in this manner, Britomart falls ill, “Sith him whilome in Britaine she did vew,/ to her revealed in a mirrhour plaine,/ whereof did grow her first engraffed paine.” (Spenser 19). Although at first she is unaware of what is causing her pain, Spenser makes the reader privy to the source of the suffering, “She woxe; yet wist she neither how, nor why,/ she wist not, silly

Mayd, what she did aile,/ Yet wist, she was not well at ease perdy,/ Yet thought it was not love, but some melancholy” (Spenser 21). Britomart’s unreciprocated love and desire for

Arthegall is causing her physical ailment. Her body continues to deteriorate, and she shows more corporeal symptoms, “Sithens it hath infixed faster hold/ within my bleeding bowels, and so sore/ now ranckleth in this same fraile fleshly mould./ that all mine entrails flow with poysnous gore,/ and th’ulcer growth daily more and more; Ne can my running sore find remedie” (Spenser 23). This graphic description makes the reader aware of the force of Britomart’s daily-intensifying pain. This quote also invokes the need for a remedy, which she does not believe exists in her great state of woe. However it further serves as an implication that similar to other sickness, love may be capable of being cured. Silberman 4

As Britomart’s nurse and caretaker, Glauce is given a cure-creating position.

Throughout Book III, the only people with these healing powers are female. Glauce sees the ailment that has enraptured Britomart and seeks to find an antidote. Glauce attempts her own potions and concoctions, “But th’aged Nurse her calling to her bowre,/ had gathered Rew, and Sauine, and the flower/ of Camphara, and Calamint, and Dill/ All which she in a earthen pot did poure,/ And to the brim with Colt wood did it fill,/ And many drops of milk and bloud through it did spill” (Spenser 25). Despite her attempts to cure her patient, it quickly becomes clear to Glauce that, “Full many waies she sought, but none could find,/ Nor herbes, nor charmes, nor counsel, that is chiefe/ and choisest med’cine for sicke harts reliefe” (Spenser 27). Like too many diseases, love proves to be incurable for Britomart. Glauce realizes her inability and offers relief through protection from love through the form of armor and chastity, a temporary respite until Britomart is able to consummate her love with Arthegall. Spenser raises a number of questions about what that does to women and their desires for affection while maintaining chastity.

Spenser leaves these uncertainties to the interpretation of the reader who might wish to find answers because of the implications Spenser is inadvertently making about women in the Renaissance. His epic becomes both a champion for chastity and a suggestion towards consummation thus leaving the importance of this dichotomy to the reader.

A male character, the Hag’s son, falls in love with a chaste and beautiful woman named Florimell, and feels the same physical symptoms of desire coursing through his body. These symptoms are consistent with Britomart’s, maintaining that the disease of desire itself is not gendered. He is content with merely loving Florimell from afar while she stays with his family and is continually intoxicated by her presence. Unfortunately, Silberman 5 when she flees, the Hag’s son despairs his loss of love and develops the same physical ailments that afflict Britomart, “But that lewd lover did the most lament/ for her depart, that ever man did heare;/ he knockt his brest with desperate intent,/ and scratcht his face, and with his teeth did teare/ his rugged flesh, and rent his ragged heare;” (Spenser 77).

Dissimilar to Britomart, much of the pain he feels is intentionally self-inflicted. He is trying to maim himself in order to remove the disease of love from his body. His physical symptoms are so intense that he cannot bear to simply wallow. Instead, love’s ailments are so powerful he must remove the infection from his body by attacking himself. Perhaps his bodily desire is stronger than Britomart’s because it is more lust- driven. While the son stares at and yearns for Florimell, Britomart feels she is truly in love. Yet no amount of physical harm to his person cures him of his longing and desire.

Attempts at a cure for the son are made solely by a woman caretaker, the Hag, who takes notice of his great despair and wishes to alleviate his pain as he is incapable of curing it himself. Like the nurse, the Hag resorts to her domestic powers and experiences to create a potion through natural herbs and remedies, “all ways she sought, him to restore to plight,/ with herbs, with charms, with counsel, and with tears,/ but tears, nor charms, nor herbs, nor counsel might/ asswage the fury, which his entrails tears.”

(Spenser 77). Her attempts to arrive at a cure are a failure. The son’s love and desire for

Florimell, as well as the symptoms that have taken over his body are so strong that these environmental means cannot assuage his desire. Unlike Glauce who rushes to arm

Britomart and help her in her quest, the Hag turns darker methods to cure her son. She is capable of devilish and magical powers, which she sees as the only way to help her son.

Using snow as a body, and putting an evil spright within this, the hag creates a second Silberman 6 more devilish “Florimell” to appease her son, “In hand she boldly tooke/ To make another like the former Dame,/ Another Florimell, in shape and looke/ So lively and so like, that many it mistooke” (Spenser 86). The Hag’s plan works to quell her son’s desire as he feels conciliation at the sight of the new Florimell. He is more confident in his ability to consummate his desire. The dark magic becomes a cure for her son, “Tho fast her clipping twixt his armes twaine,/ Extremely ioyed in so happie sight,/ And soone forgot his former sickly paine” (Spenser 87). The son is restored to his earlier self through witchcraft. The reader can expect that Britomart will soon feel this same comfort when she comes in contact with her longing, Arthegall. Spenser’s writing implicates that their physical symptoms will be alleviated with consummation of desire or the mere possibility of it.

Spenser’s earlier non-gendering of the disease is usurped by the contention that only the women, Glauce and the Hag, are capable of creating cures and empathizing with the “sick.” He has gendered the care-taking position as strictly for women. They are the only characters in Book III who attempt a plethora of remedies to heal their loved ones, further signifying nursing and care as a woman’s work. Therefore, ailments are a problem for all, but treatments are a solution made by women.

The difference in remedies between the male and female afflicted by love is also an interesting dichotomy concerning gender as Renaissance tradition and our own views of feminine and masculine roles would not predict these cures. Normally, one would expect the fighting to be performed by a man, and the waiting to be rescued by others as a sign of femininity as it is a common theme throughout literature. However, the male, the

Hag’s son, sulks until the second Florimell arrives wherein he is overjoyed. Spenser Silberman 7 implies that giving a man what he wants, rather then having him fight to attain it, can still lead to his happiness. Conversely, Britomart seems to come across a cure to her symptoms by taking up arms and protecting her chastity while still keeping the pretense that she is actively searching for a more tangible antidote, Arthegall.

Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, and more specifically, Book III of this piece, details a wide range of concepts, but none quite as compelling as how the human body is affected by love. In the case of Britomart and the Hag’s son, love is a virus that pains their entire bodies and cannot be removed. Though their nurse and mother attempt remedies, no one universal cure stops their ailments. Instead, the women who care for

Britomart and the son provide different medications that are not typically suited to their patients’ genders, but still prove effective. Similarly, in Aemilia Lanyer’s “The

Description of Cooke-ham,” the narrative voice, Lanyer herself, expresses the same sort of pain through a garden metaphor when she experiences the desire and loss of love for her female friend. Spenser uses a clearer way of describing ailment on the body possibly due to the philosophies on the composition of the body, such as humors, that reined in his time. Lanyer chooses to have the body disappear into the natural world. A decision forced upon her because an explicitly written desire for another female would not have been accepted in literary circles. Therefore, it is important to focus closely on the reading of this pastoral poem as well as others of its kind. Its detail concerning same-sex relationships were generally not thought of as popular literary topics. We would expect this strong of a desire between opposite sexes, yet it is uncommon to think about it concerning friends. Students could therefore study the piece to determine whether strong desire in friendships should be more cause for concern than the bodily symptoms of Silberman 8

Spenser’s epic because of the way they challenge the importance of traditional relationships. Lanyer raises these questions in “The Description of Cooke-ham” through her assertions that love-filled friendships are more esteemed by the two women in the relationship than love in marriage. Additionally, the strength of love between female friends is itself something to read thoroughly since it provides details into the lives of women in that time.

Aemilia Lanyer’s poem uses the description of an estate, Cooke-ham and its surrounding garden, to express feelings of pain and loss after the lady of the house and object of desire, Anne Clifford, leaves to be married. This type of metaphor was important to use when one woman was writing about another because of the constraints of their society, “those women who were sheltered, privileged, and ‘respectable,’ and who were loathe to see themselves or to express their desires in ways considered transgressive, developed more acceptable discursive strategies to contain or to deflect desires that might otherwise have threatened to overwhelm them” (Andreadis 241-242).

Although there are segments of transgression, Lanyer follows this “rule” throughout most of the poem using the withering of the Cooke-ham garden to describe her own painful symptoms of love, “And you sweet Cooke-ham, whom these Ladies leave,/I now must tell the griefe you did conceave/ At their depature; when they went away,/ How everything retained a sad dismay” (Lanyer 3). In one particular instance, after Anne has left, Lanyer laments, “Each arbour, banke, eache seate, each stately tree,/ Lookes bare and desolate now for want of thee;/ Turning greene tresses into frostie gray,/ while in cold griefe they wither all away” (Lanyer 4-5). This extremely reactive garden is dying simply because their beloved lady is leaving, similar to the seemingly-fatal illness that Silberman 9 both Britomart and the Hag’s son experience in Spenser’s work. The garden symbolism can be read as Lanyer’s own voice expressing the loss of a female utopia that she experienced while Clifford was still there. It is clear that Clifford is leaving to get married, as was custom of that time. Lanyer’s remorse displays her sorrow and pain that their relationship will change forever when a male, the husband, is put between them.

This is an unusual reaction to a loss of a friend to the other gender. One normally would expect this sort of intense lamentation to be concerning a romantic relationship and not a same-sex friendship. This is because in our culture, we create a hierarchical view of relationships placing the highest importance on the love between a man and woman with a lower regard of friendship.

The reactive garden is not the only way that Lanyer shows her heartbreaking thoughts of mourning; she also blames “Fortune” for not making her a man and thereby equipping her with the means to express her love for Anne in a truly accepted way. “And yet it grieves me that I cannot be/ Neere unto her, whose virtues did agree/ with those faire ornaments of outward beauty,/ which did enforce from all both love and dutie./

Unconstant Fortune, thou art most too blame,/ who casts us down into so lowe a frame:/ where our great friends we cannot dayley see,/ So great a difference is there in degree”

(Lanyer 3). Lanyer is saying fortune cursed her, as both she and Clifford were made women. The part of the quote “casts us down into so a lowe a frame” suggests that like society regarded them, Lanyer too felt that the female body was a lower form of the male’s and blamed fate for her misfortune of being a woman. She would never be able to have the kind of relationship with Anne that she so desired, because she regarded it as only a possibility between a male and a female. Female friendship was certainly not Silberman 10 forbidden. However, the type that Lanyer desires was not condoned because of the possibility that it would upset a more honored philosophy of marriage. This type of writing is therefore extremely significant in Renaissance history as it was a radical departure from the normative ideas and writings expressed in more traditional love stories, such as The Fairie Queene.

Even with notions that females were a lower corporeal form than males, Lanyer still chose to express her friendship and love, often times usurping traditional ideas of desire and the consummation of it. When discussing the impending marriage of Anne

Clifford, she asserts, “Partners in honour, so ordain’d by Fate;/ Nearer in show, yet farter off in love,/ in which, the lowest always are above” (Lanyer 3). By this, Lanyer means that husband and wife are only bound by legal and religious law. Their love is not as strong and as pure as the “lowest,” meaning women friends. She says that women friends are always closer in spirit because their love is more equally desired, instead of just a legal bind and property exchange. Lanyer continues this expression of women friends being tied closely together in the lines, “wherein I have perform’d her noble hest,/ whose virtues lodge in my unworthy breast,/ and ever shall, so long as life remaines,/ tying my heart to her by those rich chaines” (Lanyer 5). Their shared virtues and Lanyer’s explicit articulation of her love for Anne have bound them together for life. This could be upsetting to traditional values of giving more esteem to the relationship between husband and wife instead of between same-sex friends, which is another reason why it is important to dedicate more time to Lanyer’s poem when studying the English

Renaissance. Silberman 11

While this sort of loving desire was symbolized in many poems of the time even in her own, certain aspects of Lanyer’s actions within her writing place her in a more revolutionary realm because of her explicit attempts for consummation. Before leaving

Cooke-Ham, Anne kissed her favorite tree as a last goodbye. Lanyer’s love and desire for Anne in an erotic sense leads her to kiss the tree in the same spot, as though she were kissing Anne: “And with a chaste, yet loving kisse tooke leave,/ of which sweet kisse I did it soon bereave:/ scorning a senceless creature should possesse/ so rare a favour, so great happinesse./ No other kisse it could receive from me” (Lanyer 4). Instead of merely pining for consummation, Lanyer attempts to quell her pains of love by kissing the tree.

Lanyer then feels as though she and Anne have actually engaged in intimate behavior.

Therefore, her writing was quite radical as she disregarded a more metaphoric and symbolic style in select parts of her poem. To other writers, a figurative style “created a space for the development…of the language of female romantic friendship as the dominant discourse defining ‘virtuous’ and socially impeccable female friends”

(Andreadis 245). Since her writing did not correspond with this eighteenth century development, it is a fascinating point of study and juxtaposition to more hidden homosocial behaviors in poetry and prose.

Aemilia Lanyer’s “The Description of Cooke-ham” and Edmund Spenser’s The

Fairie Queene are both valuable texts when trying to understand gender and culture of the

English Renaissance. However, by focusing too much on Spenser’s notions of love, ailment, and the body as an insight into gender, we risk losing the chance to study concepts that we normally might disregard. Therefore, in designing a course syllabus or anthology, it would be useful to limit the amount of space or time dedicated to Spenser Silberman 12 who documents the love and romance between males and females in order to explore intense same-sex friendships in other texts. “The Description of Cooke-ham” gives the reader a strong feeling for what women friendships were like in the Renaissance and how that might affect traditional views of marriage and gender. It also expresses ways in which women were prompted to cover their true feelings through metaphor.

Furthermore, these types of readings are generally not taught or exposed as they disturb and challenge our own societal views of which relationships are considered most important both in our own time and the Renaissance. As said earlier, Spenser’s notions of physical ailment that was derived from desire and love and the gendering of cures are important in its insight into the body and the role of women in care-giving positions.

However, since it is extremely different from other ideas and still undeniably significant in its role in the English Renaissance, Lanyer’s poem and those of her contemporary female writers who struggle with the same issues should be given a greater emphasis in order to truly understand the feelings of love within women of the Renaissance.