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Information to Users INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfihn master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter 6ce, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The qualify of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely afreet reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pag%, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each orignal is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back o f the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. EGgher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Infoniiation C o m p aiy 300 North Zed) Road, Ann Arbor MI 4S106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 RAPE AND THE RHETORIC OF FEMALE CHASTITY IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE LITERATURE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Nancy Weitz Miller, B.A., M.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1996 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor John N. King, Adviser Professor Lisa M. Klein Kr Advise Professor Christopher Highley epartment of E n ^ h UHI Nimber: 9630937 VMI Microform 9630937 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. AU rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48109 ABSTRACT This study analyzes the textual construction of female chastity and its relationship to beauty in works of English literature, written by men and women between 1529 and 1675, highlighting conduct books and narrative poetry by Vives, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Margaret Cavendish. When read together, both discursive treatments of chastity and narrative depictions of beautiful chaste women fending off sexual assault help to provide a window into underlying inconsistencies in the virtue: the apparently seamless rhetoric of these didactic texts conceals conflicting ideologies which inherently condemn sexually-assaulted women for bearing a degree of responsibility for their own victimization. Women were admonished to remain chaste even while they were told to attract a husband; the moral worth of women who were sexually assaulted was tautologically judged according to whether or not a rape occurred; and women were told that their beauty was a gift from God as well as the gateway of the devil to lead themselves and men into deadly sin. My focus texts offer remarkably similar definitions of the "chaste woman," an ideal that was logically and ideologically impossible for female readers to imitate and for all readers to expect from women. These internal conflicts accord with the clash of two ideological positions in the culture. The residual position is a holdover of medieval misogyny, which ii constructs women as unreasoning creatures whose control over their sexual appetites is unreliable and who use their beauty to lure men into sexual sin. In opposition to this malicious view of women is the emergent Neoplatonic philosophy which was especially influential with courtiers and Petrarchan poets and eventually entered the popular rhetoric of beauty: women were perceived as beautifiil objects which when contemplated could bring the (male) gazer closer to divinity. The juxtaposition of these two attitudes creates an unresolved tension: men are fully justified in gazing upon women, but women are held responsible for any sexual desire this gazing engenders. Readers thus internalize this double-bind that makes it all but impossible for women to follow the advice and imitate the examples found in conduct books and other forms of didactic literamre. Ill ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Although it bears the single authorial inscription, my dissertation is the product of much collaborative learning and effort. Not the least of my debts is the one that I owe my hard-working dissertation committee: my adviser, John King; Lisa Klein; and Chris Highley. Other mentor-friends cannot be forgotten, particularly John Norman. I am also grateful for the financial support from Ohio State University that allowed me to travel to England and gather many of my primary materials—grants from the Elizabeth G. Gee Fund for Research on Women and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. My brothers- and sisters-at-arms in the great melee that is graduate school also deserve my thanks: Irmgard Schopen; Paula Weston; Tom Olsen; Jennifer Cognard- Black; and the women who survived the razing of 502—Roxanne Mackie, Mary Wagner, and the memory of Carol Virginia Pohli; Paul Hanstedt and Ellen Satrom. My personal debt goes to my patient and supportive family—Mom, Dad, Chuck and Isabel, and Bob and Michelle (and Lacey and Tyler). Finally, my biggest debt goes to my partner in love, life, and work, my husband, Scott, whose own commitment to learning was my model and whose influence shaped who I am today. Without Scott, I would never have come back to college at all. Thank you. IV VITA April 24, 1961 ......................................Bom - Detroit, Michigan 1985 .................................................... B.A. Theater, Humboldt State University 1988 .................................................... M.A. Theater, Humboldt State University 1992.................................................... M.A. English, Ohio State University 1991 - present......................................Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS 1. N.W. Miller, "Sloth: The Moral Problem in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.” The International Journal o f Moral and Social Studies 7 (Aummn 1992): 255-66. 2. Nancy Weitz Miller, "Chastity, Rape, and Ideology in the Castlehaven Testimonies and Milton’s Ludlow Mask." Milton Studies 32 (1996): 151-166. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................iv V ita.....................................................................................................................................V List of Figures ................................................................................................................viii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... I Chapters: 1. Women Readers and the Conflict of Chastity, Beauty, and Rape ..................... 11 1.1 Women Readers and Virmous Exempla .................................................. 12 1.2 Chastity ..................................................................................................... 17 1.3 Beauty ....................................................................................................... 22 1.4 Rape .......................................................................................................... 26 2. Metaphor and the Mystification of Chastity: Vives and the Conduct Book Tradition................................................................................................................39 2.1 Instruction of a Christen Woman ............................................................ 42 2.2 Later Conduct Books: English Authors .................................................. 60 3. Allegory and the Fragmentation of Chastity .......................................................88 3.1 Spenser......................................................................................................91 3.2 Castlehaven and M ilton ..........................................................................110 3.3 Milton......................................................................................................119 4. Blazon and the Eroticization of Chastity: Lucretia and Susanna on Display .................................................................................................................142 VI 4.1 Lucretia ....................................................................................................146 4.2 Susanna .................................................................................................... 164 5. Ethos and the Struggle for Chastity: Women W riters ..................................... 194 5.1 Ethos, Virtue, and Female Authorship .................................................. 196 5.2 Rhetorical Virtue and the Power of Chastity ........................................ 209 5.3 The Chaste Life Devised and Displayed ............................................... 226 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................249
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