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Developing Female Desire and Gender Balance in Early Modern Italian, English, And Silence, Expression, Manifestation: Developing Female Desire and Gender Balance in Early Modern Italian, English, and Spanish Drama by Mitchel Baccinelli A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL August 2016 Copyright 2016 by Mitchel Baccinelli ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank his committee members for their tremendous help and guidance throughout the writing of this manuscript. I would also like to express a special thanks to my advisor who encouraged me to begin this work. Lastly, I would like to thank Addys Guerra for ceaseless personal support during this writing process. iv ABSTRACT Author: Mitchel Baccinelli Title: Silence, Expression, Manifestation: Developing Female Desire and Gender Balance in Early Modern Italian, English, and Spanish Drama Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Frédéric Conrod Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2016 Renaissance and Baroque drama offers a view into gender dynamics of the time. What is seen is a development in the allowed expression and manifestation of desire by females, beginning from a point of near silence, and arriving at points of verbal statement and even physical violence. Specifically, in La Mandragola by Niccolò Machiavelli, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, and Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega, there appears a chronological progression, whereby using desire and its expression as a metric in conjunction with modern concepts of gender and sexuality to measure a shift in relation to what is and is not allowed to be expressed by women. v DEDICATION This manuscript is dedicated to my family who have always encouraged my academic endeavors. I would also like to dedicate this work to my girlfriend, Addys, for giving me motivation when I myself could not. Silence, Expression, Manifestation: Developing Female Desire and Gender Balance in Early Modern Italian, English, and Spanish Drama I. Gender Balance: A New Structure for Studying Gender Dynamics ................................1 II. La Mandragola: Unexpressed Desire ...........................................................................15 1. Virtù and Fortuna in La Mandragola .........................................................................18 2. Machiavelli’s Two Audiences ....................................................................................24 3. Lucrezia and Her Virtù ...............................................................................................27 4. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................31 III. Romeo and Juliet: Expression of Rebellious Desires ..................................................33 1. Rebelling Against the Old ..........................................................................................34 2. Juliet’s Rebellion ........................................................................................................38 3. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................44 IV. Fuenteovejuna: The Armed Woman and Her Righteous Violence ............................46 1. The Justifiability of the Rebellion ..............................................................................48 2. Laurencia in Drag .......................................................................................................54 3. Going Forward ...........................................................................................................60 V. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................62 Notes .................................................................................................................................67 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................69 vii I. Gender Balance: A New Structure for Studying Gender Dynamics In the Renaissance, power and agency, which so often were allocated differently according to gender, begin to change. The rise of powerful female monarchs such as Isabel I of Castile and Elizabeth I of England, who served as more than mere figureheads, and brought on periods of marked prosperity to their nations helped alter perspectives in regards to the abilities of females. Isabel I was part of the ruling couple which sponsored Columbus’s journey to the New World, which would bring unimaginable success and riches to Spain, so much so that the later collapse of the national economy would leave space for nostalgia for the bygone age of the female ruler. Elizabeth I was later the woman who would destroy the Armada which helped establish that Spanish dominance. More importantly, she represented an important development from Isabel I in the spectrum of female agency, as Elizabeth I, Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, would succeed in all of her endeavors, including the aforementioned destruction of the Spanish Armada, without the assistance of a King, a male counterpart. This changing concept, seen politically, also is reflected in the literature of the time, which demonstrates developments in self-agency in respect to the what can or cannot be done by each gender. What we can see in some of these works more is a development of agency in expression, the ability to express desire, specifically, the changes in ways that a female could express desire. Desire in itself becomes an effective metric for the development of gender agency as it creates a smooth gradient from mental to verbal to physical actions. Desire can be identified from its genesis in the character’s 1 mind until the physical manifestation of that desire. Expressing desires was also heavily controlled, with clear distinctions being made as to what was allowed and what was not allowed to be desired by people according to their respective genders, offering clear points from which to analyze desire. Michel Foucault speaks of such divisions in his History of Sexuality saying “Up to the end of the eighteenth century, three major explicit codes…governed sexual practices…They determined, each in its own way, the division between licit and illicit” (37). He furthers this discussion of the division between licit and illicit action through “the cycle of prohibition,” stating “Renounce yourself or suffer the penalty of being suppressed; do not appear if you do not want to disappear. Your existence will be maintained only at the cost of your nullification” (84). These same concepts about sex and sexual desire appear to hold some relevance in the general expression of desire, specifically in the ways these desires are expressed. What we end up seeing is a division in how desires can be thought of and then expressed verbally, or performed physically throughout the Renaissance and Baroque in Spain, across genders. Just as various acts were allowed or prohibited in sexual contexts, expression of desire by females was allowed or prohibited to different extents, and those limit begin to change. To explore this point, I will examine three works of three literary traditions: La Mandragola by Niccolò Machiavelli, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, and Fuenteovejuna by Lope de Vega. These works are organized geographically and chronologically in order to best trace the development of gender thought within European Renaissance theatre. Beginning in Italy, the birthplace of the European Renaissance, in the early 1500s, I then move to England in the late 1500s, where the Italian forms were being reexamined with new information, and ending in Spain in the early 1600s, with the 2 transition into the Baroque, and its inversion and decadence of the Renaissance forms. This will in turn cover the Late Renaissance in Italy, the Late Renaissance in England, and the transition into the Baroque, establishing a time period towards the end of the Early Modern Age in order to look at some of the developments in allowed expression of desire nearing the turn to Modernity. The works selected are also significant because each of these works is a canonical work which captures the mood and frame of thought of its respective era. This will allow for the examination of desire in this time period to be carried out through examples central to the general ideas of the socio-historical contexts. Beginning with La Mandragola, we find Lucrezia, who has the desire to be a mother, which her impotent husband cannot make her, but also a desire to select a sexual partner other than her husband. She still was not allowed to express this desire, but the audience acknowledges that Lucrezia has such a desire, and accepts it. Throughout the play, this almost silent character, if we compare the amount of lines she is given with her importance to the work, is able to work through a male character, utilizing opportunities which arise in order to change circumstances in her favor. Still, Lucrezia is not able to verbally express her desires. However, in Romeo and Juliet, we do see this change. Juliet, a young female with almost no personal agency is allowed to express her desires verbally. That ability to speak is the second step in the gender advancements in the Renaissance, and not simply the ability to speak, but the ability to speak for herself. The dynamics of the play are such that rather than Romeo being the man
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