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Constructing Gender in Early Modern English Poetry

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Constructing Gender in Early Modern English Poetry SPEAKING GARDENS: CONSTRUCTING GENDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH POETRY By KRISTEN D. SMITH A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2009 1 © 2009 Kristen D. Smith 2 To my Lord, who made this possible, and to Charles, who made it happen 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Had it been up to me, this study would never have been finished. I would have kept tweaking, pruning, and rearranging like any devoted gardener. While I strove for formality and order, a “gardener’s garden,” as the children say in The Secret Garden, the reality is a somewhat looser creation, more organic and spontaneous and, one hopes, better for the change. It took a lot of work nonetheless, and by a number of people. Firstly, I must thank Dr. Ira Clark, my adviser and director, whose constant goal has been to help me accomplish my own goals, and whose teaching, encouragement, and direction have helped me discover what those are. My dedicated dissertation committee, Dr. Melissa Hyde, Dr. Judith Page, and Dr. R. A. Shoaf, has with their expertise and patience also been instrumental in bringing an unruly project to fruition. Very deep thanks go as well to Dr. Peter Rudnytsky, who has provided insight, invaluable learning opportunities and books, as well as a research assistantship that allowed me sufficient free time to devote to my own scholarship. Other colleagues and friends have consistently expressed enthusiasm and encouragement, both valuable commodities in the midst of a sometimes daunting undertaking. My debts reach far beyond the academic world, to the many people I love and who love me. My husband and best friend Charles has held my hand, believed in me, supported me, and loved me without fail, no matter how difficult it got. My mother and father have given me constant love and encouragement, a hunger for learning, and an unwillingness to settle for less than I can achieve. This accomplishment has been a long time coming for them. I thank my sister Erin Bouknight, and the many other friends and family who have walked the whole long road with me. I always thank God for all of you. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................9 2 REAL-WORLD GARDENS..................................................................................................23 Introduction.............................................................................................................................23 Thinking Green Thoughts.......................................................................................................25 Great Houses and Green Spaces.............................................................................................30 Garden Designs and Uses .......................................................................................................36 Non-Literary Garden Writing.................................................................................................39 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................40 3 PERFORMING FEMALE IDENTITY IN CREATED SPACE............................................43 Introduction.............................................................................................................................43 Space and Materiality .............................................................................................................49 Performativity.........................................................................................................................53 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................62 4 LITERARY GARDENS AND SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPES...............................................63 Introduction.............................................................................................................................63 Judeo-Christian Garden Traditions.........................................................................................63 Classical Pastoral and Retirement Traditions.........................................................................69 Literary Gardens .....................................................................................................................74 5 POETIC GARDENS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ..............................................89 Introduction.............................................................................................................................89 Edmund Spenser .....................................................................................................................91 Ben Jonson – “To Penshurst” ...............................................................................................100 Herbert and Vaughan – Gardens of the Soul........................................................................104 Andrew Marvell....................................................................................................................115 John Milton – Paradise Lost.................................................................................................131 6 FEMININE WORLDS: LANYER, SPEGHT, CAVENDISH.............................................141 Introduction...........................................................................................................................141 Aemilia Lanyer .....................................................................................................................145 5 Rachel Speght .......................................................................................................................155 Margaret Cavendish..............................................................................................................165 7 BEYOND THE PALE: PHILIPS AND BEHN....................................................................188 Katherine Philips ..................................................................................................................188 Aphra Behn...........................................................................................................................213 8 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................235 APPENDIX CAVENDISH’S THE CONVENT OF PLEASURE................................................242 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................246 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................255 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy SPEAKING GARDENS: CONSTRUCTING GENDER IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH POETRY By Kristen D. Smith August 2009 Chair: Ira Clark Major: English The topos of the pleasure garden has from antiquity been associated, sometimes even equated, in Western culture primarily with ideologies of the feminine in literature and in culture more generally. In the seventeenth century, the garden and naturalized spaces offered a particularly powerful symbolic matrix to the project of gender construction and manipulation in English literature. This dialogue involved both male and female poets, although they approached the topos from different perspectives and consequently employed it to different ends. Published female poets of the time exploited the gendered associations of the garden topos to gain authority in their art. The study begins with an ecocritical and historical evaluation of real-world pleasure garden spaces as they were created physically and culturally in seventeenth-century England. It then moves to establish the theoretical framework by which the poetic readings are constructed. This framework utilizes ecocritically inflected feminist spatial theory and speech act theory to read the use of the garden topos in the poems that follow. Native and European Renaissance garden traditions combine in early modern England, to create a strong garden imaginary with which poets could interact creatively. The study thus surveys canonical works that feature gardens prominently, tracing the development of the topos to the beginning of the seventeenth century. 7 In that century, male poets—including Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton—tended to use the garden trope straightforwardly and in line with the received traditions. Female poets, on the other hand, because they are culturally associated with it, tend to have a relationship with the garden that is both more problematic and more productive. I examine first the garden poetry of these male poets and then turn to that of Aemilia Lanyer, Rachel Speght, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, and Aphra Behn. These writers used the symbolism of the garden performatively to interact with the world as artists, and
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