“Assay the Power You Have”: Distorted Female Autonomy in Measure for Measure
Chantelle Tadros
Instructor’s Introduction
Chantelle Tadros submitted this outstanding essay for “WR151: Controversial Shakespeare,” and in it she tackles one of Shakespeare’s most controversial scenes: the attempted sexual assault of a nun by a powerful politician. However, her essay points out that the play does not rob women of all agency. The sophisticated thesis holds that Measure for Measure represents sexual desire as a dangerously anarchic force, and one that can be wielded by women even though the play ultimately disapproves of it. Chantelle’s ability to think deeply about lines and words that most readers would breeze by makes the essay a pleasure to read even though the play itself is disturbing.
The historical contextualization of that creative argument, though, is why I urge anyone in a research seminar to read this essay. Her own firsthand work with primary sources not only clarifies the systemic gender injustices of Shakespeare’s society, but also unearths some remarkable texts from the Renaissance that were more sympathetic to women. Bawdy ballads, misogynist pamphlets, and an essay on women’s rights all converge in this paper to give us the deep background we need to appreciate the play’s ideological impacts. In fact, in her skillful handling of a 1632 legal treatise, Chantelle provides fascinating insight into how the laws of the time both oppressed and empowered women.
Those English laws, of course, influenced the legal system we have in America today. And Chantelle’s paper demonstrates how literary texts themselves influence the political, cultural, and social frameworks for thinking about gender roles, rape, desire, consent, autonomy, accountability, and similar issues that are still urgent topics of discussion for us. We often hear that Shakespeare shaped the modern world; if you want to discover one way that’s true, then read and enjoy this paper.
Liam Meyer
From the Writer
I never pegged myself as much of a Shakespeare or history fanatic. In fact, I remember warning Professor Meyer of how little I knew about English history. Fast-forward a few months, and I found myself telling my family fun facts about the Renaissance period at the dinner table (they were equally as taken aback). This course and this essay transformed my exploration of initially unfamiliar territory into a heartfelt pursuit of untold stories. My deeply rooted interest in learning about women of the past pushed me through the many hours I spent deciphering legal texts and creative pieces in Old English fonts. This paper is a testament to all the women who came before me—those whose voices were silenced and whose lives were overshadowed. I hope this essay sheds light on the resilience of women in literary narratives and historical accounts, highlighting just how far we have come.
“Assay the Power You Have”: Distorted Female Autonomy in Measure for Measure
In Jeff Carr’s essay touching on sexual offenses in Measure for Measure, the literary critic reasons that Angelo suffered the gravest sexual violation, rape, and emphasizes that it was “committed by a woman” (79). If Carr accurately describes Angelo as the primary victim of sexual offense in the play, I argue his claim implies that the play grants women more authority and sexual autonomy than men—that the play creates a dynamic in which a man has less control over his body and sexual endeavors than a woman. However, other scholars, such as Marcia Riefer, contest this idea and instead support the belief that Measure for Measure emphasizes its female characters’ “powerlessness” (158) and displays such women as fraudulent, fragile inferiors under the command of male characters (161). Although Carr does consider the fact that, out of all the characters, only Angelo indeed experienced rape, he overlooks the male origins and nefarious implications of the female dominance involved in the rape—a choice the play makes to malign women’s image and reputation in Early Modern England. On the other hand, Riefer’s argument accounts for the negative connotations, like corruption and dishonesty, the play links to such female power but does not recognize how the play does still give women some power and agency. By way of close reading and contextualizing documents such as The Lavves Resolutions of Womens Rights and Titus Andronicus’ Complaint, my research shows that Measure for Measure presents a society in which women have more power than was customary in Early Modern England but weaponizes this agency to criticize and diminish women, unjustly depicting and generalizing them as deceitful and dependent individuals.
In Early Modern England, the laws and the society by which they were formed endowed women with little power—most notably, to this essay, power over their sexuality and bodies. In historian Laura Gowing’s book Common Bodies, she describes how “women’s sexual agency [was] a metaphor for royal tyranny and political chaos” (85). Gowing continues by adding how “female assertion could always be associated with whorishness, witchcraft and sin” (85). Essentially, my research confirms that a society where women assert control over themselves, a human right freely granted to men at the time, alludes to disorder. These misogynistic ideologies, unfortunately, were not unusual in Early Modern England and appeared often, as Gowing points out, in various satires that imagine a world “ruled by women, and women were ruled by desire” (86). For instance, my reading of a satire titled The Gossips Meeting advances Gowing’s attestation. In this piece, the author writes about a society in which women belittle and reign over their husbands: “If my husband scold I will pull him by the ears, / I am no such fool as to cringe to a man, / If that he strikes me, I will strike him again.” The violence the author highlights in this passage suggests that when women have power over men, chaos, brutality, and absurdity prevail. The author ridicules the idea of women having dominance over their husbands and further pushes the culture to essentially strip women of any power or autonomy. My research further indicates that such constraint on female power during the Renaissance period was not limited to their sexual autonomy. In the legal book The Lavves Resolutions of Womens Rights, the author points out how “[women had] nothing to do in constituting Lawes, or consenting to them, in interpreting of Lawes, or in hearing them interpreted at lectures, leets or charges, and yet they [stood] strictly tyed to mens establishment” (2). Indeed, women in Early Modern England virtually did not have a say over their own bodies but likewise had little to no power over the laws governing their daily lives. The obscuring of female voices in the Renaissance period laws especially harmed women when it came to speaking out about rape.
The traditional, misogynistic ideologies rampant in Early Modern England produced a culture in which female rape victims could not openly voice their experiences without being disregarded. As Gowing puts it, “a woman who had been raped had already, to some degree, lost her reputation with her chastity” (92). A raped woman’s testimony immediately became “less credible” (92) when the culture realized that she had lost her virginity. In historian Garthine Walker’s book Rereading Rape and Sexual Violence in Early Modern England, she explains how “an assertion of rape…implied that [a woman] had been forced to submit to the rapist. But sexual submission indicated consent” (6). In other words, my research reveals that, in addition to the loss of virtue and hence credibility that accompanied the rape of a woman, the dominant culture often manipulated the narrative to imply that she submitted, even if forcefully, to a man’s will and thus had consented. These manipulative tactics “made speaking about sex dangerous for women” (Walker 5). Walker explains that rape was popularly depicted as “ordinary, male, heterosexual activity,” while “the usual popular language for ordinary, female, heterosexual activity was that of sin.” Indeed, the historian adds that “speech about rape was semantically restricted” (5). Women could not actually correlate rape with its sexual aspect without being disregarded legally as Catharine MacKinnon says, “rape is a sex crime that is not [legally] regarded as a crime when it looks like sex” (MacKinnon quoted in Walker 5). The heavily patriarchal civilization that constituted Early Modern England restricted female discourse on rape by dismissing the sexual implications of the crime, while also utilizing a raped woman’s loss of honor to discount her testimony—creating a culture that hardly believed these testimonies.
Due to this skepticism, female rape victims in certain legal cases would undergo a physical examination to prove that the perpetrators had actually raped them. However, most of the time, even “physical damage was not enough: a woman had to have cried out, run for help, and shown the torn and bloodied evidence of her clothes and her body” (Gowing 92). The law and culture at the time regularly and blatantly disregarded evidence of a woman’s rape, a choice that highlights the reign of intensely misogynistic ideologies in Early Modern England. Women of the Renaissance period lived in a culture that deliberately drowned out their voices, especially when they built up the courage to make such voices heard. Authorities and civilians in Early Modern England often overlooked women’s testimonies because of the widespread assumption that women foolishly gossip and, thus, try to deceive others. In the piece The Schole House of Women (1572), the author writes, “It is lyke appropryed, all women to bable / As dogges to barke, and geese to gagle.” According to the OED, the verb “to bable” means “to reveal (information, a secret) by speaking indiscreetly” (1.c.) but also “to talk foolishly” (3.b.). The passage essentially generalizes all women as gossip-driven and underhanded, painting women as untrustworthy, which particularly applies when it comes to their testimonies against male perpetrators. I argue that the culture’s misleading characterization of women encourages, thus, the need to silence them. In the ballad Titus Andronicus Complaint, Titus, a fictional Roman general and father, speaks about the rape of his daughter:
My daughter ravished without remorse,
And tooke away her honour quite perforce.
……………………………………………..
They cut her tongue, whereby she could not tell,
……………………………………………..
Then both her hands they falsly cut off quite,
Whereby their wickednesse she could not write.
This excerpt reveals the prevalent silencing of “ravished” women in Early Modern England. The OED defines the tongue as “the power of articulation” (II.4.a.). The metaphor of cutting a female rape victim’s tongue and hands pinpoints how rapists, and the enabling culture, prevented women from speaking about their traumatic experiences. These violent analogies also highlight the severity and stringency of such silencing tactics. Although the author of this ballad uses phrases such as “without remorse” and “their wickednesse” to spotlight and criticize the inhumanity of rape and the silencing of victims, the ballad suggests that despite these objections, the Renaissance period society allowed and made typical the silencing of female rape victims. In doing so, the culture in Early Modern England stripped women of their dignity and erased their power. Measure for Measure absorbs and reflects these prevalent perspectives on female authority while simultaneously shifting the dynamic in the opposite direction as it pictures a world where women have some agency.
In contrast to the predominant attitudes toward women in Early Modern England, Measure for Measure bestows upon its female characters more power than was conventional at the time. For instance, when Claudio is sentenced to execution, the play persistently portrays Isabella as his only way out, endowing her with all the power in the situation. Even Lucio emphasizes to her that “[a]ll hope is gone, / Unless [she has] the grace by [her] fair prayer / To soften Angelo” (1.4.72-74) and that she must “[a]ssay the power [she has]” (1.4.83). The play’s explicit use of the word “power” highlights how it unequivocally establishes Isabella, a woman, as the sole person able to help in a situation affecting her brother, a man. Moreover, the OED defines the verb “to assay” as “to test the nature of” (I.1.a.). I argue that the use of the word “assay” underscores the novelty of Isabel’s authority, suggesting that the play recognizes how its decision to grant a woman power blatantly defies traditional Renaissance culture. By deciding to place a woman in a position to influence Angelo, a man of high political status, the play seemingly opposes the ideas discussed in The Araignment of Leuud by Joseph Swetnam. This text from the early seventeenth century stresses how women in Renaissance culture offered nothing profitable to society: “most [women are] degenerate from the [u]se they were framed [u]nto, by leading a proud, lazy, and idle life, to the great hinderance of their poore Husbands.” Although the underlying ideologies in this passage may seem overly misogynistic, their foundations align with the principles expressed in The Lavves Resolutions of Womens Rights, which emphasizes the lack of female voices in law and society. In other words, women had little to no say in Early Modern England, especially in law and politics, and as The Araignment of Leuud implies, the culture often negatively perceived them as worthless individuals. While considering the context of the Renaissance period, my research shows that Measure for Measure resists the traditional representation of women as powerless and weak, as opposed to Riefer’s argument, and even attempts to deviate the culture toward one where women hold significant influence over the lives of men. However, this influence correlates to roots and implications that tarnish its integrity and virtue.
Although the play’s choice to grant Isabella control may appear proto-feminist, her power contrarily stems from aspects like weakness and sexuality, which diminishes its solidity and probity. When Lucio persuades Isabella to speak with Angelo, he explains, “When [women] weep and kneel, / All their petitions are as freely theirs / As they themselves would owe them” (1.4.89-91). The play candidly points out how, although it gives women some agency, their power stems solely from their frailty. Measure for Measure’s relatively progressive decision to put a woman in a position of power bears complexities since the play depicts female power as one that merely emanates from a woman’s feebleness and a man’s sympathy for her. In other words, a woman’s power in Measure for Measure depends on a man’s response. I argue the play uses this contradictory idea of female agency to reinforce existing misogynistic ideologies that roamed in Early Modern England. In fact, the play’s doctrines coincide with the beliefs harbored in The Araignment of Leuud where the author writes: “Men I say may li[v]e without women, but women cannot li[v]e without men” (14). The play, therefore, fortifies the existing premises of a culture that blinds itself to the prospect of a woman being independently competent—where a woman may only be powerful through a man’s remorse for her vulnerability. That being said, Measure for Measure often supplements this weakening of female power with perversion. The play repeatedly sexualizes female agency, especially Isabella’s power. Namely, when Isabella almost gives up on convincing Angelo to spare Claudio, Lucio tells her, “To him again, entreat him, / Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown. / You are too cold” (2.2.60-62). The OED defines “cold” as “void of sensual passion” (II.7.c.) and “without power to move or influence” (II.11.). In employing the word “cold,” the play implies Isabella may only have an influence on Angelo if she sexualizes her discourse, filling it with desire and seduction. Especially given that Isabella epitomizes purity and chastity in Measure for Measure, her sexualization in the play problematically paints women as mere entities of pleasure and pushes for a culture that only hears their voices when they appeal to men’s lust. The objectification of Isabella in the play erodes and distorts her power, particularly since, as Gowing puts it, “female desire was characterised in a whole range of discourses as dangerous, grotesque and unsettling” (101-102). This objectification allows the play to utilize female sexuality, which was heavily frowned upon at the time, to represent women as immoral people, undeserving of bearing any influence in society. To further object to a society where women have some agency, particularly sexual in nature, the play accentuates the destructive ways in which women would employ such authority, such as to deceive others.
Measure for Measure fascinatingly seems to grant its female characters more sexual autonomy than its male characters but primarily to highlight the corruption of female desire and deception. Gowing explains that Early Modern England embraced “a sexual culture that foregrounded men’s agency and wrote out women’s” (82). However, the play clearly emphasizes the opposite. To illustrate, although Angelo endeavours to pressure Isabella into having sex with him, she ultimately devises against him with Mariana, and he ends up, as Jeff Carr stated, being the only victim of rape. Nonetheless, the sexual sovereignty the play gives to the women works against them to vilify them. When Duke Vincentio proposes the bed trick to Isabella, he states that “the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit / from reproof” (3.1.284-285). Isabella replies, “The image of it gives me content already, and / I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection” (3.2.286-287). The play stresses how Isabella acknowledges the duplicity of her actions yet rejoices and celebrates them. In doing so, the play depicts women as scheming deceivers and reinforces comparable philosophies that existed in Early Modern England culture. For instance, in The Araignment of Leuud, the author expresses how “straightway [a woman’s] mind was set [u]pon mischiefe, for by her aspiring minde and wanton will, shee quickly procured mans fall.” As shown, the Renaissance culture did not readily tolerate women and often classified them as mischievous tempters. When Measure for Measure spotlights Isabella’s eagerness to deceive Angelo and then untruthfully accuse him of rape, it further promotes the misogynistic ideologies in The Ariagnment of Leuud and encourages the culture to be wary of women’s false accusations. This excessive vigilance could have partly led to the earlier-mentioned lack of trust in women’s testimonies; as Gowing explains, there had been “a lack of confidence in the evidence of [rape] and a failure to believe its victims” (92). Altogether, the play endows women with sexual dominion only to flaunt their allegedly deceitful facet—an aspect of women that the culture in Early Modern England often criticized. Moreover, the sexual dominion women in the play uphold consistently originates from men, which further negates the legitimacy of female power in Measure for Measure.
By crediting most instances of female power to men, the play blatantly degrades women by further underlining their reliance on men. For example, Lucio convinces Isabella to commit herself more passionately to influencing Angelo into saving her brother. Similarly, the infamous bed trick, where the play seems to give women a debased form of control, should be rightfully credited to Duke Vincentio, not Isabella or Mariana. The play unfailingly guarantees that women never legitimately maintain independent control over men, and it also portrays any instances of power as generally unsuccessful. Although Isabella and Mariana, with the help of the Duke, orchestrate a scheme to rape Angelo, he does not seem to convey any traumatic consequences of being raped. When the Duke reveals himself and the fact that Mariana replaced Isabella, Angelo replies, “Immediate sentence then and sequent death / Is all the grace I beg” (5.1.420-421). Angelo makes no remark on how he was essentially raped (due to the lack of informed consent) and simply admits his own faults in the larger situation. I argue that the play utilizes Angelo’s indifference toward his traumatic experience to undermine the gravity of rape and indirectly invalidate all the women in Early Modern England who spoke out about the trauma that accompanied rape. By depicting rape casually, the play agrees with the predominant ideologies in Early Modern England—a culture where, as Walker explains, “Men redefined rape as a sexual act…claim[ing] that sex, not rape, had occurred” (5-6). The Renaissance culture often overlooked the severity of rape, and Measure for Measure emulates this negligence. In disregarding the impact of rape on female victims, the play continues to diminish women’s value and standing in society.
In this paper, I have reasoned how Measure for Measure ironically empowers its female characters, only to conversely establish that women in Early Modern England should not hold positions of power. These disguised misogynistic ideologies materialize through literary means other than plays and influence cultures aside from that of Early Modern England. For instance, Nina Bouraoui’s modern French novel, Garçon manqué, follows the story of Nina, a young girl who feels empowered by her male-dominated Algerian culture to lose her femininity, which the novel depicts as the reason for her frailty and powerlessness. Nina explains that “[elle] deviendrai[t] un homme pour venger [son] corps fragile”1(46); through this passage, the novel stresses that women may only rid themselves of weakness if they were to become men. Garçon manqué pushes for the belief that to gain power as a woman warrants an erasure of femininity, and like Measure for Measure, insists that women can never reasonably and responsibly assume power. By absorbing such powerful ideologies from their surroundings, pieces like Measure for Measure echo, even if clandestinely, the misogynistic attitudes distinguishing the patriarchal cultures that formed them.
1 My translation would be: “she will become a man to avenge her fragile body.”
Works Cited
Bouraoui, Nina. Garçon manqué. Stock, 2000.
Carr, Jeff. “Harassment, exploitation, and rape: Sexual offences in Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well.” MP: An Online Feminist Journal, vol. 3, no. 5, 2012. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.
Gowing, Laura. “Consent and Desire.” Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-century England, Yale University Press, 2003. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024. Riefer, Marcia. “‘Instruments of Some More Mightier Member’: The Constriction of Female Power in Measure for Measure.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, Jan. 1984, p. 157. https://doi.org/10.2307/2869924. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.
Shakespeare, William. Measure for Measure. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2015.
Swetnam, Joseph. The araignment of leuud. 1615. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Boston University Library. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
“Titus Andronicus Complaint. To the Tune of Fortune.” UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive, 1624, ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20040/xml. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024. The Gossips Meeting. 1674. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Boston University Library. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.
The Lavves Resolutions of Womens Rights. London, 1632. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Boston University Library. Accessed 25 Apr. 2024.
The Schole House of Women. 1572. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Boston University Library. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.
Walker, Garthine. “Rereading Rape and Sexual Violence in Early Modern England.” Gender & History, vol. 10, no. 1, Apr. 1998, pp. 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.00087. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
Chantelle Tadros is a sophomore majoring in Biology (Neurobiology Specialization) and minoring in French Studies at Boston University. Born and raised in Canada, Chantelle moved to Boston to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a doctor. She is passionate about working with underrepresented populations as a future physician and integrates her passion for social justice in every endeavor, including her writing. She would like to thank Professor Liam Meyer for his continued support and inspiration. She is also deeply grateful to her parents, Nansy Nasralla and Maged Tadros, for their unwavering encouragement and enduring love.