Silencing Female Power: Pages 6-10

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Lindsay Symmonds: Silencing Female Power
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The witch hunts not only allowed for men to purge the females sexually, but they also allowed for a form of mental and verbal purging as well. For example, confessions of witchcraft were often elicited immediately before or during torture. This implies that women were admitting to crimes they did not commit in order to avoid physical pain: "In hope of ending the anguish, she may have told the judge what she knew he wanted to hear, the already widely accepted belief that the devil was sexually irresistible to women" (Barstowe 17). In common cases, the accused witch was tortured systematically until a response was elicited. During the torture, the questions asked would be directed towards a specifically desired response. For example, rather than asking - "Are you a witch?", the question would instead be phrased - "You're a witch aren't you?". This allowed for male questions to directly control the women by forcing them to regurgitate the confessions that were created to condemn them. The use of torture to elicit the desired response from the victim combined the physical and the mental purging of women. The results of the Inquisition were simple: women learned to hold their tongues; silence and compliance became the keys to remaining alive.

The Inquisition can be held accountable for thousands of deaths. Although there were economic, religious and social explanations for its occurrence, one of its major driving forces was the male anxiety regarding females who appear to use the masculine tools of spoken or practiced knowledge and sexuality. This impulse to silence of the mental and physical power of women is evident in the literature of the English Renaissance as well. There is a distinct parallel between the male anxiety which fueled the witch hunts and the anxiety which is revealed within both Taming of the Shrew and The Duchess of Malfi. Not only is this anxiety revealed, but it results in a similar type of mental and physical purging of the female characters as well.

In Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Kate is a character who displays a large amount of independence. She frequently speaks her mind, especially regarding men and her relationships with them: "If I be waspish, best beware my sting" (II. i. 210). Because Kate displays characteristics which are traditionally reserved for men, she is quickly labeled as a shrew in need of "taming". As soon as the character of Petruchio is introduced, the reader is made aware of the fact that he views Kate in terms of a conquest. Like women accused of witchcraft, Kate does not display overt sexual promiscuity. The female tongue, however, is often associated with sexuality, and therefore she is dangerous in more ways than one: ". . . the talkative woman is frequently imagined as synonymous with the sexually available woman, her open mouth the signifier for invited entrance elsewhere" (Boose 196). Kate is a stumbling block to a patriarchal society because of the fact that she refuses to give up her gifts of wit and sarcasm and become docile. Male anxiety about female power is revealed, then, through the intense need to forcibly suppress her speech and control her behavior throughout the play: "For patience she will prove a second Grissel" (II. i. 295).

Although the nature of her torture is different from that of the torture practiced during the witch hunts, Kate endures both physical and mental torture at the hands of Petruchio. During their wedding, Petruchio behaved as a madman in order to humiliate and control Kate's emotions. The taming begins to take place through a broken nuptual. Immediately following the wedding, Petruchio whisks Kate out of her normal surroundings to and into a cabin outside of society; this deviance from the wedding celebration and movement into a surrounding that is more suitable for "taming" is not unlike the deviance from legal norms which often occurred during the witch hunts. Petruchio intentionally develops a violent nature for this section of the play. He constantly yells at and belittles his servants in an attempt to unnerve Kate. Although he speaks to her kindly, he is mentally tormenting her because his verbal treatment of her does not correspond to his physical treatment of her. Petruchio intentionally deprives her of sleep and food in an attempt to form a submissive woman:

Thus have I politicly begun my reign, And 'tis my hope to end successfully. My falcon now is sharp and passing empty, And till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged. . . And if she chance to nod I'll rail and brawl, And with the clamor keep her still awake. . . And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor (IV. i. 188-211).

Although he speaks kindly to her, he is denying her basic human conventions without which she can not function for long. These methods of control can be paralleled to the torture which took place in the witch hunts because of how they are driven by a desire to control Kate's behavior to the point where she has no access to power of any kind. In order to avoid further torment, Kate allows herself to be forced into the mold of the gentle woman, thereby capitulating to Petruchio's torture. Because her personality is bound up with her power of speech, Petruchio's taming process functions to deny her the basis of her identity. Similarly, the women accused of being witches were often denied their identities in that their professions (healers), their voices and their sexual beings were all intentionally destroyed.

Although Kate is not burned at the stake for her behavior, she shares a common fate with those accused of witchcraft because she was degraded and punished for challenging the patriarchy. By the end of the play, Kate appears to have reformed and become the perfect woman. Throughout the majority of the play, Kate has been contrasted with Bianca's sugary-sweetness in an effort to shame her into conforming to the patriarchy. However, Bianca is ultimately revealed as a manipulative woman who acts independent of the demands made by her husband. Therefore, she is shown to be the less desirable woman in the end, thus setting up a foil to Kate's new subservient character. By portraying Bianca as the less desirable woman, the theory that women should not behave independently is reinforced. Whether or not Kate's spirit is actually broken, she was humiliated and tormented regardless. Because her gender dictates her behavior, she is placed in the category of women who were relentlessly persecuted and tortured for nothing more than being women during the Inquisition. In this context, her speech at the end of the play is a type of confession which signifies her return to the norms of the patriarchy:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign. . . place your hands below your husbands foot; In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready, may it do him ease (V. ii. 146-179).

Kate's "confession" forces the reader to see the difference between the woman she first was, and the woman she was forced to become as a result of Petruchio's torment. The discrepancy between these two literary images of Kate are accurate reminders of the oppression and control exerted over women that occurred in history and of the mental and physical purging which was endured by the women persecuted in the witch hunts.
Webster's The Duchess of Malfi also displays a type of mental and physical purging which closely parallels the torture forced upon both the accused witches and the character of Kate. Although her "torture" isn't an exact reflection of that which occurred during the Inquisition, the goal of silencing female power remains the same. In Webster's Duchess of Malfi, the Duchess is a woman born into a patriarchal society. More specifically, she is born into a home where her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, attempt to control every move she makes. Webster clearly makes a bold statement about the Duchess's right to choose her own husband; this statement is particularly emphatic because her family, marriage, sexuality and life are completely destroyed as a result of her asserting self-command. Through her tragic ending, the hypocrisy and lunacy of her brothers is made clear. Despite the un-masking of her brothers, though, the Duchess still stands as a woman persecuted for her gender and strength.

The Duchess shares many similarities with the character of Kate. Although she isn't openly "shrewish", she asserts her own independence through a secret marriage with Antonio. Previously, her brothers distinctly forbid her to remarry; however, she follows her heart and disobeys their orders (lying to them all the while). After the marriage takes place, the Duchess has three children in hiding before she is found out by Bosola. When the two brothers find out about her secret life, they are both upset, but they don't agree on how the situation should be handled. Ferdinand becomes completely irrational; he is controlled by lusty images of his sister. Moreover, he likens her to a witch and then decides he will torment her until she confesses her "crimes":

Were lenitive poisons, such as are of force To make the patient mad; and straight the witch Swears by equivocation they are in love. The witchcraft lies in her rank blood. This night I will force confession from her (III. i. 75-79).

Although his behavior may stem from lustful intentions and an authority complex, the fact remains that he is disturbed about his sister's denial of his commands to remain single. This blatant denial of the male authority makes the Duchess a dangerous female; she does the unthinkable by taking her life and her sexuality into her own hands.
As a direct result of the Duchess's independence, she is placed in a realm of psychological torment. Ferdinand has her imprisoned, and he claims to be unable to look at her in the light: "This darkness suits you well" (IV. i. 31). Although this treatment doesn't rattle the Duchess as much as Ferdinand would like, he is still attempting to identify her with a beast that lives in darkness. Although Ferdinand's imprisonment of the Duchess in darkness is not as physically damaging as the torment that occurred during the witch hunts, his methods are more symbolic than physical and are disturbing to her mental state. For one thing, Ferdinand's desire to connect the Duchess with the bestial is similar to one of the major themes implicit in the witch hunts. The female was often associated with animals and described as having animalistic qualities. This association was apparent in many of the torture devices used. The pear (see figs. 1 and 2) has images of animals carved directly onto the device itself. Therefore, Ferdinand's desire to demonize his sister's body and associate her with the bestial is not unlike many of the over-arching ideas that drove the witch hunts. The Duchess' strength allows her to prevail through his first few methods of torment (imprisonment and lack of light). However, her strength begins to dwindle slightly as Ferdinand has waxen figures of her family fashioned and revealed to her as though they were dead:

That's the greatest torture souls feel in hell, In hell: that they must live, and cannot die. Portia, I'll new-kindle they coals again, And revive the rare and almost dead example Of a loving wife (IV. i. 70-74).

After being shown this, the Duchess wishes death would come quickly to her and end her mental anguish over her believed loss of her family. This desire for an end to suffering is an emotion that the Duchess shares with the women who endured similar torment during the Inquisition: "threatened with torture, they struggled to say what they thought the judges wanted to hear" (Barstowe 148).