This week’s readings followed the theme of revision and projecting onto historical works. It wasn’t until after reading them that I realized that I do tend to look at documents with a bit of a modern bias, picking them apart to find the oppression and subjugation of women. Because of my experience as a women’s and gender studies major in college, and the fact that I read a lot of blogs these days that focus on feminist issues, I am, in a way, trained to always attempt to be aware of difference and privilege. However, it never occurred to me until Purkiss’ article that looking at literature or history from this perspective might be a less legitimate way of looking at them.
While I understand Purkiss’ point, I’m simply not convinced that reading these writings through a feminist lens is inherently less appropriate than from another perspective; ultimately, we are never going to be able to look at the work without imposing some kind of filter to it. Purkiss provides some examples involving different ways these texts could have been intended to function and some ways that we might be projecting our view of a feminist consciousness onto them. However, while she has provided potential alternative interpretations, she has not provided significant evidence that they are not demonstrating an early feminist consciousness and, more importantly, isn’t really giving any indication of why it might be harmful of us to see early feminist ideology if there isn’t any.
My first real question about Purkiss’ argument was: who’s to say that these writings were not actually feminist? While the way one labels and categorizes oneself is indeed important, those self-identifications aren’t the limit of one’s categories, especially in the case of categories that are only recognized as distinct aspects of identity after the fact. For instance, the idea of homosexuality as a defining identity is a fairly recent and culturally specific one, historically speaking; does this reduce the potential theoretical value of writings about same-sex love by someone who did not necessarily consider herself “a lesbian”?
In looking at history, eras and movements of thought are often categorized and named after the fact; should we not examine the great thinkers of the European Renaissance as such because they did not term themselves as part of a “Renaissance”? Sometimes the distance of history allows scholars to see a bigger picture and identify commonalities and generalities in a way that someone personally involved in the time wouldn’t be able to, especially if that person’s perspective was limited because of social factors such as gender, class, or race.
Purkiss seems to believe that looking at these early modern writings, particularly Swetnam’s, from a feminist point of view might be patently revisionist; for instance, she outlines ways in which the archetype of the unruly woman might not be representative of actual women at all, but at Swetnam’s time was used as a symbol, representing a government in disarray and allowing authors to satirize the governing bodies without putting themselves at personal or professional risk. While this interpretation seems entirely plausible, in the context of feminist readings of that text it also seems vaguely anti-feminist, implying that feminist readers might be looking too hard to find ahistorical misogyny in older works. Some of Purkiss’ points often come across as carping; her concern over the conflating of misogyny with patriarchy in works like Swetnams’s seems to be quibbling over definitions and looking for something to criticize (in the context of the arguments that she’s criticizing).
While it is inarguably important that interpretations of history be as accurate as possible, the extant misogyny as demonstrated by Swetnam and Speght’s written response to it seem more potentially productive as an area of literature study than the definitions and existence of patriarchy at the time, which might be more relevant as a completely separate topic of research.
While Purkiss may intend for her criticism to primarily impact the way we look at historical texts, some of her arguments have much more modern potential applications. Her analysis of these anti-woman pamphlets positions them as simple entertainment, humor, or satire. This particular interpretation, while potentially an accurate one, is also potentially harmful, as dismissing misogyny in the name of humor is an issue very much relevant today. More specifically, Purkiss’ explanation follows the same line of reasoning as several defensive non-apologies issued in the media earlier this year for various racist or sexist offenses. In July of 2012, Daniel Tosh and other comedians defended crude, misogynist remarks that Tosh made during a stand-up comedy performance (he said that it would be “funny” if a female audience member was raped) as humor; more recently, Harvard University’s student newspaper claimed that a racist column that described Asian applicants to the University as homogenous stereotypes was merely satire.
These instances, along with the acceptance of such reasoning, is only further legitimized by arguments like Purkiss’. For instance, while she may be accurate in her interpretation of the imagery of the unruly woman in Swetnam’s piece as satirical humor unintended to harm actual women, it is dangerous to allow the piece to exist without commenting on and challenging its obvious misogyny (even if, as an author, your purpose is not to examine or analyze that misogyny as its primary attribute). To do so would imply that that kind of “humor” is acceptable and even has historical value; the more those messages are allowed to permeate our cultural consciousness, the harder it will be to battle similar misogyny in our own world.
On the other hand, Joan Kelly’s ideas of a tradition of women feminist thinkers in the centuries before the French Revolution look to make visible a thread of feminist thinking in a time that had previously been seen as containing very few, if any, women feminist thinkers. In addition, by looking for these intellects, she seems to legitimize the practice of “intellectual resistance at a remove from action”; this divide between theory and action, and the question of whether one can or should operate independently of the other, is fiercely debated among feminist scholars today, especially in the context of the university (Kelly 6). A new perspective on the topic has the potential to add to the debate. Finally, by collecting and connecting these theorists, Kelly is able to construct a sketch of the intellectual foundations that inspired and supported feminists who were thinking and writing during and after the French Revolution.
While I personally believe that Kelly’s work is valuable, I keep coming back to the question of what is the practical purpose of determining this kind of intellectual lineage? On the one hand, any time that an idea or movement’s predecessor can be identified, we can use that knowledge to better understand the decisions and tactics made by that movement; their actions will have a clearer context and motivation. But on the other hand, what can be more directly drawn from these identifications to contribute to the modern body of feminist knowledge? Could we look at the ways in which writers like Christine de Pisan (whom Kelly insists on calling by her first name, while referring to all other authors mentioned in the piece by their last) formed their ideas in the face of the “overwhelming authority of the learned on women’s inferiority” in order to create a framework for addressing and resisting modern versions of these messages (Kelly 13)? For instance, de Pisan and her contemporaries were interested in reinterpreting “the record on women, historical and scriptural” in order to reveal a history of women’s agency (Kelly 20). Since, as discussed by Callaghan, revisionist readings of history are still today seen as a legitimate way of gaining “a far more comprehensive view of culture,” it could be important to acknowledge that the roots of this approach extend further back into our history than originally thought.
Furthermore, the discoveries made by de Pisan and her cohorts regarding “precedents of women’s governance… and for their learning” could provide a crude foundation for modern feminists who are interested in approaching the same histories from a revisionist point of view (Kelly 21); de Pisan has done some of the ground work in this regard, and her discoveries could reveal to us today ways in which pre-14th- century women were included in various aspects of public life, such as women’s involvement in warfare and in stories of “the female origins of culture and civilization” (Kelly 21 and 25), that might otherwise have been obscured from us by traditional methods of knowledge-forming. Finally, and this is a less academically valid reason to follow this line of argument, but it seems like an appropriate way to honor the memory of feminists like de Pisan by looking for and validating their work as they did to women who came before them.
From another point of view, perhaps it isn’t even the content of the writings of the women of this period that are of primary importance; perhaps the mere existence of these communities of thought is their main contribution to feminist knowledge. This acknowledgement could be seen as similar to chronicling any other revolutionary movement, where it’s important to have a basic knowledge so that we can look back and be inspired; for instance, in America every student learns about the Civil Rights Movement in order to recognize the struggles faced by people who were among the first to publicly think a certain way. To someone beginning her feminist journey today, the idea that women’s rights and powers are “newly restricted” might be a bit of a surprise; to discover that the idea had first been recorded in pre-Revolution France would be astounding but revelatory (Kelly 22). By looking at these past movements, can individual feminist thinkers today – especially those working outside the academy, just forming their ideas, or facing the barrier of multiple marginalities – be inspired to look for a community, or to see the possibility for one? Or, is taking this approach simply falling into the trap that Purkiss describes where we see the female authors only because we have been looking so hard to see a female consciousness?
Personally, I think it’s very interesting that the secondary readings for this topic focused on the issue of imposing a modern sensibility on historical texts, because my first reaction to the primary readings was framed in a very modern context. The exchange between Speght and Swetnam resembles, in many ways, an exchange had on the internet in the context of a blog and its comments. The disclaimers that Swetnam lists at the beginning of the pamphlet – that the only people who will be upset by his writing are the ones who it accurately describes (thereby implying that only “froward,” vicious women will be upset), that the women he describes shouldn’t speak up against him because to do so will only prove their guilt, and that he sees no reason to respond to his critics – are eerily reminiscent of those put forward in blog posts where writers claim that their points will only upset people if they’re true, and a commenter criticizing a writer’s misogyny is used as proof that women are crazy or that feminists are humorless. His claims of self-awareness act as built-in defenses against women’s criticism. It’s also interesting to note that the idea that women will use tears and/or sex to get what they want has survived for this long, as has the stereotype of women taking all morning to do their hair and put on makeup. These points alone, along with the obviousness of the similarities between Swetnam’s and 21st century misogynist writing, should be enough to convince readers that a feminist interpretation of them would not be without value.
Speght’s response, as well, follows the format of many feminist replies to such sexist writings, as she criticizes his bad grammar and sentence structure, weak imagery, and poor logic (I am very aware of the fact that I’m projecting my own pro-feminist bias here, in siding both with Speght and with the pro-feminist commenters on these blogs).
However, the strength of her argument (in my opinion) comes in her point-by-point rebuttal of his biblically based arguments where she logically critiques his arguments and intelligently points out all of the places in which he took quotes out of context. She also keeps an even and level tone throughout her piece, and matches his faulty examples with her own more solid ones. She also manages to point out women’s positive attributes without criticizing men as a whole, although she does land some stinging barbs as regards Swetnam’s writing style and intelligence. Overall, while I do recognize that imposing more drastic modern beliefs on historical writings can be a pointless exercise, I do firmly believe that when dealing with texts such as Swetnam’s and Speght’s, which obviously deal with gender roles, stereotypes, and gender relations, a feminist lens is a completely appropriate one with which to read them.
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