Startseite The Power of the Virgin in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

The Power of the Virgin in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  • Oz Oktem EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 27. Mai 2025
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill
arcadia
Aus der Zeitschrift arcadia Band 60 Heft 1

Abstract

Early modern England had contradictory views about female virginity. While premarital virginity was almost fetishized as insurance of legitimate bloodlines, virginity as a life choice was disapproved of as an anomaly by Protestant moralists. However, the country was ruled for forty-six years by a woman whose vowed celibacy was celebrated in cultural representations. I claim that these contradictions stem from early modern patriarchy’s unconscious that saw virginity as a source of power. A virgin, who had not been penetrated by a man, was not seen exactly as a woman in direct contrast to the male first principle. Virginity denoted a genderless space where a woman could assume male attributes such as autonomy, articulateness, military valor, and political potency. A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects these discrepancies through its four virgins. It offers lifelong celibacy as a punishment for Hermia’s filial disobedience, yet idolizes the imperial votaress in Oberon’s tale. The play also enlists various tropes that manifest virginal power. Hermia and Helena display courage and outspokenness. Hippolyta, the virgin warrior queen, is a physical threat to men. Finally, the exaltation of the fair vestal (aka Elizabeth I) is linked to the English patriarchy’s need to unsex their monarch, who being a woman was unfit to rule.

Works Cited

Barney, Stephen A. et al., eds. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (c. 625). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. 10.1017/CBO9780511482113Suche in Google Scholar

Beilin, Elaine. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987. Suche in Google Scholar

Berry, Philippa. Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen. London: Routledge, 1989.Suche in Google Scholar

Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995.Suche in Google Scholar

Brooks, Harold F., ed. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 1979.Suche in Google Scholar

Carroll, William C. “The Virgin Not: Language and Sexuality in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Survey. Ed. Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 107–20.10.1017/CCOL0521450276.010Suche in Google Scholar

Crawford, Patricia. Women and Religion in England: 1500–1750. London: Routledge, 1996.Suche in Google Scholar

Dollimore, Jonathan. “Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure.” Political Shakespeare:New Essays in Cultural Materialism. Eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1985. 72–87.Suche in Google Scholar

Dowd, Michelle M. Women’s Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture. New York, NY et al.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.10.1057/9780230620391Suche in Google Scholar

Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008.Suche in Google Scholar

Gohlke, Madelon. “‘I wooed thee with my sword:’ Shakespeare’s Tragic Paradigms.” The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Eds. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz et al. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 1980. 150–70.Suche in Google Scholar

Greenblatt, Stephen, et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. Suche in Google Scholar

Hastrup, Kirsten. “The Semantics of Biology: Virginity.” Defining Females: The Nature of Women in Society. Ed. Shirley Ardener. New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. 34–50.Suche in Google Scholar

Howard, Jean E. “Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39.4 (1988): 418–40. 10.2307/2870706Suche in Google Scholar

Jankowski, Theodora A. Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama. Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000. Suche in Google Scholar

Jankowski, Theodora A. “The Scorne of Savage People: Virginity as ‘Forbidden Sexuality’ in John Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis.” Renaissance Drama, New Series: Perspectives on Renaissance Drama 24 (1993): 123–53.10.1086/rd.24.41917298Suche in Google Scholar

Jankowski, Theodora A. Women in Power in the Early Modern Drama. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 1992.Suche in Google Scholar

Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983. Suche in Google Scholar

Jerome, Saint. Commentarii in epistolam ad Ephesios (Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians). The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. Ed. Ronald E. Heine. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Suche in Google Scholar

Jonson, Ben. Hymenaei: or The solemnities of masque, and barriers magnificently performed on the eleventh, and twelfth nights, from Christmas; at court: to the auspicious celebrating of the marriage-vnion, betweene Robert, Earle of Essex, and the Lady Frances, second daughter to the most noble Earle of Suffolke. London: Thomas Thorp, 1606. Early English Books Online. name.umdl.umich.edu/A04654.0001.001. Accessed 8 June 2024.Suche in Google Scholar

King, John N. “Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen.” Renaissance Quarterly 43.1 (1990): 30–74.10.2307/2861792Suche in Google Scholar

Knox, John. The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558). The Works of John Knox. Vol. 4. Ed. David Laing. London: James Thin, 1895.Suche in Google Scholar

Krontiris, Tina. Women and/in the Renaissance: An Essay on Englishwomen of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2000.Suche in Google Scholar

Krontiris, Tina. Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1992.Suche in Google Scholar

Ledo-Lemos, Francisco Jose. “The etymology of Latin uirgō and the Latin evolution of the consonantal group *-rgw_.” Indogermanische Forschungen 107 (2002): 220–40.10.1515/if-2002-0111Suche in Google Scholar

Marcus, Leah S. The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1986.Suche in Google Scholar

McNamara, Jo Ann Kay. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millenia. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Suche in Google Scholar

Montrose, Louis Adrian. The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1996.Suche in Google Scholar

Montrose, Louis Adrian. “Spenser and the Elizabethan Political Imaginary.” ELH 69.4 (2002): 907–46.10.1353/elh.2002.0038Suche in Google Scholar

Montrose, Louis Adrian. “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery.” Representations 33 (1991): 61–94. 10.2307/2928756Suche in Google Scholar

O’Faolain, Julia, and Lauro Martines, eds. Not in God’s Image:Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians. New York, NY: Harper, 1973.Suche in Google Scholar

Painter, William. The Palace of Pleasure. 1575. Vol. 2. Ed. Joseph Jacobs. Ballantyne, Hanson and Co., 1890.Suche in Google Scholar

Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives. Trans. Bernadotte Perrin. Harvard UP, 1959. The Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org/files/34053/34053-h/34053-h.htm#titletext. Accessed 10 June 2024.Suche in Google Scholar

Tamanini, Paulo Augusto. “The Ancient History and the Female Christian Monasticism: Fundamentals and Perspectives.” Athens Journal of History 3.3 (2017): 235–50. 10.30958/ajhis.3-3-4Suche in Google Scholar

Sanchez, Melissa E. “‘Use Me But as Your Spaniel:’ Feminism, Queer Theory, and Early Modern Sexualities.” PMLA 127.3 (2012): 493–511. 10.1632/pmla.2012.127.3.493Suche in Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Measure for Measure. The Norton Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 2021–90. Suche in Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Norton Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 805–64. Suche in Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Pericles. The Norton Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 2709–85.Suche in Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. The Norton Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 3047–109. Suche in Google Scholar

Warnicke, Retha M. Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation. London: Greenwood Press, 1983. Suche in Google Scholar

Wildfang, Robin Lorsch. Rome’s Vestal Virgins: A Study of Rome’s Vestal Priestesses in the Late Republic and Early Empire. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.10.4324/9780203968383Suche in Google Scholar

Wilson, Jean. Entertainments for Elizabeth I (Studies in Elizabethan and Renaissance Culture II). Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1980.Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-05-27
Published in Print: 2025-05-27

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. The Power of the Virgin in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  4. Sea Voyage and the Ship as Poetic Metaphors for Pre-Modern Women Poets Reflecting on Their Own Life and on Love: Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg
  5. Scheiternde Subjekte?
  6. Das Doppelte der poetischen Sprache als Problem der Kritischen Theorie
  7. Das implizite Trotzdem: Grammatiken der Hoffnung in einer gottverlassenen Welt nach Adorno, Benjamin und Lukács
  8. An Experiential Diasporic Narrative of Free Indirect Discourse:
  9. Reviews
  10. Christian Moser und Reinhard M. Möller, Hgg.: Anekdotisches Erzählen. Zur Geschichte und Poetik einer kleinen Form. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. 445 S.
  11. Olga Katharina Schwarz: Rationalistische Sinnlichkeit. Zur philosophischen Grundlegung der Kunsttheorie 1700 bis 1760. Leibniz – Wolff – Gottsched – Baumgarten (Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte 102 [336]). Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. 370 S.
  12. Anna-Lena Eick: „Geschichte zerfällt in Bilder, nicht in Geschichten“: Visualität in der literarischen Geschichtsdarstellung. Paderborn: Brill and Fink, 2024. 407pp.
  13. Katharina Pektor, Hg.: René Char und Peter Handke: Gute Nachbarn. Gedichte, Briefe, Texte und Bilder. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag (Edition Petrarca), 2024. 251 S.
  14. Tomasz Mizerkiewicz: Czytanie postkrytyczne. Teorie i praktyki literaturoznawcze po konstruktywizmie (Postcritical Reading. Literary Theories and Practices After Constructivism) Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2024. 274pp.
Heruntergeladen am 2.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/arcadia-2025-2006/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen