Understanding the Female Body in Early Modern England

• Thesis title in Czech: Pojetí ženského těla v raně novověké Anglii
• Thesis title in English: Understanding the Female Body in Early Modern England
• Key words: feminita|tělo|raně novověká anglická literatura|raně novověká anglická kultura
• English key words: early modern English literature|early modern English culture|femininity|body
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2015/2016
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 16.06.2016
• Date of assignment: 16.06.2016
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 23.06.2016
• Date and time of defence: 19.06.2018 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 20.05.2018
• Date of proceeded defence: 19.06.2018
• Submitted/finalized: committed by worker on behalf on and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Helena Znojemská, Ph.D.

Guidelines

The BA thesis will concentrate on the comprehension of the female body in early modern England, dating from 1400 to 1700, with a focus on the woman’s reproductive system and which was clearly connected to an understanding of her as a feminine being in a socio-cultural context.
Firstly I will analyze the representation of women in English translations of the Bible, where woman is classified as an inferior being to man. The reason is that God first created Adam and from his side came Eve, which leads to an interesting analogy later discussed by Thomas Laqueur and defined by the theory of one sex model. Adopting this concept for my own analysis I shall argue that woman was biologically regarded as an “imperfect” man, therefore her organs were seen as the same as man’s but incomplete. Because Eve was the first sinner, the purpose of her reproductive system, meaning mainly menstruation and labour pains, was seen as a type of punishment. It had a great impact in the cultural sphere, meaning that female sexuality conjured fear and repulsion, yet had and undeniable allure.
The discussion will continue with the general concept of the human body and apply it to women. Human constitution was derived from the Greek physician Claudius Galenus, whose understanding of anatomy and medicine was principally influenced by the theory of humorism, which worked with the idea of four bodily humours. Men’s bodies were hotter and women’s colder. The cold disposition was not very advantageous to woman’s position in the world of men, because it functioned as an explanation to various reproductive issues. For example the birth of a girl was explained by insufficient heat in the womb. Heat was seen as a source of vigour, strength, courage and intellect, which thus again meant that men were naturally superior to women.
One of the most interesting parts of the female body was the womb. It was seen as a separate organ with a will, therefore woman was wholly at its mercy. Combined with predominantly cold humour it only further weakened her. Many physical and psychological problem were attributed to it, particularly such female problems as irrationality, uncotrollable passion, hysteria and womb disease, which will be paid attention to. Its periodical cleaning called menstruation was seen as something polluted and unclean. As a result woman was constantly at the mercy of her own body and any disbalance could severely change her life. She was perceived as someone who is not in control of herself and therefore must be governed by a man.
The analysis of the discourse of the body is essential in order to understand what it meant to be a woman. For example medical books seem to be much influenced with underlying socio-cultural assumptions about the differences between the sexes and thus they participated in the contruction of proper femininity. Female sexuality was seen as having a destructive power but in Shakespeare we find that hatred of the innate evil of the female body is the mark not of common sense of that time, but of derangement, of male insecurity and of tragic misjudgement of women.[1]Medical and literary works influenced each other, as when menstruation was referred to as “flowers”. Such metaphorical ways of description and their cultural implications will also be a part of my analysis.The combination of these discourses had a major impact on the ways in which the woman‘s body is talked about. Therefore I plan to incorporate various types of documents such as drama, poetry, medical books or midwife handbooks in my analysis.

[1]N.H.Keeble, The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman: A Reader, (Routledge,1994), 34.

References

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Culpeper, Nicholas. Culpeper's Directory for Midwives. Or, a Guide for Women: the second part. Discovering…Diseases. London, 1662.
Delaney, Janice, Lupton, Mary Jane and Toth, Emily. The Curse: A cultural history of menstruation. University of Illinois Press, 1988.
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