Early modern women’s concept of woman: the weak body and the heroic inner self

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Susana
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/10973
• topic: Early modern England women; Autobiography; Body; Inner-self

“Frailty, thy name is woman!” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet I. ii. 146). Hamlet’s words to his mother encapsulate the dominant and enduring belief regarding the condition of womankind, shared by men and women likewise: women are frail or “the weaker vessel”. Moreover, their weak bodies shelter their weak characters serving as the visible confirmation of the inner-self reality of every woman since Eve. This alleged weakness, or frailty, inherited from mothers to daughters, was perceived in the Early Modern context as inescapable, the result of God’s punishment upon Eve for her responsibility in the original sin that ultimately led humankind to fall. Focusing on women’s literary production, especially with reference to diaries and autobiographical writings, how did Early Modern women perspective themselves, physically and psychologically? Bringing ‘embodiment’ into question, when, how and where does the body become visible in women’s narratives? I would like to argue that the references to the physical and socio-political body in English Early Modern women’s autobiographical writings echo the discourses that labelled women as weak and frail. It is also my purpose to argue that weak bodies accommodate, quite frequently, heroic inner-selves. In this regard, Anne Clifford’s and Margaret Cavendish’s autobiographical texts offer two stimulating and representative examples for analysis.