I want to use this blog post
to hone in on my final paper idea a bit more. In my last post, I discussed
Shakespeare’s use of love tests and accusations of infidelity, and came to a
few conclusions:
- They present an unwinnable scenario for both the male and female participants.
- The male participant plays to lose.
- The results of the test are never correct.
- Love tests are regarded with a complete lack of skepticism and always treated as a reliable way of determining a woman’s purity.
In other words, love tests
always hurt everyone involved and never yield any benefit, but are still
considered viable. This contradiction is what I will be examining.
To get closer to this topic, I’m
going to do a bit of close reading.
In 1.4 of Cymbeline, Posthumus
Leonatus decides to subject Imogen to a test of chastity. This test arises not
just out of his own paranoia, but out of a conversation with another man who
challenges his claim that Imogen is actually the fairest woman in the world.
Throughout the conversation, but Posthumus and Imogen are stripped of their
agency in the relationship.
First, Imogen’s beauty if
conflated with British nationalism as a Frenchman explains that Posthumus had
deemed “his
[mistress]to be more fair, virtuous, wise,/chaste,
constant-qualified and less attemptable/than any the rarest of our ladies in France. ”
Two things are notable here. The first is that Imogen’s name is not actually
mentioned. All that is given of her is a bland list of ‘acceptable’ female
characteristics, most of which are roughly synonymous with each other. There is
almost no real information about her in this passage. Even her supposed
fairness is unqualified and comes without a physical description. Rather, she
is referred to by a possessive pronoun. Already, her virtue is not her own, but
belongs to Posthumus (who, it is worth noting, has been denied her hand in
marriage and has no legal claim on her).
Second, emphasis is placed on nationality. Her
chastity becomes tied to nationalism in the claim that she exceeds all the
women of France and, shortly thereafter, all the women of Italy. This is
compounded in Iachimo’s retort that “As fair and as good--a kind of hand-in-hand/comparison --had been something too fair and too good/for
any lady in Britain.” Thus, the claim of Imogen’s virtue becomes linked to the
virtue of all British women, as well as their wisdom, chastity, and so
forth. (There’s also an interesting
linkage of beauty and goodness here, although I don’t have the space to explore
the importance of this.)
The linked issues of virtue and legitimacy are important
here in conjunction with the larger themes of the play, since the plot of
Cymbeline hinges on the idea that nobility is not an abstract concept, but
rather an in-born quality. If the women of the nation cannot be trusted, the
lost heirs cannot be found since there is no way to prove their parentage. By
linking Imogen’s virtue to the virtue of the nation, the restoration of her
virtue neatly coincides neatly with the restoration of her lost brother’s
legitimacy.
The connection of her virtue to nationalism also
serves to move Imogen’s sexuality into the public sphere. This makes it an
acceptable topic of discussion, and makes it available to outside scrutiny,
where it may not have been before.
After Imogen’s virtue has been abstracted and
connected to her Britishness, she is further removed from the picture by
objectifying language that appears on both sides of the discussion. This begins
with an exchange in which Iachimo and Posthumus slowly move towards conflating
Imogen with the diamond that Posthumus wears as a symbol of his affection for
her.
POSTHUMUS
LEONATUS
IACHIMO
POSTHUMUS
LEONATUS
IACHIMO
Although (not excerpted
here) Iachimo introduces the comparison between Imogen and the diamond,
Posthumus agrees to it and in saying that “I praised her as I rated her” gives
validity to the idea that she can be rated, and that he is in the position to
judge her as one would judge a material object. He authorizes the comparison,
and reduces the distance between his affection for Imogen herself, and his
valuation of the physical artifact that represents that affection. Iachimo effectively
backs him into a corner by an intentional misinterpretation that removes the
symbolic value of both the diamond and of Imogen, and that renders both of them
sellable.
Posthumus’s response
attempts to refute Iachimo’s rhetorical move, but actually serves to further
remove Imogen’s agency.
POSTHUMUS LEONATUS
Imogen, here, is “not a
thing for sale” but she is still something that can be given as a gift, and
thus, still a viable object of transaction. Rather than possessing her own
agency, she is something that can be given and received by outside sources.
Even the ways that she is referred to here is objectifying—she receives no
gendered pronouns, and is only “the other”—a material counterpart of the
diamond.
The
removal of Imogen’s agency is compounded by the way that Posthumus distances
himself from his on when (in reference to her status as a gift from the gods)
he says, “Which, by their graces, I will keep.” Here, he removes his
power in the relationship and displaces its success or failure onto an outside
source. He is no longer at fault if the relationship fails or if Imogen proves
to be unfaithful.
While the two men have
not yet progressed to the proposal of the love test, it has become available as
a possibility. By reconstructing Imogen as a public figure and by reducing her
to an object of exchange, her sexuality is made available to be tested.
Likewise, by reducing his own agency in the matter and by participating in
Imogen’s reduction to an object, Posthumus alters their relationship such that
he is able to justify testing her.
(I’m sorry there aren’t line numbers. My edition doesn’t
have them, and this is an informal assignment so I haven’t gone to the trouble
of tracking them down. If anyone’s curious about the larger context, here’s a
link to the scene: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/cymbeline/cymbeline.1.4.html)
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