The Ideology of Conduct (Routledge Revivals)

Essays in Literature and the History of Sexuality

Nancy Armstrong, Leonard Tennenhouse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138015456
• eBook ISBN: 9781317744313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In The Ideology of Conduct, first published in 1987, scholars from various fields, from the medieval period to the present day, discuss literature in which the sole purpose is to instruct women in how to make themselves desirable.

This collection investigates how middle-class writers who had long emulated the behaviour of the aristocracy began to criticise that behaviour by formulating an alternative object of desire. They did so without appearing to breed political controversy because it seemed to concern only the female. But writing for and about women in fact became a powerful instrument of hegemony as it introduced a whole new vocabulary for social relations, induced certain forms of economic behaviour as desirable in men and women respectively, and insured the reproduction of the nuclear family. It is argued, therefore, that the literature of conduct not only recorded but also assisted the production of our contemporary gender-based culture.

1

Medieval courtesy literature and dramatic mirrors of female conduct^*

Kathleen M. Ashley

As many historians have pointed out, the late Middle Ages was an era obsessed with codified and externalized behaviors. For aristocrats, such codes promised to maintain social identities at a time of blurring boundaries between upper and “middle” classes. However, the wealthy bourgeoisie and other upwardly mobile groups subverted the boundaries as they increasingly adopted aristocratic codes to define their new sense of worth and place in medieval society. Although the flourishing of courtesy literature during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was connected to both these impulses, I will be concerned here primarily with conduct books addressed to non-aristocratic women and their influence on the French and English cycle plays.

Criticism on the cycle drama has been remarkably uniform in attributing to it the primary aim of religious instruction. Whether approached through typological patterns,^l parody and symbolism,² the doctrine of repentance,³ devotional rhetoric,⁴ or communal rites and rituals,⁵ criticism of the past 25 years has singlemindedly emphasized the drama’s role in expounding and celebrating the history of man’s salvation. I would like to suggest, however, that the cycle plays fulfilled many functions for late medieval society; they were thus capable of presenting multiple, even at times contradictory, messages. The influence of conduct literature is particularly notable in several scenes where the religious drama slights its wider function as mirror of spiritual salvation for the whole community to mirror proper social behaviors for women in its audience.

This discussion will be organized around selected scenes from late medieval English and French drama, although the connection between conduct literature and cycle plays is a phenomenon with profound implications for our reading of late medieval culture. The ideology of the conduct book inscribed upon the cycle form transformed the religious drama and gave it new social functions in the late Middle Ages.

I will begin with the most ambiguous scene, the Annunciation. Its ambiguity lies, of course, in the eye of the scholar who wonders which interpretive code to apply to the episode which is only briefly described in Luke but which became one of the most symbolically rich within medieval exegesis, iconography, lyric, and narrative. The Towneley cycle Annunciation explicitly develops the theological doctrine of the Incarnation, with Deus giving a long speech (1–76) on its necessity within salvation history and on the symmetry of the recapitulation design, “A man, a madyn, and a tre: Man for man, tre for tre, / Madyn for madyn; thus shal it be” (32–4).⁶ Gabriel, too, is fulsome on the details of the “prevate” or mystery of the Incarnation when he comes to Mary (77–106, 125–42). Despite the divine dogma and rhetoric, however, Mary does not immediately accept the news of her virgin conception but asks Gabriel first of all, “What is thi name?” (107) and then, “how shuld it be?” (112). Her hesitation, her questions, were interpreted within various medieval traditions of exegesis as evidence not of a lack of faith but of her “prudence” in the face of possible temptation. Thus the Annunciation had potentially exemplary, as opposed to purely didactic, functions. Mary as model for the proper behavior in such a situation becomes dramatically primary after the first I 06 lines of theological exposition by God and Gabriel.

For the mystical tradition, the tempter was likely to be Satan, who roams about in the guise of an angel seeking vulnerable souls to delude with false visions and messages. The prudent believer must, according to this literature of spiritual caution, be wary of beautiful angels who may be the devil in disguise, and must first of all question the identity and motives of such an apparition. Mary, as I have argued elsewhere, appears to be exemplifying such spiritual caution when she confronts Gabriel in line 107.⁷

A second interpretive code, one drawn from conduct books for women, may also be applicable to the cycle Annunciation scenes. It calls for moral and behavioral prudence on the part of young women to resist the seductive words of young men who would lead them astray. Unlike Eve, who “dyd byleve to lyƷtely” and was deceived as are “many symple wymmen whiche lyghtely byleve the fooles / wherfore afterward they be broughte to doo folye,” Geoffrey de la Tour Landry’s fourteenth-century conduct book says that Mary prudently inquired of her messenger “the ende of the faytte or dede the whiche he dyd announce to her.”⁸ The Book of the Knight of the Tower concludes its chapter 107 with the moral that “Thus thenne ought the good wymmen to doo / as men speketh to them of yongthe / or of ony other thynge / whereof dyshonoure and blame may come to them.” Unlike the prudence of the mystical tradition, this lesson is gender-directed to women and it concerns social rather than spiritual behavior, for the results of imprudence will be “blame” (not sin), whereas virtuous caution will bring “honor” (or society’s praise).

The scenes of Joseph’s “Doubts” which follow in all English cycles also play upon the possibility that Mary as a vulnerable young woman has been seduced by a handsome young man, not the “angel” she claims. Most critics have placed the drama of Joseph’s discovery within the comic fabliau tradition of an old man married to a young and potentially wayward wife. I would also suggest the relevance of female conduct literature to Joseph’s discourse.

In N-Town, Joseph’s Return, Joseph rejects the claim that an angel had explained the child’s divine paternity to Mary:

Alas alas let be do way

It was sum boy be-gan þis game

þat clothyd was clene and gay

and Ʒe Ʒeve hym now an Aungel name.

(74–7)⁹

Joseph has read his conduct literature and knows the omnipresent danger of handsome youths and their fine words. In the York cycle, Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, Mary’s maid servants testify to her purity and isolation from men: “Hir kepars have we bene / And sho ay in oure sight, / Come here no man bytwene / To touche þat berde so bright” (118–21).¹⁰ Only an angel has come to feed Mary, her chaperons insist. Joseph, however, rejects their testimony:

þanne se I wele youre menyng is

þe aungell has made hir with childe

Nay, som man in aungellis liknesse

With somkyn gawde has hir begiled,

And þat trow I.

(134–8)

The probability of angelic conception is obviously outweighed by the likelihood that some attractive man has tricked Mary.

Distinguishing the influence of the mystical prudence tradition from the influence of conduct literature within such a scene is very difficult; it should be noted, however, that there is never any suggestion that the angel might be the devil in disguise – Joseph thinks only that the “angel” is a human seducer. Even more important, in my opinion, is distinguishing Joseph’s role in a didactic as opposed to an exemplary dramatic mode. If the cycle plays are perceived as dramatic expositions of salvation history whose primary message is theological, then Joseph does seem an old fool. Without understanding of the divine plan, he exists only as foil to Mary and thus as comic butt of the action. If, however, we acknowledge multiple messages within these plays, then their reception becomes considerably more complicated. Joseph may function as an exemplary character in his own right, not just at the end of the play-when the angel explains the Virgin Birth and Joseph accepts his role as human husband and father – but earlier in the midst of his “doubts.” In his comic confusion, Joseph expresses propositions which were normative for late medieval culture: that marriage between partners of unequal age was socially disruptive and that young women unless carefully chaperoned and instructed were liable to the seductions of handsome, glib young men. The exception, Mary, does not disprove the validity of such rules. In addition to its fundamental task of dramatizing the doctrine of the Incarnation, the cycle drama was now charged with articulating rules of social conduct for its audience.

The presence of such multiple messages is even clearer in the Towneley Salutation of Elizabeth, a brief Visitation play dramatizing the episode from Luke (I: 35 – 56) in which the annunciate Mary visits her aged but miraculously pregnant kinswoman Elizabeth. In Luke, the meeting of the two women is a vehicle for celebrating the Incarnation as an example of divine power manifested within history. The centerpiece of our play is also Elizabeth’s praise of Mary as blessed among women and Mary’s song of response, the Magnificat – both closely paraphrased from Luke but more immediately available to the audience each day in the liturgy of vespers. But this crucial theological exchange occupies only about half (47) of the play’s 90 lines. The other half (43) shows the friendly interaction of the two kinswomen, who engage in lengthy greetings at the beginning of the play and warm farewells at the end.

Such critical comment as there has been upon this play sees the human sentiment as an innocuous way of naturalizing abstract religious doctrine.¹¹ While such an approach probably reflects modern rather than medieval sensibilities, it does point to a more significant way to interpret the human relationships so carefully depicted in the medieval cycle drama: those relationships are intended to be exemplary in their own right. In the Salutation of Elizabeth the greetings, gossip, and leave-takings between Mary and Elizabeth model behavior for the medieval audience, especially its women members. Elizabeth greets Mary with joy as “blyssed blome” (4), “doghter and dere hart” (8), “dere kyns Woman” (15), and “frely foode” (85). Mary reciprocates by enquiring about Elizabeth’s health, and the two exchange queries about friends and relatives back home (16–18, 22–7, 88).

That these are socially significant actions is clear from the Young Babees Book, a conduct book of the period which deals mainly with table manners but opens by pointing out that courtesy came from heaven when Gabriel greeted our Lady at the Annunciation and Elizabeth met with Mary at the Visitation.¹² The brief and general moral here is pointed toward children, but in conduct books addressed to women the idea is more fully developed. The Book of the Knight of the Tower, compiled in the late fourteenth century by Geoffrey de la Tour Landry for his daughters, devotes a whole chapter to the example of the blessed Virgin Mary’s humility in the Annunciation and Visitation episodes. Mary is said to be “preysed of the holy scrypture for her good kynde and nature of her curtosye whanne she wente and vysyted her cosyn saynte Elysabeth…. And than bothe Cosyns humbled them self one toward the other / Wherfore good exemplary is here / how that parentes [relatives] and Frendes ought to see and vysyte eche other in theyr childbedde / and in theyr dysease and sekenesse / And humble them self one ageynst the other / as dyd these two holy and blessyd ladyes / as ye have herd.”¹³

The Knight also contrasts the two holy kinswomen to those of proud and foolish heart who use their higher rank to take precedence over others. The virtue of humble courtesy exemplified by Mary and Elizabeth is here described in totally social terms, and the Knight points out that the greater the lineage and power of the woman the more she should bear herself courteously in order to receive the praise of “smalle folke” who are flattered when the great “make to them ony chere and speke fayre to them.”¹⁴

The conduct book makes the Visitation a lesson in social behavior toward one’s kinswomen and those lower in status, with the impli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• The literature of conduct, the conduct of literature, and the politics of desire: an introduction
• 1. Medieval courtesy literature and dramatic mirrors of female conduct
• 2. Nets and bridles: early modern conduct books and sixteenth-century women’s lyrics
• 3. Defoe’s idea of conduct: ideological fictions and fictional reality
• 4. The rise of the domestic woman
• 5. Educating women: Laclos and the conduct of sexuality
• 6. Wild nights: pleasure/sexuality/feminism
• 7. Modes of modern shopping: Mallarmé at the Bon Marché
• 8. The beauty system
• Index