The “loving and provident mother of mankind” or the temptress: Why is rhetoric personified as female?

The “loving and provident mother of mankind” or the temptress: Why is rhetoric personified as female?

The ability to communicate one’s thoughts and opinions seems commonplace in today’s society. Indeed, one could be forgive for thinking very little about the intricacies of rhetoric itself. This, however, was not always the case. Debates about rhetoric, and its potential dangers, go back thousands of years. Rhetoric, when not used appropriately, is dangerous. Rhetoric has “from the beginning meant two things: ornamental speech and persuasive speech”#, the former having the ability to articulate emotion while the latter manipulates it#. But what of a person who has the ability to do both? In his epic, The Odyssey, Homer presents a mythical character who’s very characteristics have been echoed throughout the centuries in various forms of literature. That character is the temptress Circe. She is an eloquent, beautiful and dangerous sorceress who has the ability to enthral and captivate her ‘victims’. But it is her eloquence that seems of particular interest as it is her ability to lure people with her song and her words that is seen as her weapon of choice. In Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the poet’s fallen world is occupied by the sorceress Acrasia who has created a world more beautiful than nature itself. Spenser echoes the danger of this beautiful temptress with the dangers of artifice and her enhancement of nature. In discussions about rhetoric and even in artistic representations of the classical idea of rhetoric, rhetoric is portrayed as feminine. In Martianus Capella’s “The Marriage of Mercury and Philology”, the Seven Arts are personified as the attendants of Philology, each with a book to explain her discipline. In Book V and with “trumpet-blasts Rhetoric is ushered into the presence of the gods….[wearing a] helmet and breastplate and clashes her weapons like thunder”. This cross-dressing of a woman in armour and laden with weapons demonstrates the confusion with the feminine characterisation of rhetoric. The pen is mightier than the sword hence the weapons, but the pen (and sword) were denied to women. Interestingly, the practice of rhetoric itself is seen as something masculine because it is associated with reason. In fact, it was so important that to “the Greeks and the Romans eloquence was, quite simply, the source of civilised life, that which distinguishes human beings from animals”#. But such a civilised life had very little room for women themselves. So why then was its very existence so entrenched in something characterised as so very feminine? The answer lies in the position of women themselves as well as the debates surrounding rhetoric and its potential dangers, for women were seen as dangerous to civilised society as much if not more so than rhetoric was.

During the Renaissance period, the role of women was ultimately a fairly ornamental one. Though the fundamental job of women during this time was to be wives and mothers, in society their person was very much scrutinised as it was on women’s “behaviour in particular that the whole reputation of the house rested”#. Perhaps more modern sensibilities would underestimate the pressure that such a position entailed. During the Elizabethan era, and indeed much before, a person’s position in society was of vital importance as a social standing was a way in which to establish a sense of self. The household itself was “a crucial political tool” during the early modern era as it was “the smallest unit in a system of analogies that stretched right up to the nation itself”. Indeed, Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene was written during a time where “the envisioned order” was set out “in terms of corresponding hierarchies, with the masculine God/king/father/head securely at the top of the universe/kingdom/family/body”, as it had been for many centuries prior. But herein lies a point of great interest. The head was seen as masculine. The mind was to the body what the king was to the kingdom. A man’s mind was governed by reason. But, reason itself is articulated and persuaded by rhetoric which is seen as feminine. In his letter The Garden of Eloquence penned in 1593, Henry Peacham sets out a stirring argument for the virtues of rhetoric:

…by her his honor is highly advanced, without her it sinketh into shame. Finallie, by her the true felicitie of man is out and held up, without her it and reproach, and is utterlie confounded: by her hee is indued with a blessed state of life, without her he perisheth in miserie and death

Though he is here articulating his campaign for eloquence, the same argument could be held up for the position of women in the household. Without a ‘good’ woman in the household, the reputation of the house is in jeopardy. Without the feminine skill of rhetoric, a man’s position is tenuous. Feminine virtue in the household and the gift of rhetoric, the “sweete milke of prosperitie”, were the building blocks of men’s honour in a very masculine driven world.

Feminine virtue as a component of the household reputation is not strictly an early modern concept. The virtue of women has long been priced and celebrated. The good and virtuous damsel is often present in old romance poems such as Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec and Enide. Enide is depicted as the perfect woman. She is her father’s “joy and comfort”# and displays the desired traits of one who is shy, uncorrupted and pure; “…when she saw the knight whom she had never seen before, she drew back a little, because she did not know him, and in her modesty blushed”. But much more than this, Enide was naturally beautiful:

Nature herself marvelled more than five hundred times upon this one occasion, she had succeeded in creating such a perfect thing…In sooth, she was made to be looked at; for in her on could have seen himself as in a mirror

It is common in such literature that beauty is synonymous with goodness. For Enide, her beauty is a sign of her purity. Though her beauty reduces Erec to a state of love-drunk recreance, Enide is still portrayed as perfection because she initiates the rejection of her sexuality as something which is an inhibitor on his honour. Enide encourages the journey which would see Erec’s Christ-like redemption as he is resurrected and regains his honour. If all women were seen as such pillars of virtue, the fact that rhetoric is portrayed in art and literature as woman would not be of interest. The debates surrounding rhetoric make it known that it in itself is seen as something potentially dangerous, not Enide-like perfection.

Women were seen as temptresses who had the ability to lure men to ruin, often paralleled with Eve, the original sinner. Being seen as being more bodily and sensual, women were held as being responsible for men’s urges. Men were being tested. In Book II Canto XII of The Faerie Queene, the knight Guyon is the Knight of Temperance. The resistance of temptations is a constant struggle as temptation is a trait of the world. In the poem there is an added struggle between that of the pursuit of pleasure and that of duty. Women, of course, as the villainous temptresses who test the knight’s temperance. On entering the ‘Bowre of Bliss’, Guyon spies two maidens bathing in a pool:

Then th’one her selfe low ducked in the flood,
…But th’other rather higher did arise,
And her two lilly paps aloft displayed,
And all, that might his melting hart entise
To her delights, she vnto him bewrayd:
The rest hid vnderneath, him more desirous made

The maidens toy with Guyon when the spy him gawking at them. Though the first one ducks in the pool she can still be seen through the water. This sense of partially covering up is used often, becoming almost a trope of displaying sexuality. In The Odyssey, Circe wears transparent, floating garments that demonstrate an attempt to shield her body from prying eyes while also attracting them. So too does the Faerie Mistress in Marie de France’s Lanval. It’s a very masculine way of demonstrating sexuality because it is the attempt to cover up certain things that tempts men more. Knowing that something is there that is unobtainable makes one more desirous to obtain it. Guyon’s “secret signes of kindled lust appeare” as the women “…to him beckned, to approach more neare,/And shewd him many sights, that courage cold could reare”. Before being fully tempted by the women, our temperate knight is stopped by the Palmer who “much rebukt those wandring eyes of his”. The Palmer figure in the Canto acts as a kind of personification of Guyon’s conscious. When Guyon wishes to steer the boat in the direction of a beach with a distressed woman, the Palmer is there to act the voice of masculine reason in Spenser’s fallen world. He is not only the voice of reason in a land that has been built by the art of rhetoric in which illusion and reality are at odds, he is also the voice of religious knowledge. The historical definition of a Palmer is a pilgrim, one who has travelled to the Holy Land. The character of the Palmer is thus a personification of the Christian values, values which denounce temptation. A fitting companion then for the knight of temperance.

Unfortunately for Odysseus’s crew, no such companion saves them from such temptation. Upon finding Circe’s abode, the crew who had gone in search of her are struck by her beautiful singing voice (much like the bewitching melodies heard in the Bowre of Bliss in The Faerie Queene). The men are convinced it must either be “a goddess or a woman” and call to her. When she invites them in, the narrator claims they entered “In their innocence”. This suggested innocence seems hard to believe as upon the crews arrival they were met by wild beasts whom they knew “Circe had bewitched with her magic drugs”. Why then feign innocence of her powers were already apparent? Perhaps, it is better to feign innocence than to admit to having been lured in to a trap by a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice? But tempted they were, by Circe herself and the excesses of pleasure she provided, like fine, rich food and wine. These excesses and enhancements parallel with the struggle between illusion verses reality. In a setting where one is being tempted, differentiating between was is good and what is not is a challenge. Through rhetoric one can be persuade that is good which is not. Therein lies its dangers and the dangers of women such as Circe. When these men had succumbed to these temptation, they became what all men do when they submit to these pleasures; beasts. Circe turns the men into pigs which is symbolic of the fulfilment of their animalistic sexual desires. The fact that this symbolic transformation is at the hands of a woman should come as little surprise as it was believe that it was women fault that men even had such desires. Women just by being were desirable. In The Faerie Queene, however, these animalistic qualities are somewhat reversed. Acrasia is the ultimate femme fatale figure. She is a temptress living in a fallen world. Though she too transforms her ‘victims’ in to beasts, she herself takes on animalist qualities.

All in a vele of silke and siluer thin,
That hid no whit of her alablaster skin,
…
More subtle web Arachne can not spin,
Nor the fine nets, which oft we wouen see

Acrasia is characterised as a spider not least by the thin silken attire that she wears and the web she weaves to ensnare her prey, but by the way she feds on them. In the subsequent verse, there are words and phrases such as “hungry eies”, “Nectar”, “sweet toyles” and “quenched not”# which articulate a sense of hunger and appetite which in itself is a kind of desire. It also heightens the notion of the sin of gluttony. Temptation is always the excess. For Plato theses excesses are cosmetics and fine cooking, things that are to be indulged in but are not necessary for life. They are “wastfull luxuree”#. In the ‘Bowre of Bliss‘, these luxuries are Acrasia’s sustenance. When Guyon finds her, after being lured towards her by beautiful melodies, he finds her ‘feasting’ on a young man “As seeking medicine, whence she was strong”#, like she is addicted.  The association with the spider is more strongly enforced with imagery which evokes liquid. A spider eats by entangling its prey in its web then sucking the blood out of it. Spenser uses words like “bedewd”, “humid” and “molten”# to call to mind this sense of fluidity. The idea that Acrasia is feasting on him is suggested by the line “through his humid eyes did sucke his spright”. She is sucking his soul out of him. Though in the poem, this is a physical act it is also one that could be evocative of something more spiritual. By being tempted, one is putting at risk their immortal soul. Initiative poetry attempts to replicate truth but in so doing create falsehood. Believing this falsehood corrupts the soul. Representing rhetoric as female brings to mind these worries. Men can be tempted, or persuaded, be it by women or by words or by both.

As has been mentioned, Frye suggests that there are two kinds of rhetoric; ornamental and persuasive. For Plato, rhetoric was something potentially treacherous. Though his initial arguments about rhetoric were purely epistemological, there was also an added ethical dimension: “the end of rhetoric is to furnish pleasure without regard for what is good for its audience”#. Furthermore, Plato asserts that rhetoric is not based on knowledge but experience. But, it was claimed that experience is a loaded philosophical term which is associated with gratification and pleasure. Experience for this reason was reduced to a place in the ‘flattery’ class which was also home to the ‘finer things in life’ such as pasties and cosmetics. Rhetoric is subjected to such a lowly classification in Plato’s eyes because it is not a techne which means a “paradigm of practical knowledge”:

…the kind of experience which constitutes rhetoric and pasty baking is criticized as not being a techne because it does not investigate the nature of the cause of what it seeks to produce, namely pleasure…Plato is saying, then, that rhetoric, like pastry baking, is able to do what it does, persuade, on the basis of the accumulated memory of what has usually produced pleasure in the past

Thus, in many ways, rhetoric is a form of imitation. It seeks to replicate a thing known from the past. And herein lies the hazards of rhetoric. Women were seen as dangerous because of the temptation that they induced. By being sexual beings, they had the capacity to stir sexual desires in men. Such a sexual appetite was sinful because it sullied the basic reproductive reasons for sexual interaction and was associated with the original sin and the subsequent fall. Rhetoric was to be used to enlighten and persuade people of the truth, not persuade it listeners or readers to believe falsehoods. According to Socrates, there is doubt about “the poet’s capacity to teach virtue since he only imitates it”#. In the ‘Bowre of Bliss‘, Acrasia’s domain is a false paradise in a fallen world where there is no satisfaction or pleasure in it. It is not harmonious with reality because it is an imitation of reality and thus an illusion. Spenser draws the readers attention to the surrounding dangers by accentuating its artifice:

…With all the ornaments of Floraes pride;
Wherewith her mother Art, as halfe in scorne
Of niggard Nature, like a pompous bride
Did decke her, and too lauishly adorne

The surroundings in the Bowre are likened to a bride, the symbol of virgin purity and innocence, that has dressed in clothes that are too fine and lavish. She has been cosmetically enhanced thus concealing any true beauty. Nature has been turned into something artificial and false. Rhetoric, according to the likes of its harshest critics such as Plato, is the equivalent of wearing make up to appear healthy and beautiful or fine clothes to look more appealing, it is the same as eating fine food that has no nourishment or adding spices to food to make it more tasteful; rhetoric enhances and imitates reality without being part of it. Imitative poetry “corrupts decent people…[and] prevents the immortal soul from attaining its greatest reward” by showing only a representation of truth as fact.

Bringing to mind associations with the fall, eloquence and rhetoric was “first given by God, and after lost by man, and last repaired by God again”. This fall, however, was caused by the lack of knowledge. Men were naturally born with reason and had the ability to lord over all other living things. With this lack of knowledge, and the original sin, society began to live, according to Wilson, like brutes because they lacked the skills to communicate. Society was saved by the grace of God and were gifted with rhetoric and thus order was established. Linking the fall of men to both a corruption of the flesh and a lack of knowledge brings the argument back to why rhetoric is characterised as something feminine. Men were ‘fallen’ because they were desirous of sexual pleasure, women, and lacked the ability to facilitate order through rhetoric. Both of these dangers, when brought under masculine control, can be virtuous and good for society at large. The Arts are portrayed as female but those who employ them as male as only men can mould them with reason. Femininity was placed on a lower rung than that of masculinity and its inherent trait of reason because women were seen as being further from the faculties which could decipher between reality and illusion. During the Renaissance, there was a tendency in art to display the Seven Arts coupled with the Seven Virtues “which signifies the union of intellect and morality”, a union between masculine and feminine. Similarly, during this period “Protestant reformers believed with utter seriousness that husbands and wives could and should help each other to heaven”. Through marriage there was an understanding that husband and wife became one entity with both the masculine and the feminine. Though it could be suggested that this union was empowering for women because it suggests their role was one on par with that of men, the more cynical approach seems more accurate. This forging of one entity was a form of control. Feminine traits taking on masculine qualities meant order. Rhetoric is characterised as feminine because of its capacity to be controlled and its ability to take on a life of its own. When rhetoric becomes out of control of reason, it becomes bigger than its creator. It becomes a representation of truth and therefore dangerous to perceptions of reality and illusion. Rhetoric should be used to persuade people of good without attempting to imitate goodness. Women should be naturally beautiful, virtuous and display true goodness as displayed in the character of Enide. Their natural sexuality must be suppressed lest they awaken men’s animalistic sexual appetites and threaten the established order. Women who follow their own desires and whims are as dangerous to men as uncensored and ill-used rhetoric, but are as necessary to society and order. Characterising rhetoric as feminine links the social conception of women as the embodiment of temptation and pleasure, like Circe and Acrasia, and the notion that rhetoric has also the ability to create an illusion of what is tempting and pleasurable.



(It was all referenced beautifully, but Blogger does NOT like footnotes. Apologies. All the works used for this piece are listed below and I give them all full credit for the quotations used)

Bibliography

‘Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E)’, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH5e [accessed 22 March 2014]

Coumoundouros, Antonis. ‘Plato: The Republic’, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH5e [accessed 22 March 2014]

Eggert, Katherine. ‘Spenser’s Ravishment: Rape and Rapture in The Faerie Queene’. Representations. 70. (2000), pp. 1-26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2902891

de France, Marie. Lanval. trans. Judith P. Shoaf (2005) http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jshoaf/Marie/lanval.pdf [accessed 21 March 2014]

Frye, Northrop. ‘Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres’. Anatomy of Criticism. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000)

Garver, Eugene. ‘Aristotle on the Kinds of Rhetoric’. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric. 27.1 (2009), pp. 1-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rh.2009.27.1.1

Greer, Germaine. Past Masters: Shakespeare. ed. Keith Thomas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Homer. The Odyssey. trans. E.V. Rieu and D.C.H. Rieu. (London: Penguin Classics, 2003)

Millar, Dana. ‘Rhetoric in the Light of Plato’s Epistemological Criticisms’. Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric. 30.2 (2012), pp. 109-133. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/RH.2012.30.2.109

North, Helen F. ‘Emblems of Eloquence’. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 137.3. (Sept., 1993), pp. 406-430. http://www.jstor.org/stable/987001

Peacham, Henry. ‘The Garden of Eloquence (1593)’, Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.03.0098 [accessed 21 March 2014]

Richardson, Catherine. ‘Tragedy, family and household’. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy. ed. Emma Smith and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2010)

Shields, Christopher. ‘Aristotle’s Psychology’, The Stanford Encyclodedia of Philosophy (2010) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/#8 [accessed 21 March 2014]

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. ed, Thomas P. Roche, Jr. (London: Penguin Classics, 1987)

de Troyes, Chrétien. Erec and Enide. trans. W.W. Comfort. (Cambridge, Ontario: parentheses Publications, 1999). PDF copy stable http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/erec_comfort%20.pdf [accessed 21 March 2014]

Villeponteaux, Mary. ‘Displacing Feminine Authority in The Faerie Queene’. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 35.1, The English Renaissance (1995), pp. 53-67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/450989

Wilson, Thomas. ‘The Arte of Rhetorique’. Renascence Editions. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/arte/arte.htm [accessed 24 March 2014]