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Chapter 5 - “Put on the minde”

Cognitive Play in Gallathea, The Winter’s Tale, and The Convent of Pleasure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2021

Caroline Bicks
Affiliation:
University of Maine, Orono
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Summary

Chapter Five explores the early modern phenomenon of girls “putting on” the minds of others. It argues that, when they engaged in these acts of cognitive play, girls were able to try on alternative perspectives and experiences — not necessarily male ones, but those that belonged to sexually active females: the lover, the harlot, the pregnant woman. It focuses on the girls from John Lyly’s Gallathea, Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, all of whom costume their bodies and put on the minds of sexually experienced females. Their performances allow them to project themselves into these roles without actually becoming “women” in a heteronormative sense that would require their bodies to transform through penetrative intercourse, pregnancy, or birth. The girls who dress up in these plays do so under different levels of duress, but they all share an ability to use their brainwork to manipulate the Protestant girl-to-woman script they were expected to follow — to resist, revise and, in some cases, reject it.

Type
Chapter
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Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare's World
Rethinking Female Adolescence
, pp. 160 - 189
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • “Put on the minde”
  • Caroline Bicks, University of Maine, Orono
  • Book: Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare's World
  • Online publication: 24 June 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108933919.006
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  • “Put on the minde”
  • Caroline Bicks, University of Maine, Orono
  • Book: Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare's World
  • Online publication: 24 June 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108933919.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • “Put on the minde”
  • Caroline Bicks, University of Maine, Orono
  • Book: Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare's World
  • Online publication: 24 June 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108933919.006
Available formats
×