5 - Holy Women
from Part II - Representing Gender
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Summary
In the Chester Cappers' Corpus Christi pageant Balaack, fearing resurgence by the Israelites, orders that the townswomen be placed in front of their enemy to provide a distraction. Balaack instructs that these sirens be selected from the most beautiful women available:
Spare thou neyther ryche ne poore,
wyddowe, mayde, ne ylke whoore;
yf shee bee fresh of coloure,
bringe her with thee, I saye.
The Doctor interrupts the action and, in a direct narration to the ‘Lordes and ladyes’ in the audience, explains that the women successfully tempted their enemies and, by later rejecting their love, confused God's people. Such a moment provides an insight into the treatment of women in the Corpus Christi cycles. They are astute decoys, ‘full of illusion’ and adept at tempting and deceiving (the image of Eve had established this notion at the beginning of the theatrical event). But it is also significant that women are not treated as a homogeneous group. Balaack classifies them according to rank and wealth, marital status and finally, their moral standing.
The second section of this study will examine the textual representations that are made of holy and vulgar women within medieval drama. I argue that if one reads the women against a context of social, cultural and religious concerns it is possible to engage in a fruitful interpretation. When women characters are treated as subject rather than object, a different set of gender reading are apparent. Medieval drama contains many women who test the boundaries of their conventional roles.
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- Information
- Gender and Medieval Drama , pp. 91 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006