Open Ears, Appetite, and Adultery in A Woman Killed with Kindness

Open Ears, Appetite, and Adultery in A Woman Killed with Kindness Reina Green (bio) As Thomas Edgar notes in The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights, some women in the early modern period were able to "shift it well enough" (6); nevertheless, in law they were generally subject to their husbands and fathers and encouraged—at least by conduct book writers and preachers—to listen to these men as figures of male authority.1 At the same time, women were warned to guard their ears and "stop" them from hearing "dishonestie" (Overbury C4), as it was feared, thanks to the traditional commentary on Eve's role in the Fall, that women were more likely to be corrupted—and therefore to corrupt men—if they heard subversive or inappropriate ideas. These fears were most often expressed not as concerns over male speech but as unease about the female desire to listen, what Othello calls, in reference to Desdemona, her "greedy ear" (Othello 1.3.148), and appear connected to views of female sexuality. A number of critics, [End Page 53] including Peter Stallybrass, Lynda Boose, and Douglas Bruster, discuss the link between the mouth and the vagina and the association between speech and sexual licentiousness in the period, and Linda Woodbridge notes the long-time connection between the ear and the vagina (Woodbridge 55). However, the link between all three orifices, the ear, mouth, and vagina, is often overlooked because of the current tendency to view ears as passive, ever-open orifices (Kilgour 131). In contrast, in the early modern period, ears, like mouths and vaginas, were regarded not only as passive openings through which the body could be penetrated, but also as sites through which desire could be expressed. I therefore wish to explore how these three orifices were constructed as sites of female desire and how this construction is revealed through the character of Anne Frankford in Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness. Not only are the ear and mouth connected as one hears the speech the other produces, but they are also linked through the analogy of speech to food, an association common in the early modern period.2 The idea of speech as "nourishment of the soule" (Primaudaye 126) was most fruitful for Protestant preachers who clearly had a vested interest in encouraging people to take in and digest the spoken word, at least when they were preaching.3 According to these preachers, an open ear is necessary for both faith and obedience and those who exhibit a closed ear, who refuse to listen to God's word (or to God's earthly representatives), are ungodly. Protestant and Catholic writers alike revered the Virgin Mary as the ideal listener because she attended to and believed what she heard, bearing God's son (the Word made flesh) as a result (Hassel 54–55, 69–72). They insisted that this type of hearing was necessary for faithful, "fruitful" obedience. In contrast, Eve was deemed the epitome of an unfruitful hearer not only because she failed to maintain belief in God's word, accepting what the serpent said over God's earlier directive, but also because her act of listening brought the antithesis of fruitfulness—death—into the world. While Protestant ministers encouraged their congregations (and readers) to hunger for God's word and to incorporate it into their bodies so that they, like the Virgin Mary, might be transformed, preachers were also [End Page 54] aware of how other voices could interfere with digestion. As Eve discovered, what the devil and the world say is often more appealing than what God says. Robert Wilkinson writes, "The diuel calleth by temptation and yee yeelde vnto it, the worlde calleth and ye listen to it, the fleshe calleth and ye come to it, but the worship of God calleth and ye care not for it" (Bvv). Such an ear, according to Richard Crooke, is an "adulterous Eare" (Egerton A4r-v).4 Moreover, he specifically associates these adulterous ears with transgressive female sexual desire, for they are known "as the Harlot is knowne, they are euer gadding to seeke their new Louers" (A5r). Nonetheless...

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