Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre

by Marea Mitchell

  a lady worthy enough to have had her name in continual remembrance if her latter time had not blotted her well governed youth, although the wound fell more to her own conscience than to the knowledge of the world, fortune something supplying her want of virtue.39

  In this version the end of the story is foreknown. The narrator assesses, and finds Gynecia guilty, and includes the assertion that the situation would have been worse, and deservedly so, had luck or fortune not intervened to save Gynecia from public indignity. Gynecia’s fate is confidently predicted and the narrative moves on. In New Arcadia, in contrast, the tone of Kalander’s description of Gynecia, which we saw earlier, lacks the decisive judgemental tone characteristic of Old Arcadia. The predictive assurance of how events will unfold in Old Arcadia (‘the wound fell … fortune something supplying’) is replaced by the more speculative tone of New Arcadia (‘a man may say …

  otherwise it would have been’).40 The inevitability of Old Arcadia is replaced with a sense of contingency in New Arcadia, and perhaps this reflects a shift in Sidney’s own sense of what could or should happen in the years between 1577 and 1584.

  In the second significant change, while the scenes at the beginning of the second book are substantially the same in both versions of

  36 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre Arcadia, the responses of Cleophila in Old Arcadia and Zelmane in New Arcadia to Gynecia’s confessions of interest are subtly different.41

  In the first version Cleophila is surprised and horrified at Gynecia’s revelations. She marvels ‘what sudden sickness had thus possessed her’, marvels again ‘thinking some extreme pain did make her rave’, is

  ‘astonished’, and then is ‘stricken even dead … finding herself discovered’ ( OA, p. 83). Initially New Arcadia’s Zelmane is astonished too, but much more quickly understands Gynecia’s drift, ‘knowing well at what mark she [Gynecia] shot, yet loth to enter into it’ ( NA, p. 216). This mitigates the sense of Gynecia as predator that is the focus of the first text.42 In New Arcadia the manoeuvres between the knowing woman and the knowing man seem much more evenly balanced, and if anything the sincerity of Gynecia’s passions and the authenticity of her feelings highlight Zelmane’s own callous exploitation of those around her to get what ‘she’ wants.

  The sense of sympathy for Gynecia is particularly sharpened in the revision of Arcadia in the passage concerning Gynecia’s dream of the thicket of thorns. In Old Arcadia this dream and the following description of Gynecia’s state of mind are third person narrative, with again the voice of the judgemental narrator predominating: then indeed did her spirit suffer a right conflict betwixt the force of love and the rage of jealousy … Thus did Gynecia eat of her jealousy, pine in her love, and receive kindness nowhere but from the fountain of unkindness. ( OA, p. 103, our italics) How much more pathetic and affective is the scene in New Arcadia where the ‘great and wretched Gynecia’ assesses her own situation, lamenting:

  ‘O jealousy … the frenzy of wise folks, the well-wishing spite and unkind carefulness; the self-punishment for other’s fault and self-misery in other’s happiness; the cousin of envy, daughter of love, and mother of hate, how could’st thou so quietly get thee a seat in the unquiet heart of Gynecia – Gynecia’, said she sighing, ‘thought wise and once virtuous.’ ( NA, p. 377)

  Furthermore, in the first version, the dream is immediately followed by an interchange between Cleophila and Philoclea where the former tells the latter that he is Prince Pyrocles, before returning to the account of Gynecia’s persistent wilfulness. Here, then, Gynecia’s illegitimate desire is directly contrasted with the declaration of the legitimacy of Pyrocles’s

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  and Philoclea’s desire. In New Arcadia, Gynecia is much more sympathetically presented through her self-accusations, symbolically represented by the revolt of a ‘mutinous multitude’ ( NA, pp. 378–89). The different forms the condemnation of Gynecia takes – from the narrator, and from the character herself – also illustrate the general point made by Susan Gubar: ‘the soliloquy in Tudor romance is invariably a formal debate in which the character is poised between two opposing passions, two antithetical social codes. The internal monologue is obviously meant to examine a mind confronting a “careful conflict – tossed with contrarie cogitations”’.43 Gynecia is dignified through the form in which her turmoil is expressed. It is Gynecia with whom the reader identifies; it is Basilius who is rejected. The ‘affects’, or feelings, are stirred by access to Gynecia’s thoughts, while we simply laugh at, and laugh off, Basilius.44 In so far as Gynecia is princely and tragic, the reader, while being shown the ulcers, is nevertheless encouraged to commiserate. The desiring woman is shown to be in error but not demonized. She uneasily negotiates anxieties about powerful sexual women.

  Independent wills

  though virtue is a good guard [for women]: yet it doth not always protect their persons, without human assistance: for though virtue guards, yet youth and beauty betrays, and the treachery of the one, is more than the safety of the other. (Margaret Cavendish,

  ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’)45

  In this section it is our argument that while some of the central characters, such as Basilius, Gynecia, and Helen of Corinth (whom we come to later) approximate Elizabeth I, other key figures such as Pamela and Philoclea can be seen to represent the position of women and female desire in more general terms. New Arcadia has rightly been described as challenging the stereotypical roles of women, and it does so through acknowledging the difficulties surrounding female action in a society marked by gender hierarchies. While the love between the princes and princesses is legitimate, mutual and sanctioned in terms of rank and worth, the vulnerabilities of the women are still often evident.

  Take, for example, this description of Pyrocles’s desire for Philoclea by Pyrocles himself:

  The table at which we sat was round, which being fast to the floor whereon we sat, and that divided from the rest of the buildings, with turning a vice … the table and we about the table did all turn

  38 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre round by means of water which ran under and carried it about as a mill. But alas, what pleasure did it to me to make divers times the full circle round about, since Philoclea, being also set, was carried still in equal distance from me, and that only my eyes did overtake her, which (when the table was stayed and we began to feed) drank much more eagerly of her beauty than my mouth did of any other liquor. And so was my common sense deceived, being chiefly bent to her, that as I drank the wine and withal stole a look on her, me seemed I tasted her deliciousness. But alas, the one thirst was much more inflamed than the other quenched. ( NA, pp. 148–9) This passage is one of a number in New Arcadia where female characters are presented as objects of consumption for male appetite.

  Another, often quoted, scene has Pyrocles/Zelmane standing at the door enjoying the sight of Philoclea’s near naked body, with the aid of a strategically placed ‘rich lamp’ ( NA, p. 683). As William Craft suggests, this is part of the way that Sidney’s writing ‘compels its characters to live and move within the physical realm of bodily presence and desire’ and persuades its readers ‘to feel and think within’ these structures.46 So often, New Arcadia’s readers are encouraged, or even forced, as Gubar puts it, ‘to participate emotionally in the plot’,47 to experience the moment being described, and in these two cases we are aligned with the male perspective and appetite for the consumable female.

  Yet against these examples are the moments in the text where, far from being simply ‘potential victims who resist’ action rather than initiate it,48 women exercise independence of will, not only in a negative sense but in a positive sense. As critics have argued, New Arcadia involves a redefinition of what constitutes virtue and heroism. Mary Ellen Lamb suggests that the constancy exhibited by the princesses Pamela and Philoclea is more attractive than ‘the empty heroism of the battlefield’,49 and that th
is provides models for young women readers.

  Helen Hackett proposes that the princesses ‘invoke a language of secular martyrdom’ and that while there are troubling aspects of this in relation to the ‘resonances of sado-masochism’, they nevertheless open up a ‘space within an apparently orthodox virtue for women as a desiring subject.’50 Sidney’s princesses in the revised Arcadia are ‘much more active’51 than they were in the first version. New Arcadia does ‘offer women a version of themselves as far more independent, powerful and significant’ than they might have been elsewhere,52 or as Paul Salzman puts it, ‘Pamela and Philoclea achieve a type of heroism in the

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  Captivity Episode, but it is a passive, stoical heroism, a resistance to Cecropia.’53

  All of these formulations argue for changes in the presentation of female characters in New Arcadia, yet all in some way mark this presentation as limited, most clearly evidenced here in Salzman’s ‘but’.

  Underneath these accounts still lurks a sense of an active/passive model marked by gender and hierarchized as such.54 And indeed there is evidence of this in the treatment of the princesses in New Arcadia.

  They are the victims, at least physically, of another woman’s machinations. They are reduced, brought down, tricked and abused. Yet if we look at these two central female figures in New Arcadia we can see how they negotiate the minefields of male desire to pursue their own.

  If Gynecia’s predicament and its sympathetic treatment is unprecedented in English fiction then so too is the direct articulation of the predicament in which Philoclea finds herself in her growing attraction to the person she thinks is a woman. There is a striking passage where Philoclea, innocent, sweet and (initially) totally guileless, catalogues and lays bare the feelings that she is developing for the Amazon Zelmane. The candid and unassuming way in which she gently works through her feelings and the possibilities they raise testifies to her total lack of any secret intentions. She herself does not know what she is experiencing. Throughout the early part of New Arcadia Philoclea is consistently presented as innocent, ‘like a young fawn who, coming in the wind of the hunters, doth not know whether it be a thing or no to be eschewed’ ( NA, p. 238). She is so far incapable of determining or choosing to love anyone in particular that the imagery in which she discusses her situation repeatedly includes the sense of being overcome, invaded, and conquered. Sidney’s Arcadia very carefully ensures that Philoclea is free from any taint of wilfulness in the early stages of her relationship with Zelmane. In a lengthy sentence that mimics the gradual development of Philoclea’s feelings, readers see how Philoclea comes to feel love for Zelmane.

  For after that Zelmane had a while lived in the lodge with her and that her only being a noble stranger had bred a kind of heedful attention; her coming to that lonely place where she had nobody but her parents, a willingness of conversation, her wit and behaviour, a liking and silent admiration, at length the excellency of her natural gifts joined with the extreme shows she made of most devout honouring Philoclea (carrying thus, in one person, the only two bands of goodwill, loveliness and lovingness) brought forth in

  40 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre her heart a yielding to a most friendly affection; which when it had gotten so full possession of the keys of her mind that it would receive no messages from her senses without that affection were the interpreter, then straight grew an exceeding delight still to be with her, with an unmeasurable liking of all that Zelmane did: matters being so turned in her that where at first, liking her manners did breed goodwill, now goodwill became the chief cause of liking her manners, so that within a while Zelmane was not prized for her demeanour but the demeanour was prized because it was Zelmane’s.

  ( NA, p. 238)

  What this passage patiently establishes is the path by which Philoclea comes to love Zelmane. Clause by clause Sidney builds the sense that Philoclea is following no whim but rather an inexorably logical path founded on the observation and understanding of Zelmane’s admirable qualities, and ‘her’ attention to Philoclea herself. If observation and respect lead to admiration for Zelmane to the extent that Philoclea begins to imitate her, then this has been achieved not only ‘by the commonalty of passions … agreed unto by her most noble thoughts’

  but also by that faculty for which Sidney had the highest regard:

  ‘reason itself (not yet experienced in the issues of such matters) had granted his royal assent’ ( NA, p. 238). Yet it is important to note that at this stage it is still friendship that best describes the relationship between the two ‘women’. It is only once this ‘diligent officer’ has been established that Philoclea is described as experiencing something else, chiefly categorized by nameless longings and wishes. So step by careful step Sidney makes it clear that the process of falling in love is one over which Philoclea has had no control: ‘at the last, poor soul, ere she were aware, she accepted not only the badge but the service, not only the sign but the passion signified’ ( NA, p. 239). In a couple of pages Sidney very carefully distinguishes Philoclea’s position from that of Gynecia and all the other women in the text who know what they want and go after it. In Philoclea Sidney has designed a woman who is completely innocent of any designs of her own to the extent that she does not even know what is happening to her, as she directly reveals to the reader. She summons up and dismisses a number of scenarios that might now suit the way she feels for Zelmane. Being nymphs together is inadequate because it would not provide her with the singularity of relationship that she wishes – other nymphs would share the company. Zelmane being her sister would be insufficient if Zelmane were to marry. The third option canvassed is that either she or

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  Zelmane become a man.55 While Philoclea may be an innocent abroad in terms of not seeming to understand the implications of this third option, it is likely that the less innocent, more experienced reader would be aware that the possibility of marriage also entails the likelihood and necessity of a sexual relationship. Philoclea might only perceive a sense of this through ‘whole squadrons of longings’ whose meaning she does not understand, but it is unlikely that a reader would be in the same position. What is unclear to the young princess is highly suggestive to the reader, and it even begins to dawn on Philoclea herself through what we would now term her unconscious:

  ‘[t]hen dreams by night began to bring more unto her than she durst wish by day, whereout waking did make her know herself the better by the image of those fancies’ ( NA, p. 240). So it is that finally Philoclea gives in to feelings that she does not comprehend for an outcome she cannot imagine:

  ‘Away then all vain examinations of why and how. Thou lovest me, excellent Zelmane, and I love thee.’ And with that, embracing the very ground whereon she lay, she said to herself (for even to herself she was ashamed to speak it out in words) ‘O my Zelmane, govern and direct me, for I am wholly given over unto thee.’ ( NA, p. 244) What is important to us in this section of New Arcadia is the trouble Sidney takes to ensure that Philoclea is free from any intention or self-assertion in love. Love is something that happens to Philoclea, based on friendship, appreciative of noble virtues, dependent on reciprocity and the realization that she is loved, and governed by reason.

  Philoclea’s implicit ability to countenance, albeit indirectly, a relationship with another woman that goes beyond friendship is momentarily startling in the context of the story as a whole. It is, of course, in the tradition of all those moments of ambiguity in renaissance drama where a character falls for the cross-dresser, and it is similarly restricted and sanitized by the audience’s knowledge of the cross-dresser’s ‘real’

  sex. Yet here it is important to distinguish between what the reader knows and the knowledge of the character, particularly as it goes to the issue of the nature of the character. We may know that Zelmane is Prince Pyrocles, that a match between these two is not only acceptable but desirable, appropriate in terms of gende
r and class, but this is a dimension not available to Philoclea but that attests to her disinterestedness. The integrity or sincerity of her emotions for Zelmane cannot include a materialistic account of how felicitous and advantageous this

  42 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre match would be because she simply does not know who Zelmane is.

  She is cleared of any aspersions of self-interest before any can be made.

  The revelation that Zelmane is Pyrocles Prince of Macedon then effects two different gender transformations. First and most obviously, female Zelmane is revealed to be masculine Pyrocles. Second, at that same moment female Philoclea is temporarily aligned with male Pygmalion:

  The joy which wrought into Pygmalion’s mind, while he found his beloved image was softer and warmer in his folded arms till at length it accomplished his gladness with a perfect woman’s shape (still beautified with the former perfections) was even so such as, by each degree of Zelmane’s words, creepingly entered into Philoclea, till her pleasure was fully made up with the manifesting of his being, which was such as in hope did overcome hope. ( NA, p. 329) The statue or representation of desire that Zelmane embodies for Philoclea comes to life with the understanding that as a man and a prince Pyrocles can fulfill the longings consuming Philoclea. The impossible has become possible. The gender transformation of Zelmane produces a momentary gender re-alignment in Philoclea, but this immediately arouses the fear that as Pygmalion Philoclea has created a situation that her femininity should have prevented. So joy passes to fear that she has transgressed female virtue: