Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre

by Marea Mitchell

  ‘I fear me, my behaviour, ill governed, gave you the first comfort: I fear me, my affection, ill hid, hath given you this last assurance. I fear, indeed, the weakness of my government before, made you think such a mask would be grateful unto me and my weaker government since, makes you to pull off the visor. What shall I do then? Shall I seek far-fetched inventions? Shall I labour to lay marble colours over my ruinous thoughts? Or rather, though the pureness of my virgin-mind be stained, let me keep the true simplic-ity of my word?’ ( NA, p. 330)

  In this passage Philoclea demonstrates the fear that taxes most romance heroines – the anxiety that they will be deemed to have invited sexual advances through their own behaviour. Tinged with Philoclea’s joy is the fear and anger that she has been tricked into staining her own honour despite herself. In this moment Philoclea voices the problem that essentially has no solution, and for which there is no ultimate safeguard.56 She is emphatically aware that emotional exposure strips her of

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  respectability and esteem in societies where women’s worth depends upon chastity as the guarantee of honour. She operates in a society in which the accusation of immorality is ever imminent, and acknowledges that its counterpart is unauthenticity. For Philoclea the question is how will she now behave? Given that she has demonstrated her affection for Zelmane, how can she now deny it for Pyrocles without appearing false and insincere, without laying ‘marble colours over my ruinous thoughts’ ( NA, p. 330)? In the end Philoclea has to throw herself on the mercy and virtue of Pyrocles: ‘Dost thou love me? Keep me then still worthy to be loved’ ( NA, p. 330). Philoclea’s need continually to protect her virtue is never far from the reader’s consciousness. Having agreed to marry Pyrocles, Philoclea’s battle for her honour continues: ‘they passed the promise of marriage, which fain Pyrocles would have sealed with the chief arms of his desire, but Philoclea commanded the contrary’ ( NA, p. 331); ‘[Philoclea] would needs drink a kiss from those

  [Pyrocles’s] eyes, and he suck another from her lips; whereat she blushed, and yet kissed him again to hide her blushing: which had almost brought Pyrocles into another discourse, but that she with so sweet a rigour forbade him that he durst not rebel’ ( NA, p. 357).

  If the rigorous defence of female honour is softened by the sweetness of Philoclea’s nature, and is part of the complex business of her convo-luted wooing by Zelmane/Pyrocles, the rigour takes a different form in her more majestic sister, Pamela. While Musidorus and Pyrocles, for their parts, succumb instantaneously to romantic love, it is precisely this kind of unreasoning and precipitate love that neither of the princesses can afford to indulge. As we have seen with Philoclea, the process of falling in love is gradual and entirely without the kind of knowing recognition that so transforms Pyrocles and Musidorus. It is also absolutely telling that the first indication the reader gets of any kind of response by Pamela to Musidorus is presented by Musidorus himself. While Pamela has been grateful for having been saved from the ‘foul, horrible bear’

  ( NA, p. 179), particularly given her guardian Dametas’s craven grovelling in the shrubbery, she nevertheless asserts in no uncertain terms her sense of what is due to someone in Musidorus’s position (since he, too, is in disguise, as a servant). Striving to show his affection to her at every possible opportunity, Musidorus’s help is acknowledged according to his status as servant.

  ‘But too well, alas, I found that a shepherd’s service was but considered of as from a shepherd, and the acceptation limited to no further proportion than of a good servant. And when my countenance had once given notice that there lay affection under it, I saw, straight,

  44 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre Majesty (sitting in the throne of beauty) draw forth such a sword of disdain that I remained as a man thunderstricken, not daring – no not able – to behold that power.’ ( NA, p. 221)

  So it is that, sharply reminded that Pamela is a respecter of persons, and finding his service ‘lightly regarded, my affection despised, and myself unknown’ ( NA, p. 222), Musidorus is despondent until he comes up with the plan of proving his worthiness by wooing Pamela by proxy, through her attendant, Mopsa. Thus begins the comedy through which Pamela comes to learn of Musidorus’s history and identity, and through which she suffers him to make his case. Throughout this process Pamela also explains, once again, the dangers that women face. As she says, ‘she is not worthy to be loved that hath not some feeling of her own worthiness’ ( NA, p. 225), and then again:

  ‘since the judgement of the world stands upon matter of fortune, and … the sex of womankind of all other is most bound to have regardful eye to men’s judgements, it is not for us to play the philosophers in seeking out your hidden virtues, since that which in a wise prince would be counted wisdom, in us will be taken for a light grounded affection: so is not one thing one, done by divers persons.’ ( NA, p. 226)

  Yet it is precisely in this speech that Pamela reveals that, while having the sex of a woman, she also approximates the wisdom of a prince.

  Perhaps here again we see a reprise of Elizabeth I, exercising a careful concern about allocating her preferences to an ambitious suitor. At the same moment that she reminds Musidorus of the constraints upon her as a woman, she also provides him with the mechanism to earn her approval. While stating that Mopsa cannot openly acknowledge his virtues, Pamela encourages the strategy that will eventually allow Pamela herself to do so.

  Pamela has to exercise consistent self-restraint in Musidorus’s presence, and the impact of this is emphasized because it is reported by Musidorus himself, given that no one could be more interested in or sensitive to any indication of favour from Pamela than he is. The narrator states that Pamela’s questions to Musidorus about his antecedents are delivered ‘with a settled countenance not accusing any kind of inward motion’ ( NA, p. 232),57 and with a ‘calm carelessness’

  ( NA, p. 233), which is starkly contrasted with Mopsa’s ecstatic reaction.

  Faced with such ‘cruel quietness’ ( NA, p. 234), Musidorus threatens to

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  slump into despair, and he comes up with a dramatically evocative picture of his failure to achieve the desired response from her: ‘howsoever I show I am no base body, all I do is but to beat a rock and get foam’ ( NA, p. 234).

  Musidorus’s despondency is a measure of Pamela’s success in self-protection, and in guarding her public reputation. Privately, however, Pamela reveals the extent to which this represents a significant effort of will. Far from being an effortless or automatic and technical exercise, Pamela’s resolve is revealed, when she is alone or with her sister, to be maintained only through intelligence and tenacity, and with some uncertainty. Pamela might be able to hide her blushes in the dark, but her speech gives her away to her younger sister. ‘The constancy of your wit’, as Philoclea puts it to Pamela, ‘was not wont to bring forth such disjointed speeches’ ( NA, p. 246). If the difference between the sisters is marked – in relation to romantic love here, Philoclea’s experience has certainly lacked the careful and self-aware analysis that marks Pamela’s – in both cases the narrative makes clear and beyond doubt that each princess is morally blameless. While lack of guile or self-determination is the hallmark of Philoclea’s immersion in love, in Pamela’s case it is the rational and careful analysis of the rightness of the love-object. Can she, she asks, ‘without the detestable stain of ungratefulness abstain from loving him who (far exceeding the beautifulness of his shape with the beautifulness of his mind, and the greatness of his estate with the greatness of his acts) is content so to abase himself as to become Dametas’ servant for my sake?’ ( NA, p. 247). Posing and answering rhetorical questions, Pamela reveals to her sister and the reader that she has weighed up the evidence presented to her regarding Musidorus’s true identity and found it compelling and irrefutable, and that this need to make judgements on her own behalf is further necessitated by her parents’ complete lack of care: ‘since
my parents deal so cruelly with me, it is time for me to trust something to my own judgement’ ( NA, p. 249).

  Like Philoclea’s battle to retain her virtue, Pamela’s scrutiny of the evidence before her and her own reactions to it is ongoing. While she reveals to her sister and the reader the extent of her commitment to Musidorus’s case, this is still not revealed to the prince himself, as is indicated in her response to the first of two letters that he sends her.

  The first one she accepts without any sign of kindness – an action that is only undertaken with great difficulty, as is evident by the fact that as soon as the prince walks out of the door again, the kindness that she could not allow herself to convey to the prince is bestowed upon the

  46 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre door itself ( NA, p. 251). Later on, Musidorus presumes to move from narrative and history to personal pleading, and forgets what is due to Pamela so far as to try to kiss her, which forces her again to withdraw. Pamela, like Philoclea, keeps having to reassert a distance that is vital to the preservation of female reputation, and that the princes repeatedly transgress: ‘“Away”, said she, “unworthy man to love or to be loved! Assure thyself, I hate myself for being so deceived: judge then what I do thee for deceiving me. Let me see thee no more, the only fall of my judgement and stain of my conscience.”’ ( NA, p. 436).

  Musidorus’s response to this is appropriately distraught as he lurches off into the woods for two days, without food or comfort. The second letter that he then comes to write to Pamela is a long poem that rehearses the injustices of his position, reminds her that her beauty is the cause of his ruin, and rebukes her for her inconstancy. Pamela’s difficulty is evocatively portrayed in her indecision as to whether she should read the letter. Convinced now, as she is, of Musidorus’s worthiness and of her own duty to and affection for him, she nevertheless fears the effects of his presumption. Grasping the letter, she realizes its provenance, yet in the same instant fears what it might contain, ‘therefore clapping it to again she went away from it as if it had been a contagious garment of an infected person’ ( NA, p. 438). It is only through a marvellous piece of equivocation (which presages the moral dilemmas and the ambiguous responses to them that were to become characteristic of the debates about Sidney’s Pamela’s later namesake, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela) that she allows herself to do what she wants to do, and reads the letter:

  ‘Shall I’, said she, ‘second his boldness so far as to read his presumptous letters? And yet’, said she, ‘he sees me not now, to grow the bolder thereby: and how can I tell whether they be presumptuous?’

  The paper came from him, and therefore not worthy to be received; and yet the paper, she thought, was not guilty. At last, she concluded it were not much amiss to look it over, that she might out of his words pick some further quarrel against him. Then she opened it, and threw it away, and took it up again, till (ere she were aware) her eyes would needs read it. ( NA, p. 438).

  This kind of dilemma suggests that critics have rightly identified the moral fortitude demonstrated by Philoclea and Pamela in their captivity under Cecropia, but there has been less focus on the princesses’

  conduct with their lovers, which can be seen to pose different and

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  equally important challenges. Neither princess is tempted to love or to marry Cecropia’s son Amphialus – their affections and love have been bestowed elsewhere. It is in dealing with their lovers that the two princesses are most severely tested and come closest to crossing moral lines that threaten their reputations. Pamela’s uncertainty as to how to respond to Musidorus’s reproaches in his letter-poem is considerable

  – ‘What this would have wrought in her she herself could not tell’

  ( NA, p. 441) – and it is only the intervention of Cecropia’s machinations that saves Pamela from herself at this point.58 She has to be saved again by an external force, once she has agreed to leave Arcadia with Musidorus. Now reliant on his protection alone, she is again vulnerable as she sleeps, unaware that Musidorus hangs over her. What might have happened next is forestalled as the ‘clownish villains’ ( NA, p. 654) come upon them and take them back to trial.

  What seems evident to us is that among many other things, New Arcadia demonstrates a clear narrative concern with how women (even women as innocent or as majestic as Philoclea and Pamela) are severely taxed in their endeavours to love wisely and virtuously. There are numerous and varied forces against them, parental, political, and accidental. At some points in New Arcadia, indeed, the sense of the difficulties facing the princesses becomes almost farcical in its extent.

  Delivered from the cruelties of Cecropia by her death, and released from Amphialus by his self-harm, Pamela and Philoclea are next embarrassed by the unwanted attentions of the grim brothers, Anaxius and Lycurgus, whose only redeeming feature is that they are not quite as imperceptive as their younger brother Zoilus, who makes the Basilian mistake of attempting ‘Zelmane’. Yet if the repeated attempts on the princesses become increasingly excessive and immoderate, this nonetheless works to emphasize how perilous the princesses’ position is. Time and time again, Pamela and Philoclea are required to take action for themselves, and to defend their decisions. While the two princesses are, of course, central characters in New Arcadia’s narrative, an examination of two final examples will further illustrate how dominant is the theme of delineating desiring women in Sidney’s revised Arcadia, and suggest also how this theme spoke to and was recognized by later readers and writers.

  Unfinished business

  The stories of Parthenia and Helen of Corinth are linked when they are first introduced by Palladius, early in New Arcadia, in book one, and

  48 Representing Women and Female Desire from Arcadia to Jane Eyre they provide fascinating suggestions that Sidney here is rewriting the relationships between his mother and Queen Elizabeth. Philip Sidney’s own mother was seriously scarred by smallpox, and subsequently left Elizabeth’s court as a result of that affliction. In Arcadia Parthenia is damaged by a poison thrown in her face but the damage is reversed by the ministrations of Helen of Corinth. In representing Parthenia as the damaged then cured ideal figure of womanhood, with Helen of Corinth as the troubled but generous female monarch, Sidney’s account repays the service of a loyal lady and courtier with courtesy and renewal, rather than years of ‘seclusion, illness, and humiliation’

  that were the fate of Lady Sidney, and, to some extent, her son.59 Again we see how particular fictional incidents manifest both specific and general associations.

  Parthenia is the epitome of female virtue, forced, like the princesses, to deal with unwise parental decisions. Parthenia’s mother decides that she should accept the attentions of Demagoras in a decision that clearly reflects dynastic and worldly interests rather than those of romantic love. Demagoras is her mother’s rich and powerful neighbour.60 The indictment of him is that he loves no-one except himself, and ‘for his own delight’s sake, Parthenia’ ( NA, p. 88), where Parthenia’s attractions lie in her beauty and in her value as a possession. She is not valued for herself and her own happiness is not a consideration.

  Parthenia initially obeys her mother, not because she agreed with the choice but because ‘her obedient mind had not yet taken upon it to make choice’ ( NA, p. 88). But when Parthenia meets Argalus, ‘the mutual affection’ between them teaches Parthenia the need to demonstrate her judgement and refuse to marry Demagoras. Perhaps this is the first instance in Sidney’s New Arcadia of the conjunction of Protestant and humanist values so dear to Sidney, of right-thinking wit and will, of the tenet that ‘men’s actions do not always cross with reason’, though they often might.61 Parthenia’s resolute refusal of Demagoras is underwritten by her own good judgement and by external assessments of Argalus’s own qualities. The stark contrast between good daughter and bad mother is evident in an observer’s reluctance to name the mother’s error:

  The change was no more stra
nge than unpleasant to the mother who, being determinately (lest I should say of a great lady, wilfully) bent to marry her to Demagoras, tried all ways which a witty and hard-hearted mother could use upon so humble a daughter in whom the only resisting power was love. ( NA, p. 89, our emphasis)

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  The mother’s self-destructive anger at her daughter’s persistence and Demagoras’s spiteful willingness to destroy what he himself cannot have by throwing poison into Parthenia’s face then lead into the painful self-sacrifice that Parthenia undergoes. Unwilling to allow Argalus to commit himself to someone whose beauty has been so badly marred, Parthenia’s absence and subsequent healing by Helen’s surgeons once again link these two women whose beauty can be compared only with the princesses. Argalus’s later refusal to love someone who simply looks like Parthenia, arguing that it was ‘Parthenia’s self I loved and love, which no likeness can make one, no commandment dissolve, no foulness defile, nor no death finish’ ( NA, p. 105), illustrates the combined labours that this couple undertake, and the temptations and tests that they complete to reach their successful union.

  The reciprocity of their relationship is further marked when we next see the married lovers, many pages later. Argalus reads to Parthenia tales of Hercules, while Parthenia listens, as absorbed in Argalus as she is in the stories he reads. The messenger who interrupts this idyllic scene to seek Argalus’s encounter with Amphialus then leads to what Argalus protests is ‘the first time that ever you resisted my will’

  ( NA, p. 503), a protest that leaves Parthenia in a speechless swoon.

  That it is Amphialus who is responsible for the end of this perfect relationship, in the deaths of both Parthenia and Argalus, is also a corollary of his own mother’s, Cecropia’s, malicious self-serving. The mothers of both Parthenia and Amphialus contribute to the destruction of their children through the exercise of their will enabled by their active wit and powerful circumstances.