Paradise Lost

Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n

In this passage, Milton seems to be making Heaven and Hell rather arbitrary. If it's just how the mind perceives something, then what is truth? What does being good mean you must strive for? Through out Paradise Lost Milton keeps showing the reader instances where things are not what they seemed.

For example, Satan is traditionally the epitome of evil, but in this work he's seen as oppressed and rebelling against a tyrant. Eve is traditionally the weaker, more emotional one, yet she reasons at a higher level than Adam. Her choices, even her choice to eat the fruit, are incredibly understandable to us. Eve and Adam are traditionally seen as very different people, with very different roles as ordained to them by God, yet Milton stresses that it's just their hair that are really different from each other.

In attempting to out do the Bible, in attempting to explain to us the acts of God, I find that Milton crafts a story where the people never really stand a chance, where if we are to believe that God is just we cannot try to find reasons that God is just - because those things won't match up if (as I believe Milton intended) we can find compassion for Adam, for Eve, and perhaps even most for Satan.

Paradise Lost ~ the best state of humanity

Thus early, thus alone; her heav'nly form
Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge;
But the hot hell that always in him burns,
though in mid-Heav'n, soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure not for him ordained: then soon
Fierce hate he recollects . . .

This is a shocking, dynamic passage containing language that, as we have been discussing in class, is tearing the text apart, and presenting Satan with an intimacy that the Bible never reaches.

The passage begins by describing Eve's beauty overpowering the evil intent of Satan. Milton could have described this happening in many different ways, but he chose to focus on the psyche of Satan. Milto says that the "Evil One" (a name suggesting no room for anything but evil) becoming abstracted from the very thing which we usually believe to be the essence of Satan's identity - evil. I'm also curious about how Milton does not say that Satan becomes abstracted from evil, but that Satan becomes abstracted from his own evil. Again, Satan is understandable and humanized - he has personal demons riding him as well! In this passage, Satan is not portrayed as Evil Itself, but he appears to be an unlucky, miserable, childish conduit for evil. If Eve's effect on Satan is able to abstract him from his own evil, could he not be redeemable? Portraying Satan this way does make Milton's God seem like a harsh one.

Next, Milton describes this abstraction as making Satan "stupidly good." It seems for the moment that seeing Eve has restored his own innocence. The word choice is also especially interestingly here. If Satan for a moment is separated from his evil by being stupefied, and by being made stupid, is intellect an evil thing? Is the best, most pure, most un-fallen state of humanity one of being "stupidly good?" Yet this is the thing that Eve also questions through out the piece. She wants to know more and to act more than just live according to the virtue of obedience to God.

The last lines of this passage remind me of the later scene, after Eve has eaten the fruit and when she is contemplating what to tell Adam. In the same way that Satan returns to evil contemplating the things that he cannot have (pleasure not for him ordained), Eve reveals her own evil because she cannot bear the thought of Adam partaking in pleasures that she cannot.

The Roaring Girl

PROLOGUE: A play expected long makes the audience look 
For wonders, that each scene should be a book, 
Composed to all perfection. Each one comes 
And brings a play in's head with him; up he sums 
What he would of a roaring girl have writ; 
If that he finds not here, he mews at it.
 Only we entreat you think our scene
 Cannot speak high, the subject being but mean.
 A roaring girl (whose notes till now never were)
 Shall fill with laughter our vast theater;
That's all which I dare promise. Tragic passion 
And such grave stuff is this day out of fashion. 
I see Attention sets wide ope her gates 
Of hearing, and with covetous list'ning waits
To know what girl this roaring girl should be, 
For of that tribe are many. One is she 
That roars at midnight in deep tavern bowls, 
That beats the watch, and constables controls; 
Another roars i'th'daytime, swears, stabs, gives braves,
Yet sells her soul to the lust of fools and slaves.
 Both these are suburb roarers.Then there's besides 
A civil city roaring girl, whose pride, 
Feasting, and riding, shakes her husband's state,
 And leaves him roaring through an iron grate.
 None of these roaring girls is ours: she flies 
With wings more lofty. Thus her character lies.
 Yet what need characters, when to give a guess 
Is better than the person to express?
But would you know who 'tis? Would you hear her name?
She is called Mad Moll; her life our acts proclaim.

The prologue to The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker quickly engages with the reader because it identifies itself as a work that is out of the ordinary. The first few lines of the prologue acknowledge that every person in the audience is coming to the play with a set of expectations and a set of opinions about what a "roaring girl" is. It also subtly criticizes people's tendencies to make fun of (or, "mew") the things that they do not understand, simply because he/she does not have a structure ready to understand it.

The prologue then continues to discuss the ready made molds that society have made for somebody called a "roaring girl." It brings up women who are drunks, women who make trouble with the police, women who are whores, and women who abuse their husbands and use all their money. The play stresses that "none of these roaring girls is ours: she flies with wings more lofty." Immediately the audience knows that this roaring girl is not only nothing that's ever been seen before, therefore they do not yet know how to categorize her, but that she is a woman of character. And that despite the earlier lines which tell the reader to not take the play too seriously and that the theatre will be filled with laughter (Tragic passion and such grave stuff is this day out of fashion), it does not suggest that the roaring girl herself will be the object of humor and comedy. The prologue immediately sets up the Roaring Girl to be taken as a serious character.

The Witch of Edmonton

And why on me? Why should the envious world
Throw all their scandalous malice upon me?
'Cause I am poor, deformed and ignorant,
And like a bow buckled and bent together
By some more strong in mischiefs than myself
Must I for that be made a common sink
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues
To fall and run into? Some call me witch,
And, being ignorant of myself, they go
About to teach me how to be one, urging
That my bad tongue, by their bad usage made so,
Forspeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn,
Themselves, their servants and their babes at nurse

This is my favorite passage in the play, because of its powerful, complicated language and striking characterization of Elizabeth Sawyer.

Elizabeth compares herself to a sink, or a vessel that must catch the dirtiest parts of society. She is poor, destitute, old, ugly, and uneducated. She is at the bottom of society, and her lack of power and any attractive quality makes her an easy scapegoat. It makes her easy to be made into a monster. Yet Elizabeth is no monster and she is no witch. She only becomes one (and not a particularly fearsome one compared to the monsters that the characters around her become) after she is accused and conjured into one by her society.

The playwrights are making complicated comments upon what the power of truth and perception within society. In the same way that the townspeople conjure Elizabeth Sawyer into becoming a witch (and, being ignorant of myself, they go about to teach me how to be one ), Elizabeth conjures the devil dog into being, causing mischief among the townsfolk. The devil-dog plays a part in Frank's murder of Susan, but given Frank's characterization that we see before this event unfolds, we get the sense that incompetent, fickle Frank acted in part of his own volition.

What is believed to be true may become true. Elizabeth is believed to be a witch, and due to these abstractions of human thought (so easily changed and negotiated around human motivation/ego/fear), suffers the very real penalty of death. Societal truths are arbitrary truths, yet people may die because of their existence. They get their power from people believing in their truth.

Therefore, the authors seem to be saying three things: an element of the supernatural shapes our world, social perceptions founded on nothing concrete shape our world, and free will shapes our world as well.

Following is a list of my reflections on the monsters that we conjure today.

~post 9/11 Islamophobia
~successful, independent, intelligent women
~particular body types
~mental illness

This play and my reflections about fear's role in our current society make me seek wisdom. Seek the wisdom to not act out because I fear change, seek the wisdom to understand the position and humanity of those at the bottom of our society. I want to find this wisdom because although the face and name of the witch has changed, as a culture we are still often conjuring one.

Islamophobia

body shaming

Ferdinand in Duchess of Malfi needed more compassion for the mentally ill. In this time period, mad, insane people were viewed as funny and a source of entertainment.

Arden of Faversham

Alice is constantly going back on her word, always lying quickly and easily to Arden. She even goes so far as to manipulate the man into thinking her public misconduct with Mosby is meaningless and that it is Arden's own insecurities that are coloring his perception of the situation.

In this time period (1590's), traditions are collapsing and social institutions are redefining themselves. The Catholic Church is no longer the only church. Questions about the power and identity of women surface when Queen Elizabeth takes the throne. Common lands become private property. The rise of the middle class creates more complicated ideas and fears about social status. Public, social institutions like marriage undergo change as well. The value of one's word is less binding.

But why is this change so feared? Maybe people believed that once an overarching dominant power structure was broken, people could not function, people would go crazy. Wives would constantly plot the untimely demise of their husbands.

I had a professor once who discussed a trip he took to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He was looking at an exhibit that chronicled the history of art in the western world. He said it was fascinating that one could clearly see the dominating power/ideal/thought or thing that most people aspired to during that time period, demonstrated through the painting. At one point all the paintings were extremely religious. At another it was all about Victorian decadence and lavishness. At another it was all war propaganda. Until he got to the present day, "modern art" section. This section was full of abstract art with a "disembodied feel" that, when placed next to its clear and understandable predecessors, was just difficult to make any sense of.

In an increasingly globalized world that also glorifies individuality, the lines between culture and race and social status and job title are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to compare. Catholicism and monarchy no longer dominate the world powers. Marriage is no longer a public institution. The definitions of what and who make a family have changed. Could the disjointed-ness and lack of coherency that my professor mentioned in modern art be reflecting the sense of groundless-ness of our modern time? Could our current society be what those who lived in 1592 have feared most? Do people go crazy without a clear hierarchy and established role within a family, social community, and work guild? This is a difficult question to answer.

We've brought up in class the point that although we tend to think of earlier time periods as more barbaric than our modern day, perhaps we are not so different. Although public executions are much more rare now than they were in 1592, our weapons of mass destruction are a monster that those living in the Renaissance couldn't even imagine.

Although we value our individuality and freedom of choice, could the lack of a dominating tradition/religion take away from our sense of community and connectedness? And if so, could this be correlated to a rise in mental illness and violent crime ( like murdering your husband)?

Are people less violent in a secular democracy than in a feudal society?

Is hierarchy part of the human condition?

Arden of Faversham is a play that highlights the actions of people prompted by fear and prompted by the uprooting of tradition. It's critical focus on human folly forces the audience to examine the social constructs that forged much of their identity, the dismantling of these constructs and its effects on identity, and, on an existential note, what, if anything, was ever a steadfast part of their identity?