Wife and window in Arcadia: re-envisioning the ideal.(Philip Sidney's 'New Arcadia')(Critical Essay)

In February of 1608, Margaret Ferne-seede, the window of a London tailor, was executed at Saint George's field for the murder of her husband. It was reported that Margaret, upon hearing of his death, demanded to be brought to the scene of the crime where, after viewing her husband's bloody, maggot-infested body, expressed no visible sign of emotion; instead, she dryly demanded "whether his throat were cut or [whether] he had cut his own throat" (Araignement 1608, n.p.) When asked by an astonished acquaintance why "the loss of a good husband [is] so slightly to be regarded," she coolly responded: "Tut sir, mine eyes are ill already and I must now preserve them to mend my clothes, not to mourn for a husband" (n.p.).

Whatever other evidence was used to convict the dry-eyed Margaret, perhaps none was as damning as her unnatural response to her newly acquired widow status. For she purportedly did not shed a tear at the sight of her husband's mutilated body; rather, as the Araignement reports, "the dryness of her brain would suffer no moisture to descend into her eyes" (1608, n.p.). From this lack of tears, a case was constructed around the stoic Margaret. Later it would be reported that she had, even prior to the murder, exhibited behavior unbecoming a wife.

She had been given to all the looseness and lewdness of life which either unlawful lust or abominable prostitution could violently call upon her, with the greatest infamy, yea, and with such a public and irrespective unchastity that neither being chaste nor cautious she was regarded not either into what care the loathsomeness of her life was founded or into what bed of lust her lascivious body was transported. (Araignement 1608. n.p.)

That she came to be labeled an unchaste wife ultimately doomed the emotionless Margaret Ferne--seede. For in casting aside her chastity, as the Araignement maintains, Margaret opened herself up even to the possibility of murder. Although no physical evidence linked her to this most heinous of domestic crimes, culturally inappropriate peripheral behavior led to the lighting of the execution flames.

Early modern women's behavior is explored at length in Sir Philip Sidney's New Arcadia (1593), where a wife's unsanctioned lust for another leads to the "death" of a husband and a conviction on charges of murder. Although Gynecia is ultimately absolved of her crime, her compromised virtue expediently restored, it is not before the text wrestles with cultural mandates dictating female behavior within early modern England. Indeed, it is in the dialogic opposition of two other figures, the highly stylized Parthenia and Cecropia, that we may glimpse the early modern debate over women's behavior. For although Parthenia and Cecropia respectively rehearse the "do's" and "don'ts" of virtuous wife and widow, each likewise questions the viability of a behavioral code for women. Exposed as a static, idealized construct, the code inevitably fails during unscripted moments of everyday experience. The text's problematic resolution to the tortured Gynecia's behavioral dilemma ultimately underscores the necessity of agency w ithin women's lives--be they maids, wives, or widows.