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COPYRIGHT 2000 Rice University
[T]he semblances and appearances of all things cunningly couched, are the principal supporters of our Philosophy: for such as we seem, such are we judged here.
--Philibert de Vienne
[I]t can never be obvious what a woman has inside her.
--Katharine Eisaman Maus
In recent years, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry, written by Elizabeth Gary sometime between 1603 and 1610 and published in 1613, has been interpreted as supporting a broad spectrum of political and social views. [1] While some critics have found the play to be overtly feminist, others see it as an explicit validation of aristocratic male dominance within marriage and the state. [2] Despite these contradictory interpretations, there is one notable constant in modern Mariam criticism: with few exceptions, the tragedy is read as an extension or expression of its author's own life and struggles, both within a difficult marriage and involving her conversion to Catholicism. The fact that one of the most popular scholarly editions of the text republishes the play in combination with Gary's extant biography, The Lady Falkland Her Life, simultaneously underscores and encourages this approach. [3] The apparent congruence between the play and the Life establishes a "field of conceptual or theoretical co herence" Michel Foucault incorporates into his account of the "author-function," a coherence central to current analyses of her literary production. [4] For instance, the consistency of her views about proper female behavior expressed in both the Life and the play has frequently been noted, exemplified by her biographer's assessment that "[s]he did always much disapprove the practice of satisfying oneself with their conscience being free from fault, not forbearing all that might have the least show, or suspicion, of uncomeliness, or unfitness; what she thought to be required in this she expressed in this motto (which she caused [to be inscribed] in her daughter's wedding ring): be and seem" (p. 195). Combine this with Mariam's proud assertion that "I cannot frame disguise, nor never taught / My face a look dissenting from my thought," a conviction she reiterates several times, and the assumption that Mariam is a stand-in for the author herself becomes logical (IV.iii.145-6). Be and seem appears to be a neat e ncapsulation of the kind of behavioral rigor and consistency Gary ostensibly maintained throughout her own life and thus crafted in her tragic heroine's attitude.
But to accept this assumption at face value is, I believe, to close ourselves off from the wider range of meaning offered by this rich text. Instead, I want to argue that be and seem is a key which unlocks diverse possibilities for female agency within both Gary's life and her drama. It is true that this motto is explicated for readers of the biography as evidence of Gary's insistence upon an exact correlation between virtuous thought and decorous practice, but we must pay attention to the contexts in which this text appears. The Lady Falkland Her Life is not, strictly speaking, hers at all- rather, she is a protagonist in a story of someone else's composition, and her representation is therefore shaped by the agenda of her biographer. Her status as a persona in this narrative invokes the rhetorical concept of ethopoesis, the making of character, which, as Lloyd Davis explains, is an inherently contradictory process.[5] The inevitability of authorial involvement in the crafting of biographical events into a cohesive record means that readers must approach it as a precise indicator of the nature of its subject with extreme caution.
The exact identity of the author of the Life is debatable, though it was evidently written after Gary's death by one of her four daughters who took the veil at the Benedictine convent of Cambray.[6] Throughout the text, the author is unconventionally straightforward about her mother's personal characteristics, but these are not necessarily cause for condemnation: "She spoke very much and earnestly; her heart was very open, and she easily known; nor was it hard, for those near about her, to get some power over her. Her fashion was in nothing graceful; her neglect, through forgetfulness, of all customary civilities was so notable that it was passed into a privilege[ldots] She was one very generally known, and to those that knew her, much known" (p. 270). According to this account, Gary's character flaws were primarily those of na[ddot{i}]vet[acute{e}] and an absentminded disregard for social proprieties--refreshing material when read in contrast with some of the other idealistic life stories composed during th e Renaissance, such as John Mayer's comparison of Lucy Thornton to a battalion of biblical figures, or the extravagant testimonies to Elizabeth Crashaw's perfection. [7] However, Cary's faults are not the most important point of the narrative. Instead, the central purpose of the text is to relate the story of this intelligent and well-educated woman's conversion to Catholicism and subsequent devotion to its tenets.
The hagiographic tendency of the biography is made most manifest by the author's observations near the end of the Life about the nature and depth of Viscountess Falkland's faith: "she was a most sound sincere Catholic, greatly coveting the conversion of others [ldots] and, as she had ever, from her first being so, gladly made profession of it, so at her death she was most careful to avoid making any show to the contrary [ldots] she did more hope to be heard as a child of the Church, though, as she always acknowledged herself, a most imperfect one" (pp. 270-1). Next to this portrait of her piety, Cary's lack of practicality and apparent disdain for the social niceties are mere bagatelles. According to the values inherent in this narrative, Cary's behavior is an exemplum of the transformation and proper practices of a proud member of the One True Church. Both passages quoted above emphasize Cary's sincerity, the impossibility of her concealing the truth of her thoughts from others: she was too "easily known" t o have been able even to consider the expedience of deceit. In "ma[king] profession" of her faith and "avoid[ing] making any show to the contrary," we are assured, she performed precisely the role that her beliefs dictated.
The idealizing exegesis of be and seem thus becomes clearer as a necessary element in the construction of Elizabeth Cary as the ideal Renaissance English Catholic, disdaining to resort to duplicity in her steadfast refusal to be overcome by the Protestants among whom she had to live. The Life as a whole fits neatly into the contemporary practice among recusant Englishwomen in Continental nunneries of...
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