refashion, classical, estimation, rhetoric, Christian duty, debate, Christian humanists, Protestant reformers, husbands, wives
<< previous
next >>
170
refashions this classical estimation of women’s material value by shifting the focus from what women produce to what they possess; thereby overcoming the anachronism of a middle-class lady passing her time in the production of wool. By doing so he diverges from the reforming spirit of the poems upon which he innovates in this attempt to display his classical learning.
Significantly, in the penultimate couplet, Turbervile realigns himself with the conventional doctrine preached about the purpose of matrimony. Procreation is figured as an altruistic act which is both beneficial to the commonwealth and a Christian obligation: “Yet must we praise the match whereby we see/ The earth maintainde with men, and stored full” (ll.31-2). This argument marks the point at which the answer and its antecedent truly depart from one another. Although women’s value continues to be determined by their capacity for childbearing and the material benefits they might bring, the introduction of the rhetoric of Christian duty into the debate exposes its absence in the previous poem. This lends an additional sense of condemnation to the answer-poet’s closing couplet: “But if you thinke so yll to take a Wyfe,/ Let others wed, leade you the single lyfe” (ll.33-4).
********
Debating the Duties of Husbands and Wives
Another of husbands’ duties, according to the Christian humanists and Protestant reformers alike, is to mould their wives into ideal partners: “The husband may the woman make or marre”, as Turbervile phrases this precept in his answer (l.16). Such echoes of Erasmus’s claim in the Encomium Matrimonii that “none have evil wives but such as are evil men” must be seen in context alongside the emphasis placed upon the agency allowed to women within marriage (Art of Rhetoric, p.95). Following Paul, women were exhorted to be obedient to their husbands, but such dogma was tempered with a dose of Peter’s emphasis upon husbands’ responsibilities and
<< previous
next >>
Stumble It!
