Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain: Literary and Historical Explorations ed. by Richard Hillman, and Pauline Ruberry-Blanc (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain: Literary and Historical Explorations ed. by Richard Hillman, and Pauline Ruberry-Blanc Frank Swannack Hillman, Richard, and Pauline Ruberry-Blanc, eds, Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain: Literary and Historical Explorations, Farnham, Ashgate, 2014; hardback; pp. 236; 4 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781472410450. Richard Hillman and Pauline Ruberry-Blanc’s anthology examines fictional representations of female transgression alongside cases recorded in historical documents. Rather than viewing this basic comparative approach as reductive, the editors claim ‘that the methodological divergences’ between the majority of literary scholars and social scientists can be combined (p. 3). They also argue that their use of ‘transgression’ rather than ‘crime’ in the collection’s title emphasises the imaginative construction of women through fictional and factual interpretations. The first essay by Hillman examines ‘the incest motif’ in Shakespeare’s Pericles (p. 15). Hillman argues that volume 7 of François de Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques, dismissed by the play’s critics, was the source that Shakespeare used for the incestuous act. Shakespeare goes further than Belleforest, though, by [End Page 241] making the king’s daughter the instigator of the sexual transgression, rather than a passive victim who is persuaded by her nurse to find sexual pleasure with her father. In an important essay, Hillman finds that early modern women were not simply the fragile damsels in distress stereotyped in Romance, but were actually given agency through the transgressive act. In an equally fascinating essay, Diane Purkiss reads Macbeth through bodies and markings as transgressive spaces. She first examines the cauldron scene as eroticising the relics with which saints are associated. Purkiss then analyses in the play and comparable sources how the Jew and the witch become interchangeable, the differences between a hard and soft body, and the implications of babies’ bodies being imbued with supernatural power. Following on from David Nicol’s work on The Witch of Edmonton, Ruberry-Blanc focuses on how that play’s social and demonic aspects intersect. She also investigates what the play’s complex allusions and intertextual references connected to the black dog would have meant to its contemporary audience. The intriguing conclusion to Ruberry-Blanc’s well-written essay finds an uneasy comparison between the Marlovian scholarly ‘over-reacher’ and the old woman as witch. Frédérique Fouassier-Tate studies negative constructions of the early modern prostitute. Her mainly descriptive discussion of the prostitute as the reviled and desirable other is dated. A more accomplished essay is Pascale Drouet’s analysis of the infamous Mary Frith alias Moll Cutpurse. He finds in the colourful fictional representations of, and historical documents referring to, Moll Cutpurse an intriguing connection. Whether dealing in stolen goods or depicted as a cross-dressing, warrior woman, Moll is a subversive and allusive figure who challenges patriarchy. The importance of a woman’s marital status in English law is discussed by Marisha Caswell. She examines trials in early modern London for infanticide and petty treason to argue how the two crimes are affected by marriage. In an essay that relies solely on historical law records and Acts, Caswell notes how a woman’s marital status may incriminate or acquit her. James Sharpe makes creative use of the editors’ rubric for combining fact and fiction. He studies the role of women in the pre-trial stage of infanticide cases in Cheshire. Sharpe also analyses the accounts of female witnesses in cases of murdered women and fights between men resulting in death. His essay establishes the importance of women in enforcing or challenging the law. Anne-Marie Kilday challenges the belief that women only have a peripheral involvement in the highly violent crimes of assault and homicide. She examines cases in Scotland relating to the Scots law that a married woman is held culpable for the crime she commits even if her husband is present. Kilday finds that violent women, rather than acting as the stereotyped image of gentle femininity, were just as brutal as their male counterparts. [End Page 242] With bastardy, Jennine Hurl-Eamon finds a crime mostly attributed to poor women. Her essay is illuminating for challenging the literary construction of soldier...