Abstract
This essay maps out a constellation of early modern English feminine gatekeeper tropes that represent female sexual consent and imagine a gendered Cartesian dualism. This trope’s inherent mind–body divide grants the female subject’s mind a greater measure of rationality and autonomy from the body than other early modern discourses of feminine virtue, such as humoralism. However, it can also undercut feminine agency in self-regulation by placing all the responsibility and blame on the woman’s mind in cases of sexual harrassment and assault. Hadrian Dorrell’s Avisa, Shakespeare’s Lucrece, Thomas Heywood’s Jane Shore, and Christopher Marlowe’s Hero represent a spectrum of feminine mental complicity in extramarital sex, yet their mental “gatekeepers” are all suspected of failure. Shakespeare’s Juliet and Cressida literalize this gatekeeper trope and render it a material allegory when they negotiate with male suitors at literal portals on stage, a window and a chamber door. Examining the extraordinary pressures put on feminine “gatekeeper” minds in early modern texts allows us to discern contemporary willingness to blame the victims of sexual assault.
Highlights
This essay maps out a constellation of early modern English feminine gatekeeper tropes that represent female sexual consent and imagine a gendered Cartesian dualism
Figuring a gatekeeper mind that regulates traffic through the portals of her body’s architecture allows representation of widely different levels of feminine consent to sexual activity. This personified feminine mind might energetically bar the door to adulterous penetration, make a conflicted but calculated decision to open the door due to negative pressures, or throw open the door with gleeful willingness to men other than her husband. This trope’s inherent mind–body divide grants the female subject’s mind a greater measure of autonomy from the body and rationality than other early modern discourses of feminine virtue, such as humoralism, which would assert that a woman’s moral and mental failings arise from the inherent weakness of her body
The gatekeeper trope for female sexual consent imagines a gendered mind–body divide in which the mind functions as an independent entity separate from the properties of the body
Summary
This essay maps out a constellation of early modern English feminine gatekeeper tropes that represent female sexual consent and imagine a gendered Cartesian dualism. This pervasive trope posits a gendered mind–body divide that grants the woman an empowering intellectual agency over her body and at the same time undercuts the reliability of that sovereign gatekeeper mind when it regulates sexual consent.
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