Workshops: Stories

Workshop 4: "Good-Enough Mothers?":
Maternal Narratives in Early Modern Literature, Art, and Song

Conveners:

• Naomi Miller, English, University of Arizona
• Naomi Yavneh, Humanities, University of South Florida
• Claire Fontijn, Music, Wellesley College

In a variety of early modern narratives, maternity is associated with a doubleness of identity that only partially coincides with the doubleness commonly associated with femininity at the time. Whereas women in general were directed to be silent as well as chaste and obedient in order to counteract the perceived power of their sexuality, the idealized mother was seemingly granted a voice, and thus authority, to shape both her own offspring and others.Much fine work in the past decade has been dedicated to the recovery of early modern women's "voices"--their production in literature and art--as well as to a re-examination of women's roles in the period, breaking away from traditional stereotypes. More work remains to be done in considering how women themselves utilized stereotypes, and even caricatures, of feminized roles in order to establish speaking positions for themselves.Our workshop offered the opportunity to explore representative strategies by which conventional readings of motherhood are recast in a broad array of musical, visual and literary narratives.

Demonstrating the more recent advance of feminist thought into the traditionally conservative realm of musicology, Claire Fontijn discussed a striking and uncollected repertory of pieces depicting the occasions of Christ's birth and crucifixion that feature the Blessed Virgin Mary, who sings in a direct, first-person, Italian voice infused with character. In Catholic doctrine, the Virgin Mary holds a unique position as mediatrix between her son and his people. As mother of God, as well as guarantor of Christ's humanity, she is distinguished both by her conformity to and distinction from the lived experience of the Christian, for while she herself may have been conceived without sin, and given birth effortlessly and virginally, she is first and foremost a mother who nurtures, nourishes and finally buries her child.The duality of her maternal role is underscored in these vocal dramatizations, whether lullabies sung by the young nursing mother or the laments of the weeping mother mourning the death of her son. Professor Fontijn focused on the significance of Mary's maternal voice; despite the supreme humility that exalts her, as a singer, the Virgin rejects the virtue of silence, allowing her to mediate between nature and culture, between pure physicality and spiritual expression. The humanizing element of the divine prompts the need for the direct quality that the first-person vernacular voice provides. It also grants authority for the development of a new phenomenon in seventeenth-century Italian music: the female singer on stage.

Questions considered:

How does the performed quality of music affect the representation of motherhood? What in the nature of lullaby and mourning song makes these genres seemingly appropriate for giving voice to the maternal exemplar? How is the question of gender problematized in a song written by a man, yet sung by a woman as a clearly defined female character?

Naomi Yavneh invited exploration of the sacred exemplar, but from a visual perspective: her examination of representations of the Madonna lactans (or nursing Madonna) considered both the persuasive function of the stylized presentation of the Virgin's breast in the fourteenth century, when such images as Margaret Miles and others have argued served as pro-maternal breastfeeding propaganda, and the very personal significance of Sofonisba Anguissola's almost uniquely naturalistic representation in the sixteenth century. Anguissola drew upon both the greater realism of the art of her period and her own experience as a woman to delineate a parallel between the shaping qualities of mother's milk and the power of the female artist. If Sofonisba has not borne the children expected of the early modern woman, she is nevertheless responsible for wondrous offspring which guarantee her own self-definition as virtuosa. Like the exemplary analogy drawn between the humble Virgin and her faithful in the traditional Madonna lactans, Anguissola's Madonna becomes a model for the successful female artist, exalted precisely by her chaste creation of living--indeed, robust--beings.

Questions considered:

How do specific images simultaneously gesture toward and elide discussions of maternity? How can a traditional subject for representation be transformed from an emblem of theologically and culturally determined hierarchy into an enabling revision thereof?

Turning from painting to literature and from Italy to England, Naomi Miller considered idealizations as well as caricatures of maternity in both the pamphlet debate on women's roles and the popular genre of mothers' advice books. Even as participants in the pamphlet debate, such as Jane Anger and Esther Sowernam, used broad strokes to delineate maternal authority and responsibility in countering misogynist attack, authors of mothers' advice books, such as Elizabeth Grymeston and Dorothy Leigh, emphasize the dignity and strength that they bring to their roles as mothers, allowing them to direct their children with confidence. Rather than countering societal stereotypes regarding women, these writers use the conventions of the day to legitimize their rhetoric, situating themselves in relation to received notions of A good as well as bad mothers. Expressing maternity, for many of these writers, sometimes signifies writing to excess, beyond the bounds of reason, in order to transform the boundaries of generic constraint.

Questions considered:

How do popular conceptions of the "ideal" mother enable women writers to engage with issues normally considered off-limits, as well as to identify speaking positions for mothers? How do the expressions of maternity of early modern women writers (and artists and musicians) not only expand their own generic boundaries, but also serve to shape the boundaries of other widely different genres?

The interests and backgrounds of the three organizers represent the expansion of our field in the past twenty-five years, while suggesting areas for further growth. As facilitators rather than lecturers (each of us will provide a presentation of no more than five minutes in order to help shape the terms of the discussion), our goal was to increase interdisciplinary dialogue by uncovering narrative strategies across disciplines and national cultures to bring a wide variety of participants into a productive, informed and informing conversation.

In order to assist the dissemination of relevant materials, and in keeping with a conference goal to "exploit advances in technology to facilitate research and teaching," we created a workshop website that made available texts, images and music, and enabled interactive communication both before and after the conference itself.

The creation of the website has several advantages. First of all, it strengthens the interdisciplinary focus of our workshop by allowing participants not only to read relevant texts but to view the images and listen to the music -prior to the conference, thus enabling a more sophisticated discussion of the issues at hand when we all meet in Maryland. Secondly, because the website has been created in WebCT, a format designed to encourage and facilitate communication between teachers and students, as well as among students themselves, organizers and participants alike can raise questions before the conference, and continue discussion after a conversation which may include other conference attendees unable to attend this particular workshop (choosing is often difficult at ATW). We also sent a more traditional packet to those registering in our session, and have such materials available to those joining us at the last minute; thus, although the website will, we believe, enhance participants engagement with issues raised by our workshop, and encourage web use by some who may as yet have little experience with this medium, its existence will in no way proclude the participation of drop-ins.

Required Reading:

• Music for and recording of
  • Tarquinio Merula, "Canzonetta Spirituale sopra alla nanna,"
  • Tarquinio Merula, "Hor ch'è tempo di dormire"
  • Claudio Monteverdi, "Pianto della Madona a voce sola Sopra il Lamento d'Arianna

• Images of the Madonna by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and other fourteenth-century Tuscans, leonardo, Raphael, Titian, and Sofonisba Anguissola

• Selections from
  • Elizabeth Grymeston, Miscelanea, Meditations, Memoratives (1604)
  • Dorothy Leigh, The Mother's Blessing (1616)
  • Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women (1589)
  • Esther Sowernam, Half-hanged Haman (1617)