In the Labyrinth

Banished Brides and Longbows

 

I found this lovely image—most likely of the great warrior Queen, Matilda of Tuscany—and thought how familiar she looked, banded together with her sisters-in-arms, swords and longbows, arrows, and beautiful dresses. Though Matilda was certainly far more powerful and effective as a warrior queen, this image seemed like a perfect illustration for a band of querulous brides that appear in Zizola's novel.

More than a while ago, I wrote about the peculiar figure of the "banished bride" in folktales and ballads --- the bride who unwittingly stands in for the heroine until she can extricate herself from whatever impediment has kept her temporarily from her intended groom. The poor dear is then banished at the altar -- sent home, and even though financially compensated, her honor and reputation dimmed. Here's what I wrote in that post:

"So what happens to those banished brides -- not the deceitful and disguised brides, they always meet with bad ends -- but those brides like poor Anne of Cleves determined too ugly (and "too swarthy") by Henry the Eighth and sent home as unsuitable. Since we never get their side of the story or the what-ever-happened-to-that-young-woman? The writer in me couldn't resist wondering what those women might do to reclaim themselves if given a chance in a novel. A young writer I know suggested they went home with a huge sigh of relief -- imagining that such weddings to total strangers would have been scary enough to contemplate.

But from a narrative point of view, that's no fun -- especially after reading the Lost Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gonzenbach; I know that the Italians -- or at least the Sicilians-- are firm believers in spectacular revenge. So I couldn't help but think of a sisterhood of Banished Brides coming together and taking their fury on the road to extract some form of punishing compensation. A band of marauding, almost brides are offering to my young heroine roadside companionship and rancorous cautionary tales about men in general. (Although I suspect the trickster traveling with her would not be able to resist the temptation of meddling with those dangerous women.) Well...there's a few chapters to meditate on and then to write."

Queen Matilda was certainly no banished bride—though she did have an awful marriage to a stepbrother—but she seems to have compensated for all the shortcomings of an unhappy marriage by becoming a highly effective military commander and fighter. All this happened in the 12th century, which is pretty remarkable. 

When Struck by Fear of Writing, Refer To The Masters For Help

In anxious moments while working on the current novel, I turn for assistance to a 1968 Paris Review interview with the great Canadian author Robertson Davies, where he describes his writing process, a laborious and methodical investigation long before the narrative is written.

"I am at the moment winding up to write another novel, and when I say “winding up,” I mean I am making notes and plans and perpetually building up what I will eventually write; that is how I work. I make very, very careful plans and a great many notes—so many notes indeed that sometimes they are as long or longer than the eventual book. And sketches of characters and suggestions and references to things that will be useful. All that takes a long time. Getting to work on a new novel is a dismal business, for the beginnings never seem to get any easier with the passing of time. I toil like a swimmer who feels himself about to sink beneath the waves at any moment. Like all my novels, this one began with quite a simple idea, but as I work on it, a mass of complexities assert themselves, and I have to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by extraneous detail. But then—at least the way I work—when you begin to write, you can write quite briskly because you have done all the preparatory work beforehand. I hope it turns out well. But with novels, like cakes, you never know. Even when I finish a book, I’m never sure whether it is good or rubbish."

So, I am making furious notes, plotting, character studies, and the rest -- and I pray the cake will hold. And that will be good. And can I just add, that I love even more that Davies used a food analogy -- another habit of my family when talking about literature that is close to my heart.

The Menacing Virgins: The Commodification of Marriage and Birth II

    Here is an interesting perspective on the complexities of transforming a virtuous maiden into a chaste but sexually productive matron. "How does a maiden shift from bride to matron and" pay the marital debt?" Cristelle Baskins asks in her article "Il Trionfo della Pudicizia" (The Triumph of Modesty), a fascinating study of the economic exchanges negotiated before and after marriage. Baskins also examines the type of goods provided in the exchange that sought to educate the couple on their marital proper roles and reinforce the marriage bond through art.

    "In those negotiations concerning marital chastity, Elizabeth Cohen reminds us, the language of debt, payment, and exchange makes virginity a commodity. Fifteenth and sixteenth wedding furniture, including elaborately painted and historiated lettucci (beds), cassoni (dowry chests), and spalliere (wains-coating), is a domestic commodity employed in conspicuous consumption; it also offers an opportunity to examine Renaissance marriage ideology through the visual imagery geared for the primary spectatorship of brides and grooms." (118)

   Among the upper classes, it was expected that husbands would demonstrate their status and wealth by purchasing elaborately painted wedding furniture, commissioning religious paintings and sculptures, and deshi da parto (birthing trays), which were also painted and given as a gift for a new mother. It would also launch the future husband as a cultured man, purchasing expensive art. The subject matter of the art would have been carefully selected to reflect both the couples' status and "aimed to elucidate using example and perhaps even more concretely to inspire the conception of children and thus the expansion of the patriline. The most popular choice of art, it seems, was a reproduction of the Triumph of Modesty, a poem cycle written by Francesco Petrarca in the 1340s -- describing Cupid/Love being vanquished by Laura/Chastity and often appeared in horizontal panels on a cassoni.  

    "A fifteenth-century Florentine bride would have viewed Petrachan Trionfi on painted wedding furniture with a particular set of expectations and associations; her temporary triumph in the form of a bridal procession prefaced the conquest of her virginity and her transformation into a sexually active spouse...the Petrachan Trionfi trace a development from physical, sexual love to the renunciation of Cupid...For them (the brides), the state of innocence must be overcome but only by a chastened, disciplined conjugal love, not by the irresponsible, unpredictable passion inspired by Cupid." The art on the furniture was meant to "conceal the lack of fit between occasion and subject and thus, to blur the distinction between compliment and coercion...the pictures must simultaneously encourage the bride to abandon her fiercely maintained chastity to the needs of the patriline and yet, renounce illicit, physical passion."

But, to make sure the bride could be gently enticed, there was also an abundance of cassoni which, while it showed marriage events on the outside (and sometimes martial battles,) under the lid were erotic paintings of men and women nude doing the things married couples generally do when trying to create the next generation. More on the cassoni coming up with the next post (along with more on the art of the battle between Cupid and Chastity, cassoni, and birthing trays. 

"Il Trionfo della Pudicizia: Menacing Virgins in the Italian Renaissance Domestic Painting" by Christelle L. Baskins in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, by Marilyn Migiel (Editor), Juliana Schiesari (Editor)

The Menacing Virgins: Chastity Before and After Marriage, I

    Menacing Virgins (ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie) is a beautiful collection of essays on 16th-century attitudes and traditions regarding female chastity and conjugal sex before and after marriage. These customs are inscribed by two other considerations: the honor of the household and virginity as a form of commodity that engenders an exchange of goods, debt, and payments. The bride should exhibit the virtues of her status: vagine, onesta, casta, virginity, honesty, and social class.  When marital sex becomes a requirement of marriage, purity should be expressed through public modesty and private sexual restraint. In this first half of the essay, Cristelle L. Baskins examines (mostly male) attitudes toward female sexuality in the Renaissance. (*note to self, compare these attitudes to the women writers of the period.)

    Research Notes from "Il Trionfo della Pudicizia: Menacing Virgins in Italian Renaissance Paintings" by Christelle L. Baskins: 

    Quotes from the 14th to the 16th century, written by men on the proper behavior for women, reveal a concern should the wife fail to behave illegally, she would, in effect, betray her husband's honor and that of her children. And probably, financial concerns as marriages saw exchanges of money and goods before weddings, brides contributing dowries (paid out over time only if the union remained a moral activity), husbands providing housing, and copious amounts of art and wedding furniture. (*note to self -- look up more information on the "Desco da Parto" birthing trays given as a wedding gift for the bride.)  

    Paolo da Certaldo: compares a woman's virtue to a beautiful flower and a husband's crown." (14th C). Francesco da Barbaro tells wives to "at least seem to be chaste in that sort of temperance from which chastity is derived...lust and unseemly desire are harmful to their dignity and to their husbands even when they say nothing about it." ("On Wifely Duties" 1416) (117).  Leon Battista Alberti: "Nothing is so important for yourself, so acceptable to God, so pleasing to me, and precious in the sight of your children as your virtue. The woman's character is the jewel of her family...per purity has always far outweighed her beauty. (Delle Famiglia, 1440) (117) Baldassare Castiglione's dialogue, "Il Cortegiano" (1528), ponders the construction of exemplary female virtue in the service of men. In the dialogues debating women's chastity, Giuliano de Medici challenges a misogynist Gasparo: "But if you acknowledge the truth, you surely know that of our authority, we men have arrogated to ourselves a license, whereby we insist that in us the same sins are most trivial and sometimes deserve praise which in women cannot be sufficiently punished unless by a shameful death or at least perpetual infamy." (117)

    By the middle of the 16th century, the ambivalent attitude toward female sexuality intensified as "every gesture towards purity of the text or the body risks further contamination and pollution. Virginity emerges in Renaissance discourse, then, as a site for the exercise of misogynistic assumptions about women's limited capacity for sexual restraint. "  Francesco da Barbaro echoes an ongoing need to contain his wife's sexuality by requiring that even in her thoughts "...see that you never want another man to share this bed but me." 118)

Containing Violence in the Language of Honor

I have been reading Thomas V. Cohen's Love and Death in Renaissance Italy, a fascinating study of crime reports, for the information they reveal about life and language in the 16th century (the setting of my WIP). Detailed handwritten depositions of criminal cases recorded the testimonies of everyone from the kitchen boy, the serving girls, maids-in-waiting, pages, the knights, and the aristocracy. These depositions offer a wealth of information on the crime and the formulaic language used by all witnesses when speaking about the crimes. There were competing considerations for everyone involved. The serving women tried to be loyal to their Lady but recognized the higher authority of the Lord to whom they were obliged. The criminal and the aggrieved party engaged in tense discussions to find reconciliation. The law scribe transcribed the different voices into a legal process that would move toward appropriate compensation and resolution, thus ending the potential for future retribution and violence.

To maintain a reasonable chance of peace after a heinous crime (especially among the aristocracy and on which the lower classes depended for their survival), a codified language was used to satisfy the law's requirements and distance all parties from the threat of additional violence. Arriving at proper justice required a lexicon of acceptable phrases to describe the drama in "words and ceremonies that could channel the pain and convert catastrophe into something that is, because encoded, bearable."

These are a few research notes of mine, as well as Italian vocabulary and phrases that are new to me. As I am still reading through Cohen's work (so well written), there will probably be more of these notes as I gather ideas and thoughts about the new novel. 

"Scannare": the ritual slaughter of cattle through the neck, though occasionally used against unfaithful wives. Since adultery is a crime, a husband would have been obliged to murder his wife if caught indelicate to preserve the honor of the family and its position. 

"Ah, traitorous, this is the honor you do the Savelli house; you have cut off the nose of the Savelli House!" A transcript of the Massara, the senior servant to the Lady of the House. Cohen explains it: "Nose cutting, in Renaissance Italy, was a gesture of extreme contempt, a permanent disfigurement penalized in codes of law and signaled in local speech and custom. As an act, as a notion, it is often attached to adultery and cuckoldry... Victoria's (the wife) treason had afflicted her husband, her brother (with whom she was having a sexual affair), and the whole Savelli House. "

Once the killing is done, there begins a dialogue on the propriety of events: honor lost and then restored by specific acts and words, which, if done according to the ritual, invites a legal restoration of honor and the rights of those dishonored. From the deposition in the case files: 

"Signor Luovico (Albano family) turned to Signore Giovanni Battista, asking who killed the signora. Signor Giovanni Battista answered, "I killed her with my own hands." Then Signor Ludovico answered, "If you had not killed her yourself, I would have killed all three of you (the wife, the brother, and Stefano, the Albano cousin charged with looking after the sister.) At this point, Stefano, who was present, said to Ludovico, "Signore, nobody laid a hand on the signora except Signor Giovanni Battista, but as Triano (the brother), I'm the one who killed him because I loved Your Lordship and because Signor Giovanni Battista commanded me to."

Cohen then takes apart how this script both exonerates the brutal murders and returns both families into an accord: honor restored to both houses rather than vendetta or revenge: "In all this discussion, probably only the husband spoke the single truth, Ludovico and the two servitors said what the situation demanded...Stefano's improbable declaration of love reached out to make Ludovico complicit, a putative advocate of killings done on his behalf. Here, Stefano's amore was of the instrumental variety, not expressive passion but a social obligation, tagged in the language of effect...As for Ludovico's blood-curdling declaration, it at once sanctioned and hedged the double murder. The weight of his mock threat gave the killings gravitas and underlined its propriety."

Comments From the Dream World

I woke from an early (really early!) morning dream where Max Fleischer-style cats were on a fence, saying, "I woke up too early, too late. "I can't decide if it was meant for my untimely rising, a description of my whole life, or the character I am writing in a new novel—all three fit.

Childhood's Wound

 

When writing fiction about childhood and rites of passage, one can't escape the sorrow of maturation, the painful process of shedding one's skin to inhabit a new identity. Oral narratives evoke these transformations in often stark and vivid language: an armless maiden on a journey to become whole; the girl whose feet are battered from walking seven years in iron shoes; the hero who is torn to pieces and tossed over a cliff until a fantastic cow licks the broken part together and restores him.  The transition from one identity to a new one is where the tension of the narrative lies--will one survive such a process? So, I was taken by these two quotations from very different works and wrote them down in my notes: 

The first is from  Carlos Ruiz Zafón's gorgeous gothic novel, The Shadow of the Wind: "One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. When the mind can comprehend what has happened, the heart's wounds are already too deep."  Imagine the intensity of such felt knowledge as a child and, later, the revelation in adulthood about the long-lasting impact of such a wound. For the child, it is about surviving the injuries; for the adult, it is trying to reconcile the contradictions of such moments in one's life. 

The second quotation comes from Early Spring, the memoir of Danish author Tove Ditlevsen. Ditlevsen grew up in a brutal and barbaric working-class family with little respect for her as a girl and even less for her hopes of becoming a writer. It was a stifling, heart-breaking world; it is a marvel that she survived it and eventually thrived as an author. She muses about her childhood experience in a dark chapter that opens with, "Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own." This is important because it suggests that whatever self-awareness one has about the heart's wounds from childhood, we instinctively search for those who can give us a hand out of that coffin-like despair. Friends, older siblings, fairy godmothers, and even long-dead authors whose works give us a view much larger and more abundant in scope than our own.