Why was virginity important in elizabethan and jacobean times?
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By modern day standards, Claudio in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing has this weird obsession with virginity. Many could argue that since he discovers Hero, his fiance, sleeping with another man the night before their wedding, Claudio is more concerned with the infidelity of this act. However, Claudio’s argumentation when he ‘exposes’ Hero on their first wedding day is entirely centered around her virginity and perceived lack thereof. What made this charge against “poor Hero” so slanderous in Elizabethan theater?
In Elizabethan England, “the distrust of sexual desire and the ideals of maidenly virtue – virginity – and wifely chastity continued to preoccupy the Renaissance imagination of the moral and spiritual life well into the seventeenth century” (Rose 5). This, of course, refers to the strict adherence to purity and chastity that both churches that ruled England on and off during the Tudor dynasty (the Protestant Church of England and the Catholic Holy Roman Empire) supported and enforced. Virginity and maidenhood were bargaining tools for women at this time and perhaps the only real asset they could lay claim to; as a maiden, a woman had a greater ability to choose her destiny and rise in society. However, once virginity was lost outside of marriage, outside of a husband, a woman lost her only power. This is why when Hero is accused of sleeping with someone before her marriage with Claudio, she is “dead” to society. Many could argue that Claudio shames her before their wedding congregation because he is hurt by her infidelity. Depending on the actor and production concept, this could be the case, but Shakespeare’s main, original argument here is not “men will be hurt if they’re cheated on” – it is women are powerless without the promise of chastity.
Furthermore, Shakespeare really takes Hero’s side in this whole debacle over her “loss” of virginity. He hints at this with the title, Much Ado About Nothing, which “applies to the relationship between Claudio and Hero because he creates a great deal of fuss over nothing: in fact, Hero has not lost her virginity and she only pretends to die” (Dobranski 245). As Dobranski argues, this lost virginity is nothing in Shakespeare’s eyes: because she hadn’t lost it in the first place and because it shouldn’t be something so important to lose. Previous to the Tudor dynasty in the Middle Ages, sexuality was far freer and while stigmas around the loss of virginity were present, they were of a less dominant discourse. Scholars understand Shakespeare took a lot of inspiration from the Middle Ages, the times of knights and lords, so some argue he took this stance of female sexuality as freer and as something that shouldn’t be so tied to a woman’s power from this earlier time period.
Therefore Shakespeare combats this issue of virginity in Elizabethan England in this play, Much Ado About Nothing, because he disagrees with the demand for Elizabethan chastity.
By modern day standards, Claudio in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing has this weird obsession with virginity. Many could argue that since he discovers Hero, his fiance, sleeping with another man the night before their wedding, Claudio is more concerned with the infidelity of this act. However, Claudio’s argumentation when he ‘exposes’ Hero on their first wedding day is entirely centered around her virginity and perceived lack thereof. What made this charge against “poor Hero” so slanderous in Elizabethan theater?
In Elizabethan England, “the distrust of sexual desire and the ideals of maidenly virtue – virginity – and wifely chastity continued to preoccupy the Renaissance imagination of the moral and spiritual life well into the seventeenth century” (Rose 5). This, of course, refers to the strict adherence to purity and chastity that both churches that ruled England on and off during the Tudor dynasty (the Protestant Church of England and the Catholic Holy Roman Empire) supported and enforced. Virginity and maidenhood were bargaining tools for women at this time and perhaps the only real asset they could lay claim to; as a maiden, a woman had a greater ability to choose her destiny and rise in society. However, once virginity was lost outside of marriage, outside of a husband, a woman lost her only power. This is why when Hero is accused of sleeping with someone before her marriage with Claudio, she is “dead” to society. Many could argue that Claudio shames her before their wedding congregation because he is hurt by her infidelity. Depending on the actor and production concept, this could be the case, but Shakespeare’s main, original argument here is not “men will be hurt if they’re cheated on” – it is women are powerless without the promise of chastity.
Furthermore, Shakespeare really takes Hero’s side in this whole debacle over her “loss” of virginity. He hints at this with the title, Much Ado About Nothing, which “applies to the relationship between Claudio and Hero because he creates a great deal of fuss over nothing: in fact, Hero has not lost her virginity and she only pretends to die” (Dobranski 245). As Dobranski argues, this lost virginity is nothing in Shakespeare’s eyes: because she hadn’t lost it in the first place and because it shouldn’t be something so important to lose. Previous to the Tudor dynasty in the Middle Ages, sexuality was far freer and while stigmas around the loss of virginity were present, they were of a less dominant discourse. Scholars understand Shakespeare took a lot of inspiration from the Middle Ages, the times of knights and lords, so some argue he took this stance of female sexuality as freer and as something that shouldn’t be so tied to a woman’s power from this earlier time period.
Therefore Shakespeare combats this issue of virginity in Elizabethan England in this play, Much Ado About Nothing, because he disagrees with the demand for Elizabethan chastity.
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