Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires: Female Sexuality in "The Faerie Queene."

In Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires, Sheila Cavanagh argues that earlier readings of The Faerie Queene ignore the different perspectives that male and female readers might bring to the text. She therefore attempts to "reclaim the 'woman's part,'" by insisting on Spenser's ultimate refusal to ally femininity with anything like true virtue, a word she construes in terms of an etymology of gender (virtue). In the first four chapters of the book she explores the issue of female sexuality in The Faerie Queene by considering the ways in which Spenser describes the appeal of woman as she is revealed to male characters (and readers) in dream and in nightmare or through a scrim composed of society's empty categories of beauty and of class. Cavanagh's discussion focuses on key figures like Gloriana, Duessa, Una, Mirabella, Florimell, and Amoret, pointing up the ways in which Spenser's presentation of the feminine devalues it and delimits its potential for virtuous action or for power. In the final chapter she concentrates on the legend of Britomart, reading Britomart's heroism as woefully inadequate, in the end only a sign of female insubordination, a manifestation of the impossibility of the very virtue she embodies, since in order to be chaste she must remain ignorant (171). Cavanagh's reading stands as a testament to the difficulties of translating Spenser into the language of the late twentieth century, to the difficulties any teacher might have reading the text in the context of contemporary feminist concerns. She signals the uneasy response to certain concepts and conventions (like the fertile and barebreasted but "desexualized" Charissa [31-32]) when a reader has been schooled in the rhetoric of postmodernist film theory and feminist psychological criticism. She therefore locates the Faerie Queene within the boundaries of the contemporary woman reader's response, rather than within those of a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century woman.

In so doing Cavanagh appears to ignore the complexities of the allegorical mode which Spenser chose as the language for his poem. For example, she states in the Introduction that a good deal is to be gained by adhering to the narrative level of Spenser's poem, for such a reading allows her to juxtapose widely disparate scenes (2). However, it makes little sense to hold all female characters to the same critical standards, for not all do the same work in the poem. Some figures like Charissa are purely allegorical and can only be seen in relation to Spenser's exploration of the complexities of holiness (where gender configurations surely play a part). Others, like Britomart demand the same type of scrutiny as do Guyon or Red Crosse or Artegall, for Spenser's picture of chastity is as multivalent and as problematic as his depictions of the other virtues. (Nor would I argue that chastity depends upon ignorance, for Spenser makes it clear that he explores chastity in the context of the world and its demands, thus a tested virtue, not untried virginity.) Indeed Cavanagh argues that Spenser's presentation of Britomart is fraught with inconsistencies. But, rather than consider those inconsistencies in relation to the conventions of the medieval and renaissance literature of love or to the political and social rhetoric of late sixteenth-century England, Cavanagh grounds her argument by referring to contemporary discussions of female sexuality. (The notes, by the way, read like a separate book in which Cavanagh does engage with the more historical work of other Spenserians.) Why texts like The Story of O (121-23, 134-35) should tell us more about Spenser's poetry than those texts he himself knew and used Cavanagh never adequately demonstrates.

This is not to say that the issues Cavanagh raises are invalid. The neo-platonic conventions that underlie Spenser's treatment of love and beauty need to be further contextualized in terms of the work that is now being done on late medieval and renaissance literature. An example of such work can be found in Sara F. Matthews' recent essay on Georgette de Montenay in the Winter 1994 issue of this journal. Almost ten years ago the collection of essays entitled Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe heralded such differently directed studies; and since then the work of scholars like Elaine Beilin, Ann Rosalind Jones, Barbara Lewalski, Louis Montrose, Maureen Quilligan, and many others has demonstrated the benefits to be had from rethinking a literature and a history. Cavanagh's study of Spenser as a woman might read him underlines our need to know more about how women did read him and use him.

LYNN STALEY Colgate University