Bio: Sarah Devine is a Senior English and Spanish major at Willamette University. Her English emphasis is creative writing, and she completed a novella as her thesis. She plans to attend law school with a social justice emphasis and work in the area of women's rights.

Bodies Soft and Weak: Corporeal Shame in

Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew

By Sarah Devine

            Because of its public nature, shame functions in Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew as a societal sanction for people who overstep their social limitations. It reestablishes the status quo where it has been disrupted, and re-integrates deviant characters into the mainstream. The way shame operates in these plays is particularly interesting because of its deep connection with corporality; characters’ bodies are often the mechanism with which they are shamed, as well as the source of their transgression. Both Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and Malvolio in Twelfth Night demonstrate the anxiety that vulnerable and transgressive bodies provoke, and both are publicly shamed in response to their misbehaviors. Kate’s transgression involves overstepping her societal status as a woman, and her public shaming is one aspect of her eventual reinterpolation into patriarchal culture. While the hierarchy that Malvolio violates is class-centered, his shaming is enacted through the feminization of his body, and thus functions in much the same way as Kate’s does. Shame as it appears in these two plays is gendered and extremely corporeal. Kate’s shaming occurs because she is a woman, and thus gender is the rationale behind it; for Malvolio, however, gender (more specifically, the feminization of his body) is the technique with which he is shamed.

            Using bodies as the mechanism by which shame operates is particularly relevant to the early modern period because of the prevalence of humoral theory during this time. Humoral imbalance provoked significant anxiety in early modern England, and though all bodies were considered “semipermeable, irrigated containers” that had “porous boundaries” (Paster, 8), women’s bodies were “naturally grotesque” (Stallybrass 126). The characterization of the female body as especially vulnerable to humoral imbalance contributes significantly to the ease with which bodies are used to shame women and feminize men. Paster says: “Humoral theory was instrumental in the production and maintenance of gender and class difference as part of what Foucault has called the ‘hysterization of women’s bodies’” (7).

Notions of sexual difference in early modern England extend beyond characterizations of women as simply vulnerable to humoral imbalance. This imbalance was assumed to exist because the female body was open, unfinished, and grotesque; in The Body Embarrassed as quoted by Paster, Bakhtin defines the grotesque body as one that “is not separated from the rest of the world/ It is not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits. The stress is laid on those parts of the body that are open to the outside world” (Paster 14). This body is directly opposed to the classical body, which is “an image of ‘finished, completed’ man” (Stallybrass 124).

The difference between these two bodies has social implications as well. The classical body is ruled by “the ‘tongue of official literature or of the ruling classes,’ a language governed by the hierarchy and etiquette of palaces, churches, institutions and private homes” (124). This dichotomy, then, has a clear relationship to power and social standing. The dominant class is represented by the classical body, which implies temperance and a certain fortitude against the influences of humoral imbalance. The grotesque body, in contrast, belongs in “the marketplace, where it enjoys ‘a certain extraterritoriality in a world of official order and official ideology’” (Stallybrass 124). The grotesque body’s location outside of the dominant hierarchy almost necessarily makes it a threat to that system of ideology. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, according to Stallybrass, were concerned with “establishing social purity through bodily purity. The enclosure of the body…emphasized the borders of a closed individuality at the same time as it separated off the social elite from the ‘vulgar’” (125).

Because this hierarchy includes patriarchal values, the separation between the classical body and the grotesque body has a particular significance for women. As Stallybrass says, “bodily definitions were as important in the mapping out of gender as of class” (125). In addition to being “naturally grotesque,” or perhaps precisely because there were considered to be, “women’s bodies were already the object of policing by fathers and husbands” (126) in early modern England. The characterization of the grotesque as something open, and of something open as something vulnerable, directly informs women’s position in a society influenced by humors.

Kate’s shame in The Taming of the Shrew stems directly from her transgression against patriarchal culture. Societal control over women occurs specifically in the areas of “the mouth, chastity, [and] the threshold of the house” (126), and Kate violates her prescribed role within this system primarily through speech. A woman’s closed mouth was equivalent to her chastity, as demonstrated by the lines from Varchi’s The Blazon of Jealousie: “A Maide that hath a lewd Tongue in her head,/Worse than if she were found with a Man in bed” (quoted in Stallybrass, 126). For this reason, Kate’s witty and often acidic banter, particularly with men, denotes her as a shrew. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a shrew as: “A person, esp. (now only) a woman given to railing or scolding or other perverse and malignant behavior; freq. a scolding or turbulent wife.” The equation of railing or scolding with perverse and malignant behavior is echoed in Gremio and Hortensio’s statements regarding Kate in act one scene one. Both agree that “she’s too rough” (1.1.55), and that there will be “no mates for [her] unless [she] be of gentler, milder mold” (61). Although Gremio notes that her father is rich, he is certain that she will not find a husband, for such a man would be “so very a fool to be married to hell” (125-26). Later in the scene, Hortensio equates her shrewishness with “grotesque” bodily decay: “there’s small choice in rotten apples” (135-36).

Kate’s relationship to her sister Bianca embodies the dichotomy between the (female) grotesque body and classical body. Bianca is much sought-after by suitors, and Gremio and Hortensio describe her as having “sweet beauty in her face,/Such as the daughter of Agenor had” (168-69). Bianca herself appears to happily obey her father’s (and, by extension, patriarchy’s) limitations for her; she says: “Sir, to your pleasure I humbly subscribe. My books and instruments shall be my company,/On them to look and practice by myself” (81). She is what Stallybrass calls the normative “Woman”: “This ‘Woman,’ like Bakhtin’s classical body, is rigidly ‘finished’: her signs are the enclosed body, the closed mouth, the locked house” (127). Bianca’s character demonstrates that in order to not be perceived as grotesque and open (and, therefore, humorally vulnerable), a woman must submit to the physical and ideological enclosures of patriarchy.

The openness that Kate demonstrates in her interactions with men, coupled with the fact that she has no desire to marry, place her in defiance of the patriarchal culture in which she lives. Tranio must wait until “the father rid[s] his hands of her” (182) to marry Bianca, which once again highlights Kate’s entrapment within a society in which she is legally property: “In early modern England, ‘woman’ was articulated as property not only in legal discourse…but also in economic and political discourse. Economically, she is the fenced-in enclosure of the landlord, her father, or husband” (Stallybrass 127). Kate’s shaming, therefore, begins with the deliberate enclosure and humiliation of her body, and ends with her ideological enclosure within patriarchal norms and practices. When Petruchio marries her, he says to the other guests: “Go to the feast, revel and domineer,/Carouse full measure to her maidenhead,/…But for my bonny Kate, she must with me….I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels…My horse, my ox, my ass….touch her whoever dare” (4.1.224-25, 227, 229-33). By preventing Kate from joining in the celebration, Petruchio not only publicly asserts his control over her but also relegates her to the enclosed territory of the classical body and normative “Woman,” which is deliberately opposed to the “grotesque” imagery he evokes with his invitation to the partygoers.

Because she is a woman, and especially because she is a “shrew,” Petruchio’s shaming of Kate assumes a strikingly corporeal and humoral form. As Petruchio describes the various bodily tortures he has conceived of to “tame” her, he says: “I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor” (4.2.197). His strategies for taming Kate correspond quite closely to Stallybrass’ summary of Snawsel’s suggestions in A Looking Glasse for Married Folkes: “…the techniques to ‘tame’ a wife (including beating and deliberate changes of mood)---[he] compared them favorably to the methods used ‘to tame lions, bulls, and elephants” (126). In act four, scene five, for instance, Petruchio forces Kate to agree with him that the moon is shining, when she knows it is daytime: “I say it is the moon that shines so bright….It shall be moon, or star, or whatever I list” (4, 7). Along with his deliberate weakening of her body through starvation and lack of sleep and her entrapment within his or her father’s house, Petruchio stresses the ideological enclosure to which she is subjected as his wife: although she says that she “knows it is the sun” (4.5.5), if he “says” that it is the moon, then it is the moon.

Just as her shaming was enacted through her body (and brought about because of her femininity), Kate’s eventual reinterpolation into the patriarchal system is corporeal. In her soliloquy in act five, scene two, Kate justifies women’s need for obedience in bodily terms: “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,/Thy head….for thy maintenance commits his body/To painful labor….Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe” (150-53, 155). She speaks of bodily enclosure as a privilege, reifying the notion of patriarchal limitations as a necessary safeguard against vulnerable female bodies. Women are protected by staying literally and figuratively closed, she states, because “our bodies [are] soft, and weak, and smooth,/unable to toil and trouble in the world…” (169-70).

While Kate’s weakness and humoral vulnerability are assumed because of her gender, Malvolio’s in Twelfth Night  are brought about by his transgression as a member of the lower class trying to (and assuming that he can) marry above his station. He initially presents himself to his superiors as a Puritan-esque enforcer of rules who is in complete control of his emotions; Maria says in act two, scene three that he is: “a kind of Puritan” (139). In act one, scene five he says to his mistress: “Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool” (1.5.73-4). Olivia’s reply several lines later foreshadows Malvolio’s eventual downfall: “you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite” (87-88). The focus on decay and distemper (glossed in Bevington as disease) in both of their statements suggest a degree of humoral preoccupation; such physical afflictions indicate a susceptible and imbalanced body. Just as Kate’s body was regulated in order to shame her and reintegrate her into dominant culture, Malvolio’s physical sickness will, it is clear, result from and respond to his “self-loving” attempt at class mobility.

Act two, scene three demonstrates Malvolio’s attempts to maintain a classical (and therefore elite) body in the face of the “grotesque” antics of Sir Toby, Maria and Sir Andrew. He guards himself against this openness by attempting to stop it among those of the upper class: “My masters, are you mad?....Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty….Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?” (86-7, 91-2). Malvolio’s attempts to safeguard himself from humoral vulnerability prove to be the very weakness that eventually opens his body to it; Maria says: “he thinks…that it is his grounds of faith and that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work” (2.3.149-52). Later she calls her revenge “physic” (171), glossed in Bevington as medicine. Her revenge, therefore, is corporeal in nature, designed to weaken and open Malvolio’s body in order to publicly shame him.

One of the lines in Maria’s counterfeit love letter to Malvolio reads: “Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em” (2.5.141-3). Because the letter supposedly comes from Olivia, these lines can be seen as an invitation, or a temptation, for Malvolio to cross class lines in order to marry her. In act three, scene four, he says: “And when [Olivia] went away now, ‘Let this fellow be looked to.’ ‘Fellow!’ not ;Malvolio,’ nor after my degree, but ‘fellow’” (77-9). “Degree” is glossed as “station,” indicating that Malvolio believes Olivia could love him despite his status as a servant. This readiness to accept her offer is the transgression for which he is ultimately punished; a servant who believes he is able (and worthy) to marry his mistress is a threat to the dominant class system.

Later in the letter Maria (or Olivia) writes: “Thy fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them” (143-4), which once again locates his transgression in the body. In act three, scene four, Malvolio references humors, specifically black bile, in his speech to Olivia: “Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs” (27-8). Black bile, thought to produce melancholy, is juxtaposed (perhaps unwittingly) with yellow bile, thought to produce choler. Although he is referring to his stockings, his statements betray a body alarmingly imbalanced and open.

Although there are corporeal elements in Malvolio’s transgression itself, the majority of them appear in the shaming that occurs in response to it. As Maria correctly predicted, his body is eventually exposed as less classical and impervious than he pretended, and this exposure is feminizing. Like women, servants were not thought to possess the faculties to resist humoral or emotional influence; this (perceived) weakness is part of what kept them in a subordinate position. His transgression, which occurred because of his vulnerability, leads the dominant class to shame him. When he is thrown in the cell, several scenes echo Kate’s taming; in act four, scene two, for instance, he and Feste have a conversation strikingly similar to Kate’s disagreement with Petruchio about the sun and moon: “Say’st thou that house is dark?/ As hell, Sir Topas./ Why, it hath bay windows transparent…/ I am not mad…I say to you the house is dark…./ I say there is no darkness but ignorance” (34-7, 40-1, 42-3). Malvolio’s shaming, then, is also a “taming”; Callaghan describes the shamed Malvolio as “feminized, ridiculed [and] castrated” (436). He has been feminized via his (open) body to the extent that Feste and members of the upper class can entrap him to the same degree that Kate was entrapped by marriage, starvation and physical violence.

            Whether in response to subversions of gender or class norms, corporeal shame is always gendered. The notion of the female body as open and susceptible to humoral fluctuations is one defense of patriarchal domination, and Kate’s reinterpolation into the patriarchal system is marked by the physical and ideological enclosure of her (supposedly open, dangerous, and vulnerable) body. Her body is the reason for her shaming, and also the means by which it occurs. Malvolio’s shaming reveals that such bodily shame is not exclusive to women, and that gendered norms and practices can be applied to men as well as women. Grotesque bodies are associated with the lower class as well as with women, and thus the shame that they engender has significant social ramifications. The upper class uses Malvolio’s body in order to punish his attempted class mobility. Shame is public and by nature an expression of the dominant class, and is integral to the maintenance of social hierarchy because it reintegrates deviant citizens into the prevailing system.

Work Cited

Callaghan, Dympna. “’And All is Semblative a Woman’s Part’: Body Politics and

Twelfth Night.” Textual Practice 7 (1993): 428-52.

Bevington, David, ed. Shakespeare's Comedies. New York: Pearson Education, Inc.,

            2007. 111-147, 333-369.

Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early            

            Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.

“shrew, n².” The Oxford English Dictionary Online. 1989, 2^nd Edition, 7 May 2009

            < http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.willamette.edu/entrance.dtl>

Stallybrass, Peter. “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed.” Rewriting the

Renaissance: The Discourse of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Ed.

Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers. Chicago: U of

Chicago P, 1986. 123-142.