Women Writing of Divinest Things: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Pembroke, Wroth, and Lanyer

9. Proving Woman’s Worth

Proving Woman’s Worth 177 177 CHAPTER NINE Proving Woman’s Worth I begin my discussion of Lanyer’s volume in medias res for several reasons. First, “Eves Apologie” is not only a notable exception to Lanyer’s “biblical literalism,” it is also the place where her persuasive intent is most clear.1 As an apology in the early modern sense, “Eves Apologie” is a defense of women; as an apologia in the rhetorical sense, it offers an especially lucid example of a woman poet using, with considerable finesse, her ability “to see the available means of persuasion.” 2 The entire narrative poem is driven by an argument that aims to affirm the moral and spiritual superiority of women and thus to deny the necessity of their subordination . 3 In a uniquely protofeminist volume, though, “Eves Apologie” stands out in that it presents the Salve’s most forceful—and hence most overtly rhetorical—challenge to Christian orthodoxy; as Achsah Guibbory says, the apology’s vehemently revisionist exegesis argues that both the speaker and the poet “have not only interpretive power but the right and responsibility to speak publicly.”4 Second, because “Eves Apologie” is also more intensely focused on gender issues than any other section of the Salve, it is a particularly useful place from which to demonstrate that the woman poet’s understanding of rhetoric is not correspondingly gendered. “Eves Apologie” thus provides an especially salient illustration of the argument I have been making all along, that 178 Women Writing of Divinest Things just because women writers may at times be concerned with issues that are exclusive to their sex, this does not also mean that they are not participants in a purportedly male rhetorical culture. As much as Lanyer’s volume presents “a specific resistance to the recollection of the past as history,” 5 it also offers specific resistance to our tendency to read women’s writing in distinctly feminine terms. Lanyer’s apologia strongly suggests that, no matter how “feminine” the substance, women writers engage in rhetorical argument in much the same way as their male counterparts—the “history” of rhetoric is “herstory,” too. Finally, “Eves Apologie” is a useful place to start because it exemplifies how Lanyer uses the art of rhetoric to persuasive advantage throughout the volume known as Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum . As noted above, Lanyer’s text as a whole is as concerned with the larger guiding principles of rhetorical argument as it is with the mimetic possibilities of “microscopic rhetoric.” This is not to say that Lanyer in any way avoids the colors of rhetoric: on the contrary, there is scarcely a stanza in her entire volume that does not use rhetorical figures. Most often, though, Lanyer uses repetition in her verse; figures such as anaphora, polysyndeton, diacope and conduplicatio appear with notable frequency, and they far outnumber other kinds of figures. 6 All of these are used in a way that seems designed to arouse the audience’s emotions, convey the speaker’s vehemence, and affirm the severity of Christ’s persecutors’ crime. Lanyer’s use of other kinds of figures—such as the ecphronesis of “Oh hatefull houre! oh blest! oh cursed day! (472) and the syneciosis of the Passion’s “joyfull sorrow” (912)— work toward the same end, generating a persuasive force that cannot, in this case, be read as exclusively masculine. Missing from Lanyer’s volume, however, are the numerous and subtle appearances of figures such as antimetabole and zeugma that play such an important role in the poetry of Pembroke and Wroth. But this distinction should not be read as evidence of Lanyer’s lesser skill; rather, the rhetorical differences between her verse and that of the Sidney women have more to do with these Proving Woman’s Worth 179 poets’ very different aims. Part of Lanyer’s aim is, of course, to persuade her readers of the rightness of her argument on woman’s behalf, a purpose that frequent and forceful repetition serves. In relation to the story of Christ’s Passion, though, Lanyer’s use of rhetorical figures can be read as having a purpose that is more mimetic than persuasive. Though the figures she tends to use carry more argumentative force, they are also plainer and less elaborate than those on which Pembroke and Wroth, for the most part, rely: this is because Lanyer’s poem aims...