The Maudlin Impression: English Literary Images of Mary Magdalene, 1550-1700 (review)

Patricia Badir examines the figure of Mary Magdalene in England from the Reformation to the Restoration. Exploring drama, poetry, sermons, and artworks, she argues that Mary Magdalene served as a 'site of memory' (p. 3) that could transcend the rupture with the medieval past, and evoke the experience of Christ's physical presence for those generations deprived of the Eucharist after the rejection of transubstantiation.

Chapter 1 focuses on Mary Magdalene's conversion (Luke 7) and Lewis Wager's play The Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene. Mary's conversion transforms the sinful Magdalene, representing Catholicism and the past, into a reformed, Protestant Mary. She is, however, also a site of continuity: while proclaiming this break with the past, the play's success depends on the non-scriptural medieval construction of Mary Magdalene as an aristocratic prostitute. Washing Christ's feet, the dramatic Magdalene allows the audience to imagine 'how it feels to touch Christ' (p. 47), an experience now rendered inaccessible.

In Chapter 2, Badir notes 'Christ's vanishing human presence' (p. 56) in poems by Robert Southwell, Richard Verstegan, and others, in which Mary Magdalene replaces Christ as a site of memory. Mary expresses grief, loss, and yearning at the sepulchre over the missing body of Christ (John 20) and her affective response to the risen Christ offers an 'idea' of his presence built on her memory of the past.

Chapter 3 studies the contemplative Mary, sister of Martha (Luke 10). For John Donne, Nicholas Breton, and Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Magdalene becomes a model for virtuous women. Instead of touching Christ, Mary experiences Christ the Word, serenely reading the Scriptures and reflecting. This contemplative Mary, as artworks (many helpfully reproduced here in halftone) reveal, owes something to the legendary hermit Magdalene.

Chapters 4 and 5 chart the 'secularisation' of Mary Magdalene as 'the subject of prayer becomes the object of art' (p. 157) in poetry (Herbert, Crashaw, Herrick, and Vaughan), prints, and paintings, where 'the beauty of holiness' (p. 189) increasingly appeals to connoisseurs and collectors.

Finally, the sensual Magdalene of the Restoration reflects the period's decadence. Aphra Behn's The Rover and portraits of courtesans à la Madeleine reveal that, while traces of Mary Magdalene remained, the Restoration Magdalene represented illicit pleasure rather than pointing to Christ. Even so, Badir suggests, Mary Magdalene continues to function as a site of memory in which the medieval Magdalene and something of the inaccessible past can be traced.