Female Errancy as Medium and Message

Deanna Shemek. Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998. xii + 258 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-8223-2155-6 (cl); 0-8223-2167-x (pb).

In this elegant book, lucid in design and expression, Deanna Shemek studies female errancy as displayed in four texts, one visual and three verbal: a fresco by Francesco del Cossa in the Sala dei mesi (Hall of Months) of the Palazzo Schifanoia built for the amusement of the dukes of Ferrara; Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532); Laura Terracina's riff on forty-six octaves from the Orlando Furioso; and a novella of Matteo Bandello's. The readings of these texts, performed in five neatly linked chapters, are connected by the theme of errancy.

The word "errancy" derives from the Latin verb meaning both "to wander" and "to err"--two activities that Renaissance theorists, like their medieval and ancient predecessors, attributed to women. Whereas men, it was thought, pursued clear goals by linear paths, women wandered, lost in illogic, their tongues yielding babble. Their wombs also "wandered," producing the symptoms of "hysteria." Women erred, straying from the standard of excellence set for them by men, and tending toward sin; and, as sin in women was most often sexual, the consequence was male dishonor. Just as literary, visual, rhetorical, and religious culture celebrated some women's virtue--specifically, their chastity--it spotlighted (in order to condemn) the errancy of others. By exposing female errancy, male authors acted as powerful agents interested in upholding the social order.

Shemek finds a vivid example of the simultaneous display and denigration of errancy in Cossa's fresco, depicting a festival event that Duke of Ferrara Borso d'Este created not so much for carnival recreation as to promote rituals with which the ruler surrounded himself to maximize his power. The festival featured a race in which men, women, and horses ran around a track. Working expertly through unpromising chronicle descriptions, Shemek has determined that the men were soldiers, the horses their pack animals, and the women were prostitutes. Conventionally associated with lower-class soldiers, prostitutes frequently accompanied them to war, where they not only provided sex but also cross-dressed, fought in battles, and worked as spies. Cossa presents the runners in a narrow band. One key female figure (who merits a place on the cover of the paperback edition) is errancy incarnate, scantily dressed, her genitals revealed, running and grasping at the male figure in front of her. In a broader band above are arrayed male officials and female spectators who, by their signs of power and indications of disdain, establish the subordination of the runners and display the solidarity of the social elite.

Shemek's next two chapters explore errancy as embodied in the two principal female characters of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso--Angelica and Bradamante. Angelica wanders randomly through the forest, encountering adventures and the serial illogic of the epic, but she does not err. She represents an ideal femininity, desired but never yielding, committed above all to the preservation of her chastity and her kinsmen's honor. In the end, she falls in love--as total woman--but keeps her chastity intact.

Equally chaste but radically different in all other regards, warrior maiden Bradamante represents another ideal woman--the incipient modern woman, perhaps. Bradamante errs but does not wander, thus her errancy is redeemed. She errs by dressing and behaving like a man: she wears armor, fights duels, and wins battles, her long golden hair confined in a net underneath her martial helmet. As a masculine figure, she does not, like Angelica, wander aimlessly through a romantic landscape avoiding male violence. Rather, she defends her chastity and honor, while vanquishing male sexual predators as well as knights. Bradamante is not merely competent at being a man, she embodies masculinity; yet she remains supremely female, the possessor of golden locks. In the end...