The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch

Male and Female Bodies

chapter four AWoman’sTouch Male and Female Bodies Hot,dry,cold,and moist.The same qualities thought to shape the cosmos in premodernity were also believed to shape the bodies of men and women.The creation of a human being involved the union of cold matter, provided by the mother, with hot seminal spirit, contributed by the father. If the father’s semen had been sufficiently“cooked”or concocted the newborn would be male.If the amount of heat was insufficient to fully concoct the semen,a female child would result.The conclusion was that women were imperfect,“half-baked” men (P. Allen 1985). According to received wisdom, a superior endowment of heat accounted for many of the characteristics of the male body.Heat pushed the male body upwards, giving men narrow hips and broad shoulders and extending their height. Heat also pushed the male organs of generation outwards. Heat could even account for male baldness: rising to the head, it was said to “burn up” the hair that grew there.A lack of rising heat,by contrast,made the female body broad at the bottom and narrow at the top, as well as relatively short in height.With insufficient heat to impel them outwards, the female organs of generation remained ensconced within the body. Furthermore, while a greater endowment of heat supposedly gave men greater vitality,their relative coldness made women inactive.Hot men used up most of the food they consumed in activities,cold women,it was thought, stored their food as fat, menstrual blood, and milk, enabling them to carry and nourish children (Allen 1985; Maclean 1980). Once made,bodies,particularly female bodies,might still change their sexual characteristics. It was considered possible for an overheated woman—one who, for example, raised her body temperature by engaging in vigorous activity—to Classen_Text.indd 71 3/15/12 2:48 PM 72 chapter four acquire male corporeal traits.The increase in heat could burn up feminine fat and menstrual blood and even possibly cause women’s internal organs of generation to externalize and be transformed into male genitals (Laqueur 1990: 140–42). The opposite circumstance of a male body taking on female characteristics could occur in the case of men who had been “cooled down” by castration. Along with being hotter than women’s bodies, men’s bodies were considered to be drier and hence harder and stronger.Women’s cold moist bodies, in comparison , were thought to be like uncooked dough, soft and malleable. Scriptural authority for the notion of men being harder than women was found in Genesis: whereasAdam was created from hard ground, Eve was made out of soft flesh— Adam’s rib.Thus Hildegard of Bingen wrote in the twelfth century that“through the vital powers of the earth,Adam was manly. . . . Eve, however, remained soft in her marrow” (cited byAllen 1985: 296).The very words for man and woman in Latin—vir and mulier—were understood to express this difference, for vir could also mean strong while mulier was similar to mollier, meaning soft (Isidore of Seville 2006: 144). The dryness that accompanied masculine heat additionally gave to male bodies qualities of incorruption and inodor.Excessive moisture,by contrast,was said to predispose female bodies to corruption and malodor—of which menstrual blood was taken to be a prime example.Along with being a source of odor, the womb was considered to be sensitive to odor, to the extent that physicians occasionally used incense to induce a displaced womb to return to its proper position within the body (Maclean 1980: 40; Jacquart andThomasset 1988: 131). Further support for linking thermal qualities to sexual differences was found in the stars.The Sun—the foremost astral body—was associated with masculinity and typed as hot and dry.The female Moon, by contrast, was deemed to be cold (like the nighttime in which it appeared) and wet (like the tides it governed). Hence the medieval theologian and astrologer Pierre d’Ailly proclaimed: “The Moon is cold and wet and the mother of waters” (cited Grant 1996: 466).The unchanging nature of the Sun was taken to be a sign of masculine constancy while the changeable nature of the Moon signified feminine inconstancy.Feminine menstrual cycles, of the same duration as lunar cycles, seemed to provide conclusive evidence of women’s physical connection with the cold, wet, mutable Moon. The different qualities that shaped male and female bodies were also considered to shape male and female characters...