A Train of Thought: Questioning the Contemporary Lens

Tuesday's lecture about Shakespeare’s domination over early modern literature raised an interesting question for me. Dr. Sperrazza’s talk included stories about three female contemporaries of Shakespeare: Emilia Lanier, Margaret Cavendish, and Hester Pulter. The detail that piqued my interest particularly was that Cavendish and Pulter, both writing during the upheaval of English civil war, used their rhetoric to support monarchy and speak against the democratic Parlaiment.

This created a sort of cognitive dissonance for me. As a supposed beneficiary of the rise of Democracy and as a chronic advocate of the underdog, I would expect to hear these women’s voices championing prior changes in society that I understand as “progress.” The idea that these proto-feminist voices might stand up in female solidarity with a ruling power that is now generally viewed as highly patriarchal caused a moment of pause.

But then I realized that equating monarchy to patriarchy is an incorrect assumption and began to wonder whether monarchy is currently viewed in as negative a light as patriarchy. It made me wonder whether proto-feminist writers arguing for monarchy might have seen a patriarchal evil in democracy itself. It made me ponder whether these particular voices were set aside because they argued for monarchy, because they defended women, or both. In the end, Sperrazza’s lecture made me question my own assumption that explicit vassal status is, itself, detrimental to the individual and to society.

After all, there is not much difference between the vassal system of land “ownership” under Feudal rule and the current American network of corporate landlords; arguably, corporate landlords today are able to amass greater dominion than Feudal lords, since they are not bound by geography in the same way.

Ultimately, the train of thought I got on after Dr. Sperrazza’s lecture was one about who is silenced in times of civil unrest. Dr. Sperrazza emphasized to me that there was plenty of writing on both sides of the issue of monarchy vs. parliament at the time, and that assuming a 17^th-century English proto-feminist would have seen democracy as “progress” imposes the lens of our own temporal perspective.

The next stop on the train, where I’m now stuck, is a place of realization that I cannot permanently abandon my temporal lens. I believe progress has been made toward gender equity over the past 400 years, and I think Democracy is at the heart of social progress. It’s interesting to consider that individuals (like Emilia, Margaret, and Hester) whose “progressive ideas” may desperately deserve attention might not have the right answer for everything; yet still, silencing voices or ignoring arguments due to other fallacious arguments is a detriment to democracy, to progress, and to the canon.