Giving voice to women: Teaching feminist approaches to the mystery plays

College Literature, Spring 2001 by Normington, Katie

Coletti advocates that the figure of the Virgin Mary should also be studied. She advises that much rewarding debate can be had within the classroom by examining responses to the image of the Virgin, and this has been my experience (1990, 86). Students were able to identify the complexity of her iconography: she is at once a passive representation of an ideal woman and also a strong, independent projection of womanhood. She was felt by many students to be remote and inaccessible; this was a complicated background against which to examine her portrayal within the plays, as it marked the difference between medieval and contemporary audiences/readers.

The work of contemporary feminist theologians, such as Rosemary Radford Reuther, has raised issues about the way Mary is viewed. As Reuther points out, Mary's image "reintegrates humanity as androgynous personhood and redeemed body" (1975, 36). Reuther's writing was used as a starting point through which to re-evaluate our responses to Mary. Many of Reuther's observations support the views that Coletti offers within "A Feminist Approach to the Cycles." For example, Coletti draws attention to the Coventry Weavers' pageant Presentation and Disputation in the Temple, where Joseph refuses to procure the turtle doves that Gabriel has requested be presented at the Temple (1990, 83-84).This moment of domestic squabbling highlights the way in which Mary's portrayal "reintegrates humanity."

We discovered that studying the pageants that incorporate Mary builds a more complex image of her position and function. For example, the Coventry Annunciation seems to stress the relationship between Joseph and Mary rather than focus upon the religious miracle. Of course in choosing to emphasize this aspect the dramatist provided his medieval actors with a simpler task of representation; it is easier to depict the relationship between Joseph and Mary than it is to show an immaculate conception. In presenting an extract from this pageant, students identified the way in which the use of personal pronouns and the continuous switching of subject within the scene set up a dialectic between Joseph's concern with the views of the outside world (the suspicion that he has been cuckolded) and his devotion to Mary within their domestic sphere:

But, in faith, Mary, thou art in sin, So much as I have cherished thee, dame, and all thy kin, Behind my back to serve me thus.

All old men, example take by me-- How I am beguiled here you may see-- To wed so young a child. Now farewell, Mary, I leave thee here alone--(Cawley 1990, 75. 1.130-36)

These incidents can be used to discuss the function of such scenes: it is a reminder that the cycle plays are not only the vehicle of the church. The dramatist has spent much time depicting the relationship between Joseph and Mary and this is important. The citizens who comprise the guilds are shown to be instrumental in controlling the means of reproduction that dictated the cycles; here the plays reflect their domestic and social concerns. As Gail McMurray Gibson points out, "public literary texts like vernacular religious drama were not only shaped by local facts and expectations, but served an active function in shaping them as well" (1989, 40).The dramatist, in depicting the annunciation, has decided to focus upon the tensions that surround a marriage between an older man and younger woman. This is just one moment when the dichotomy of virgin/whore is swiftly displaced, and a more complex dialogue is set up for the spectator.23