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Giving voice to women: Teaching feminist approaches to the mystery plays
College Literature, Spring 2001 by Normington, Katie
18 The representation of women within the plays as "helpmate or servant" is probably realistic: the majority of their work within the late medieval period was in the areas of domestic service, petty retail, prostitution, midwifery and parts of the wool and cloth trade (Bennett 1989, 12).
19 Elizabeth Witt in Contrary Marys disputes Coletti's reading. She believes that Coletti's ideas do not reflect a clear enough understanding of the significance of Mary in a Catholic country.Witt believes that "the divine as opposed to the human nature" of the Virgin is emphasised in the mystery cycles (1995, 51).
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20 Caroline Walker Bynum suggests a similar approach to the examination of the representations of medieval women which overcomes their marginality: "If one looks with women rather than at women, women's lives are not liminal to women (1991, 47-8). Indeed, Richard Hillman takes this approach in his examination of Mary's lament in the Chester cycle. He sees the shift between transitive and intransitive modes, and between self and object as enabling Mary to surpass "the self-image reflected by her crucified son" (1997, 243).
21 See Bynum (1991) for a full discussion on the double-gendered body of Christ.
22 Coghill's translation is very accessible to students who may have no prior experience of medieval literature.
23 Cindy Carlson argues that in the N-Town Trial of Mary and Joseph Mary is positioned alongside the experience of women in the late Middle Ages: "In the medieval play, Mary's submission and silence have the potential to call into question
the public institution of the church and its legal systems, both run by men..." (1995, 358).
24 York City Chamberlain's Rolls, 1475 (mb 2). Later records show the Lady Mayoress leased a station at York for free, and in 1522 two of the twelve stations were leased to women.
25 Kowaleski and Bennett estimate that widows composed between two and five per cent of guild membership (1989, 15).
26 For a fuller discussion of this moment see Normington (1996).
27 The 1391 trial of the Lollard, Walter Brut reraised the issue of whether women should publicly instruct men (Blamires 1992,250).
28 Mimi Dixon Still provides an interesting reference for feminist approaches to medieval drama (1995).
29 For a full response to the Salford experiment see Peter Happe and Others (1983, 110-22), and Meg Twycross (1983, 123-80).
Works Cited
Amt, Emilie, ed. 1993. Women's Lives in Medieval Europe. London: Routledge. Ashley, Kathleen. 1987. "Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct." In The Ideology of Culture, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. NewYork: Methuen.
Bartlett,Anne Clark. 1995. Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Beadle, Richard. 1983. "The Shipwrights' Craft." In Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer and Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble.
1994."The York Cycle." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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