Thomas
Heywood’s Reluctant Parasite in A Woman
Killed with Kindness
One
of the most conspicuous models of parasitism found on the early modern London
stage can be located in the figure of Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone (1605). Formally designated as Volpone’s
trusted parasite, Mosca manages to effect a lasting disturbance to his master's
financial and social position by the play’s end. This paper will argue that a
similar parasitic progression of domestic exploitation, disintegration, and
evacuation can be found in tracking the movements of Wendoll in Thomas
Heywood’s contemporaneous A Woman Killed
with Kindness (1603). Drawing on
Michel Serres’ theory of human relations set down in The Parasite, this paper will focus on Wendoll as a parasite figure
acting under the dominion of self-interest using strategies, wittingly or
unwittingly, that work directly against the interests of his host; a figure who
manages to significantly alter existing channels of domestic authority, thereby
bringing about scenes of domestic disequilibrium, not unlike the disequilibria caused
by Mosca’s own parasitism.
One
day we will have to understand why the strongest is the parasite—that is to
say, the weakest—why the one whose only function is to eat is the one who
commands. (Michel Serres 26)
If
we were asked to locate one of the most conspicuous figures of early modern
parasitism appearing on the London stage in the early 1600s, we would probably
look no further than Mosca in Ben Jonson’s Volpone
(1605). Formally designated as
Volpone’s parasite and trusted servant, Mosca manages to effect a lasting
disturbance to the financial and social position of his master who is sentenced
to life in prison by the play’s end. Mosca’s disruption leads not only to the
irreversible exclusion of Volpone from the society of gulls he once enjoyed, it
also leads to Mosca’s own social exclusion and incarceration as well. This
essay will argue that a similar parasitic progression of domestic exploitation
and evacuation can be found in tracking the movements and motivations of
Wendoll in Thomas Heywood’s contemporaneous A
Woman Killed with Kindness (A Woman Killed) (1603). Playing the role of a
newcomer settling into the Frankford household, Wendoll manages to effect a
lasting disturbance to the marriage of Anne and John Frankford, leaving John not
only without a wife, but his children without a mother and his servants without
a mistress. Both parasitic figures, Mosca and Wendoll, can be interpreted as similarly
acting under the dominion of self-interest using strategies, wittingly or
unwittingly, that work directly against the interests of their hosts, and both
figures do this through significantly altering existing channels of domestic authority.
Critical commentary to date has not treated Wendoll’s steady encroachment into
the proprietary domain of John Frankford as an instance of parasitism[1]. One reason for this
critical oversight is offered in Peter Remein’s observation that the “parasite’s
perceived conventionality as a stock character borrowed from classical models” partly
explains why “recent scholarship has been curiously silent on the prominent
role that the parasite plays in early modern literature” (257). Perhaps it is
not surprising then, that early modern scholars have overlooked the parasitic
nature of Wendoll’s companion status in the Frankford household. Whether he
finds himself at the Frankford dinner table or card table, Wendoll is always
there beside his host eating, drinking, and talking—arguably a traditional mode
of parasitic living that exemplifies the etymological strands of the generic term.
To parasite is ‘to eat food’ (sitos) ‘beside or next to’ (para) a host of some sort. The act of
sharing a meal alongside a host might sound benign enough, but soon the
parasite is likely to be instinctively eating at the expense of that host—as Wendoll
does. Once we see that Wendoll’s actions are instances of parasitism, then in a
much broader sense we will be better equipped to see this operation of
exploitation and resultant adaptation as fundamental to all human relations. As
Serres demonstrates in The Parasite, such
parasitic change is everywhere to be seen in its profusion and persistence as a
“primordial, one-way, and irreversible relation” of “abuse” underlying all “human
institutions and disciplines” (x, 85). This essay will take this Serresean lens
to the main plot of A Woman Killed in
order to see differently the nature and degree of Wendoll’s impact on human
relations within the Frankford household[2]. Such a lens marks a shift
toward the biological in our assessment of Wendoll’s adulterous impulses, thereby
allowing a deeper investigation of his agonising acquiescence to those impulses
driving his transgressions.
First,
I want to briefly look at how Mosca fits and extends the archetype of what we
might call a capital P traditional Parasite, in order to better appreciate how
Wendoll represents a deviation from this hybrid model. Of primary interest here
is Mosca’s blatant self-awareness of his own parasitic nature and the
accompanying intentionality driving his manoeuvres within Volpone’s household. As
the narrative of A Woman Killed
progresses, it becomes apparent that
the kind of self-awareness and controlled purposefulness that we see in Mosca is
inherently absent in Wendoll, who appears initially to resist and then reluctantly
follow his adulterous parasitic drive to dominate his host’s domain.
E.
P. Vandiver and Cynthia Damon have already detected a genealogy of classical
influence (Plautus and Terence, in particular) in Jonson’s depiction of Mosca as
a quick-witted, eloquent flatterer, expert at executing rapid shifts in
alliance and deception, while managing to remain firmly attached to a single
host in a single household[3]. Damon’s more recent study
of Greek and Roman parasite figures helps us see Mosca as embodying less of the
earlier Greek model and more of the later Roman model: the more itinerant Greek
Parasite “hoped that wit and
servility… could win him an invitation to dinner”, and the more stationary
Roman Parasite, the one closer to
Mosca, gives exclusive attention to a single “rex” in a single “house” (181-2). Of special interest for our
assessment of Mosca is Damon’s observation that the traditional Parasite had a “habit of delivering
monologues”; a habit that instantly brings to mind Mosca’s own famous speech about
parasitism delivered directly to the audience at the opening of Act Three (183).
Within this speech Mosca addresses the two models (Greek and Roman) of
classical Parasitism outlined by
Damon, and further distinguishes himself from the itinerant Greek Parasite who would normally have “no
house, no family, [and] no care” (3.1.15-16). Yet Mosca’s speech also promotes
a biological, inborn explanation for his parasitical nature that he sees evidence
of not only within his own being but in other beings everywhere. Mosca’s
philosophy sees “all the wise world [as] little else in nature / but parasites
and sub-parasites” (3.1.12-13). It is a phenomenon that can be found “here /
and there, and here, and yonder, all at once” (3.1.26-7). Here Mosca reduces no
less than the entire world’s nature to the operation of parasitism. He
continues with the theme by explaining the naturalness of his own parasitism as
something “born with him”, since he “toils not to learn it, but doth practice
it, out of [his] most excellent nature” (3.1.30-2). The attitude conveyed is a
positive one, bringing forth a self-awareness of his own nature, culminating in
Mosca’s brazen, self-identification as a “true parasite” (3.1.33)[4]. What this essay can take
from this speech is a conception of parasitism that represents an extension from
classical models of the traditional Parasite
outlined by Vandiver and Damon. In the words of Mosca, his parasitism sounds more
like an innate and ubiquitous model—a universal phenomenon[5].
Such
an emphasis on what is natural, inevitable, and universal about parasitism is similarly
seen in Serres’s theory of human relations set down in The Parasite. In this work, Serres explores three epistemological
domains (biological, social, communicational) that the parasite metaphor relies
on in everyday applications. For Serres “the parasite is a microbe that takes
without giving” (biological) or a “guest who exchanges talk, praise, and
flattery for food” (social) or a “noise” that causes “interference in a
channel” (communicational) (x). The
parasite takes without giving in all three domains in the name of survival, and
it is this very act of taking that represents the “abuse value” associated with
all parasitism (168). For Serres, the basic unit of all relations in all three
domains comes in the form of a single channel[6] connecting two operators
(sender and receiver). Any kind of entity (e.g. husband and wife, parent and
child, master/mistress and servant) can occupy operator positions sitting at
each end of a channel. In the example of a patriarchal marriage for instance, a
Serresean approach would treat the entity of wife as filling the
receiver-operator role, and the entity of husband as filling the
sender-operator role. The channel is vertical, running in one direction from
top (husband) to bottom (wife), with the function of the entering parasite
acting as a new horizontal interruption to that message (see Step 1 in Fig. A
in Appendix). Such an interruption can bring about one of two responses: first,
the unique qualities of the parasite can be adopted by the channel, which
changes the nature of the channel to one that incorporates the qualities of the interrupting parasite (see Step 2
(Result A)); or second, the unique qualities of the parasite can be expelled by the channel, which changes
the nature of the channel thereafter to one that reinforces a resistance to those
qualities of the previously interrupting parasite (see Step 2 (Result B)).
Either response, A or B, creates a difference in the quality of the channel,
and herein lies the logic of humanity’s evolutionary tendency, which might best
be thought of as a field of cascading parasitic channels that “struggle to
incorporate or expel the parasite” (Steven D. Brown 14).
To reiterate, the most important element of Serres’s
theory for our interpretation of A Woman
Killed is his reliance on the concept of an interruption of a one-way,
irreversible relation between two operators:
the parasite is a new “third who has no relation to the people or the
things, but only relates to their relation” (Serres 108).
In John Frankford’s case, he fills the sender role in multiple relations that sit
open to potential parasitic abuse. These relations can be found in his separate
obligations to his wife, servants, and children. All of these relations are
eventually disrupted permanently by Wendoll who attaches himself onto each of
those relations through an act of interception, thereby effectively influencing
each of their flows in his favour. In the following I plan first to explore the
conditions that allow such interceptions to occur within the Frankford
household, then I will analyse the methods of those interceptions, followed by
a final assessment of the household conditions after those interceptions.
But first it is necessary to address how this explanation
of the constitution of Anne and John’s marriage differs from the approaches
already taken by Lyn Bennett (2000) and Nancy A. Gutierrez (1989), both of whom
represent some of the most compelling assessments of the Frankford marriage in
the current scholarship. Bennett describes the marriage in terms of husbandly
proprietorship, where Anne is viewed primarily as an object of trade, more specifically
a “symbolic commodity” existing in a “homosocial community” built on the “circulation
of capital” (37, 51). Bennett’s approach does not strictly view Anne as
occupying the position of operator-receiver in a channel stemming from her
husband. Instead, Bennett sees Anne first as an entity (wife/object), which
gives the impression she sees Anne as a free-floating object within the marriage.
Another critical approach is provided by Gutierrez in her description of the
Frankfords as a “husband-wife dyad” (275). She suggests that the original
“harmony” found in this dyadic pairing of two distinct monads (husband and
wife) is shaken up by the “addition” of a “third party” in Wendoll (275). This
approach comes close to the Serresean method taken in this essay to explain the
nature of Anne and John’s marriage, but Gutierrez does not explain the relation
in terms of flow or direction within the “dyad” (275). In contradistinction,
this essay’s Serresean assessment of the Frankfords detects a one-way,
irreversible flow of direction in the channel between husband and wife. The
quality of this channel, along with other channels stemming from John, will be
analysed in the next section.
Vulnerable Conditions
“If he is hospitable, he pays forever” (Serres 99).
A Woman Killed opens
with the wedding celebration of Anne and John Frankford. The scene is populated
with much dialogue discussing the value of John’s new wife, which has the
effect of immediately situating Anne as the primary focus of the main plot
going forward. The importance of Anne is soon reinforced just three scenes
after the wedding, when John admits to himself that over and above all the
happiness that his education and material wealth can bring, his “chief”
happiness is in his “fair”, “chaste, and loving wife” (4.9-11). Here we have
the express acknowledgement that Anne occupies the most privileged position in
John’s world, and we would expect such a primary relation to be preserved with
considerable control on John’s behalf. But even as early as his wedding day, John
is shown to have less than full control of the proceedings within his own house.
Richard Rowland notices how John allows Anne’s brother, Sir Francis Acton, to
assert himself at the wedding reception through bossing the musicians around:
“music, ho!”, “sound”, refusing to accept John’s decline to dance: “I’ll have
you dance too brother”, and instructing John on his hosting duties: “into the
hall! Away, go, cheer your guests” (1.6, 1.9, 1.13, 1.74) (110, 111). Such
behaviour looks like a public reaction to John’s already insecure position in
his new role as paterfamilias within
the Frankford household. It is arguably the first hint of John’s weakness—a
weakness already apparent to some on the first day of his marriage[7].
Moving forward a single day from the wedding,
and we find Wendoll appearing uninvited at the Frankford household bearing news
of that day’s hawk fight. At this unexpected visitation, he is promptly taken
in as John’s permanent companion. We are told that Wendoll is “a gentleman of a
good house”, but “of small means” and “somewhat pressed by want” (4.31-2).
These details establish Wendoll’s inability to contribute materially to the
household he has been invited into, and this inability is met immediately with
John’s insistence that Wendoll “use [his] table and [his] purse” as his own, while
also offering a servant and a “gelding” for Wendoll’s exclusive use (4.63, 68,
70). At this early stage Wendoll has been formally invited in to occupy a taker
role, thereby signifying the first step in the host’s continual granting of consent
to the parasite’s presence in his domain. Such consent plays an important role
for defining John as a host (rather than prey) and Wendoll as a parasite
(rather than a predator). As Serres reminds us, “preying and hunting need more
energy and finesse than sponging, thus the latter is more probable, that is,
more widespread” and “more natural” (165). Serres notes further that such ease
of entry into the hostal space, as we have witnessed in Wendoll, increases the
chances of a parasite’s survival through a slow process of sponging, where the “eternal
host gives over and over constantly, till he breaks, even till death” (7).
At
least one person in the house, Nick the servant, rightly suspects the
inevitable disruption to domestic lines of authority that will result from
incorporating someone who has been given no formal role in the house. Nick
confesses to the audience soon after the newcomer’s entry that he “does not
like” Wendoll “by any means” (4.84). Later, he cites unwavering “love” for his
“master and mistress” as the chief reason for turning “a spy” to keep “an eye”
on Wendoll in order to maintain household integrity (6.173, 166-7, 178-9).
Wendy Wall views Nick and the other Frankford servants as occupying a
“fundamental place in the domestic and dramatic ordering” of the household
(203). Such household maintenance is very much a collective responsibility that
we will see further evidence of in the servants’ capacities as “detectives,
spectators, and instructors” of moral order as they closely follow Wendoll’s expansion
into the hostal space (203). At this early stage of Wendoll’s entry, Wall sheds
light on just how potentially problematic this new “status-confusing
gentlemanly serving man” is to the hierarchy within the Frankford domus (204).
Wall draws from contemporaneous sources[8] detailing the typical
obligations and requirements of servants during Heywood’s time to show that
their identity was commonly treated as something “subsumed almost wholly within
their master’s identity” (204). These sources help us speculate that the
Frankford servants would know quite clearly their position in the house as one
that treats their master’s will as their own, but such clarity cannot be found
in Wendoll’s position upon his arrival. The servants see that the entering
parasite will not assume a receptor role in the master-servant channel alongside
them in the house. Wendoll will still act as his own person, guided first by
his own impulses for survival, which marks him as existing outside any of the
channels stemming from John.
Note
at this stage in the narrative there is resistance already from Wendoll at John’s
excessive charity: “I shall never deserve it!” (4.65). Such hesitation supports
earlier hints that Wendoll arrives at the house carrying no assumptions or
intentions to be taken in permanently[9]. It also proves that he
feels far from entitled to such an over-generous inclusion into the household. Two
scenes later, after Wendoll has been installed in the house, the host consents
again to Wendoll’s encroaching presence. This time it is conveyed verbatim
through Anne at a time when John is first absent on one of his business trips
to York—an absence that becomes a regular occurrence in the narrative going
forward. Anne informs Wendoll of John’s instruction: “he wills you…. to make
bold in his absence and command / even as himself were present in the house /
for you must keep his servants / and be a present Frankford in his absence”
(6.72-77). What we have here is a quick escalation of Wendoll’s position from that
of a floating parasite providing no labour or capital in return for the food,
accommodation, and luxuries he receives, up to the head of the Frankford
household as a putative second pater
in “command” of the patriarchal domus (6.74). In Serresean terms, John’s
instructions relayed by Anne represent an opening for Wendoll to take over
command as sender-operator in the husband-wife channel; it also represents an
opening for him to take command of the master-servant channel. This time
Wendoll does not resist, since during the scene preceding Wendoll’s most recent
promotion he confesses to developing a “passion” for Anne, which can be read as
informing his uncomplicated statement of approval and acceptance of John’s
offer that he should to take the husband role with Anne: “I thank him for his love”
(6.4, 78).
We can only assume that at the
beginning of Scene Six there still has been no significant passing of time
since the wedding. With the newness of the Frankford marriage in mind, perhaps
we can read Anne’s invitation to Wendoll to be her surrogate husband as her first attempt, through necessity, to establish
ad hoc lines of authority in John’s absence. Ann Christensen makes a similar
point when she notes “the world Heywood creates lacks a protocol for dealing
with the master’s absence” (329). Indeed, Scene Six arguably shows a new
marriage with little experience in handling the departure of the paterfamilias, and this inexperience is arguably
just one reason why Wendoll can get close enough to intercept the marriage
channel[10]. Christensen goes so far
as to say that John’s temporary absences provide “the necessary preconditions
for Wendoll’s villainy and Anne’s capitulation”; conditions that are over and
above more crucial for the fate of their marriage than John’s “invitation to
Wendoll to enter the house” in the first place (320-1). Wendoll’s own words corroborate
Christensen’s assessment, when he admits to himself during John’s second
(fabricated) absence “how business, time, and hours… are furtherers to [his]
newborn love” (11.87-8).
Parasite Fills the Hostal Space and Intercepts
The parasite gets power less because he occupies the
centre, than because he fills the environment.
(Serres 95).
From Scene Six onward, Wendoll’s burgeoning affections
for Anne are seen as internally pitched against the acuity of his awareness
that such affections, if acted on, risk bringing about his banishment from the
house—“I am a villain if I apprehend / but such a thought; then to attempt the
deed…” (6.1-2). Heywood dedicates considerable textual space in this scene to take
us through the vacillations in Wendoll’s reasoning about how he can control his
increasing infatuation with Anne. First Wendoll considers various methods of forgetting: “I’ll drive away this passion with a
song”; “I’ll pray, and see if God within thy heart / plant better thoughts!”
(6.4, 8-9). Yet he knows these attempts will be defeated by the madness of his
escalating ardency: “prayers are meditations” and when Wendoll meditates “it is
on her divine perfections” (6.9-11). The image of Anne follows him, as a
reminder of the competing biological demands of his own teleonomy that he finds
impossible to resist. Yet, Martin Wiggins suggests that Wendoll’s behaviour
“appears motiveless” at this point (xiii). Instead, I argue that the logic of
epidemics can go some way to explaining Wendoll’s freewheeling feeling of being
“hurried to his own destruction” (6.18). With increasing intensity Wendoll
becomes further and further unsettled at the thought of participating in his
own death, whether it be social or material. This behaviour rings true in what
Serres describes the “completely stupid [and] suicidal” nature of parasites
with their “juggernaut-like logic” (207). Wendoll’s headlong journey into
self-destruction exemplifies the tragic nature of the suicidal, parasitic life.
There is no element of willed control allowed in the expanding existence of the
parasite that does “not stop for lack of microbes but for lack of hosts” (207).
One of the better known methods of survival that the
parasite relies on to make its home in a host undetected is mimicry. Serres
explains that “to avoid the unavoidable reactions of rejection [or] exclusion,
a (biological) parasite makes or secretes tissue identical to that of its host”
(202). Such mimicry ensures that “the parasited, abused, cheated body no longer
reacts, it accepts, it acts as if the visitor were its own organ” (202). As John’s
“second”, or indeed twin, I argue that Wendoll most successfully engages in
this method of mimicry to ensure his secure accommodation within the host’s
house (4.33). We are given multiple impressions that John raises Wendoll not
just to the level of a “companion”, but to his closest companion, since he
figuratively “can’t eat without” Wendoll, “nor “laugh without” him (38-40).
Wendoll is so expert a mimic, and so close a DNA match, that he is figured “as
necessary” as a digestive organ in John’s body, exerting an influence that
could “equally… make [John] whole or sick” (6.39-42). These biological descriptions
tell of the joining of two entities; a phenomenon that occurs when the
individual parasite intercepts its host, which can result in two broad
reactions (see Fig. A)[11].
I argue that Wendoll is so successful in interrupting
the marriage channel between Anne and John, that Anne in her receptor role
within that marriage mistakes the identity of the source of the message coming
from the sender (husband). Her exclusive bond has previously been and always
should have been with John. But through ambiguous instructions from John
suggesting otherwise, and through the parasitical mimicry effected by Wendoll,
Anne is not surprisingly left in a state of confusion. It is a confusion requiring
metaphors that describe the misleading nature of a “maze” to convey Anne’s feelings
of disorientation within the marriage channel (6.158). She has lost any sense
of who has exclusive control over her affections. This loss of steady ground
explains her capitulation first to Wendoll’s “kiss” and later to his advances
in her “private chamber” (6.161, 11.92). Both of these escalating stages in
physical intimacy occur only after Wendoll has successfully ensconced himself
so well into the household that he is indeed “husband… in Master Frankford’s
place” (11.89).
The
motivations of Anne at this moment in the narrative have been questioned and subsequently
explained by a range of approaches. Some scholars view the problem of
individual motivation as a subsidiary concern in their assessments of Anne. Bennett
says that “Anne’s behaviour is not so much psychologically motivated, as it is
arbitrarily determined in a system” of circulating commodities (49); Bromley
notes similarly that “the question of [Anne’s] motivation... is sometimes
irrelevant… because Heywood is not interested in individual psychology” (261). But
there are other scholars who prioritise individual motivation in their
assessments of Anne, and they cite lack of affection within the Frankford
marriage as one reason why Anne submits to Wendoll. David Cook (1964) notes a
“calmly affectionate marriage” between Anne and John (357), and Lori Schroeder
Haslam (2002) notes sentiment in her classroom supporting speculation that
“Frankford’s lack of jealousy and suspicion is owing to his lack of any sexual
interest in Anne in the first place” (145). But Laura G. Bromley says these
kinds of approaches reflect more about the cultural assumptions of the modern
reader’s mindset, than the social mores of Heywood’s time. Bromley draws from
contemporaneous conduct books published for guidance of the English gentry[12], and from historical
studies on the early modern family[13], to suggest that
“feelings were not openly expressed in the family at this time” (266). Such
cool behaviour was due to societal prescriptions for moderation in all emotions
(including anger, pride, and lust) exhibited by all family members (including wives
and husbands) (265-6). Any coolness detected in the relations between Anne and
John can be explained by these sources providing evidence that “wives were
encouraged to address their husbands formally and to avoid endearments” (266). Keeping
with this topic of Anne’s motivations, some critics[14] have addressed problems
with the apparent rapidity in the turnaround of Anne’s affections from a loving,
virtuous wife, praised as “perfection’s eldest daughter”, to an unhinged
adulteress (1.24). But Thomas Moisan asserts that there is little evidence in
the text to support the observation that Anne’s fall is from such a height
(177)[15]. Rather, we don’t know
enough about Anne’s personal history before the wedding to assume that she is
not the type of woman who would commit an infidelity so soon into her marriage.
Hopefully, as discussed earlier, I have made a strong enough case that it is primarily
Wendoll’s parasitical intimacy with Anne in the house that plays the most
crucial role in her fall. Indeed, it is Wendoll’s newly sanctioned and effected
role as surrogate husband that provides the most plausible motivation for
Anne’s transgression.
Throughout
the play, John appears oblivious to Wendoll’s slow progress and it appears
incumbent on Nick to alert John to the extent and seriousness of the incursion:
“that base slave enjoys my mistress [mistress-servant channel intercepted] and
dishonours you [husband-wife channel intercepted]” (8.53-4). Only then does
John notice Wendoll’s full infiltration in the house, especially during the card-gaming
scene where the presence of Wendoll has the effect of pushing his host out of
communal family spaces. The host’s impulse then is to deparasite the house
through the setting of his trap, which effectively brings about the expulsion of
his parasite and his parasited wife.
Fallout
Any
considered response to the conclusion of this play has to address the question
of whether the Frankford household has been strengthened or weakened by
Wendoll’s interception. Wall and Rowland[16] note a rejuvenated
patriarchal alliance between Sir Francis and John that takes shape after Anne’s
death-bed renewal of her marriage vows. Upon Anne’s death, Sir Francis tells John
that “all the near alliance / I lose by her shall be supplied in thee… her
kindred hath fallen off, but yours doth stay” (17.99-102). It appears that economic
stability through the resumption of family ties prevails. Understanding the
logic of homeostasis within a particular environment is helpful here for
explaining the movement of these gentlemanly factions closing in on a site of
disturbance. When a system of some sort coordinates its parts to bring itself
back to its normal function, it can be interpreted as a homeostatic
accommodation of the damage inflicted by an interrupting parasite. Such
accommodation brings about a re-equilibrium within the Frankford household, yet
a very different household results. As Wall notes, John effectively “replaces
marriage with male kinship alliances” (214). But is this a satisfactory result?
It leaves a family without a wife and mother. Essentially, a deformed domestic
unit in a society where family was expected to express the patriarchal logic
that promoted the complementarity of wife and husband[17]. John’s family is left
not only deformed through the expulsion of the wife who is considered so
essential to the ontological status of the husband, it is also left
delegitimised to a large extent due to the questions raised by Wendoll’s
possible paternity of the two young children left in John’s possession. John’s
memorable anguish over this particular aspect of Wendoll’s alleged interference
is striking—he “hath stained their names with stripes of bastardy”[18]—which conveys the presumed
extent of Wendoll’s despoliation of John’s direct descendants (13.124)[19]. It is an anguish
informed by the reality that family life after Wendoll will not involve an uncomplicated
transfer of property from father to children. All of this points toward a
weakened household, looking more like Result A) in Fig. A.
Yet, if we are to continue with this
line of reasoning about the health of John’s family after the expulsion of the
parasitic adulterer, then we might do better through applying what we know
about vaccination to such reasoning. Serres reminds us that vaccination relies
on the rule that a contaminating parasite helps its host build a resistance to
further contamination: “the parasite gives the host the means to be safe from
the parasite” (150). Considering the nature of Wendoll’s contamination was
adulterous interference in John’s marriage, we could employ the logic of
vaccination to conclude that John’s house will be more resistant to any new
addition to the household who exhibits similar tendencies to Wendoll. Put
simply, the principle of vaccination encourages us to see John’s family as
stronger from the experience of the original transgression—another Wendoll
would never get as far as the first Wendoll. This line of reasoning would bring
us to Result B) in Fig. A.
The
play’s final note on parasitic adultery is a fatalistic one, since we cannot
rule out the possibility that Wendoll will attach himself to another household
and engage in another case of parasitic adultery. Wendoll flags this
possibility himself, when he says that he intends to “go wander” in “foreign
countries and remote climes”, and “will return” only once “rumours” surrounding
his transgressions have abated (16.124-35). Only then does he predict he will
be in some “court… raised” again to make his next incursion into another
household (16.135).
Parasitic Adultery: A Trans-historical
Sufferance
Ultimately,
the import of Heywood’s story about Wendoll’s parasitism is a trans-historical
one. Adultery is arguably a unique human condition associated with our
universal tendencies toward and failures with pair-bonding[20]. It is a condition that
has shown itself in repeated but different contexts ad infinitum, with literary history playing arguably one of the central
roles in the re-telling of our history with adultery. There is something universal being said here about such
reoccurrences, and that something perhaps trumps any claims to a historical
specificity that attempts to argue for a privileged position in any discussion
about marital transgression. Just as Miltonists spar over the caution or incaution
demonstrated by biblical history’s first husband (Adam) in allowing his wife
(Eve) to fraternise with humanity’s first seducer (Satan); early modern
scholars spar over John Frankford’s caution or incaution in allowing his wife Anne
to fraternise with a likely and potential seducer in Wendoll. The point being,
that literary history itself argues for the treatment of adultery as a recurrent,
or indeed universal, condition and should always be remembered as such. I take
my cue from Terry Eagleton’s discussion about particular “aspects of our
suffering” that are “rooted in our species-being” (xiii). He lists love,
ageing, disease, and the brevity and frailty of life, as some of the more
“recurrent features of human cultures” (xiii). Put another way, these features might
be better termed as “essential” to the lived experience of humans (xiii). I
argue that parasitic adultery, and more importantly the biological imperative
driving it, can claim its rightful position in such a list. This is a gesture that
is perhaps pre-emptive of any historicist claim that such an experience is
always historically specific. With such universalism in mind, I want to
conclude this essay with a quotation from Serres that speaks to the importance
of noting that “there are many portraits in the parasite gallery” and that “gallery
will soon occupy the museum” and that “museum will soon cover the whole city”
(212). Perhaps in light of this description of humanity as an ever-expanding
collection of artefacts testifying to its own individual stories of parasitism,
we could include A Woman Killed as
just one of many artefacts in that museum.
Works
Cited
Bennett,
Lyn. ‘The Homosocial Economies of A Woman
Killed with Kindness.’ Renaissance Reformation.
24.2 (2000): 35-61.
Bromley,
Laura G. ‘Domestic Conduct in A Woman
Killed with Kindness.’ Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900. 26.2 (1986): 259-76.
Brown,
Steven D. ‘Michel Serres: Science, Translation, and the Logic of the Parasite.’
Theory, Culture, and Society. 19.3
(2002): 1-27.
Canuteson,
John. ‘The Theme of Forgiveness in the Plot and Subplot of A Woman Killed with Kindness. Renaissance
Drama, New Series, Vol. 2, Essays Principally on Dramatic Theory and Form.
(1969): 123-141.
Christensen,
Ann. ‘Business, Place, and the Domestic Economy in Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness. Exemplaria. 9. 2 (1997): 315- 40.
Cook,
David. ‘A Woman Killed with Kindness:
An Unshakespearian Tragedy’. English
Studies. 45. 5 (1964): 353-72.
Damon,
Cynthia. ‘Greek Parasites and Roman Patronage.’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 97 (1995): 181-95.
Eagleton,
Terry. Sweet Violence: The Idea of the
Tragic. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
Gilbert,
Allan H. ‘Thomas Heywood’s Debt to Plautus.’ The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 12.4 (1913):
593-611.
Gutierrez,
Nancy A. ‘The Irresolution of Melodrama: The Meaning of Adultery in A Woman Killed with Kindness.’ Exemplaria. 1 (1989): 265-91.
Heywood,
Thomas. A Woman Killed with Kindness.
Ed. Martin Wiggins. Oxford: OUP, 2008.
Jonson,
Ben. Volpone, or The Fox. Ed. Brian
Parker. Manchester: MUP, 1999.
Moison,
Thomas. ‘Framing with Kindness: The Transgressive Theatre of A Woman Killed with Kindness’. Essays on Transgressive Readings: Reading Over
the Lines. Ed Georgia Johnston. Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1997.
Remien,
Peter. ‘Jonson’s Universal Parasite: Patronage and Embodied Critique in ‘To
Penshurst’.’ Studies in Philology.
111.1 (2014): 255-81.
Rowland,
Richard. ‘Moving Inside(s): Heywood’s Divided Households.’ Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599-1639: Locations, Translations, and
Conflict. Burlington: Ashgate, 2010.
Ryan,
Christopher, and Cacilda Jetha. Sex at
Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. Melbourne: Scribe, 2010.
Schroeder
Haslam, Lori. ‘Tragedy and the Female Body: A Materialist Approach to Heywood’s
A Woman Killed with Kindness and
Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi.’ Approaches to Teaching English Renaissance
Drama. Eds Karen Bamford and Alexander Leggatt. MLA: New York, 2002.
Serres,
Michel. The Parasite. Ed. Lawrence R.
Schehr. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1982.
Vandiver,
E. P. ‘The Elizabethan Dramatic Parasite.’ Studies
in Philology. 32.3 (1935): 411-27.
Wall,
Wendy. Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early
Modern Drama. Cambridge: CUP 2002.
Watkins,
Christopher. ‘Michel Serres Today.’ University
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Martin, ed. A Woman Killed With Kindness.
Oxford: OUP, 2008.
[1]
Allan H. Gilbert (1913) makes a minor suggestion about Wendoll’s parasitism
when he notes briefly that Heywood’s depiction of Wendoll “brings to mind the
parasite of Captivi”, but he does not
elaborate on this point (607).
[2] I
want to acknowledge the influence of Christopher Watkin for initially steering
the Serresean approach taken in this essay. His unpublished paper, Michel Serres Today, delivered at the
University of Melbourne English and Theatre Studies Seminar Series in May 2015,
catalysed my interest in Serres’s work on parasitism. I would also like to
thank Dr David McInnis, University of Melbourne, for providing valuable
feedback on two early drafts of this paper.
[3] Vandiver reveals Mosca as a
“composite” figure exhibiting “various threads of influence” from Latin plays
and historical figures (Sejanus the parasite of Tiberius), arguing that this
very “complexity” marks Mosca as a typical dramatic parasite for his time (411,
426-7).
[4] Vandiver rightly highlights the
sentiment of exceptionalism in the speech: Mosca’s boastfulness reveals a view
of himself in terms of refinement, “fine”, and elevation, “elegant”—a superior relation
to the traditional Parasite (3.1.23)
(427).
[5]
Remien also finds this aspect of Mosca’s speech about parasitism compelling. He
uses an excerpt from the speech as an epigraphic guide for his own study of the
trope of the “universal parasite” in Volpone
and Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’ (255).
[6] This connection is what we might
already think of as a bond of some sort.
[7]
Rowland (2010) attributes Sir Francis’ attempts to dominate the wedding reception
partly to his resentment of “the fact that the celebrations are taking place at
the bridegroom’s home rather than, as was always custom in Yorkshire weddings,
at the home of the man giving the bride away” (111).
[8]
Thomas Fossett’s The Servant’s Duty; or,
the Calling and Condition of Servants (1613)
and William Gouge’s Of Domestical Duties
(1622).
[9]
Wendoll’s “horse is booted / up to the flank in mire” with “himself all spotted
/ and stained with plashing” (4.20-22). Textual evidence that Wendoll has indeed
ridden with urgency from the hawk fight directly to Anne to deliver the news
about her brother’s loss of two men in the fight.
[10] Christensen writes persuasively
about the tensions placed on the household resulting from John’s attendance to
business affairs in York. The long distance travelled for such business
contributes to the duration of each of his absences, which adds to the overall
conditions of vulnerability within the household.
Christensen
speculates that the particular business requiring John’s attention involves
attendance to law suits relating to the lease of his lands (328). Textual
evidence citing John as a “gentleman”, Anne as “noble”, and both being
“descended nobly”, supports Christensen’s claims about the nature of the
business affairs associated with the landed gentry (4.3, 1.18, 1.68).
[11]
Wall takes a slightly similar approach to these descriptions of incorporation
when she describes the “engrafting” of Wendoll onto John through the operation
of an “intimate merger” (203).
[12]
Richard Brathwaite’s The English
Gentleman (1630).
[13]
Lawrence Stone The Family, Sex, and
Marriage in England: 1500-1800 (1979).
[14]
John Canuteson (1969) 130; Moisan 177-9.
[15] Moisan
(1997) observes that there is no empirical
evidence of Anne’s purported virtuous nature before the wedding to support the
“chorus of male well-wishers” singing her praises during the introductory
wedding scene (177-9). He argues convincingly that Anne’s apparent embodiment
of modesty is largely created through a “patriarchalist construction” projected
on to her by the male attendants at her wedding (179). These observations
support his conclusion that there “is less a protean shift in [Anne’s]
character” than some critics assume (179).
[16]
Wall sees strength in “a household newly reconstituted through the expulsion of
the adulterous mistress and gentleman companion”, followed by a further
strengthening in the “dynastic merging of households” (212); Rowland notes “a
realignment of power relations based on economic interest and the marginalisation
of women” (153).
[17] This
logic of the self-completing binary, largely informed by biblical history’s first human marriage between Eve and Adam,
was also taking on new resonances from the circulation and incorporation of
Aristotelian principles of friendship at the time.
[18]
Rowland draws our attention to R. W. Van Fossen’s glossing of these lines in
his critical edition of A Woman Killed (1961)
that suggests the “stripe” left by Wendoll on John’s children may refer to the
“diagonal line [sinister bend] used to denote illegitimacy in heraldry” (131).
[19]
Note Wendoll is also depicted as soiling another of John’s dependents in Anne, as
we witness John’s reference to “her spotted body” after Wendoll’s interference
(13.123). Through such multiple spoiling of the hostal space, Wendoll makes it
largely his own. This reasoning is partly informed by Serres’s stercorous
theory of private property: he argues that “as soon as you soil [something] it
is yours” since what others see as “dirty is one’s own clean” (144-6).
[20]
Christopher Ryan (2012) explains that our evolution from the pre-historic norm
of “casual sexuality” to today’s norm of monogamy (pair-bonding) is a history
that can still be read on the features, and in the behaviours, of our bodies
(6). It is a history that re-asserts itself in our contemporary sexuality that
still “throbs with obvious, painful truths that must not be spoken aloud” in a
climate that promotes “the monogamous nuclear family unit” (4). This
evolutionary struggle in human sexuality, according to Ryan, has proven to be
“the richest source of confusion, dissatisfaction, and unnecessary suffering of
our time” (4).
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