Female Embodiment and the Ascetic Impulse

1.1. Introduction

This chapter explores how female embodiment was construed in Christian antiquity (c. 100 CE to c. 451 CE). The aims of this chapter are, first, to explore the historical influences from which the female Christian body emerged, namely the Greco-Roman and Judaic constructions of the female body and how these interacted with the defining feature of emergent Christianity: the valorisation of virginity.

Second, the theological ideas that impacted the construction of the female body will be explored, namely the debates surrounding resurrection and the promise of the return to a primordial Eden, both of which were framed in terms of the virginal body.

Third, the chapter will consider the female body in medical discourse, particularly the discussions surrounding the ‘porous’ female body. It is argued that while the classical conceptions of the body interacted with Jewish notions of the body, Christianity elucidated its own distinctive construction of the female body, influenced by its eschatological hope, which had a significant impact on how society, and therefore women within society, were realised.

It will be demonstrated that female bodies were problematised in early Christianity through the practice of asceticism, which ultimately came to disavow women of the positive status of wife and mother that they might have held in the classical and Jewish traditions. The result was the idealisation of the female as virgin which, ironically, resulted in women being even more fully identified with their female, sexualised nature.

1.2. Historical Bodies I: Continent Woman

The origins of Christianity are bodily. Its decisive break from Judaism was proclaimed in the declaration that the Messiah had arrived, that Jesus Christ was crucified and died, only to be resurrected in glory.¹ Its origins, from Christ’s crucifixion until well into the fourth century, marked itself as apart from wider society as a whole. The Christian Church from its inception was bloodied by periodic persecutions, and its refusal to pay obeisance to the gods of the empire made it suspect. Suffering was part of the redemptive narrative and martyrdom for early Christians was central to their self-perception.²

Christianity in its nascent state was apocalyptic, the earliest faithful were fully expectant that the end of times would materialise within their lifetime.³ When the Parousia failed to materialise, the question became one of how to live in this world while waiting for the hereafter. When the sudden legitimisation of Christianity came in 315, its glory acclaimed through Constantine’s military victory, imitatio Christi – the practice of emulating Jesus – previously realised through martyrdom, was now identified with Christ’s temptations in the desert rather than his passion.⁴ Martyrdom was now realised through the mortification of the flesh.⁵

The Christian body was therefore marked as a suffering body, one to be transformed in light of eschatological promise. Christianity brought a profound shift in how the body was perceived, but its shift was built solidly upon the inheritance of the prevailing worldview at the time. As Margaret Miles writes, ‘Roman religions and Judaism were not background for, but interactive with Christianity’.⁶ The Christian Body was in part the Roman Body, the body as polis or state, and informed by the Jewish conceptualisation of the body as sanctified creation.⁷ The Greco-Romans understood the body as being at the service of the empire, part of a corporate identity. Similarly, Jewish identity wedded the body firmly to the context of a covenanted people, not to the individual.⁸ Christianity, however,

brokered a unique relationship between God and the individual that was personal and peculiar to each person. The body was not managed for the sake of health, the good of the state or as the locus of honouring God. Rather, the body was oriented towards God and therefore beyond the concerns of society and the mortal life.

This, it could be argued, proved a unique challenge to female embodiment, in part because women’s bodies were so linked with the continuation of society in the here and now. Women’s bodies in antiquity formed part of the honour/shame culture whereby their activity was seen as reflecting on the honour of the male. As Margaret Y. MacDonald describes it:

In general, anthropological studies have identified honour as a value embodied by males and shame (here, in a positive sense, as a concern for reputation) as embodied by females. Male honour is related to the struggle to preserve the shame of kinswomen. Female shame is demonstrated through sexual chastity. Therefore, male reputation is linked to female sexual conduct. When males are not successful in maintaining the chastity of females, their honour is diminished in relation to other males.⁹

The voices of women in antiquity come to us, therefore, through the male. Our textual sources for the day-to-day lives of women in antiquity are sparse. Women in Greek antiquity (c. 800–48 BCE) led strictly circumscribed lives.¹⁰ They could not participate directly in politics and rarely owned land or controlled inheritance, and were ‘disenfranchised […] from direct, active participation in the political arena’.¹¹ Their main functions were to be dutiful wives, ensure the continuation of family stability through the production of legitimate heirs, and to manage the household. Any public activity was limited to participation in religious rites and family occasions such as marriages and funerals.¹² By the time of the Roman period, the legal status of women was far superior to that of their earlier Greek counterparts, but they remained very much subject to the power of their husbands.¹³ While Roman women could function in the public sphere, own property and in certain cases, institute divorce, in terms of sexual ethics, women were held to a far higher standard than men. Thus, we find in Cato: ‘If you had apprehended your wife in the act of adultery, with impunity you could take her life without a trial; she, if you were committing adultery or if you were being adulterated, would not dare so much as touch you […]’.¹⁴

This fear of the sexual female body was reflected in how women were treated in law and culture. Women presented an occasion for male sexual anxiety, a theme found throughout the ancient world.¹⁵ The fear of the sexually voracious and therefore possibly unfaithful female is illustrated by Aristophanes’ (c. 446–386 BCE) comedies which provide images of the sex-addicted female,¹⁶ while the myth of Tiresias gives an aetiological justification for the belief that women enjoyed sex far more than men.¹⁷ There was also a strong connection between women and gluttony. In the writings of the satirist, Semonides of Amorgos (seventh century BCE), women were presented as inferior to men by nature. In Semonides’ The Types of Women, a frequent representation of the unsuitable wife is one who is shiftless, who spends most of her time gorging: ‘of work the only thing she knows is eating’.¹⁸ He links gluttony to laziness and sexual voraciousness:

Another kind comes from an ashen coloured ass, conditioned to the whip, so that when coerced and abused she

grudgingly yields to do the barest amount

of work. In the meantime, withdrawn from sight day and night she eats at the hearth

she is just the same with the task of lovemaking

and welcomes any companion who happens to come along.¹⁹

There are, however, intriguing glimpses of an alternative view of women. In the philosophical tradition, equality between men and women was generally affirmed, in theory if not in practice.²⁰

Scholars arguing against the trend for identifying misogynistic strands within classical antiquity often cite Plato’s Republic as offering a less jaundiced view of women.²¹ Republic V contains two radical proposals for the social organisation of the ideal state, the first that the function of guardianship is to be performed by men and women alike (451c–457b), the second that for the guardians the private household and therefore the institution of marriage is to be abolished (457b–466d). However, this theory is rooted in the notion that women were still seen as weaker than men (455e), regardless of even their greatest capabilities. Moreover, this independence/equality between men and women is restricted to the guardian class, which is by definition elite and whose members are not bound by the roles and rules that govern the rest of society, such as familial bonds.²² One could also point to the Pythagorean societies that included both men and women in perfect equality, or the cult of the Vestal Virgins which gave women a visible role within Roman society.²³ Additionally, it has been suggested that the female exemplars in literature such as Lucretia and Dido, indicate that women’s status in antiquity was not necessarily inferior, but rather different in kind to that of men.²⁴

It may legitimately be argued that there were suggestions of parity between men and women in antiquity, but only in relation to the non-physical dimensions of woman, namely her soul.²⁵ Her physical reality was markedly different.²⁶ While the Pythagoreans did indeed argue for equality of men and women, they identified certain virtues as being peculiar to women, and these related to their roles as mothers and wives.²⁷ The same applies to the Vestal Virgins: it was precisely their bodies that defined them. The Vestals’ sexual continence correlated to the inviolate status of the state. When the Roman state was threatened, the Virgins were thought to be incestum, a charge that resulted in the fallen Virgin being buried alive.²⁸ Analogously, Lucretia and Dido were honoured as wives and mothers, and were only truly considered in relation to how their bodies and relationships reflected on the male bodies with which they were associated. As Eleanor Glendinning argues, Lucretia’s narrative as a violated woman and her subsequent act of suicide functioned across centuries as a redemptive motif, central to the self-perpetuating narrative of outrage, revenge, and redemption.²⁹ Notably, when women acted outside of their traditional roles, such as Clytemnestra, Antigone and Hecuba, they were considered male.³⁰ ‘Proper’ heroines, who exhibited positive traits appropriate to their sex, tended to be those who sacrificed their lives, generally for fear of bringing shame.³¹ Woman and the body were therefore inextricable.

Woman was her body, which needed to be controlled by men.

The other influence on Christian conceptions of the female body was Judaism. In rabbinic Judaism (late second century CE to the early seventh century) when orthodox Christianity began to emerge, women were characterised – with reference to men and not as individuals as Léonie J Archer observes – either as obedient wives and unsullied virgins or as treacherous and sexually promiscuous creatures.³² In ‘The Benediction’, first formulated in or around the second century CE, thanks is given that the male speaker is an Israelite and not a woman or a boor.³³ In prayer books, women are coupled with heathens and slaves. Women are described as ‘gluttonous, eavesdroppers, lazy and jealous’ and it is asserted that ‘women are lightminded’.³⁴ In the wisdom tradition (beginning with the personification of Wisdom as a woman, in Proverbs 1–9), only two types of woman are present: good wives and dangerous seductresses.³⁵ The purity laws in Judaism meant that, due to menstruation, it was almost impossible for women, in their active roles as wives and mothers, to participate in public life.³⁶ However, certain women, widows and unmarried women who were outside of the reproductive realm, unencumbered by pregnancy and motherhood, could operate as independent agents.³⁷ They were almost surrogate males, allowed to operate independently in the world.³⁸ Yet, the danger of female sexuality was a threat that was constantly posed.