Confinement and Exposure in
Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness
Mary Free, Associate Professor
Department of English
Florida International University
Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness is too easily dismissed as a morality play. While we cannot deny the morality elements within it, limiting our vision in that way does an injustice to cultural issues surrounding the writing this play. Heywood himself was strongly interested in the querelle des femmes as his 1624 History of Women and the later Exemplary Lives demonstrate. At the same time, those works follow the patterns of others going back to Christine di Pisan and coming up to works like Sir Thomas Elyot's Defense of Good Women among others; that is, works that praise women who demonstrate their virtues by willingly choosing to follow the very constraints recommended in the period's prescriptive literature. Somehow I doubt that Heywood would have included his fictive Anne Frankford among those he honors, and I for one would take issue with Brian Scobie's view that Heywood's presentation of her demonstrates that "His championing of women is consistent with the broadly sympathetic handling of the guilty heroine". (1) Granted, Frankford's treatment of Anne is less harsh than it might have otherwise been, given the punishments accorded to adulterous wives in the Early Modern Period. I find, however, that examining the play in terms of the binary tension between confinement and exposure demonstrates the anxiety surrounding the theater-going populace as they became active participants in the economy of the theater through their attendance. I wish to argue that this play's treatment of Anne demonstrates what Jean E. Howard sees as a "widespread gender tension" that reveals itself through situations of confinement and exposure that are themselves theatrical, especially when we examine them in relation to Wendoll's and Nick's circumstances in the play. (2)
In Anne's case the play's first scene richly displays that tension. Opening as it does with the wedding celebration emphasizes the theatricality of the moment and affords the opportunity for a spectacular presentation of Anne. She rather than Frankford is on display, the subject of men's gaze and interpretation. The stage directions underscore this fact designating her as the only woman present in the assembled group. This opening moment thus constitutes an exposure of her, one that must be contained. Heywood's initial means for doing so lie in the dance metaphor and in Sir Charles's and Sir Francis's comments on Anne. The emphasis on dance calls attention not only to festivity but to confinement as well through the rules and patterns inherent in dance. Sir Charles and Sir Francis draw our attention to Anne not as a living, blushing bride but rather as an object, something paraded before us as on a stage to be observed, defined, and interpreted. After his blazon to her noble birth, education, and musical abilities, Sir Charles turns Anne into an abstraction-"beauty and perfection's eldest daughter". (3) While "daughter" seems to ground Anne in corporeal reality, the parentage-abstractions themselves-denies that reality. "Daughter" also reminds us of the contained state associated with father-daughter relationships that should obtain during the period-we need but recall Theseus's admonitions to Hermia in the opening scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Brabantio's to Desdemona in Othello, Lear's to Cordelia in King Lear-along with the concept of the father handing the bride to her husband thus passing authority over the woman from one male figure to another. Anne, too, contributes to that sense of objectification in the opening scene through her deferential acknowledgment that any sense of beauty or perfection arises only from Frankford's contentment with that beauty which serves as "a flattering glass" for Anne (1.33). She exists only through his animation of her, she being but a reflection of him and his pleasure. As such her marriage and Frankford define and confine her.
Heywood continues that sense of definition and confinement through Sir Francis's and Sir Charles's further comments. Each nobleman offers traditional and confining visions of the perfect wife. According to Sir Francis, Anne is "A perfect wife already, meek and patient" as well as one who ". . . that [begins] betimes thus, must needs prove pliant and duteous" (1.37, 40-41). He concludes his praise with his cliched closing couplet-" 'In a good time that man both wins and woos / That takes his wife down in her wedding shoes' "-emphasizing Frankford's physical mastery over her through the sexual innuendo. To Sir Charles a wife ornaments the man. She serves as something that should "become [him] like a well-made suit / In which the tailor hath used all his art" or adorns him like "a chain of gold" (1.59, 64). Both images reinforce the idea of woman as owned and contained object, something to be displayed only at the man's choosing. Heywood's characters thus rehearse the language of the debate about women itself, and the scene's closing furthers the ideal of containment they offer. While still emphasizing the enjoyment of the wedding feast through the scene's opening dance metaphor, Heywood moves the bridal couple to an interior hall. Responding to Sir Francis's urging that they entertain their guests lest they appear ungracious, Frankford withdraws with Anne obediently following. The house figures importantly in Frankford's self-definition and serves as a metaphor of containment as does the move into an interior hall. Within the supposed sanctity and security of those halls, wives of Anne's status are to stay at home, conduct the running of the household, and carry out their husbands' wishes and desires. Yet in this play that house becomes a veritable theater itself that subjects Anne to exposure via Wendoll's presence in that household.
The concept of confined order that the Frankford dwelling initially signifies contrasts radically with what Heywood offers in the following scenes. The first scene ends by focusing once again on the knights who turn our attention to issues of social class and forms of entertainment. Sir Francis observes that the servants "Dance all their country measures, rounds and jigs" and compares them to mill-horses that ". . . turn as round . . . not on the toe. / And they caper, but without cutting" (1.84, 86-87). That Sir Francis, along with Sir Charles one may assume, gives his blessing to the country amusements the servants enjoy suggests a form of patriarchal oversight and patronizing approval, not dissimilar to that they showed earlier to the marital couple. Still, dance remains metaphoric of containment; however rude it follows a pattern, rules. By way of contrast, the scene now turns from the domestic sphere to gentlemen's pastimes-noticeably gendered in this play-and the setting of plans for gaming, hunting, and hawking-another group of pastimes with their own sets of rules. Sir Francis's condescension toward the servants and his eagerness to pursue gentlemanly entertainment call our attention to the play's elitism, a significant factor in Anne's containment/exposure binary. An examination of Wendoll's and Nick's social spheres and actions in relationship to the play's elitism clarifies that tension and exposes the play's metatheatricality by showing how, according to Howard, ". . . stage plays themselves participated . . . in the cultural production of gender and class differences and in the production of cultural 'centers' and 'margins'." (4) As Frankford's house becomes the center, we observe how the marginal and marginalized figures replicate social realities.
On the surface we can easily dismiss the second scene as pure entertainment. It affords the audience spectacle with music and dance. It also introduces us to Nick as a humors character, quarrelsome but not so much as to create disharmony. Yet Jack Slime's contrast between themselves and the courtiers and Heywood's stage directions that Nick is to speak "stately and scurvily" while the others speak "after the country fashion" suggest two things (2.s.d.). The first reinforces the tension between the classes; the second provides us with Nick's view of himself as being above his mates. By setting Nick apart, Heywood once again offers us a sense of spectacular exposure that serves to enable Nick when he later engages in his sole campaign against Wendoll via spying. I also wish to suggest that Nick's attitude toward Wendoll grows out of something larger than his being a humors character. Nick's sense of superiority points us to the play's concerns about class fluctuations, the "liquidity of social relations" as Jean-Christophe Agnew puts it, and the contributions of the theater in the blurring of class lines. (5) And certainly Wendoll's social standing (or lack thereof) serves as much as a motivator for Nick's revelation of him to Frankford as do his servant-master relationship with Frankford, the immorality of Anne and Wendoll's act, and his loyalty to Frankford whom he has served "seven years before [Frankford's] beard" implying that his long-term relationship with Frankford creates greater loyalty than can the shorter relationships with Wendoll or Anne (8. 34, 35).
Despite Wendoll's presence in the play's first scene, we have little impression of him save for his being a member of the upper-class party and an eager participant in the next day's proposed gaming. The third scene, however, affords us a window into his soul just as scene two does with Nick. The focus turns once again to the elite world of hawking and gaming, gentlemanly sports that have their rules and codes of conduct. Although Heywood waits until the fourth scene to reveal to the audience that Wendoll is "of small means . . . somewhat pressed by want," we find his first words in scene three suggestive of his needs; Sir Charles's hawk "has struck ten angels out of [his] way" (4.32, 33; 3.4). What is more interesting, however, is how this monetary loss and his ensuing actions parallel him with Nick. Wendoll's loss provokes his own quarrelsome nature which results in his helping set of the argument between Sir Charles and Sir Francis. The ensuing duel between the noblemen collapses into a general brawl that prefigures the troubles Wendoll brings to the Frankford household. In addition both Wendoll and Nick depend on the good will of their financial betters. Yet this similarity breaks down along class lines. Their difference lies in their social standing in this hierarchal society and how the world views each. Despite the fact that Wendoll is "of small means," he is ". . . yet a gentleman / Of a good house, somewhat pressed by want" (4.32-33). Thus he may enter into the Frankford household as fellow courtier/gentleman while Frankford treats the loyal Nick deferentially, paternally as an unthrift child.
Their situations further underscore the idea of containment and exposure. Wendoll as wedding guest and fellow gentleman attends the celebration while Nick remains part of the contained servant group. His participation in the hawking and gaming mark Wendoll as one of the elite despite his lack of wealth. He can and must participate in the exposed, gazed upon activity that separates one class from another. His status eases his way. His entry into the Frankford household places him in another theater where he may play the courtier, the kept gentleman. Nick, by way of contrast, remains below stairs, a perfect place from which to watch, interpret, and read Wendoll's performance. Nick's position remains a contained one as Frankford's treatment of him underscores; whatever Nick does for Frankford, he remains a servant. In Nick's attitude toward Wendoll, however, I find a tension that goes beyond the commonplace of loyal servant. Frankford's admonition that Nick needs to husband his money more carefully suggests a spendthrift; hence, Nick's seeming natural antipathy toward Wendoll may be born of envy. Wendoll is after all the spendthrift, as his gambling demonstrates, yet one entertained with largesse. Nick's admission that "[He does] not like this fellow by no means: / [He] never see[s] him but [his] heart still earns" underscores the class tension between them (4.85-86). Despite Wendoll's financial state, which is common knowledge to the play's elite, they entertain him. Wendoll receives substantial reward being a very Frankford in the household while Frankford rewards Nick with a half-crown. Wendoll has the luxury of the free access and exposure afforded the leisure class, Nick the confines of the servant. Finally, Wendoll's now ever-present reality in the Frankford household serves as a constant reminder that despite Nick's long service the servant can never rise to Wendoll's status.
Anne too has parallels with Wendoll and Nick. The praise she receives in the play's first scene and the social function she serves set her apart yet define her as well. She is of proper birth and breeding but depends on her husband for her soical definition as do both Wendoll and Nick; her means along with Wendoll's and Nick's are those that Frankford supplies them. She is no servant, it is true, yet as with Nick she remains initially and properly subservient and loyal to her husband. Wendoll, by way of contrast, has a larger tether by which to range. Through inviting Wendoll to live at his expense and thus entertaining him, Frankford creates a potential danger to Anne. Just as with the theater-attending woman who becomes the object of multiple gaze, Anne becomes the object of a gaze other than her husband's. Bringing Wendoll into the house destablizes the metaphor of house as a containing space, and the paradigm of woman's proper place as being in the home turns ironic at this juncture. Although Anne seems chastely bound within the confines of the house, Wendoll's presence there transforms the house from a confined space to a theatrically exposed one. Anne becomes the object of Wendoll's gaze. The theatricality of that moment creates another: Nick's scrutiny of them both. In another sense, Heywood creates an inverse of the theater-attending woman as Anne becomes the theatricalized woman who has the power to arouse the senses of those in the audience. As a result, her very existence is provocative. No longer exclusively under Frankford's gaze, Anne's very perfection seduces Wendoll as her transgressions incense Nick. While she herself demonstrates no provocative behavior, we witness her effect on Wendoll which cheapens her for us through his gaze. Wendoll's seduction of her serves to define and confine her in another of the period's paradigms-that of the theater's duplicity and the women it depicts. Even in Anne's statement that she is Frankford's wife "That in [Wendoll's] power hath left his whole affairs," we note her malleability (6.123). Wendoll indeed has the power to rewrite her, to change her into the duplicitous woman. Heywood has Anne observe that "Women that fall not quite bereft of grace / Have their offences noted in their face. / I blush and am ashamed" (6.155-157). By her own description, she becomes the painted harlot. As she has originally fulfilled the courtiers' and her husband's definition of the perfect wife/woman, so does she here fulfill the opposite and feared theatrical role in bringing about Wendoll's fall.
By succumbing to Wendoll's advances, Anne can easily strike us as a woman once again acted upon rather than acting as I have just suggested. I find that Anne serves as a much more destabilizing force within the play, however. On the one hand she allows men to define and objectify her; what drives Wendoll is what he and the other nobles have called her "divine perfections" (6.11). On the other, she represents a threat to their power. Just as the theater empowered women by allowing them the autonomy to look, see, and judge-thus threatening patriarchy's view of them as objects-so does the theater of the Frankford household. In it, where the gazer and the gazed at object blur, Anne chooses to act on her own. Granted, doing so brings with it consequences, but within the autonomy that her transgression affords her, she stages her greatest moment of independence, her greatest act of theatricality as she moves to a new realm of exposure and confinement.
Literally exposed-first to Nick, then Frankford, and ultimately the entire social community-Anne suffers further exposure on her banishment from the household. Before beginning her journey, however, she appeals to the women in the audience:
O women, women, you that have yet kept
Your holy matrimonial vow unstained,
Make me your instance: when you tread awry,
Your sins like mine will on your conscience lie.
(13.142-145. My emphasis)
The implications are significant. The "yet" in "you that have yet kept your . . .vow"implies an inevitable futurity, especially followed by the "when" in "when you tread awry . . . ." Women are indeed changeable and duplicitous. However, her very act of choosing to follow the "maze that [she is] in" threatens stability (7.159). The concept of the maze wsould bring us back to the play's opening emphasis on rule-bound amusements-be they hawking, dancing, or entertaining, yet the maze's nature affords choice. One may turn as one sees fit. As Anne chooses to starve herself to death, we must grant that she demonstrates an act of independence whether or not we approve of her choice. Unfortunately, Anne's very autonomy comes at a price. Given Heywood's own view in his An Apology for Actors that plays should ". . . shew the people the untimely ends of such as have moved tumults, commotions, and insurrections . . .," her act must be contained. (6)
Anne's last act is, of course, to die. But doing so is her choice, another autonomous act, as is her rejection of Wendoll when he attempts to comfort her as she moves to exile. Here again Heywood provides us a parallel between the two. Each will go her/his way. Wendoll will return from his journey, however, with the hope that "[His] worth and parts being by some great man praised / At [his] return [he] may in court be raised," reminding us once again that in the early Modern Period the woman was always the guilty party in adultery (16.136-137). He will "wander like a Cain" before his desired and implied redemption (16.127). Anne too will regain her name through her confinement in the manor house. That confinement, however, affords her exposure as well. She becomes a martyr to her act. All come to visit her, to enshrine her, if you will, in her enclosed, defined, and confined space.
The end furthers the destabilizing quality of Anne's actions. On the one hand, Anne dies the deserved death of a sinner. On the other, doing so constitutes yet another autonomous act on her part, one that the play attempts to contain and redefine according to patriarchal boundaries. To do so Heywood shifts our attention to Frankford. According to Sir Francis, only through Frankford's agency, kindness, and patience can Anne understand her offense and realize the "true sorrow [that] touched her heart" (17.135). Anne thus again becomes an adjunct of Frankford. No where is that more apparent than in the play's closing lines. The objectification and ultimate confinement of Anne lies in her marble tomb and Frankford's epitaph: "Here lies she whom her husband's kindness killed" (17.140). With Anne no longer capable of taking any action, all emphasis seems to fall to Frankford. No longer exposed, the "New married, and new widowed" becomes the perfectly objectified and ultimately contained woman in one sense (17.123). In another, her very presence confined within her physical tomb constitutes an exposure. She remains subject to the gaze of those who visit her tomb which serves as a visual emblem of her autonomy and underscores the anxieties surrounding women's social relations and interactions in Early Modern England.
1. Brian Scobie, ed., "Introduction," A Woman Killed with Kindness, New Mermaids (1985; repr. London: A. & C. Black, 1991), ix.
2. Jean E. Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1994), 36. Heywood's treatment of Susan in the play is also worth studying in this context; however, the constraints of reading time precludes doing so at this moment.
3. A Woman Killed with Kindness, ed. Brian Scobie, New Mermaids (1985; repr. London: A. & C. Black, 1991), 1.36. Subsequent citations refer to this edition and appear parenthetically.
4. Howard, 15.
5. Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theatre in Anglo-American thought, 1550-1750, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Cited in Howard, 79.
6. Cited in Howard, 5.