Roaring Girl

I really enjoyed Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl. I loved how it toyed with the ideas of women's liberation and some kind of recognition of same sex orientation far before the western world had ever heard of such a thing. The piece was groundbreaking, I thought.

The fictional character, Moll, being based on a real woman in history was also something I found amazing. I think she was seen as scandalous and bawdy merely because she was so outspoken in her disdain and disapproval of the ways in which women were meant to live.

This is one of my favorite depictions of Moll, the roaring girl. Rhine Maiden poses as the very sexualized version of an outspoken and loud leading lady. Not the typical manly Moll we get the sense of in the original text, but a beautiful and interesting portrayal.

As aforementioned in my blog on homosexuality and same sex relationships in the Renaissance, I think the issue was not about the actual orientation or sexual acts, but about the woman gaining independence. Enpowered by the new fashion of wearing men's clothing, women began traveling in mobs to go on outtings, like the theatre for instance (Staub). The taking on of men's clothing displayed a masculine power. Now the women were not only rulers of the "home domain", but they were also owners of themselves. They could pretend to be men through their clothes and in sexual ways--men began to feel that they were losing all power. With dressing how they liked and banding together in ways new to the English society, figures like Moll became humorous. When you want to take power from something, you laugh at it, humiliate and demean it.

However, Moll never seizes to amaze and never gives into the degradation. My favorite speech of hers is located in 3.1.73-113. Moll takes up for all that feel the pressure from a patriarchal and dangerous society, saying that we are born of our surroundings and we all suffer: "Fish that must needs bite or themselves be bitten, such hungry things as these may soon be took with a worm fast'ned on a golden hook."