With less than two weeks to go until the opening of our Season of Violent Women, co-artistic director David Bullen explores why we might have to think about renaming the whole thing…
The current race to be the next president of the USA has historic significance: for the first time ever, a woman is in the running. Gender has lingered on the edge of consciousness in this election, without the blatant sexist attacks of 2008 – a little quieter, a little more insidious. Recently, though, gender has come crashing into the conversation with a vengeance following the revelation of Republican candidate Donald Trump’s damningly inappropriate remarks a decade ago. At Wednesday’s final debate between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the man remarked that no one respects women more than him. Yet in the course of that same debate, he interrupted Clinton as she was answering a question about social security to declare her a “nasty woman.”
Pro-Trump commentators have been quick to point out that both men and women can be nasty and that as Clinton is both (supposedly) nasty and (more definitely) a woman, the label is simply accurate, devoid of any deeper significance. Maybe that is the case. There is a long history, however, of men declaring powerful women who speak up and get in their way as nasty – or words to that effect. A woman attempting to move out of the box in which her culturally-created gender seeks to contain her is invariably reimagined in the consciousness of that culture as in some way mean, vile, or downright monstrous. When the women’s suffrage movement gathered momentum in the early twentieth century, women who campaigned for the right to vote – i.e. gain democratic power – were frequently branded with words like nasty (not to mention ugly and home-destroying). Later, when women started taking positions of power in business during the 1980s and 1990s, the stereotype of the dominating, “ball-busting” woman boss was born. In contrast to the accusations of ugliness and frumpiness thrown at suffragists, this stereotype is often imagined as being sexually uncontrollable and insatiable. In the 2011 film Horrible Bosses, for example, the male “horrible bosses” are psychotic or inept; Jennifer Aniston’s is a “maneater”.
Hillary Clinton at the third presidential debate on Wednesday 19th October
Culture frequently imagines women who occupy – or attempt to occupy – positions of power as having outrageously transgressed the strictly defined conventions of behaviour their gender ascribes them. This outrage then leads to the creation of nasty women and maneaters and bitches – because women are expected to be kind, sexually passive, and polite. Nowhere is this more acutely and poetically expressed in Western literature than in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3, where the Duke of York’s army has been defeated by an unapologetically triumphant Margaret of Anjou. Earlier in the play, the idea of a woman successfully occupying the traditionally male sphere of warfare is scoffed at – York’s son Richard remarks: “a woman’s general, what should we fear?” The Yorkists thus go into battle against Margaret’s overwhelming forces and are, unsurprisingly, soundly defeated. When the captive York is then confronted by Margaret, he gives a speech that precisely sums up patriarchal outrage at the concept of powerful women:
“How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex
To triumph, like an Amazonian trull,
Upon their woes whom fortune captivates!
‘Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;
But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small:
‘Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
The contrary doth make thee wondered at:
‘Tis government that makes them seem divine;
The want thereof makes thee abominable:
Thou art as opposite to every good
As the Antipodes are unto us.
…
Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.” (Act 1 Scene 4)
York expresses the idea that women are supposed to be beautiful, virtuous, and of good temperament; Margaret, in taking and exerting power usually reserved for men in York’s world, has been branded the opposite of these things. If there was ever the temptation to explain away York’s comments as a relic of the era in which they were written – more than four hundred years ago – then you need only seek out criticism of Clinton on social media: comment after comment couches (sometimes very just) complaints about her past actions or policies in terms that describe her as ugly, evil, and of poor temperament. Indeed, Trump himself accused Clinton of not having the right temperament to be president in the first debate. These insults belie a distaste that goes beyond the act or acts being complained about, indicating a much deeper problem with the gender of the woman performing those acts. Margaret of Anjou is certainly no angel: in her confrontation with York she taunts him with a handkerchief dipped in the blood of York’s youngest son. It is a deeply cruel act. Yet York’s response, given above, is framed in a way it never would be to a male opponent: Margaret’s violent act is a perversion on the grounds of gender as much as, if not more than, ethics.
In the 1965 BBC adaptation of the Henry VI plays, you can see Peggy Ashcroft’s Margaret laugh in York’s face as he makes what amounts to his “nasty woman” comments (you can see the moment here at 6:48). The same words York uses to condemn Margaret confirm that she is exactly the kind of material looked for in male leaders – and the online reaction to Trump’s remark serves as the equivalent of Ashcroft’s laughter. Tweet and tweet sought to own the words meant as an insult, repurposing them as a proud badge of honour. A website has even been set up – nastywomengetshitdone.com – that redirects to Clinton’s campaign site. It recalls a skit by the ever-wonderful Tina Fey and Amy Poehler performed on SNL around the time when Clinton vied to become the Democratic nominee in 2008. This first attempt by Clinton to seek the powerful position of president was met with a storm of derision aimed at her being a woman – Fey and Poehler point out that calling Clinton a “bitch” is no insult, because “bitches get stuff done.”
By Jove are about to embark on a Season of Violent Women – three stories of women whose violent actions problematize the way the societies around them attempt to moderate their gender. After the most recent presidential debate, we could just have easily called it a Season of Nasty Women. The first play in the season, Margaret of Anjou, will be performed the week before the world finds out whether Clinton becomes the first woman to hold perhaps the most powerful office in the world. As we go into our final stages of rehearsal, Trump has reminded us exactly why we are performing the play and the season as a whole: the tales of those “nasty women” of history and myth who so enflame patriarchal rage by encroaching on the world of the men around them – and then refuse to remain silent about it – continue to speak so very potently to our own time.
Margaret of Anjou is on at The Gallery on the Corner from 1-6 November. There is limited availability, so get your tickets here while you can.
