A “piece / Of excellent witchcraft”: Women as Witches, Storytellers, and Creators in The Winter’s Tale
A “piece / Of excellent witchcraft”:
Women as Witches, Storytellers, and Creators in The Winter’s Tale
Annie Shriver
Nearly 300 years after the writing of The Winter’s Tale, Virginia Woolf would claim that if Shakespeare had a sister, she “would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at” (Woolf 37, my italics). Though this hypothetical sister, a woman just as talented as Shakespeare himself, did not – and Woolf argues, could not – exist historically, Hermione, Paulina, and Perdita all take on a “half witch, half wizard” role in The Winter’s Tale. Trapped in a patriarchal world in which kings hold total power, these women refuse to be submissive and obedient. The result is that a paranoid King Leontes decides they are witches and tries to diminish or destroy them. By the play’s end, however, Leontes changes his mind, and the power of the women to speak and to create life switches from the devilish, female “witchcraft” to lawful, male “magic.” Though The Winter’s Tale does not end with a radical overhaul of all patriarchal structure – Leontes retains the authority of kingship and, literally, has the final say – the play does recognize and affirm the critical, magical, creative role of women as life-givers and storytellers, celebrating the women who challenge violent systems of male authority and defy the expectation that women submit to men.
As Kirstie Rosenfield points out, every major female character in The Winter’s Tale is accused of witchcraft (95). Polixenes, believing that Perdita has bewitched his son to make him fall in love with her, calls her a “fresh piece / Of excellent witchcraft,” and Leontes calls Paulina “A mankind witch” (4.4.416-7, 2.3.68). However, other claims of witchcraft, including Leontes’ accusation of Hermione, take more subtle forms. Rosenfield defines the witch in Shakespeare’s time as a woman “disorderly and cursing…outside the patriarchal structure, unmarried, widowed, or sexually active…the healer or midwife…the storyteller and woman of action” (95). Or, to use a definition given by the Wise Woman, the witch figure in Thomas Hewyood’s 1604 play The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, “I am a Wise-woman and a Fortune-teller…I deal in…Fore-speaking…and in recovering things lost…I keepe Gentlewomen Lodgers…I am provided for bringing young Wenches to bed…I can play the Matchmaker” (Pearson 200). The witch is a woman who knows, who speaks, who acts, and who engages in or facilitates illicit sexual activitiesy. She emerges from patriarchal fears that women will take the little power they have, which comes in the form of speaking and choosing their sex partners, and use this power to challenge male authority. She is the Wise Woman, or la Celestina in Fernando de Rojas’ La celestina, who “combines procuring, erotic magic, and the practice of conjuring,” or Medusa in Anthony Munday’s Fidele and Fortunio, “a bawd, dispenser of erotic charms, an conjuror,” or Paulina, who speaks in defense of Hermione, even when Leontes orders her silence (Pearson 199-200).
When Leontes calls Paulina “A most intelligencing bawd,” “a gross hag,” and a “midwife,” he draws on associations of witchcraft with prostitution and midwifery, associations with which Shakespeare’s audience would have been familiar (2.3.69, 108, 160). In conversation with Antigonus, Paulina’s husband, he refers to her as “thy lewd-tongued wife,” an insult that derives from two fundamental aspects of witchcraft: rebellious speech and promiscuity (2.3.172). Though neither Leontes nor Antigonus has any reason to suspect Paulina of infidelity, the fact that she “wilt not stay her tongue” makes her a witch, and if she is a witch, then she must also be a “bawd” (2.3.110).
In the case of Hermione, Leontes’ assumptions follow a similar logic, though in the opposite order: he believes she is “a hobby-horse,” and so she “deserves a name / As rank as any flax-wench” (1.2.274-5). The fact that his suspicion of his wife’s infidelity arises from the slightest hints – “practiced smiles” are enough to make Leontes question whether he is the father, not just of his unborn child, but also of Mamillius – indicate an undercurrent of anxiety (1.2.116-7). Leontes’ accusation fits into a “rhetoric of threatened masculinity” in which “the conflation of sexuality and maternity with witchcraft is a projection of male anxiety about birth, paternal proof, and the male construction of self” (Rosenfield 97). His claim that “My wife is slippery” demonstrates his fear of having a wife who is an adultress – making her sexually “slippery” – because it indicates that she may prove impossible for him to hold onto or hold back – making her figuratively “slippery” (1.2.271). He declares that “Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened / (As mine) against their will,” (1.2.195-6). The infidelity he imagines disturbs him so thoroughly because if Hermione has been unfaithful, then she has asserted her desires over his “will” (1.2.195-6). If his queen can choose if and when to obey him, how much power does he have? And if his power is tenuous, does it mean anything for him to be king?
Believing that she is an adulteress makes Hermione a witch in the eyes of Leontes. He must silence her to reassert his own authority. He orders that Paulina take his wife and his infant daughter – as if both are witches, the child guilty by proxy – and “Commit them to the fire!” (2.3.96). Though Antigonus convinces him to soften the sentence, Leontes still demands that the infant be left for dead and Hermione thrown in jail, removing them from society as a way to erase any threat to his power.
At the midpoint of the play, when Time enters to announce that he will skip over sixteen years, the situation looks bleak for the three “witches.” Perdita has been left for dead, Hermione left to rot in prison, and Paulina ignored. The play’s final act, however, redeems all three as accusations of witchcraft turn to evidence of magic. TheA first indication of this change comes when Leontes, who has spent sixteen years mourning the loss of his son, his wife, and his daughter, expresses his wish “that ever I / Had squared me to thy [Paulina’s] counsel!” (5.1.51-2). No longer Antigonus’ “lewd-tongued wife,” “Good Paulina” has become a woman whom Leontes trusts as an adviser (5.1.49). Paulina’s commitment to speaking her opinion-the trait which makes her a threat to Leontes’ authority and which led him to accuse her of witchcraft-becomes the reason why he values her. By celebrating Paulina because she refuses to be ruled, Leontes undermines the traditional narrative of witches as forces of evil that must be contained.
In the play’s final scene, Paulina steps into an even more powerful role than adviser: wizard. After securing a guarantee from Leontes that he will not “think…I am assisted / By wicked powers,” she brings the statue of Hermione to life with actions she calls “holy” and a spell she deems “lawful” (5.3.89-91, 104-5). Leontes, in response to Hermione’s descent from her pedestal, declares “If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating” (5.3.110-1). He accepts Paulina’s claim that her powers are “lawful,” not demonic, and labels her reanimation of the wife he thought he had lost forever “magic” not “witchcraft.” As Gareth Roberts explains, “Female witchcraft is always bad, but there is a chance that male magical art might just be allowable,” so in recognizing Paulina’s actions as magic, “a male art,” Leontes rescinds his earlier accusations of witchcraft (133, 128). Paulina aligns herself with Prospero, protagonist of The Tempest and a man with magical powers that allow him to cause storms, turn invisible, and raise the dead. Though the audience never sees Prospero resurrect someone, he mentions that “graves at my command / Have waked their sleepers, ope’d and let ‘em forth” (V.1.48-9). Her ability to reanimate also connects her to the doctor who brings Thaisa back to life after she is tossed into the sea in a coffin in the middle of a tempest in Pericles. Of the three characters in Shakespeare’s romances capable of bringing the dead back to life, Paulina is the only woman, so perhaps it is no coincidence that she resurrects Hermione with a “spell,” confirming the power of women to enact miracles through speaking. In doing so, she becomes like Marina in Pericles, who escapes a life of prostitution by talking her way out of having sex with Lysimachus and then talking her way out of the schemes of Poult, Bawd, and Pander. Though she uses traditionally male “magic,” Paulina’s powers have a feminine twist: she draws on them by speaking and uses them only to give life.
But Paulina’s redemption does not mean that women have equal power to men – the end of The Winter’s Tale is “patriarchy reformed” not patriarchy overthrown (“Introduction” 58). Paulina’s magic relies on Leontes’ approval. About to bring the statue to life, she tells Leontes “It is required / You do awake your faith” (5.3.95-6). Prospero never requires the consent of others to perform his magic, nor does he have to worry that people will think he is “assisted / By wicked powers” (5.3.90). Paulina, by contrast, must live with the label “witch” until Leontes decides to trust her again. The play’s final scene celebrates the power of female voices through Paulina’s spell and the drama of Hermione’s first words, which prove that she is alive. But Leontes gets the final say. In the play’s concluding lines, he instructs Paulina to “Lead us from hence,” a reminder that female leaders rely on men to grant them leadership (5.3.152). The patriarchy, though clearly fallible and susceptible to violent impulses, remains in place.
Moreover, whether or not Paulina performs an act of magic remains ambiguous in a way that the actions of Prospero or of the doctor who revives Thaisa do not. Hermione, upon coming back to life, explains that she has “preserved / Myself to see the issue [Perdita],” a line which could indicate that she has been alive the entire time (5.3.128). Comments about Paulina’s daily trips to the chapel in which the statue stands, combined with Paulina’s insistence that Leontes not touch the statue until she has performed her spell, provide enough evidence for some critics to believe that “in the fictional world of The Winter’s Tale the magic is not real” (Richards 140). If Paulina can return the dead to life, why does she let her husband remain dead? The dramatic moment of female magic, one in which “witchcraft is realigned with healing, art, rebirth, and the power of theatrical performance, in a formulation that connects femininity to creativity” may be one grand trick, an illusion that enables Hermione to reenter society with the approval of Leontes (Rosenfield 95). The Winter’s Tale does not make the radical step of giving a woman indisputable magic. The audience may question whether or not Paulina has power. The power of Leontes, by contrast, remains unquestioned. In the play’s final line, he orders “Hastily lead away,” and all the characters onstage exit (5.3.155). He is still the one who makes orders, and the other characters are the ones who follow.
The same patriarchal shadow that casts doubt on Paulina’s magic hangs over female sexuality, which must be contained to prevent it from becoming perverted and turning the women into witches. Just as Paulina relies on Leontes’ approval, so too does Hermione require a change of heart from Leontes before she can return, and when she does return, she resumes her position as his faithful wife. In spite of the fact that he condemned her to prison on an unfounded accusation of adultery, once she returns, “She embraces him / She hangs about his neck” (5.3.111-2). What else can she do? She knows better than anyone the risk of displeasing her husband, that anything he interprets as a sign of infidelity could give way to uncontrollable rage. Whether she is ready to forgive him or not, her well-being depends on his love, and so she must again becoming the doting wife. Perdita’s redemption occurs when Polixenes learns of her nobility. He can only accept her as his daughter-in-law because, as the daughter of a king, Florizel can marry her without challenging the social hierarchy. Her sexuality becomes a means to preserve patriarchal authority through the birth of noble children, rather than an irresistible force leading Florizel away from his responsibilities as a prince. With his wife returned, his daughter engaged, and all three women trusted again, Leontes decides the time has come for Paulina to remarry. Though Leontes trusts Paulina, an unmarried, outspoken, magical woman poses a threat to a patriarchal society. The reuniting of Leontes and Hermione and the upcoming marriages of Florizel and Perdita and Camillo and Paulina provide an assurance that female sexuality can be contained and ensures that true power remains with the men, especially the kings, who decide if and when marriages happen.
Just as women’s sexuality must be ruled, so too must the patriarchy have power over women’s speech and storytelling to dispel the possibility of witchcraft. Paulina and Hermione, the only adult women in the play aside from the few who appear briefly while caring for Mamillius, provide two models of bold women who believe they have the same right to speak that men do and are willing to say as much. Hermione asserts that “a lady’s ‘Verily’ is / As potent as a lord’s,” and Paulina, having decided that Leontes must learn about the birth of his daughter, takes on the role of messenger herself, proclaiming “He must be told on’t, and he shall. The office / Becomes a woman best” (1.2.50-1, 2.2.30-1). When Leontes asks Antigonus to make Paulina stop talking, she tells Leontes that Antigonus “shall not rule me” (2.3.49). However, though Hermione and Paulina can demand the attention and respect of the men around them, the men decide whether or not to give this attention and respect. On trial for adultery, Hermione acknowledges that the only defense she has is to say that she is not guilty, and “Mine integrity, / Being counted falsehood, shall (as I express it) / Be so received” (3.2.25-7). Though she can point out that the trial “’Tis rigour and not law,” denouncing Leontes for injustice, he decides her sentence (3.2.113). No words of hers have the power to change his opinion or save her from sixteen years away from society, dead or in hiding. Paulina, in language much less delicate, decries Leontes for his “cruel usage of your Queen” and tells him his imprisoning of Hermione “savours / Of tyranny” (2.3.117, 119-20). Her words have no effect, aside from to arouse Leontes’ anger. Though Leontes later recognizes his mistake in dismissing the words of Hermione and Paulina, what consolation is this to Hermione, who loses sixteen years of her life, or to Paulina, whose husband dies following Leontes’ orders to expose Perdita?
The Winter’s Tale, which ends like Pericles and The Tempest, has the distinction of ending with the implication that the women will tell some of the stories, but these stories, at least onstage, remain untold and unheard. Leontes declares that everyone will relate what has happened to them in the past sixteen years, unlike Pericles, who address Cerimon when he asks “To hear the rest untold” or Prospero, who explains that he will tell “the story of my life,” with no indication that Miranda will have the chance to speak (5.2.84, 5.1.306). Alone of Shakespeare’s romances, then, The Winter’s Tale provides convincing evidence for the notion that “the cultural construction of romance as feminine may lie in traditional myths about women as storytellers” (Richards 32). It makes sense for The Winter’s Tale, which has a title that evokes a “woman’s story at a winter’s fire, / Authorised by her grandam” to feature women telling stories (Macbeth 3.4.64-5). However, as Helen Hackett points out, “there is no example in the late plays of a woman actually telling a story” (37). Though The Winter’s Tale, which ends with Paulina leading the others away, comes close, women’s stories, skipped over by the male figure of Time, remain silenced, existing beyond the drama of the play and at the discretion of Leontes, who decides if and when women can be storytellers.
Nevertheless, The Winter’s Tale remains “the late play in which the female generation of story comes closest to being openly recognised and surrendered to, rather than taken under the charge of an organising male figure” (Richards 39). Though the first acts follow the tragic arc of Othello, another man whose suspicion of his wife’s infidelity leads to his gross abuse of power, the time skip signals a dramatic change in tone. Rage turns to repentance, death to new life, winter to spring in a cycle that mimics those of “great creating Nature” (4.4.88). A signal of this tonal shift comes in the use of language associated with female sexuality in the context of truth and goodness. One gentleman confirms that the claim that Leontes has recovered his daughter is “Most true, if ever Truth were pregnant by Circumstance,” and Leontes notes that Florizel and Perdita stand before him “begetting wonder” (5.2.29-30, 5.1.133). Pregnancy, once associated with infidelity, becomes a characteristic of truth, and “begetting,” a word which derives from giving birth, again produces “wonder.”
The ending creates the possibility for women to tell stories. Paulina, a “subversive woman, truth-teller, and finally, artist, whose truth challenges Leontes’ masculine order,” keeps the characteristics of a witch (Hunt 265). She remains “a Wise-woman,” and a “healer…storyteller and woman of action” who “can play the Matchmaker” in a scene that “connects femininity to creativity.” In doing so, the final scene connects women – especially pregnant women and storytellers, who engage in acts of creation – to “great creating Nature.” If women’s art consists of creating life and telling stories, then this “art itself is nature” (4.4.97).
In “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf concludes that successful writing requires that “Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated,” (Woolf 75). Within the structure Woolf proposes, creative, generative power derives from a combination of the masculine and the feminine, a combination which lies at the heart of The Winter’s Tale. Hermione, Paulina, and Perdita, in spite of attempts by male authority figures to silence them, persist as speakers and creators. By claiming power within a patriarchy, they take on a masculine role that combines with their womanhood to produce magic and stories at the play’s end. Kiernan Ryan argues that Shakespeare’s romances “invite us to recognise and play experimentally with imaginable alternatives, which strengthen our conviction that a different kind of world could actually be realised” (31). Though The Winter’s Tale may not deconstruct the patriarchy, the “witches” who drive the action of the play by creating life and claiming power over their words give us the chance to consider “imaginable alternatives” to patriarchal structure, and their redemption at the end “strengthen[s] our conviction” that this sort of world, though it may not exist in full in Shakespeare, “could actually be realised.”
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