Shakespeare's 'Forfended Place(s)': Women and the City

Abstract

International audience ; In the early 17 th century, Tommaso Campanella imagined a utopian city, The City of the Sun (1602), in which Love rules over a compulsory system of training and education, and attends to the implementation of political eugenics. Daughters under the age of 19 and sons under 21 must be sexually restrained and amorous feelings prohibited. However, a few brothels remain accessible to those individuals incapable of controlling their sexual drives. Generally speaking, sexual relationships are just tolerated in the city as far as the imperatives of reproduction are concerned. In order to beget perfectly sane and vigorous children, partners will mate only after digestion and prayers. Sexuality in the city had already been banned by his predecessor Thomas More, for the expression of an individual passion was regarded as an act of transgression: either a girl or a boy guilty of clandestine love affairs was severely punished and she or he was forbidden to marry afterwards, " unless the prince, by his pardon, alleviates the sentence ". The parents were also harshly condemned for neglecting their duties. Eventually, all subsequent misdemeanors led to a condemnation to death. Desire in general—and feminine desire in particular—is considered as a threat by most Renaissance writers, who tend to identify women with ill-defended cities through a series of misogynistic metaphors. In a patriarchal society, the feminine body is often regarded as an unwatched citadel, and the violence of rape downplayed, mocked, or transfigured into some sort of aesthetic posture. Contrary to most of his contemporaries, Shakespeare adopts a much more nuanced or careful point of view on female " forfended places ".