Vulnerability as Female; Grief as Power
- Prof. Shaw
- Dec 2, 2020
- 4 min read
By Manal Ahmed
There is a stunning moment in Shakespeare's play King John where Constance, told her primary emotion regarding Arthur’s imprisonment is ‘madness’ and not ‘sorrow,’ proclaims that ‘Thou art not holy to belie me so; I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife; Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost: I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!’ (Shakespeare 3.4.45-50). The urgency and the surety of this statement always astounds me a little, no matter how many times I have read it. Through this declaration, Constance confidently resists a man’s opinion of her feelings and is unrelentingly absolute in this resistance. Then when the Cardinal accuses her of holding ‘too heinous’ a ‘respect’ for grief (Shakespeare 3.4.92), Constance only has one simple thing to say: that this accusation comes from someone who has never had a son. Implicit in her comment is the notion that her grief is almost special and sacred because it is unimaginable and inaccessible for someone who is not a mother. In doing so, she derives selfhood and confidence from what is usually considered domestic and non-political. Even the Cardinal’s use of the word ‘heinous,’ seemingly likening her mourning to a crime, is fascinating in a world where law and order are tenuous at best.
Elsewhere, Constance claims that her grief is ‘proud’ and so ‘great’ that ‘no supporter but the huge firm Earth (could) hold it up’ (Shakespeare 3.1.72-75). The image of this firm Mother Earth brings to mind feminine tenderness and fertility. It is not a violent picture or a militaristic display of power and strength but a maternal image that is all-encompassing and grand. In her lamentation, Constance attributes an otherworldly quality to her grief and does not succumb to it but rather extracts power and a strong sense of self from it.
Though scholars such as Joseph Campana have attributed Constance’s grief to an inflated, dramatic flair, referring to it as ‘ridiculous’ (Campana 33), through this course I have learned to question and resist existing scholarly literature that might argue certain things, especially concerning female (and other marginalized) characters in Shakespeare’s plays. Why is Constance’s overwhelming sadness - and her overarching desire for what she considers justice for her son - not seen as a reaction most natural and appropriate? When it comes to women, must we always doubt the authenticity of their emotions and deem their reactions exaggerated or dramatic (such as also in the example of Cleopatra)? What is it about the idea of a woman’s power stemming from the most human of emotions (grief, in this instance) that seems so suspicious to us? Is it because our ideas of what is considered powerful are inherently flawed? Does power come in the form of an indecisive, tyrannical man who might subtly call for the murder of his nephew in an attempt to preserve, as King John does, his own title?
When it comes to the notion of grief and what might come out of human grief, I often think about Judith’s Butler essay, ‘Violence, Mourning, Politics,’ from the book Precarious Life. In it, she posits that grief ‘shows the thrall in which our relations with others hold us,’ illustrating the interdependence that is illuminated by this fundamental human experience (23). She describes grief as having the power to ‘furnish a sense of political community of a complex order’ and argues that grief is political precisely because it is communal (22). Butler urges us to ‘face’ the truth that we are ‘undone by each other’ (23). And so what if Constance is undone by the loss of her child? Butler states we are ‘missing something’ if we are not moved by our grief (22) and indeed, would Constance not be missing a piece of her humanity, as King John seems to in his often-indifferent attitude towards Arthur if she were not mourning at such a time?
Butler explores the question: ‘What makes for a grievable life?’ She asserts the idea that living in a community means our bodies are open to love, touch, feeling but also vulnerable to risk, pain, injury and that they have a ‘public dimension,’ through which some lives ‘are favoured more than others’ (26). Through a ‘hierarchy of grief’ (32), some bodies - and by extension, some people - are more vulnerable in life and more forgotten and ignored in death. Bodies are first dehumanized - or Othered - and then discarded from public mourning and grief after. Through the writings of scholars such as James Kincaid, Campana helps the reader construct the idea that discourse surrounding children has Othered them through a focus on their innocence, purity, and blank-slate-like nature which makes it easier to project ideas and fantasies onto them and ‘define them by what they do not have’ (Campana 22). In this way, Arthur is powerless in the play, serving as a pawn for varying interests. He is vulnerable. And in grieving his loss, I believe Constance is attaching value to his life and honoring the place he holds in her own life. Arthur is unrelentingly present through his absence (‘Grief fills up the room of my absent child’ (3.4.95), Constance says, as though grief were water and the room an empty pool). I think to attach suspicion to her grief is an exceedingly myopic act and one that is based on the assumption that power is emotionless, cold, and stoic.
This course and engaging conversations with my peers have taught me that it is always important to interrogate widely-held ideas about Shakespearean plays; the context that we read a play in and the context that the play was written in are always in conversation with each other, one does not trump the other. More particularly, I have spent this pandemic-sized semester questioning the idea of power itself and how strength is usually not attributed to softness but that maybe it should be. Through Shakespeare’s female characters, specifically Constance, I was able to glimpse the power in the unashamedly emotional and feminine.
Works Cited:
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Print.
Campana, Joseph. ‘Killing Shakespeare’s Children: The cases of Richard III and King John,’ Shakespeare, 3:1, 18-39, 2007.
Shakespeare, William. King John, Edited by Mowat, Barbara A. and Werstine, Paul, Folger Library.
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