Friday, April 24, 2009

Why all women secretly want a Y chromosome...

The mystification of women has resulted in an unspoken taboo pertaining to women’s secrets, both physical and mental. This mystification has also resulted in the obsessive scrutiny and fear of female thinking and knowledge. In John Lyly’s Galatea and Francis Beumont’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, women are shown as out of control of their own imagination, wreaking havoc onstage until they are once again controlled by male authority. The required intervention of men in the plays implies that the thoughts of women are ultimately dangerous when given free reign. What makes them so dangerous, according to the two plays, is the desire for women to have male authority, in essence, the desire to be a man.

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