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Examining the Concept of Authorship in Veronica Franco’s Texts By Monica Hernandez Women’s historical and literary
experience varies to a large extent from that of men’s. The
Italian renaissance from the late fifteenth-century to the seventeenth
century is one example. Italy was significantly ahead of the rest
of Europe thanks to its early consolidation of city-states, the mercantile
economy, and its quick reorganization of post feudal social relations.
“These developments reorganized Italian society…and affected
women adversely, so much that there was no renaissance for women-at
least not during the Renaissance” (1). The Humanist tendencies
of artists, intellectuals, scholars and scientists, looked for inspiration
in the literary, artistic, religious and medical traditions of the
patriarchal Classic Era, an extremely patriarchal era. During the
Renaissance, “only in relation to the institution of the family
did…civic humanism take up questions of love and sexuality.
They developed the bourgeois sex-role system, placing man in the public
sphere and the patrician women in the home, requiring chastity and
motherhood from them” (2). Female chastity ensured the integrity
and continuity of the male-headed household. Perhaps more importantly,
the norm of female chastity, as the way to protect the patriarch’s
line of descent, invigorated the religious revivalism that fueled
criticisms of female prostitution. Concerned with the centralization
of the Italian cities and the supervision of female sexuality, religious
leaders targeted those “liberated” women who worked as
prostitutes. A Spanish-catholic churchman described the function of
the brothel as “that of the stable or latrine for the house.
Because just as the city keeps itself open by providing a separate
place where filth and dung are gathered… so… acts the
brothel: where the filth and ugliness of the flesh are gathered like
the garbage and dung of the city” (3). Franco achieved success as a courtesan
by reducing her everyday routine to a dramatic display of her sexuality
and attractiveness. In the sonnet, she also reduces her self-representation
to the approval of the male gaze. However, the fact that she writes
of her “real self…[as] a lowly and imperfect image”,
subject to the gaze of a king, connotes an important set of political
issues about why is she really empowered for the articulation of
her discourse. By precisely using the socially constructed gendered
codes and norms of submissive femininity and the images of beauty
for a courtesan, she affirms her voice and opinion, something that
women in the sixteenth century Renaissance were far from ever obtaining.
Through the reassertion of her status as a courtesan, who is subject
to the desire of men, Franco reclaims her authority as a female
writer addressing a king. Due to the rigidity of realms in which men and women operated during this period in history, only a few women in early modern Europe wrote. They rarely received the education that would enable them to write. Speaking out was transgressing the norm of female chastity. The question that therefore arises asks: how does Franco’s prose and poetry that exalts women’s difference from men, compare to the sixteenth century norms of authorship? Michel Foucault argues that the particular cultural systems of valorization envelop authors and their work. The individual status given to authors by society departs from “the [social] conditions that fostered the formulation of the fundamental critical category of the [author] and his work” (11) Society values the singular relationship between author and texts because the author remains as a formulator of its own discourses that cannot be attributed to others. Franco’s Familiar Letters featured stylish poems addressed to Henri III. It also included trivial requests and comments of personal gratitude. In Letter 4, Franco advises a friend in adversity, “I have nothing to tell you except exactly what you once told me…Vain and foolish is the man who thinks he can pass without troubles through this mortal life” (12). Her advice might have not been particularly special to the Venetians if she did not enjoy, as Foucault wrote, the conditions that foster the cultural valorization of an author and his work. Franco was already a public figure as a successful courtesan. Venetian society acknowledged Franco’s mundane letters by publishing them. This would not have happed if they were letters written by other women on similar topics. In Familiar Letters, Franco reinforces her sexual desirability by showing what defines female subjectivity as different from the male. Franco’s celebration of her heightened sexuality as a prostitute, allowed her to publish commentaries of everyday life. Given her extraordinary success as a courtesan, the public sphere in which she operated and worked approved her literary production. Her open display of her sexuality in both the literary and public domain reinforced her public status of a woman. This made her capable of obtaining greater independence in the eyes of the Venetian public. By reclaiming her sexual desirability that is perceived to be dependent on the male public alone, she actually reclaims the control of her status as woman in society. In the same manner that the public sphere approved her literary production, it influenced the range and scope of Franco’s creative activity. She presented herself as a public figure, seen and admired by influential men, and speaking directly to them. In the collection of Poems in Tirza published in 1575, Franco departs from the neutral tone throughout her Familiar Letters to a more sexual one. In Capitolio 2 Franco writes to Marco Venier, “so sweet and delicious do I become, when I an in bed with a man who, I sense, loves and enjoys me, that the pleasure I bring excels all delight” (13). The erotically charged verses connote her life as a prostitute. The open display of her body in her work-sphere grants her license and authority over the publication of her verses. Franco literally becomes doubly public. Later on in the same poem Franco reinforces the degree of her private control in the portrayal of her public sexuality. Phoebus, who serves the goddess of love…comes toFranco separates her writing from lovemaking, and yet the fact that she portrays herself as both the author of the written word and the male delight. This connotes the possibility of an unrestricted relationship between woman’s sexuality and her writing. In the article, “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways out/Forays,” Hélène Cixous claims that writing outside the phallocentric discourse that generally permeates literature requires liberation from the constraining notions that women’s bodies are inferior and subject to male-dominance. “It is in writing from woman and toward woman, and in accepting the challenge of the discourse controlled by the phallus, that woman will affirm woman somewhere other than in silence…Woman must write her body” (15). The identification of the woman with her body in writing is crucial for Cixous. “We have turned away from our bodies. Shamefully we have been taught to be unaware of them, to lash them with stupid modesty” (16). Franco’s Capitolio 2 certainly responds to Cixous’s arguments concerning women writing about femininity, sexuality and the erotic. Franco’s openness with her own sexuality made her an easy target for public scrutiny. In the Capitolio 16 Franco responds to a male poet who has insulted her by saying that “a woman whose fame makes to right to be proud, who stands out for beauty or for courage, and far exceeds all others in virtue-such a woman is rightly called unique…” (17). And yet “when we women, too, have weapons and training, we will be able to prove to all men that we have hands and feet and hearts like yours…and though we may be tender and delicate…I undertake to defend all women against you…” (18). Here Franco believes that she protects all women by defending her beauty and her success. The weaponry she refers to is precisely her knowledge acquired through the life as a courtesan. According to Cixous, Franco as a female writer “defends the ‘logic’ of her discourse with her body; her flesh speaks true. She inscribes what she is saying because she does not deny unconscious drives the unmanageable part they play in speech” (19). Franco corresponds to Cixous’s theories of women inscribing their body in their writing and remaining comfortable with their sense of female sexuality. She also critiqued the life of a courtesan. In Letter 22 of Familiar Letter to Various People she warns a mother about turning her daughter into a courtesan. And because you’re her mother, if she should become
Franco points out that being subjected
to her body for work constitutes a form of slavery. The commodification
of the female body, in which its display remains to the use and
gaze of others, reduces a woman’s individuality. Being subjected
to work within this process of commodification, in which the display
of the body stands as the sole signifier of a woman’s sexuality,
enslaves women. Women are completely alienated from their sense
of self. They are compelled to construct their individuality on
the imposed definitions of sexuality and desirability from others.
Franco’s warning echoes Cixous’s assertions that “in
woman there is always, more or less, something of ‘the mother’…
Even if the phallic mystification has contaminated good relations
in general…She writes with white ink” (21). Franco’s
stark criticisms of the daughter’s mother reinforces that
“there is always at least a little good mother milk left in
her” (22), and makes her poems humane. Franco transgressed the sixteenth
century norms of chastity and silence for women in literature to
write about her life, her lovers and the reality of a courtesan.
Although one could argue “she was by necessity an individualist
making her own way” (25) by basing her prose and poetry in
an uncensored heightened sexuality to market herself among the Venetian
elite. But she also wrote about the dangers of male abuse for women
who shared her profession. In Capitolio 24, from her collection
of poems, she defends a fellow courtesan from a man who has tried
to slash her face. Look with the eyes of your good sense Capitolio 24, in conjunction with Letter
22 of Familiar Letters, reveals that Franco’s
texts incorporated criticisms for both the men and women in her
society. She remains in the history of women’s literature
as a proto-feminist writer. The cultural understanding of Franco’s
enhanced sexuality in the public sphere differs from contemporary
notions. In her case it gave her status to challenge the accepted
forms of writing for women. And once her writings became significant
in society, she used it to create a social awareness of the realities
of the women in her time. “In her draft to the Venetian council
in 1577 she proposed that the government found a new kind of home
for women who, because they were already married or the mothers
of children, were ineligible for the shelters already in place”
(27). Belsey, Catherine & Jane Moore.
The Feminist Reader. Blackwell Publishers: Bridenthal, Renate & Claudia Koonz. Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1977. Cosman, Carol & Joan Keefe & Kathleen Weaver eds. The Penguin Book of Women Poets. The Viking Press: New York, 1978. Ferguson, Margaret & Maureen
Quilligan & Nancy J. Vickers. Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe.
The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1986. Foucault, Michel (Daniel F. Bouchard). Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Cornell University Press: 1977. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1990. Footnotes: 1. Renate, Bridenthal, &
Claudia Koonz. Becoming Visible: Women in European History.
(Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1977), 139. |
