Summary | Mary Beard - ‘The Public Voice Of Women’
The essay can be found here.
Overview
The Public Voice of Women examines how women have been silenced in society, primarily in public, throughout history. To showcase this, Mary Beard utilizes anecdotes of both fictional and actual historical figures. In her search for evidence across the history of the acts of silencing women, she discovers an ancient example in Homer’s The Odyssey that fosters the idea that men begin their maturity when they learn to silence the women around them. Likewise, a cartoon published in Punch magazine in 1988 proves to be an apt modern example as well as spawning what Beard dubs the Miss Triggs question. As Beard continues her exploration of this history, she cites examples of women speaking out along with the consequences they faced. She also does not shy away from the horrors of some of those consequences. Despite a vast distance in time from those events, Beard reveals through personal experience that those fates are just as possible today. In sharp defiance of those who still command silence, she uses her voice to speak for the silenced.
Beard’s essay also comments on how speech in a modern society descended from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The literal sound of speech was also heavily analyzed with high-pitched voices attributed to women and low-pitched voices attributed to men. Another aspect is modern society inheriting their negative treatment of women and refusing to allow them to speak as freely as men could. Most of her fictional examples utilized are from these ancient societies. Even the speechcraft of notable historical figures such as former President Barack Obama finds its origins in the spoken and written words from those eras. The template laid by the Greeks and the Romans that considers those of quality and persuasiveness is also inherently intertwined with what spaces allow women to speak.
In her conclusion, Beard points out that despite how Greek and Roman societies designed the foundation of many of the modern problems regarding women and speech, their artists had the skill of reflection. Such as fictional women finding ways to convey important ideas despite conditions that sometimes caused them to be unable to speak. She also mentions that the smartest rhetorical theorists of those ancient worlds saw that the most effective aspects of the persuasive male orator were, in their perspective, uncomfortably close to skilled female seduction. In speechcraft, the lines between male and female qualities are blurred. Putting the usage of the androgyny to describe certain speeches into perspective. With a problem that has plagued the entirety of human history, Beard is, unfortunately, unable to find a one-and-done solution. However, in her closing words, she urges an intellectual and constructive solution between men and women to prevent reaching a more gruesome conclusion that involves handing Miss Triggs a hairpin or two.
The Odyssey & Man’s First Sign of Maturity
Mary Beard’s essay begins with her discovery of the first recorded example of a silenced woman in Homer’s The Odyssey. Beard then proceeds to recontextualize the story of The Odyssey as one that has just as much focus on Telemachus and Penelope, in particular, the journey of maturity Telemachus embarks on. Beard points out the beginning of this process as the moment Telemachus scolds his mother after she asks a bard to change the song he is performing. Telemachus’ intervention is swift and blunt, even for a boy at such a young age. Beard immediately comments on the ridiculousness of an ignorant young boy devaluing his intelligent mother.
Telemachus’ direct quote is important as it sets a precedent for a way of thinking that permeates throughout history: “…speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in this household”. The fact this was said in a public setting adds more to the template of a woman’s silence in front of an audience, especially because Homer lived around the time Western culture began to cultivate.
Anecdotes of The Women Who Spoke Up
Following Beard’s analysis of Telemachus’ action sparking the myth of man holding the sole position in the public forum, she mentions the stories of three women told by Valerius Maximus, a Latin 1st Century A.D. writer of historical anecdotes. These three women were naturally unable to remain silent in the public forum.
The first was Maesia, who was called the “androgyne” due to her description of having a man’s nature despite the appearance of a woman following her successful personal defense in court.
The second was Afrania, who initiated legal cases herself and was described as impudent for pleading in person. Her speaking was labeled as ‘barking’ and ‘yapping’, both sounds attributed to animals. Beard mentions that her death was recorded in 48 BC due to her description of an ‘unnatural freak’.
The third and final example was Hortensia, who got away with her speech due to speaking on behalf of the women of Rome after they were subjected to a special wealth tax to fund a ‘dubious’ war effort.
The Exceptions
Beard reveals that there were two main exceptions to the evisceration of a woman’s right to speak. However, these exceptions fall within horrific contexts.
The first exception was the allowance of women to speak up after being victimized. One story that circulated in ancient Rome detailed a prince brutally sexually assaulting Lucretia, a legendary noblewoman who was only granted a voice to condemn her attack and announce her suicide (we must rely on Roman writers for how accurate this event was) Beard quickly points out that even this type of speech is removed by simply and literally removing the woman’s tongue. This was portrayed in stories such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses and William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.
The second exception was the occasional time women could speak up in defense of their homes, their families, or the interests of other women. Hortensia was one such woman who spoke up within these parameters.
Famous Words but Who Said Them?
In 1588 when Elizabeth I, in the face of the Spanish Armada, addressed (in a way that Beard describes as ‘belligerent’) the troops at Tilbury: “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”. However, not only does this reaffirm the idea that an outspoken woman has androgynous qualities but it also leads Beard to consider the possibility that Elizabeth I did not speak this quote. Instead, the quote could have been written by a man nearly four decades later. With no official script from her hand or reliable witnesses from that moment, Beard finds evidence of a potential invention. She does comment that this is a positive as the man who wrote it attributed the confession of androgyny to Elizabeth I’s own words.
Sojourner Truth, an ex-slave, abolitionist, and American campaigner for women’s rights gave one of the best examples of female oratory in her ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ speech in 1851: “And ain’t I a woman? I have borne 13 chilern, and seen ‘em mos’all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman…”. Beard comments that as influential as the speech has been, those words are slightly less mythical than those spoken at Tilbury. The authorized version of Sojourner Truth’s speech was published by Frances Gage in 1863, over a decade after she spoke those words. Beard points out that in the Gage version, her famous refrain (which is also the inspiration for the speech’s title) was inserted by Gage. To match the abolitionist message, her words were translated into a Southern drawl despite her birthplace in Swartekill, New York, and her upbringing speaking Dutch.
Silence in Stories
Throughout the essay, Beard highlights various examples of stories that support her claims. These stories include:
The Odyssey by Homer – Features the primary example of a silenced woman (and arguably the most famous in fiction) in the form of Penelope.
Miss Triggs in Punch – A famous cartoon drawn by Riana Duncan and published in Punch in 1988. This cartoon’s famous line, “That’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.” immortalized the concept of a woman ignored in the workplace while also serving as a metaphor for ignoring a woman in any context when she speaks. Along with Penelope in The Odyssey, Beard uses the context in these two fictional examples to help build her message in this essay.
Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – This story portrays the women of Athens controlling the state as a concept only seen as fantastical and only possible in a comedy.
Metamorphoses by Ovid – This story highlights the transformations women have gone through that see them silenced in the process.
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare – The depiction of slicing the tongue of the raped Lavinia is a notion that mirrors the moment in Metamorphoses when the young princess Philomela has her tongue sliced to prevent her from accusing her rapist like Lucretia.
The Bostonians by Henry James – One of this story’s primary themes is silencing a woman, particularly the young feminist campaigner and speaker, Verena Tarrant. As Beard explains how her suitor, Basil Ransom, silences her (and highlights a powerful and manipulative line from Ransom, “Keep your soothing words for me”) throughout the novel, she also details the American-born British author’s feelings on the matter in real life. Revealing a thought process that mirrors his contemporaries in ancient Greece and Rome.
The Hairpins
Mary Beard caps off her brutal essay with one final gruesome depiction. This anecdote reveals the gender wars that bubbled under the surface and lay unresolved during public life and speaking in ancient Rome. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar, civil wars in Rome followed. This eventually saw the lynching of Rome’s most powerful public orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero (who is also an inspiration for modern speech writers as Beard points out that Obama’s speeches were influenced). Cicero’s head and hands were triumphantly brought to Rome by his hit squad and displayed on the speaker’s platform in the Forum. Some of Cicero’s most devastating polemics were at the expense of Mark Antony and as the story goes, his wife, Fulvia went to that bloodied speaker’s platform. There she removed her hairpins and repeatedly stabbed them into Cicero’s lifeless and silenced tongue. This image of a woman using one of the defining articles of female clothing to attack the source of verbal violence is a disconcerting image but one of the few moments in life where the victim gets a sense of closure.
