longest footnote of my lifeketurandreaDecember 9 2005, 17:56:35 UTC
another reading might play on the word “head” indicating that Amphilanthus as head of the Love set Pamphilia and Amphilanthus is absent thus defaulting to Pamphilia as head and in effect, though in a much cruder sense ‘giving her head.’ Many writers such as Ilona Bell in her Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship text often portray women as subversive by using excessively dramatic language. I quote “Given the code of ethics that equates female virtue with shamefastness and silence, it is hard to know what is more daring: Whitney’s spirited kinship with all other Elizabethan women who are boiling and raging with libidinous urges, or her claim to be a judge of men and a teacher of women (119).” Where her claims may be correct in their sincerity I think it’s too sweeping a stroke to label “all other Elizabethan women as boiling and raging with libidinous urges” though I do not doubt that some women were passionate about the sex act, Bell like many writers I seem to encounter on this kind of topic, seem to be stressing that woman
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