So pure.

[katernater]

As part of my final semester of graduate school, I continue to work with one of my professors to collect, abstract, and decipher research materials about, well, pretty much anything she's interested in. She's currently working on a pair of English plays from the Early Modern period, and how they treat concepts of female virginity and chastity. As a result, most of the books that I receive from interlibrary loan have some variation of the word "hymen" or "virginity" in the titles, which prompts a lot of raised eyebrows from the library staff (if they ever ask, I'm going to tell them I've got a "big weekend" planned). Anyway, so I'm reading all of this stuff, and the kinds of tests that have historically been done to prove/disprove female virginity are a joke. Here are some of my favourites:

In tractate Kethuboth [part of the Talmud], it is recorded that Rabbi Gamaliel performed a virginity test, calling for "two handmaids, one who is a virgin and who had intercourse with a man." The two women were placed upon a cask of wine. The Rabbi, we are told, was able to smell the fumes of the wine through he mouth of the nonvirgin; however, the wine was undetectable on the breath of the virgin.

The 13th century physician Guilielmus de Saliceto claimed that a virgin can be identified because she "urinates with a subtle hiss," while still other scholars and physicians declared that the urine of virgins was "clear and lucid, sometimes white, sometimes sparkling."

In De secretic mulierum, a prescribed test for determining the purity of a woman was to "grind up the flowers of a lily and the yellow particles in between the flowers, and give her this substance to eat. If she is corrupt, she will urinate immediately."

You guys, I can't even.

Comments

[ceitfianna]

Can I ask what the plays are?

I took a great course about women in Early Modern plays in college and we talked a lot about the virgin/whore stuff.

[katernater.livejournal.com]

John Milton's Comus (A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634), and Philip Massinger's The Renegado.

[ceitfianna]

I've read the first one, but not the second.

[katernater.livejournal.com]

Massinger was Milton's contemporary, though we're not sure if they passed in the same circles. I actually borrowed a copy of Milton's library, which is supposed to list all of the titles in Milton's personal collection, to see if he owned any Massinger.

Massinger's great. A terrifically interesting life, too.

[ceitfianna]

Ooh, I'll have to investigate him. That era is just fascinating.