“Sun-clad power of Chastity”: Feminism and Milton’s Comus

Milton’s mask A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, more popularly known today as Comus, was written by Milton along with Henry Lawes for the Earl of Bridgewater’s appointment to the Lord Presidency of Wales. Knowing that the Earl’s children would play the lead roles in the mask, Milton created characters that are  strong in conviction and uphold the values of the society for which they were created. The mask’s central character of the Lady was played by the Earl’s daughter Alice, who was of marriageable age, so it is appropriate that Milton would give the character the particular virtue of chastity. Many critics have viewed the Lady through a feminist lens and have applauded Milton for his ability to create such a strong female character. However, the purpose of my essay is to question the idea of the Lady, and Comus as a whole, as feminist, specifically through the representation of femininity and masculinity in the mask and the final scene of the Lady’s rescue.

It is easy to see why one would view the Lady as a feminist character because for most of the mask she is pushing the boundaries of what would be her typical role. The Second Brother frequently refers to his sister as “lost,” a “virgin,” and “hapless,”  reinforcing the idea of the woman as weak or helpless, despite his brother’s reassurance. However, the Lady does not fall into the “damsel in distress” archetype even though she is placed in the appropriate stereotypical situation. Instead of begging for her freedom from Comus, she instead argues with him with the same skill level in rhetoric and decidedness in tone. She not once worries if her brothers are on their way to rescue her or if some divine intervention will set her free. She says to Comus, “Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind / With all thy charms” because she truly believes that her trust in the “serious doctrine of Virginity” (787) and the “Sun-clad power of Chastity” (782) will be able to keep her safe.

Despite this seemingly strong female character, the Lady’s core ideals about faith and chastity are ultimately based on the structure of the patriarchal society she lives in. This is not to say that one cannot be both a feminist and a devout virgin, but it is obvious that the Lady is not choosing the path of chastity through her own free will but that it has been structured into her life since birth as the ideal of femininity. This is shown in two ways. The first is through the brothers’ conversation about their sister’s chastity. The Elder Brother makes it quite clear to the Second Brother that the Lady is well versed in “virtue’s book” (367) and the values are permanently ingrained inside her:

Virtue may be assail’d but never hurt,

Surpris’d by unjust force but not enthrall’d

Yea even that which mischief meant most harm

Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. (589-92)

However, the Spirit plays up the Lady’s feminine helplessness by saying triggering phrases like “O poor hapless Nightingale. . .” (566) and “The aidless innocent Lady his wish’t prey. . .” (574). Even though the Elder Brother believes his sister to be so strong, he falls into the masculine archetype of the avenger, saying he will find and kill Comus himself: “I’ll find him out. . . drag him by the curls to a foul death” (606-7).

The second way in which the Lady’s femininity is presented is in juxtaposition with Comus. Comus blatantly associates himself with powerful, sexual, witchy women, especially as he carries a magic wand and cup of potion as his mother Circe did. He also evokes the power of Hecate and Cotytto, two goddesses associated with witchcraft and sexual deviancy, respectively. Although Comus is not overtly Christian, it is obvious that Milton, as a Puritan, desired his audience to see these women as evil forces. Milton uses the classic dichotomy of the Apollonian versus the Dionysian not only to emphasize the differences in their characters but to reveal the potential spectrum of the renaissance female. Also, just as the Lady’s Second Brother views her as weaker because of her sex, so does Comus. Towards the beginning of the seduction scene, Comus says a sexist remark to the Lady:

Why should you be so cruel to yourself,

And to those dainty limbs which nature lent

For gentle usage and soft delicacy?

This compares to an earlier moment in the mask when Comus first hears the Lady and compares her voice to a soft bird floating “upon the wings / Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night” (249-50). However, the Lady uses his perceptions of her femininity to call into question his masculinity:

Hast thou betray’d my credulous innocence

With vizor’d falsehood and base forgery,

And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here

With lickerish baits fit to ensnare a brute?

She basically says to him, “Oh, what a big man you are to be able to overpower little me with your magic. Way to go.” This statement is the Lady’s way of using a attributed weakness of femininity as a means of weakening her opponent. However, the final moments of the action of the mask are what really set the foundations of the morals in place.

In her article “A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle: The Armor of Logos,” Kathleen Wall draws the connection between the Lady and the myth of Callisto. Callisto was a virgin maiden of Diana who was raped by Zeus, who disguised himself as Diana to gain her trust, after she one day wandered into the woods alone and unprotected. However, unlike Callisto, the Lady is never literally raped by Comus. Wall says that “it is the differences between the original forms of the myth and the form given it in the masque that provide us with interesting insights into Milton’s ideas about the feminine” (53). Why doesn’t Comus take advantage of the Lady when he has her physically controlled? For Comus, the Lady’s feminine beauty is not what he ultimately seeks to control. He is first attracted to her in the woods solely by her voice, saying “sure something holy lodges in that breast” (246). This particular woman, to Comus, is the embodiment of the female ideal of chastity and to corrupt her would be the ultimate achievement, he “is attracted to her not because she is beautiful, but because she is chaste, not because she is vulnerable but because she seems so sober and self-certain” (56). So in this case, it would not be satisfying for Comus to force her to give in to sin, so instead he presents her with the temptation of choice to drink from his cup, to pour sin into the same orifice that her free speech pours out.

When the brothers arrive and chase Comus away, the Lady is still stuck to the seat. In the mask, the Spirit expresses annoyance that the brothers let Comus get away without acquiring his wand, the key to helping the Lady out of the chair. At first this seems to follow the typical fairy-tale rule book, we need the caster to undo the spell. However, there is something deeper underneath this mythological surface. The Lady’s body has been metaphorically conquered by Comus, for he was able to fully control her body -- sexual implications provided by the “gums of glutinous heat,” speculated by critics to be male ejaculate, that bind her to the chair. Even though the Lady has kept her mind pure, believing her chastity to be a frame of mind, her body is ruined, marking her impure. It is not until Sabrina, the water nymph of the Severn river, sprinkles water on her is she set free. This scene is the most overtly religious scene in the mask with its obvious resemblance to a baptism. In his essay “Comus Once More,” A.S.P. Woodhouse compares this scene to the scene in Spenser’s Faerie Queene when the Redcross Knight emerges from the water fully restored. He goes on to say:

“So with the episode of Sabrina: the sprinkling of pure water, those drops of ‘precious cure,’ symbolizes an infusion of divine grace, and what is implied is the secure raising of the problem to the religious level where alone it is soluble and where alone the dynamic of true virtue must be sought.” (76)

The Lady’s baptism allows her sin to be, literally and figuratively, washed away, which ultimately  allows her to stand up from the chair and return, notably silent, to her place in society - and her father - as a chaste, pure woman.

There is some speculation to how the mask would have ended if the Lady’s brothers never came charging in with swords drawn and the Lady was left to fight on her own. There are many different proposed endings but I think that the Lady would have stuck to her conventions until the very end because for her there was no other way of life. As Wall posits: “the Lady is unable to give in to the experience because of her very ‘masculine’ patriarchal frame of mind, one which she cannot transcend” (59). Milton brings forth these concepts of masculinity and femininity in such a way that they are not only intertwined, but they are constantly challenged by the characters and outside forces. However, even if Comus had managed to force the Lady to drink from his cup and transform her into an animal or his “queen” (265), he would never be able to control her mind, not because she has a free mind, but because her mind is already controlled by something else: the pressures of the patriarchal society.