Women in Absalom and Achitophel
Women in Absalom and Achitophel
John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel has long been established as a manifestation of the intricate fabric of patriarchal scheme of the Restoration monarchy. Generations of critics have found it as an extremely intriguing territory, swiftly trafficking with the contemporary socio-political notion of the king as the father of the nation and his celestial alignment with the God himself. This perspective locks Dryden’s text within the obvious interpretation of it as a literary tool to manifest the structures of the father-oriented monarchy. The woman-question, in this kind of critical thinking, becomes a vivid attempt on the poet’s part to wipe out the female voices and thereby underplaying female authority in a patriarchal society. This, indeed, becomes apparent when we focus upon the fact that in the text we hear no word uttered by any female subject; in fact, there are only three names of female characters mentioned in the text- Michal, Annabel, and Bathsheba and of course they are hardly the references to be proud of, for Michal’s soil is “ungrateful to the tillers care”, Annabel is almost a gift to Absalom from his father David and the king “Is grown in Bathsheba’s embraces old”. Apart from these three somewhat humiliating references there is no other mention of the women in Absalom and Achitophel. The poem surely aims at fashioning a binary opposition between the feminine qualities and the masculine faculties that David/Charles II represents. The perfidious nature of the group that goes against the divinely justified Monarchy is heightened by the feminization of the rebelling factions. As the kingship is settled by God, to stand against monarchy is logically to stand against God’s will. Achitophel’s luring of Absalom into the rebelling faction is therefore drawn as a reworking of the scene of Milton’s Paradise lost where Satan lures Eve into disobeying God’s words. Like Eve in the Garden, Absalom is cajoled to believe it
John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel has long been established as a manifestation of the intricate fabric of patriarchal scheme of the Restoration monarchy. Generations of critics have found it as an extremely intriguing territory, swiftly trafficking with the contemporary socio-political notion of the king as the father of the nation and his celestial alignment with the God himself. This perspective locks Dryden’s text within the obvious interpretation of it as a literary tool to manifest the structures of the father-oriented monarchy. The woman-question, in this kind of critical thinking, becomes a vivid attempt on the poet’s part to wipe out the female voices and thereby underplaying female authority in a patriarchal society. This, indeed, becomes apparent when we focus upon the fact that in the text we hear no word uttered by any female subject; in fact, there are only three names of female characters mentioned in the text- Michal, Annabel, and Bathsheba and of course they are hardly the references to be proud of, for Michal’s soil is “ungrateful to the tillers care”, Annabel is almost a gift to Absalom from his father David and the king “Is grown in Bathsheba’s embraces old”. Apart from these three somewhat humiliating references there is no other mention of the women in Absalom and Achitophel. The poem surely aims at fashioning a binary opposition between the feminine qualities and the masculine faculties that David/Charles II represents. The perfidious nature of the group that goes against the divinely justified Monarchy is heightened by the feminization of the rebelling factions. As the kingship is settled by God, to stand against monarchy is logically to stand against God’s will. Achitophel’s luring of Absalom into the rebelling faction is therefore drawn as a reworking of the scene of Milton’s Paradise lost where Satan lures Eve into disobeying God’s words. Like Eve in the Garden, Absalom is cajoled to believe it