Susan Snyder

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Susan Snyder

• Mamillius and Gender
• Polarization in The Winters Tale

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• Thesis Statement Susan Snyder thinks that it
  takes away his palpable physical reality to
  remove Mamillius from motherly care. She examines
  implications of Leontess sudden removal of his
  son from the nursery world and its materal
  figures. Leontess sudden appropriation of
  Mamillius looks like a violent and perhaps
  masculinizing of his son.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• I. Boundary between childhood/nursery world and
  male society coats vs. breeches
• A. The age of Mamillius
• 1. Mamilliu is the same age as Florizel, who
  in Act 5 is implied to be twenty-one (5.1.126).
  Hence, when the play begins, sixteen years
  before, both princes were about five.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• B. Female Care
• 1. The first year of childhood required close,
  gentle care.
• 2. Young child dressed in his coat or coats,
  the skirts worn by young boy-children before they
  put on the breeches that completed their
  gendering as a male.
• 3. Medieval tradition favored keeping boys in
  care at home until they were seven, not set to
  training or study but fed and nurtured to growth.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• C. Separation from Nursery
• 1. A Symbol of Breeching
• a. Among the upper classes in early modern
  England the breeching of boys was a formal
  transition to the next stage of childhood, often
  coinciding with a shift from nursery and womens
  care to male tutors and attendants.
• b. When a boy took on male attire, it was the
  outward and visible sign that he was leaving
  behind the special cherishing accorded to early
  childhood and setting out on a gendered course
  that was more strenuous but held appropriate
  rewards.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• II. Death of Mamillius
• A. Mamillius implies in its root mamilla
  (meaning breast or teat) the young childs strong
  connection to the maternal body.
• B. Leontes and Paulina both focus on
  Mamilliuss internalization of what has happened
  to Hermione, his identification with his mother.
• C. There is a direct connection between
  physical death and the psychological
  identification of child with mother.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• III. Separation of Genders
• A. Leontess Premature Rupture of the
  Mother-Child Bond
• 1. Betrayed by his former mirror-comrade
  Polixenes, Leontes seeks a new one in this loved
  boy Mamillius , a new twin lamb who will be his
  mate in another alliance apart from women.
• 2. Loentes places himself with Mamillius,
  whose sex and appearance mirror his, apart from
  the heterosexual pair of Hermione and Polixenes,
  withdrawing from the adult conversation to
  commune with his son and sending the others off
  by themselves.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• B. Spatial Separation of Genders
• 1. Gathering at the prison, women focused on
  Hermione and her new born girl. The social space
  of birth is a collective female space,
  constituted by the presence of midwives and by
  the absence of men.
• 2. Leontes is withdrawn among his lords. He
  has set up his opposite male world, excluding
  Hermione and other women.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• 3. When Paulina brings the child whose sex is
  alienated from Leontes and crosses over from the
  womans world of childbirth to violate his male
  space, Leontes, speaking through abuse of Paulina
  and of Antigonus, shows his fear of womens power
  over men and his need to keep the genders
  absolutely separated.
• 4. The last scene, a church ceremony,
  resocialized the new mother and reinstituted
  normal relations between men and women. The
  churching rite celebrated a womans deliverance
  not only from death but from social and sexual
  sequestration. The play ends a sexual separation
  inscribed on a whole society.

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Mamillius and Gender Polarization in The
Winters Tale

• Conclusion Mamillius is not ready to live on his
  own, let alone to play the role Leontes has cast
  him. His identity is not fully male. Mamillius is
  clearly on his way to masculinity, but he is not
  yet arrived there, not yet completely separated
  from the female matrix. He cannot survive in a
  world that ruthlessly polarizes male and female.
  Unable to be an ally of Leontes, Mamillius is
  only a victim in the play.