About a third of the way through my guest lecture, the professor said, “I’m going to stop you there. I don’t agree with your feminist reading of the text.”
I was Professor Levin’s TA in a Shakespeare course. I already had my Masters–I’d written a book to get it, on the figure of the witch on the British stage, from Shakespeare to Churchill. Chapter One was about Macbeth, and even though I didn’t use it in the book, I’d written another chapter about witchcraft in The Tempest.
Thus, when Levin invited me to give a talk, I proposed a brief talk based on that.
The Tempest features a mage, Prospero, which is tricky, since King James really hated witches.
He had written an entire book about them, Daemonologie, in which he explained how all magic is in service of the dark forces, with tangents about how it’s possible for the Devil to impregnate a woman, since he can’t make sperm (spoiler: he gets sperm from a corpse).
While all witches were bad, he did make a common distinction between male and female magic. Male magic was “white”–it’s what learned men did, in trying to compel the spirits. Female magic was “black,” base, sexual, and destructive. Women were controlled by the devil and usually gave their body to him to seal the pact.
My point was that Sycorax, the unseen (dead) witch in The Tempest was there to foil for Prospero (she is rumored to have gotten pregnant by the devil, etc.). One could view the play with more sympathy towards Prospero due to her (and because Shakespeare allows for multiple interpretations, one might realize they’re not that different).
I got cut off, though.
I had to leave the lectern and take my seat in the back of the room, before Levin told the students that he didn’t approve of feminist theory and that they should forget everything I’d said.
Some of the students emailed me, apologizing for their professor’s behavior, saying they wished they’d been allowed to form an opinion about my point, if only they’d been allowed to hear it.
On the way out of class that day, Levin had asked where I’d gotten all that crap about James’s views.
“From his book, as I said. Have you read Daemonologie?”
“No.”
Every time I teach Shakespeare, as I am this summer, I think about this interaction.
And about the lesson.
A professor stopped a point of view he didn’t understand before hearing it out.
A male professor made a woman sit down before hearing her out.
I’m sure the students learned from that–that he would punish them for even proposing an interpretation he hadn’t thought of.
And that the sexism of King James’s time is still very much with us.
