Schwarz 2003

chastity

"Formulated in terms of self-control, chastity stands in an odd relation to the presumption of control by others; it is not a straightforward mechanism of hierarchical imposition but a complicated and always potentially contested interplay of constraint and will." (270)

Milton's Comus and Cavendish's Assaulted and Pursued Chastity

"Milton and Cavendish link violent obduracy to conventional social value, yoking militancy to marriage, and with this elaboration significance shifts." (272)

"somewhat apprehensive view of chastity" circulating more generally in the period; but for Milton and Cavendish, becomes "not anxiety but story: not, that is, a partially repressed subterranean possibility but a matter of plot and a mode of heroism" (272)

whose mastery does chastity signify? (274)

"If femininity, the set of conventions that directs female identitis and acts toward the accomplishment of patriarchal ends, appears as an artifact of female will, its role in the management of power becomes ambiguous at best. A feminine sexuality at once conventionally defined and militantly disposed imperils the ordering effects of marriage." (275)