Milk to Gall: Representations of Angry Women on Page and Stage

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This project explores the questions: how did early-moderns perceive female anger? And did it originate in the gendered body, in personal agency, or could it be manipulated by the external intervention of demons? The first two chapters will examine medical conceptualisations of anger, choler (the humour linked to wrath) and gender; then stereotypes of angry women in popular culture, focusing on 'shrew-taming' narratives in pamphlets and plays. The final three chapters will analyse plays by Shakespeare, Middleton, Heywood, Ford, Dekker and Rowley, alongside female dramatists Cary and Sidney Herbert, comparing portrayals of female anger from different gendered perspectives. These chapters will examine dramatic representations of angry women (including the angry/choleric witch, the performativity of female anger, and contagious emotional disorder) to gain a wider view on how humoral medicine engages with discourse around female power. The project will link demonology, humoralism and gender studies, and join a transhistorical conversation about how women's bodies have been written within, and against, patriarchal discourse. It will make timely and important contributions to a growing field: the history of emotions.