• Wednesday 19 March - Panel I

Hasdrubal's Wife and Other Forgotten Female Heroes

Susan Haskins

Hasdrubal's wife committed suicide with her two children rather than follow her husband on his surrender to Scipio Africanus and captivity; she was described as reproaching her husband for his cowardice. Never named, she was depicted on a panel by Ercole de' Roberti, a companion to two others of Lucretia and Portia (two other suicides on account of honour and fidelity), probably chosen by Eleonora d'Aragona to decorate her late fifteenth-century studiolo in Ferrara. In classical times these figures were all celebrated by Plutarch as active, moral and chaste.

The concept of female heroic behaviour was until the Renaissance largely written by men, usually of the Church, and therefore in Christian terms, and derived from the status of the Virgin Mary, and based on the value of chastity: heroines of Christianity are martyrs, and are virgins, widows and wives, such as Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia and Catherine, role models proffered in medieval sermon manuals. St Jerome in the fourth century listed Hasdrubal's wife in his category of married women 'unwilling to survive the decease of their husbands in case they were forced to remarry', interpreting her suicide according to strictures against widows remarrying and entirely ignoring the true heroic reasons for her act. Powerful models like Mary Magdalen also had their Gospel roles subordinated and were transformed to become passive exemplars exhibiting chastity, humility and obedience. Lucretia's heroism was subordinated to her chastity, and Susanna became a temptress, even protagonist, depicted as such in Tintoretto's crouching Venus figure. Honour was equated with sexual honour, as the word pudicitia is virtually always applied to the heroine regardless of whether or not her claim to fame is dependent on her sexual probity.

In the City of Ladies, Christine de Pisan became the first woman to rebut medieval misogyny - and the interpretation of female figures. What constitutes a heroine can be further gleaned from the catalogues of famous women from classical, biblical and Christian sources, published from the late fifteenth century, in texts concerning female behaviour. Models are also found in the writings of Vives and Erasmus, sympathetic to women, but within a framework prescribed by their own sex. Female achievement is championed, with active models offered as rulers, learned women, women illustrious as military leaders and warriors, women who are strong and courageous; but models offered are also usually figures from the past. Medieval frescoes showed female heroism in martyrdom (St Catherine on the wheel or Lucy dragged naked by oxen to a brothel); Castagno's Esther and Thomyris of the 1480s appear, swords in hand, as defenders of their countries.

Comparison with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women writers, such as Lucrezia Marinella and Moderata Fonte, shows them reverting to and sometimes rewriting the classical accounts, according to their own lights and feminism. Categories I have been looking at will give some idea of the scope: Warrior maidens, Widows in warfare, Virtuous virgins, Suicides and shame, Wifely chastity, Abandoned women, Women, beware women, Prophetesses and womanly wisdom, Women on top and Victorious goddesses.

sbh@macunlimited.net