Exclusionary Premises

Plays of the Fall are largely uninterested in Eve's subjective responses to her change of state after the Fall, but several English plays of the Flood appear actively invested in the exploration of Mrs Noah's responses to the drowning of the world as she knows it. This article returns to the issue of female recalcitrance in the Noah plays from York, Chester, and (in particular) Towneley. Given that Mrs Noah is beaten or forced onto the Ark in all three plays, this article also addresses the question of whether and how violence against women in farce plays can ever be real or serious, and also of whether and how female resistance to this violence, or female violence, can be real or serious in its turn. In York and Chester, Mrs Noah raises her voice in mourning for friends and relatives, and in the Towneley play insists on remaining behind to work. The story of the Ark has its obvious cruelties; the inclusion of Mrs Noah's resisting voice is one way of making these cruelties present and real for the audience. The Noah plays from York, Chester, and Towneley have investments of various sorts in those who are left behind, and these investments are often filtered through the voice of Mrs Noah. This is not to say that Mrs Noah's recalcitrance is approved in any given play, but it is present and persistent even when it is disapproved and defeated. Significantly, given that her recalcitrance is an extra-biblical feature, this feature offers a voice not only for the dead but also for the living: all those women at the bottom of the hierarchy of discourse. All three plays place an emphasis on Mrs Noah's exclusion from God's and Noah's counsels alike; her anger and denial are shown to spring not merely from her flaws of faith and character, but also from her resentment at her late and mediated exposure to the realities of the situation.

Madeleine L'Engle has a displaced twentieth-century observer of the Flood point out in her novel Many Waters that 'Only the males have names ... They're just women, so they don't matter. They don't care if Yalith gets drowned'. (1) But Mrs Noah cares about the drowned world. Rather than supporting a simple exegetical reading, in which Mrs Noah resists divine knowledge, or in which Noah's relationship with God is uncomplicatedly prior, Mrs Noah's troublemaking highlights the loss of life caused by the Flood, and hints at some painful exclusions--of wives from the inner lives of husbands, of persons from life itself and from salvation as well. Mrs Noah resists containment by doctrine in at least two ways: first, her sorrow about the exclusionary aspects of the salvation narrative cannot be entirely disregarded, and second, her bond with Noah is seen to be severely compromised.

The biblical narrative depicts a meek Mrs Noah who makes no protests about her role or about getting onto the Ark. The rebellious Mrs Noah of medieval...