ABSTRACT
For an exploration of how women’s genitalia and mouths were socially encoded as equivalents, see Peter Stallybrass, “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed," in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy Vickers (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986), 123-42. Given the connection between bodily orifices, it is hardly surprising that silence was recommended as a means of insuring sexual reputation; as Bacon stated, “There is nothing that doth so commend, avaunce, set forthe, adourne, decke, trim, and garnish a maid, as silence" (cited by Kelso, 50). For the male mastery of rhetoric, see Walter Ong, “Latin Lan guage Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite," Studies in Philology 56 (1959), 106-24.
