ABSTRACT
In the first half of this book, I have argued that the emergence of heteronormativity repositions the Jew from the role of Devil to that of Sissy. More specifically, I have proposed that as the cultural concern over what constitutes ‘proper’ masculinity shifted from imposing a limit on stigmatized hypermasculine behavior to propping up the potentially effeminate bourgeois male, the figure of the Jew came to symbolize the weak man unable to resist sinful heterosexual sex. In this chapter I develop a corollary that follows from my main argument. If sex acts (and the attendant institution of marriage) are understood to possess the religious valences I have posited in this study then it would logically follow that divorce practices would also convey religious connotations in accordance with this larger paradigm. In this chapter I seek both to prove the validity of this hypothesis and to provide a taxonomy of the religious coding that comes to be associated with the act of divorce as it was variously practiced in early modern England. In order to demonstrate these claims, I will first provide a summary of this subject through a review of the commentary devoted to Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy o f Mariam and Milton’s Samson Agonistes, two early modern English works that make divorce a central concern. This brief survey will illustrate that the religious connotation of divorce has been noted but misrepresented in both the range of its possible signification and its general significance. As a result, my major aim in this chapter is to make an intervention in the current critical discussion of divorce among cultural critics in order to force a reevaluation of this subject.
