The Natural and Unnatural Silence of Women in the Elegies of Propertius

I begin with a quote from W.R. Johnson on Propertius 4.11: 'When we have finally gotten to Cornelia, whose central message is that the game of recusatio has ended, overwhelmed by her chilly sublimities and conquered by the powers of her Roman Truths and Virtues - when the performance ends and the silence begins, we may be shocked to hear Cynthia laughing loudly at the lachrymose deity and the metonymic skid that has now enfolded him.'1 So Ralph Johnson describes the final poem of Propertius Book 4, the long rambling speech of Cornelia, paragon of Roman aristocratic maternal virtue. She is one of several women to take the podium in Book 4: she is accompanied by Arethusa, the Roman wife left behind by her soldier/husband Lycotas (4.3); Tarpeia, the love-struck girl who betrayed Rome to the Sabine king, Titus Tatius (4.4); Acanthis, the grasping and vile lena, who gives the poet's mistress advice on how to get as rich as possible (4.5); and Cynthia herself, featured in two poems (once dead in 4.7 and once alive in 4.8). The range of women presented in Book 4 of Propertius is characteristic of the many ways that female characters are depicted throughout his four books of elegies: some are purely mythical (for example, Thetis in 2.9, 3.7), some figured as more fictional (Cynthia throughout), and others as historical (for example, Cornelia in 4.11). All, however, are figured as fictional in the end. What does it mean to have so many women speaking out of Propertius' pages, to end with Cornelia's spirited posthumous defense of her life? And why does Johnson hear, in the silence after 4.11, a laughing Cynthia, making fun of a poem that many critics have accepted as Propertius' final conversion to an Augustan vision and Augustan ideals of marriage and womanhood?2 To laugh is to have a presence, to make a judgement, to declare an identity separate from the text. If we allow Cynthia to laugh in our imaginations, we are granting to her a position as the creator and judge of poetry, a sign-maker, rather than simply consigning her to the role of the 'Written Woman'.3 But this is Johnson's fantasy (it might be important that he is a man: can women hear Cynthia laughing?). I am interested in the methods used to silence women and in how Propertius figures this silence through his garrulous women. I propose to investigate the silent women of Propertian elegy by examining, first, the meanings of silence, particularly when it is used to suppress alienated groups; second, the ways silence can be put into play by those who wield the instruments of depiction (the pen, stylus, computer or paintbrush); third, the women of Propertius' elegies who are silenced even through their speaking; and, fourth, particular women in Book Four of Propertius' elegies, especially Cornelia and Cynthia, who speak from beyond the grave and thus exemplify another kind of silent speaking. I. THE MEANINGS OF SILENCE It is generally true that, in most societies, the dominant group has control over the means and methods of representation while the Other, those marginalised and excluded from sources of power, are silent or silenced. Silence is, of course, as multivalent as other forms of communication. It is usually, but not always or inevitably, the mark of powerlessness. The words 'silent' and 'silenced' reveal very different sides of this posture. To be silent can be an active choice: we can speak of a strong silent type, or silent disapproval, or silent protest. Silence, if figured as nothingness or space, is essential to any conceptual way of thinking, be it in mathematics, where the zero is essential now to mathematical systems; astronomy, where space is the place in which our planet revolves; art, where figures can only be inscribed in space and form must be balanced against emptiness; music, where silence is as necessary as the notes that punctuate it; or religion, where silence often allows the most important forms of communication to happen. …