Essay: Male and female bodies through history in literature

With the onset of the early modern period, genital homology dominated beliefs about male and female bodies. The ‘one-sex theory’ formed the foundations of this, affirming that men and women shared the same genitals.  Throughout the early modern period however, this evolved into the two-sex theory, accompanied by the transition from one to two-seed models. The domino effect this advancement had catalysed further belief changes across the early modern period, for instance the social position of women, importance of the female orgasm and arising questions regarding the humoral superiority of the male body.
The Aristotelian notion of the ‘one-sex theory’ placed male and female bodies on a vertical hierarchical axis, given their genital homogeneity.  This uniformity was buttressed by the humoral system, in which men were perceived as hot and dry and women as cold and moist, an explanation as to why her genitals were internal rather than external.  This model emphasised the superiority of male bodies in both their humoral heat and external genitals.  Permeating the social as well as intellectual realm, this concept fundamentally reinforced traditional gender roles making it important as a point of comparison in the later early-modern period. Laqueur highlighted how in the public world, the one-sex model proved to show how ‘man is the measure of all things, and woman does not exist as an ontologically distinct category’.  It may be that a prime mover in prompting the move away from this theory was the desire to prevent women entering the political arena, thus keeping them prisoners of the traditional separate spheres ideology. Justification for this derived from the existence of natural variations between the genders and so became reason for different natural rights.
The early-modern period saw the evolution of this theory into the two-sex model. Men and women were now placed on a horizontal axis in which their biological differences were recognised in the context of growing classification and scientific advance.  Facilitating this development may have been the changing beliefs about contraception and the progression from one-seed to two-seed theories.  The late seventeenth to early nineteenth century gave rise to new terminology, ‘women’s testicles’ were renamed ‘ovaries’, and ‘neck of the womb’ became the ‘vagina’.  This implies that improved pragmatic methods to early-modern science also stimulated change in this period.  The traditional one seed-theory of active male sperma and passive female catemenia found in menstrual blood elevated male bodies to a position of significance, as only he could provide the necessary active seed for divinely ordained procreation.   Contrastingly, this highlighted the inadequacy and imperfectness of a woman’s body, alongside demoting the importance of a female orgasm. Her body was somewhat stigmatized as shameful, presented by Andreas Vesalius’ anatomical illustrations of male and female bodies.  In this, while the man asserts a proud stance, the woman is depicted covering her genitals and looking to the side, suggesting shame in her own body.
In comparison, the abandonment of this model and the adoption of the two-seed theory created differences between male and female bodies. The Hippocratic two-seed theory deemed the ejaculate of the man and woman to be of equal worth, while the Galenic accepted the importance of a woman’s seed, albeit lesser in comparison to the male seed. It must be acknowledged however that the existence of the female seed was difficult to prove and so Aristotelian notions still dominated,  emphasising a lack of change in the perception of the male body. Another pivotal scientific development was the discovery of the important role of the ovum in reproduction in the 1660s and 1670s, eliminating the idea of male dominance in the reproductive system.  No longer was a female’s contribution seen as passive or shameful, especially following the pre-formatist thesis of all animals originating from eggs.  The Fruit Shop (1765) further exemplified this, in which the author ridiculed the view of contraception occurring if male and female contributions were different.  Despite this, the satirical nature of The Fruit Shop leaves us to question whether the author was instead mocking rather than supporting these new developments. Contrastingly, Jacques Moreau de la Sarthe in 1803 disputed the absurdity of Aristotle and Galen, contending that both physically and spiritually men and women clearly differed.  Changing beliefs about male and female differences then were oscillating, rather than a wholesale abandonment of earlier beliefs.  Furthermore, historians such as Harvey see this progression in the context of the eighteenth-century,  however this has attracted some doubt. Cadden goes as far to say that the one-sex model had been disputed in the ancient and medieval period.   These changes were evidently ambiguous, leading us to question whether it was in fact even the early-modern period that witnessed a drastic change in the perception of male and female bodies.
In Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the humoral physiological theory of a man’s body as hot and dry, and a female’s as cold and wet.   This highlights the pivotal position that the humoral system played during this period, making it’s invalidation by modern medicine in the eighteenth century all the more significant.   It must not be overlooked that this decline in humoral physiology impacted the perception of male as well as female bodies. When the system that hailed men for their perfect nature declined, it can be assumed that these principles too began to fragment, thus removing male bodily superiority. This is evident in Fissel’s assertion that ‘women’s bodies are the stuff of history’ in the early modern period, and her failure to grant men with bodily significance.
The increase in literacy rates following the Reformation and the printing business aided the dissemination of new vocabulary and ideas, another reason for changing beliefs. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a gradual renaming of archaic anatomical vocabulary, accelerated in 1502 with the publication of Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon.  The Civil Wars of the seventeenth century called for greater transparency in medical knowledge, leading to translation of medical works and handbooks.  Feminist foundations also illustrate the climate in which this change was fashioned, with Professor of Medicine J. Lotichium in 1645 stressing that women have just as perfect a body as men, and should be considered equally human.  This however has attracted some scrutiny from historians such as Stolberg who doubt the validity of this as a stimulus of change.
The early modern period witnessed a change in beliefs about the differences of male and female bodies for a plethora of reasons. The notion of the perfect male body in comparison to the lesser, passive female body was one that appeared to gradually fragment following the adoption of the two-sex theory and greater understanding medically of variations in male and female genitals. The printing business, improved medical knowledge and methods alongside the Enlightenment concept of female equality clarify why these changes occurred during this period. While this is clear, it is also apparent that Aristotelian concepts still lingered throughout the period, continuing to do so until the discovery of the exact purpose of sperm and eggs in the nineteenth century.