Pulter’s “The Turtle and his Paramour” is a short emblem poem that recounts a turtle’s persistent pursuit of a mate. The paramour is a largely unwilling partner, impossibly described as wise, fair, chaste, modest, fearful, reluctant and, simultaneously, coy. Conventional in many ways—in form, theme, and allusion—this poem also contends with the complex problem of early modern consent and offers direct advice to women readers at its conclusion. Pulter’s gendered subject position transforms this poem into a subversive critique of coquetry rather than a recapitulation of the familiar game of cat and mouse (or, in this case, turtle and turtle). Rather than a playful account of two amorous animals, this poem offers a pointed interrogation of Renaissance ideas about rape.
Of exceptional note is Pulter’s command of form. The heroic couplets mimic the language of epic poetry, though the poem comprises only twenty-two lines. The form elevates the subject matter, casting sexual assault as a subject worthy of epic weight. Pulter deploys other formal poetic devices with skillful wit. When she breaks the regular iambic meter with anapests and dactyls, she uses sound to emphasize the slow, methodical terror of brutal immobilization (“Soe the grand Sygnior makes his vassels yield” (15)) or the frenzied speed of the turtle’s chase (“Love made him nimble fear made her make hast” (9)). In this particular line, the caesura between “nimble” and “fear” separates the two figures mid-chase as form echoes poetic function.
Pulter’s emblem poems derive inspiration from natural history and from the popular genre of emblem books. Mara R. Wade defines the emblem as “one of the primary vehicles of cultural knowledge during the early modern period (ca. 1500–1750), capable of expressing highly complex ideas in compact and compelling forms.”1 Typically, emblems consist of both words and pictures, yet Pulter evokes pictures with her words. The Turtle and his Paramour (Emblem 47) [Poem 112] is not her only emblem poem to feature a turtle. The Turtle (Emblem 8) [Poem 74] also centers on a female turtle, but there it serves as a warning of the turtle’s physical vulnerability: “But do but turn this turtle to the skies: / She sighs and sobs and discontented lies / And in this passion, bathed in tears, she dies” (5–7). The Porcupine (Emblem 13) [Poem 79] features a tortoise who is similarly vulnerable but whose shell protects her soul: “What if they hurt my flesh? ’Tis but my shell / That suffers; my enfranchised soul is well” (30–31). This Poor Turtledove (Emblem 20) [Poem 85] features a turtledove, a distinct animal with an analogous name that, like The Turtle and his Paramour (Emblem 47) [Poem 112], emphasizes constancy, as she encourages her readers to “imitate this turtledove” (21). The Turtle and his Paramour (Emblem 47) [Poem 112] begins with an amorous turtle burning, in Petrarchan fashion, with “Reinflamd desire.” This reference echoes other aggressive pursuers in Pulter’s work, like Rodrigo the rapist in The Unfortunate Florinda who is “inflamed with the love of Florinda.” Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Ed. Alice Eardley. Toronto: Iter, 2014, p. 283.
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996, p. 1843.
In her 2014 edition of Pulter’s poetry, Alice Eardley cites Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History as a possible source for her depiction of the turtles. Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Ed. Alice Eardley. Toronto: Iter, 2014, p. 253 n. 443.
Topsell, Edward. The history of four-footed beasts and serpents. London: Printed by E. Cotes for G. Sawbridge, 1607, 1608, 1658, p. 795.
Topsell, Edward. The history of four-footed beasts and serpents. London: Printed by E. Cotes for G. Sawbridge, 1607, 1608, 1658, p. 798.
At first, the choice of a turtle seems odd for depicting a swift and aggressive chase, but this is likely due to a conflation between the turtle and the tortoise in Pulter’s sources. Aesop characterizes the tortoise as slow and steady; other Renaissance emblems associate turtles with the paradox “festina lente,” depicting a turtle decorated with sails to “make haste slowly.”
Neither tortoises nor turtles are known for their speed, at least not on land. But importantly, Pulter’s turtles are both sea turtles: she spies his head “above the Waves” (7). Turtles may be slow on land, but they are fast in the water. This duality is key to the turtle’s pursuit.
The turtle shows up in another common Renaissance emblem tradition, depicting an eagle carrying a turtle to a dizzying height in his talons, “ut lapsu graviore ruat” or “ut corruat,” so that it may fall.
This emblematic appearance of the turtle can be read as a critique of “excessive ambition.”8 The turtle will inevitably be dropped from on high, smashing its shell and making it the easier prey. Pulter uses this image in Old Aeschylus (Emblem 31) [Poem 96] when she recounts the legend of Old Aeschylus’ death, killed by a falling tortoise dropped by a passing eagle: “A Tow’ring Eagle let her prey fall down / In hope to break the Escallop on his Crown. / She had her wish: it broke the fatal Shell, / And struck the Poet’s Rhyming Soul to Hell” (7–10). While this particular emblematic reading is not directly pertinent to The Turtle and his Paramour (Emblem 47) [Poem 112], it does demonstrate the multivalent resonances of the turtle in Renaissance culture. Perhaps Pulter’s turtle is similarly ambitious (and self-destructive) in his pursuit.
Another puzzle derives from the Renaissance emblem tradition that depicts Venus, or Aphrodite, standing atop a turtle, or tortoise, as in Alciato’s 16th-century emblem. For a study of this trope, see Dougherty, Carol L. “Why Does Aphrodite Have Her Foot on That Turtle?” Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics 27.3 (Winter 2020), pp. 25–48.
For more on this connection between Venus and early modern women, see Kaznowska, Helena. “Women Are from Venus: Addressing Female Agency with Classical Allegory.” Audience Reception in the Early Modern Period. Ed. John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives. New York: Routledge, 2021. pp. 276–302.
Stephens, Dorothy. The Limits of Eroticism in Post-Petrarchan Narrative: Conditional Pleasure from Spenser to Marvell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 200, n. 17.
But this Ovidian reading—whereby “no” means “yes” and, as Marlowe translates it, “red shame becomes white cheeks”12—is further complicated by the violence of Pulter’s ensuing metaphors. The two turtles are first likened to Daphne and Apollo, an aggressive pursuit so unwelcome that Daphne prays to be transformed into a tree to escape. Unfortunately, the faster Daphne runs away, the more Apollo wants her: Daphne “seemed most lovely to his fancy in her flight.” Ovid. Metamorphoses. “Daphne and Phoebus.” Trans. Brookes More. Boston: Cornhill Publishing, 1922, 1.531–2.
Rape culture is a sociological concept originating with second-wave feminism in the 1970s that identifies the normalization of (male) sexual violence and the blame placed on victims of sexual assault. Peter Herman aptly notes Pulter’s evocation of a gender binary that shapes men’s and women’s expected sexual behavior in his analysis of Pulter’s romance The Unfortunate Florinda: “Pulter situates the divide between the chaste and the licentious, between men as sexual predators and women as their prey.” Herman, Peter C. “Lady Hester Pulter’s The Unfortunate Florinda: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Rape.” Renaissance Quarterly 63.4 (2010), p. 1226.
Stanton, Kay. “‘For me, I am the mistress of my fate’: Lucrece, rape culture, and feminist political activism.” Shakespeare/Sex: Contemporary Readings in Gender and Sexuality. Ed. Jennifer Drouin. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, p. 26.
Stanton, Kay. “‘For me, I am the mistress of my fate’: Lucrece, rape culture, and feminist political activism.” Shakespeare/Sex: Contemporary Readings in Gender and Sexuality. Ed. Jennifer Drouin. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, p. 35.
Where Pulter’s turtles differ from Daphne and Apollo is not in the chase but in the catch: Daphne prays to transform her body in order to elude capture, but the female turtle is caught, a perverse “love conquers all” outcome: “Thus Love then fear did prove more Swift in Chase” (13). Cynthia E. Garrett connects such poetic rationalization of rape to the legal practice of “post facto consent”: “the medieval concept of post facto consent lends credence to the timeline built into Ovid’s legitimation of male force, in which a woman may ‘at first’ resist but will eventually yield willingly. Indeed, the notion that a woman can yield internally while resisting externally defers denial indefinitely.” Garrett, Cynthia E. “Sexual Consent and the Art of Love in the Early Modern English Lyric.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 44.1 (Winter 2004), p. 41.
Catty, Jocelyn. Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England: Unbridled Speech. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 32.
Yielding to sexual violence could, ironically, offer early modern women a sense of agency. If they perceive the outcome as inevitable, yielding might allow them some control over the situation and a degree of preserved respectability. Pulter entertains these alternatives in The Unfortunate Florinda. Florinda, “a most unparalleled lady of an electrical beauty, superlative in all virtues, especially chastity,” Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Ed. Alice Eardley. Toronto: Iter, 2014, p. 274.
Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Ed. Alice Eardley. Toronto: Iter, 2014, p. 273.
Importantly, yielding does not negate violence. The violence of the catch is only reinforced by the whiplash shift Pulter makes to a pseudo-historical reference, invoking the brutality of the Grand Seignior, Turkish sultan of the Ottoman Empire: “Soe the grand Sygnior makes his vassels yield / When through their foot his cruell spheir they feild” (15–16). This metaphor evokes an alluring orientalist fantasy, mixing “terrors, pleasures, [and] desires.” Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1979, p. 63.
Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Ed. Alice Eardley. Toronto: Iter, 2014, p. 254 n. 446.
Pulter ends her poem with a direct appeal—and warning—to her women readers. Pulter advises, “the Weomen of this age may see / Nothing gains love like virgin Modestie.” Coming on the heels of such violent metaphors, “love” feels like an unsavory euphemism. Call it what you will: love—unwanted attention—post facto consent—rape. If this is the reward for “virgin Modestie,” perhaps the game isn’t worth playing. As Jocelyn Catty argues in Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England, “The concept of female sexual ‘coyness’, then, which at its most extreme is portrayed as a masochistic desire for violence, becomes closely connected with rape.” Catty, Jocelyn. Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England: Unbridled Speech. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 97.
Pulter’s advice climaxes in an ambiguously worded conclusion: “Ladyes leave your Impudence for shame / Let not the Turtle have A Chaster flame” (21–22). The imperative command, “leave your Impudence for shame,” offers a few alternative interpretations. Impudence might reference immodest behavior (OED def. 1); in her edition, Eardley glosses “impudence” as “shamelessness; immodesty.” Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Ed. Alice Eardley. Toronto: Iter, 2014, p. 254 n. 447.
— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
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