Virgin

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Virgin

Virgin: Not yet touched, handled, or employed for any purpose; still undisturbed or unused; perfectly fresh or new (Oxford English Dictionary online, definition 16b).

For the Renaissance writers, virginity was a precious ideal and a favorite theme. It went by many names: virtue, chastity, purity, maidenhead; but it signified that rare thing that was untouched, fresh, new. In a large sense, it was everything that the Old World of Europe ached and searched for: a new thing, the New World. Virginity was a thing men wanted to admire and treasure, but also to conquer and consume. And to the bearer, the virgin, it was an invaluable asset.

Virginity is bounty, riches, and treasure. When European explorers first set foot on the ‘virgin soil’ of the Americas, they were awestruck by the profusion of life, resources, and beauty. This land, innocent of the European touch, "… had many goodly woods full of deer, coneys, hares, and fowl, even in the midst of summer in incredible abundance (Barlow 1067)." The plowing of earth is often compared to the ‘tilling and sewing’ of a virgin woman. Sir Walter Raleigh (1064) explicitly employs this sexual metaphor when he writes "… Guiana is a country that hath yet her maidenhead, never sacked, turned, nor wrought; the face of the earth hath not been torn …"

Virginity is so admired that the word ‘virtue’ is a synonym for it. But in large part, it is prized only because of the difficulty of overcoming it. The deflowering of a girl or a new-found land is an exciting challenge to be surmounted. Raleigh goads his Queen to take the challenge of colonizing Guiana when he writes of her: "For whatsoever prince shall possess it shall be greatest, … shall hereby hear the name of a virgin which is … able to … invade and conquer so great empires so far removed (1066)."

While virginity retained leaves the suitor unsatisfied, it does likewise to the virgin. This mutual yearning and frustration seems to drive Renaissance writers to new heights of poetic expression. For example, Stella reassures Astrophil that, while she must make him wait, she too burns with passion: "Trust me while I thee deny, In myself the smart I try, … (Sidney 993)" In Shakespeare’s first sonnet, he laments that his would-be lover, by denying him, is "Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel (1169).

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