What the Act Has Made You: Approving Virginity in The Changeling

[...]when Beatrice's speech disintegrates into unintelligible breath, De Flores takes cynical pleasure in comparing her to a quivering bird: " 'las how the turtle pants" (3.4.173). According to Eve Keller's study of generative bodies in early modernity, for instance, early term "abortions" were not necessarily subject to moral or legal rebuke because "it was considered impossible to determine with any certainty that a woman was even pregnant. [...]because the technological apparatus in Alsemero's closet ultimately fails to master any of the secrets in nature, The Changeling's dramatic tensions work by showing just how slippery and illusory patriarchy's claims of dominion can be. [...]if the play enthralls its audience by showing them their own nagging doubts about the corporeal reality of virginity, then it drives the point home by shattering the optimistic technological fantasy of Glass M. Even if this "strangest trick to know a maid by" really works, even if it successfully superimposes the patriarchal order of symbols, language, and arithmetic over the mystifying wilderness of woman's flesh, then it completely fails Alsemero, the supposed "master of the mystery."