A Core What Is The Role Of Women In Medieval Literature 5a228

David Jones

English I

Texts In Context January/February 2000

What Is The Role Of Women In Medieval Literature? Medieval literature depicts direct though non-linear elements in what Jung termed the "collective unconscious". That is, dreams, folklore and myths. Generally however these are the dreams of men, where women are symbols of aesthetic beauty, conquest and (subtly, as it goes against the chivalric ideal) sexual fulfilment. Unsurprisingly however, this is not the complete picture over several centuries of writing. In Medieval literature the story is tantamount, and the significance of women varies depending on their role as symbols pointing to the latent meaning of each tale. In this essay, focussing on the Breton lays1, typical female roles will be analysed in relation to Sir Orfeo. Analysis will then progress to the lays of Marie de and I will contend that these are an exception in of the role of women. The main symbols in these lays are often female, and the latent meaning relates to the nature of being a woman. Sir Orfeo's Queen Herodis is little more than a symbol of beauty to be rescued. Following Kibler's ascertains that Medieval characters "are individualized not by psychological development, but rather by the specific situations in which they find themselves" she must exist primarily to be absent. The meaning of the lay is not "Mest o love", as claimed, but is in fact the hero’s capacity for love. This is demonstrated at the outset when eighteen lines about Orfeo's love of harping are followed by a mere six about his wife: The king hadde a Queen of priis That was y-cleped Dame Herodis, The fairest levedy for the nones That might gon on body and bones, Full of love and godenisse, Ac no man may tell of hir fairnise (lines 27-32) The lack of imagery in this superlative rhetoric leaves Herodis a far less vivid character than Triamoure in Lanval. The final couplet almost negates her character by

David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

placing closing emphasis on her reputation. She is further dehumanised by the decontextualised modern reader. Whilst the word “priis” may be closest to our word “excellence”, we cannot help associating connotations of “price” and the historical sense that women were a commodity2. Herodis only seems a real “character” in the dialogue before she is taken away, declaring "ever ich have y-loved thee"3. Female naivety contrasts Orfeo's worldly cunning and allows him to be a true hero. There is the carefree, but almost infantile image of Herodis and two maidens (for women are rarely alone in lays) going: To play by an orchardside – To see the floures sprede and spring And to here the foules sing. (lines 42-44) There is no denying the beauty in this image, the assonance of floures/foules and alliteration of sprede/spring creating an image of innocent woman at one with nature. However the purpose of this innocence is to create vulnerability. The equally naïve maidens' failure to wake their Queen means that a dangerous situation soon occurs and a hero is required to save the day. The corruption of femininity is used in Sir Orfeo to enhance dramatic impact. The Queen's waking, coming after lines of carefree female innocence, could not be more of a contrast: She froted her honden and hir feet And crached her visage – it bled wete. Hir riche robe hie all to-rett (lines 55-57) The assonance is gone, the lines are protracted, and the rhythm is disted as meaning cuts across couplets. "rett" not only relates to tearing but also has connotations of "red", the saturation of blood she has caused. She uses her fingernails, symbols of femininity, to destroy her beauty: "Thy body, that was so white ycore,/With thine nails is all to-tore!"4. The corruption of femininity is a visceral symbol recurrent through literature. In Wuthering Heights the unnaturally effeminate Isabella uses her fingernails to leave "crescents of red" on Catherine's arm. Similarly recurrent is Le Fresne's notion of a mother killing her child,

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David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

such as in Macbeth. Women's mysteriousness, in the eyes of men, enhances the mystique of the fairies in the spectacle of "sexty levedis on hors"5. In medieval this is the natural order debased. The hero is powerless against a mass of unarmed women. These silent automatons, with their brutally efficient hawks, are utterly unsettling. The inherent mysteriousness of womanhood also makes Queen Herodis more ambiguous. It is uncertain whether she is kidnapped or seduced to the fairy kingdom. That she is easily impressed by its splendour establishes her, beyond the classical structure and Celtic aesthetic, in an Eve-facing-temptation archetype. The extrinsic role of women, with female patrons emerging in a new "middle class" audience, may explain the increased femininity of heroes like Orfeo, a musician rather a warrior. A.B. Taylor (1930) simplistically states that these women found the stance of chivalry more palatable than Anglo-Saxon heroics6. Yet the shift in male ideals that came with the Norman invasion, focussing on the Virgin Mary7, may be more able. Perhaps this ties in with the attractive speculation of Joseph Campell5. He cites an eruption in Western thought of a new sense of the feminine, an archetype suppressed by medieval misogyny. This archetype, expressed through fantasy as it was inherently anti-Christian, built a new sense of the individual for both sexes. Whether he is entirely accurate or not, I feel that this idea embodies best the unusual portrayal of women in the lays of Marie de . Marie de 's Lanval is a progression from the traditional role of women, whether its author was a woman or not. Female characters are still commodities and superlative beauties. They exist, as feminists often cite in literature by men, at polarities; "heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme" [Woolf, pg.2175]. These polarities are represented by Dame Triamoure and Guinere. David Wallace characterises the lay as a "tale of female power overcoming female malice". This woman-orientated meaning focuses on the implications of female power. Women have control over both Lanval and Arthur. The lay is built on a crescendo of temptation/redemption, with the appearance of beautiful damsels preceding Triamour before both seducing and saving Lanval. While the central character of Lanval is clearly its eponym, a case can be made for Dame Triamoure being the most interesting, and important character. She is an introjection of Jung's anima archetype9, in the shape of a wood nymph. She does not however represent the anima of the author, nor the main protagonist, as he is not 3

David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

psychologically developed. Instead, she is symbolic of this exemplar that taps into a universal form in the human psyche. This is what, pre-Jung, Derek Brewer perhaps meant when he claimed that lays made little logical sense but "felt right". His phrasing related to the "symbolical power in certain stories". Dame Triamoure is a dynamic creature playing several roles. She is described outside the human sphere, in the realm of nature, she "sured in beauty the lily and the new rose when it appears in summer"10. Uniquely in lays, she is aware of her sexual power and utilises semi-nudity as a seduction tool. The lay's dramatic pinnacle comes when, in front of the court, Triamoure "let her cloak fall so that they could see her better"11. Her wealth infers power; an exception to 's succinct descriptions comes in the hyperbolic portrayal of Triamoure's tent: "the coverlets cost as much as a castle"12. The eastern tone here establishes her as a fantasy figure, a goddess, outside the court system. Triamoure plays an unusual active role in events. As a kind of deus ex machina13 she is more important in the hero's restoration from poverty than he is himself. She goes against T.A. Shippley's idea of lays as male and female versions of growing up in not ively attracting Prince Charming. Instead she is almost a female hero, rescuing the knight as Orfeo did his Queen, and eclipsing him in the process. Triamoure sums up the variety of roles she plays in a request to Lanval: "I onish, order and beg you". Queen Gwenere is at the opposite polarity of the archetype, demonstrating that "the insinuations of the anima . . . can utterly destroy a man" 14. Interestingly, she does not use particularly different tactics to Dame Triamoure, calling maidens to surround her as she approaches the king. The difference is that she is playing the negative position in the story, placing Lanval in a position where he will inevitably break the courtly code either by going against the king or the requests of a lady. Lanval's puritan stance should not elevate him as a hero. Two of the greatest medieval romance heroes of all time – Launcelot and Gawain – took Guineverre (Gwenere's more common form) as a lover. She is a classic example of a sexually frustrated woman married off to an older man15, in a society that saw marriage more as a business contract than a relationship of love. Unfortunately her position in the tale prevents her from being developed as a sympathetic character. In the transition from Lanval to Thomas Chestre's (a male author) Sir Launfal the role of women becomes more traditional. Sir Launfal is established firmly as central hero, with the addition of warrior powers as part of Triamoure's gift. Queen 4

David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

Gwenere is demonised further as an archetypal fatal woman. It is her rather than the king who does not give Launfal a gift (seemingly without reason) and thus causes his descent into poverty. Whereas Marie de allows the reader to pick up the insinuations of "thirty knights. . .gone to relax in a garden beneath the tower where the queen was staying"16, Chestre tells us explicitly that "she hadde lemannis under her lord"17. The Queen's punishment in the version – being humiliated by a string of women more beautiful than her, the pinnacle revealing her as a liar – seems reasonable. For her to be made blind seems unnecessarily bloodthirsty and damages Triamoure's purity. Triamoure is diminished in her role as a strong female figure. The sexual content is toned down. Derek Pearsall's claims that Chestre negates supernatural elements of the original with increased social issues is mostly true, but he does diminish some of Triamoure's mysteriousness (and some of the mystery that makes an anima figure most effective) with an explicit supernatural reference: "Here fadir was King of Fairie"18. Conversely there is the addition of the daughter of a hypocritical mayor. Like Gwenere she is a threat in revealing Launfal's greatest secret, which at this stage is his poverty. However, once in Launfal's confidence she actually helps him by giving him a horse. This adds suspense to Launfal's subsequent altercation with the Queen as there is less certainty that harm will be the result. Marie de 's Le Fresne provides the most unusual example of women's role, as the latent meaning of the text is the nature of being a woman, the implications of maternity and sacrifices of love. It is one of only three lays with a female main protagonist. Sir Guroun is a relatively ive figure, who comes to love Le Fresne gradually, and works to gain her affection. This is a total contrast to the spontaneous seduction of Dame Triamoure. It demonstrates that while Marie de always has endurance for love as the route to happiness in her lays, the type of love she utilises is variable. Meale believes that the surrogate maid/daughter in Le Fresne "symbolizes the redemptive power of the mother's better feelings, her capacity for maternal love". However, this idea seems more accurate if toned down; I contend that this lay portrays the kind of female interdependency at the centre of such modern womanist novels as The Color Purple. Le Fresne's mother is deterred from the ultimate crime against womanhood – murdering her child – by her maid. In the Middle English Lay Le Freine update, this role is emphasised further by having an evil midwife opposed by a 5

David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

"maiden fre", a surrogate daughter of Le Freine's mother who enforces family bonds by taking on her mother's child. This maid/surrogate daughter takes the child to safety. The theme of surrogacy continues when the porter of the abbey gives Le Fresne to his "widowed daughter" who is first seen with another "baby she was suckling". Le Fresne is a resourceful and unusually human heroine, capable of immense stoicism in diligently providing for her love on his wedding night to another, giving him the precious objects that define her identity. She goes through the social degradation of Orfeo or Launfal in a much more affecting way. However, as her reaction to her descent and rise is not noted (she does not even speak until the end of the lay) I feel that she is not the central character. This is Le Fresne's mother, the motivating force behind the story. A Freudian reading, for better or worse, seems inescapable in relation to the text here19. This lay does not present the typical view of women at polarities. Instead Le Fresne's Gwenere-like mother – "To ich woman sche hadde envie" – becomes enlightened. The problem is that we do not know how this development came about, perhaps it can only be attributed to "feeling right" as an ending. Ultimately then, the role of women in medieval literature is a varied category dependent on how female characters or womanist issues relate to the main plot. It is this plot's ironic and dynamic situations that evoke enjoyment from the listener, which is the main purpose of the work. Female characters often conform to archetypes, as these come with generic implications that can be left unsaid in such relatively brief works. While applying Freud or Jung to medieval literature results in the inevitable inaccuracies of any meta-narrative, their ideas are the closest we can come to a glimpse at what makes inexplicable aspects of womanhood in these works so utterly effective to this day. 2084 Words.

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David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

Notes 1. There are of course numerous other fields of enquiry, but generalisations must be made in an essay of this size. Another interesting subject would be The Canterbury Tales. Appearing in the late Fourteenth Century, it saw characterisation of female protagonists reach new complexity and depth. Rather than attempting to pigeonhole the intricacies of Chaucer's Prioress or, especially, his Wife of Bath, this work can only be omitted. 2. A type of problem in decontextualised literature, identified by Welleck. It is described in Hirsch, E.D. Jr “Objective Interpretation”. 3. Line 99. 4. Lines 81-82. 5. Line 280. 6. Taylor: "Arthurian Romance reflected what women wanted men to be". He believes that the lays appealed to women as men hard to perform all the hardships and suffering to achieve love. 7. Explicitly mentioned in Lay Le Freine, line 172: "For Marie love, thi moder fre". 8. Explained in Siewers, Alf "Romantic Love Lecture Outline". 9. "Every man carries with him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definitive feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or "archetype" of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman. . .since this image is unconscious , it is always unconsciously projected upon the person of the beloved, and is one of the chief reasons for ionate attraction or aversion." The archetype is often represented by mermaids, lansia, succubus or other mysterious

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David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

femmes. It creates a sense of momentousness as it glimpses at the enormity and complexity of the subconscious. C.G. Jung. In Jaffé, Aniela C.G. Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pg. 411 10. Lines 77-106. 11. Lines 585-610. 12. Lines 77-106. 13. Identified in Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve ed. "TEAMS Launfal introduction". 14. Jaffé, Aniela C.G. Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 212. 15. A central part of the structure of Marie de lais, see also Guigemar 16. Lines 219-52. 17. Line 47. 18. Line 280 19. Using Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis, Le Fresne's mother would symbolise (for she is not developed enough to be psychoanalysed) the female fear of sexual intercourse and resultant maternity. Her paranoid association between sex and pregnancy is clear in her initial belief that a woman who gives birth to twins has had two lovers. She is jealous of the first woman who has overcome this fear and reproduced successfully. The woman's solution is to turn the product of reproduction into a classic Freudian phallic symbol (page 131), by wrapping her baby in a cloak and contemplating killing it. She is overjoyed to be disassociated with the result of sexual intercourse, and now allows the act itself to take place again, symbolised by the journey. Here, the phallic symbol is transferred across a landscape (the female body), through a forest (pubic hair) into a churchyard and left in a hollow 8

David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

tree (the female body and genitals). Paradoxically this landscape also represents the surrogate women who have taken responsibility for her actions. Le Fresne's mother is only able to accept the result of her having had sex some ten years later, in maturity, when she is happy to discover her daughter.

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David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

Bibliography Abrams, M.H. “Archetypal Criticism” in Abrams, M.H. A Glossary Of Literary : Seventh Edition USA: Hardcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999 Brewer, Derek "Escape From the Mimetic Fallacy" in Brewer, Derek, ed Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Burrow, JAW Medieval Writers and their Work Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982 Davis, Tom The Theories Of The Mind Lectures: Reading The Dream. UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM http://www.bham.ac.uk/english/bibliography/CurrentCourses/Freud/index.htm l , Marie de, trans. Burgess, Glyn S. and Busby, Keith The Lais Of Marie De England, Penguin Books, 1986 Used for all translated quotations from French lays.

Freud, Sigmund trans. Riviere, Joan Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1922 Hirsch, E.D. Jr “Objective Interpretation” in Newton-de Molina, ed. On Literary Intention: Critical Essays. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976 Jaffé, Aniela trans. Winston, Richard and Clara C.G. Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections Great Britain: Fontana Press, 1995 Jung, C.G. trans. F.C. Hull The Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1959 Kibler, William W. and Zinn, Grover, ed. (1995) Medieval : An Encyclopedia C. Davern, Ph.D Marie- Site UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTEN http://wntapp.cc.utexas.edu/~davern/Marieenc.html Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve, ed. (1995) TEAMS Launfal Introduction UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/launint.htm Meale, C ed. Readings in English Medieval Romance Woodbridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pearsall, Derek "Development of the Middle English Romance" in Brewer, Derek, ed. 10

David Jones English I Texts In Context Sir Orfeo: A Description Of The Fairy Kingdom

Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches Sands, Donald B. ed. Middle English Verse Romances Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986 Used For All Quotations From Middle English Lays.

Shipply, T.A. "Breton Lais And Modern Fantasies" in Brewer, Derek, ed. Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Siewers, Alf (1998) Romantic Love Lecture Outline DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS http://www.english.uiuc.edu/siewers/106/romantic_love.htm Taylor, A.B. An Introduction To Medieval Romance London: Richard Clay and Sons ltd, 1930 Wallace, David ed. The Cambridge History Of Medieval English Literature Guilford: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Woolf, Virginia "A Room Of One's Own", 1929, in Abrams, M.H. & Greenblatt, S, ed. The Norton Anthology Of English Literature: Seventh Edition, Volume 1. USA: Norton, 1999.

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