Bisclavret Summary: Exploring Gender Roles and Empowerment

Introduction

Lauryn Jones ENGL 261 Professor David Rollo 27 September 2018 How “Marie” Demanded Gender Equality in 12th Century Europe Although she is a pioneer of feminist literature, the first renowned poet of France and one of the first recorded female authors in European history, the world knows close to nothing about the self-proclaimed “Marie.” Flourishing sometimes in the 12th century, historians believe she lived in England around the time of her writing. It is clear through her writing that she was widely educated, of high status, and known within the royal court of King Henry II.

Marie’s Approach to Gender Roles and Empowerment

A clever author, to say the least, she invented what is now French romance verse along with her male counterparts in a rather critical set of preoccupations to humanize the female character that was consistently being depicted as a passive object or in a negative light as that of Eve in Genesis. This misogynistic society produced misogynistic literature for men to read and depicted women in a defamatory fashion. Marie made it clear in her works, however, that any culture that suppresses the voice of half of its population can never reach its full potential, and she made sure to comment on her disapproval of the male chauvinist literature that had become the societal norm. Throughout the Lais, she used her condemnation of the capricious nature of courtly literature, “ideal women,” to humanize female characters by refusing to portray them on the basis of a general stereotype but judging each by standards of her personal merit. Before delving into the densely metaphorical lais, one must first unpack the prologue. Within the first sentence, she less than humbly refers to herself as someone who has received the gift of knowledge and true eloquence from God, claiming the purpose of the Lais is to record the tales for future generations to study. While the majority of the prologue is lacking in the use of personal pronouns to reveal the author’s gender, it is most likely that her audience assumed these were the words of a man.

However, the defensiveness that is only clear while re-reading makes it easier to see her true gender. She is defensive as to why the reader should read and yield her words and even addresses them to the “noble king” (who historians believe to be King Henry II). This can be seen as thematic foreshadowing as many of the men within her lais fall to their demise due to their lack of listening to a woman’s words. She reveals her gender within the last few lines of the prologue with a gendered verb she uses to describe herself. After this reveal, she becomes less secure herself as she asks the king not to consider her as being too presumptuous or bold, but regains her confidence by commanding the reader to “hear the beginning.” Although the prologue is, at its surface, an implied statement of purpose, she is providing defense against any claim that the Lais are simply loved stories and relaying to the readers that they must closely analyze her text if they want to understand the meaning within. The caricature of the ideal woman was carefully dictated by men belonging to the noble class. Women were expected to be both physically beautiful and spiritually wholesome.

Empowerment Within Limited Spheres

Throughout the Middle Ages, women strove to emulate the ideal of the Virgin Mary by being modest and remaining “lardy-like” or dignified no matter the situation. As contradictory as it seems to someone in the modern age, being a devoted wife and nurturing mother is what lifted women of this time period up the social rankings and allowed them to gain influence. Within the Lais, the best depiction of the ideal woman’s character is Le Fresne. This lay recounts a woman who maligned her neighbor for being an adulterer after birthing twins, and after birthing twins of her own, sends one child off to an abbess in a nearby village and recounts the life of the lost daughter and how she eventually recovers her true identity. In the middle of the story, Le Fresne’s true love is married off to a noble bride. This bride just so happens to be Le Fresne’s twin sister. While dressing her beloved and his new bride’s wedding bed, Le Fresne lays the coverlet she was abandoned with, and it is then that her true identity is discovered, and she gets to marry her beloved due to her new social status. This is where Marie begins to question what “noble” truly is, a social status or personality seen through someone’s actions. Le Fresne’s willingness to completely forfeit her identity by giving away her coverlet is the crux of her depiction as an ideal woman. Le Fresne is not only attractive, however, but intelligent and kind. It is this that leads her actions to deemphasize the importance of her beauty. Le Fresne’s mother is also a depiction of the ideal woman.

Although she is beautiful and of the noble class, she gives up her newborn daughter to save her reputation. Her selfishness and overall crude behavior do not even find resolve by the end of the lay. It is only that Le Frense’s identity is revealed due to her mother’s humiliating confession. It is obvious that the theme of this lay in the image of loving and devoted women. Le Fresne is loving and devoted to her beloved, and her mother is loving and devoted to herself and her reputation. Marie is not only praising the ideal woman caricature but also portraying the idea of nobility in a more obscure way. A recurring theme within medieval literature was the image of the disloyal woman. This can be seen in other works such as The Art of Courtly Love by AndreasCapeallaus when he wrote: “The mutual love which you seek in women you cannot find, for no woman ever loved a man or could bring herself to a lover in the mutual bonds of love.” Shockingly enough, this ideal is also seen throughout the Lais, specifically in Bisclavret. In this lay Marie presents a female character who is guilty of being disloyal to her husband. Although the wife was not adulterous (which was how most women were depicted as disloyal in that time period), she does betray her husband’s sworn trust. Bisclavret is a story of a man who regularly becomes a werewolf. While constantly disappearing three nights at a time, he is confronted by his wife, who is anxious that he may be having an affair. It is then that he confesses his secret and tells her that he hides in the woods and cannot turn back into a man without his clothes. His wife then seduces an admirer to steal the clothes, trapping her husband in a werewolf state. As a werewolf, he is befriended by the king, and when he sees his wife, he bites off her nose. She and the admirer are exiled, and he becomes a man again. The wife within the story, while betraying her husband and playing into the medieval woman stereotype, is a metaphor for the gender roles within medieval society.

Societal Commentary and Allegory

Marie grammatically writes Bisclavret as a male-only when he is a human, but once someone takes his clothes, he is stuck as feminine and voiceless. As a werewolf, he cannot speak and remains in silent torture because he lacks the ability to communicate. Marie is trying to relay this as an allegory for femininity. Similar to Bisclavret wife, society betrayed women by keeping them voiceless. The woman within the story, however, was condemned for her wrongdoing. She must bear the curse of leaving a lineage of women to be born without a nose. On the surface, it may seem like Marie simply feeds into the medieval idea of disloyal women, and she was, in turn, condemned for betraying her husband, but at its core, it is a cautionary tale for societies trying to silence a part of its population because it could be in turn condemned. It is very clear that within the Lais, a majority of the women are not married out of love and have found themselves in unhappy marital situations. Although in Bisclavret, it is clear that Marie condemns adultery of all kinds, unhappy marriages are often exonerated by her due to extenuating circumstances. In Yonec, the protagonist is a perfect example of an unhappy marriage. She is not allowed out of the tower that is guarded by either her husband or his sister and is not even allowed to see the servants without the guardianship of a chaperone. She prays for a guardian angel of sorts, and one appears. A fine knight in the form of a hawk flew into her room and told her that he could beckon at her call. When her husband finds out about this, however, he fatally traps the hawk. Before his death, the knight tells the woman that she will bear a child who will avenge his murder. Years later, their son Yonec (for which the lay got its namesake) beheads his mother’s evil husband with his father’s sword. Though this story is attributable to the extreme desire of a woman, Yonec’s mother is not sticking to a social norm that says all adulterers should be punished but reveals her sympathies for women who are married without choice and her emphasis on justice in love. Marie creates characters that show women can manipulate and exploit feudal social structures. She repeatedly depicts women having power within their limited spheres, from Le Fresne’s mother having the power to give one of her children up, Le Fresen’s power to deal with the fact that her true love is marrying someone else, Bisclavret’s wife having the power to seduce her admirer into stealing her husband’s clothes, to Yonec’s mother having the power to have a relationship with the knight then compelling her son to avenge his death.

Conclusion

However limited their spheres, Marie emphasizes the point that all women are powerful and equally as important as men. Another important task that she accomplishes is the fact that she judges each woman individually rather than lumping them together. The poetess presents women in a brand new light for her time period and beautifully illustrates the diversity of women with her lais and, through her condemnation of the “ideal woman” stereotype, judges and affirms the uniqueness of each individual female character.

Works Cited

1. Blamires, Alcuin. The Case for Women in Medieval Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Capellanus, Andreas, The Art of Courtly Love (trans. John Jay Parry [New York Columbia University Press, 1990])
2. Guthrie, Jeri S., ‘Critical analysis of the roles of women in the Lais of Marie de France’ (1976). Graduate Student eses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1941.
3. Mickel, Emanuel J., Jr. “A Reconsideration of the Lais of Marie de France.” Speculum, Volume XVI (1971), pp. 39-65 Woods,
4. William Sledge. “Femininity in the Lais of Marie de France.” Studies in Philology 47 (1950): 1-19.

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