"bus: “— A 3‘ ‘11." ‘ I . ' ‘ v .- . 8*‘AN-du k.» . “x at. .. a .0- - 'r .- o ’t‘k'»..- . ‘.-'a’50'q-1‘.|4u . ._.U"- ._‘.,a 9-! . ‘1 ~ I 1‘: {on-.0 .- c ,_ . .fl ‘1? '.'.,.- :3 Q h-; Q‘ o . ”Q'Q ‘0.- nJ..&.‘ . J ., ,"_. -0 ..- ‘ ‘O'hau __ ' "r~~ ..“..:'. on-‘LI- -.-c.... J Iv I.- o '3 09", .»-., v4.9. <‘O o L:‘ ‘b «In. "hl—u. 0.- »~... .‘4 z 7.. . .o,L.a an r A, , . ml-- 6 D o‘- . . 44 . . ‘c c’t’ q.....‘k .. _"" “‘ M ‘ :31. “L n. a. . ,t. ‘1 “V r...-...‘.‘: 1? ' "".v «g .. ' ’7" 9’n-vq4 filiolql. “ '3“ r- . l L! 3.. ,. x c. .s .. '.' " - I a". - .a ...‘. ’ «x; v0.1 . ,. ' '0 a 4 0,1“: - \. . . , ‘ . _ ‘ n o I ‘ . ~ _ > o . , 09:1..::‘ .1 ',‘ ' 9 , ('0. ' ‘ V . ' "Q ‘2 .t. I 0", . a. m '9 f“... d)! ’_ '.‘4 - Iv l‘ " Q" "" ' v“: 0 ; .~Ol-‘¢ f w o‘~‘v~_ l ."i--. C‘ "o(..‘ ‘3 o “ m": as! u o__. - . ~ ' x A. ‘ X 9 . , '1 - 4 . . " ,; "“‘ '.' ,.‘..'. ‘g I“. . b , . 0' .- ‘3. . .ht'. 0“ {by vfiufiyfi "t' ‘5 _ ‘t 5'; g... ..t ‘ ' ‘o . ' .‘: .'t‘..;" r. ‘1' ' ii! 0‘ . r. _ . . ‘ 9 . . ‘. _. I. ' ' V ' . '0‘.‘0‘.’~..;9v . . ,. _ ‘ 1“"§“‘¥'~""r' ' ‘ o. . I '4. -‘o' "~ '. g- 7:.” d". . i - ."‘ . A . ‘ - . o ,n‘ '.'.'_.',“ '0-- ' ., ° K!” .I 5’ .’ \ ' .\ v.0? . I. - . ‘1’: "T9,... ,.. - .. t‘ 0r 2...‘ .‘g- o . .. ‘-_.._ —- lllllllll‘lllllllllllllllll SI l 3 1293 01051 0877 This is to certify that the dissertation entitled CONTEXTUALIZING RAPE: SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE presented by Diane Andrews Henningfeld has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph .D . degree in English A, U MW Major professor Date March 17, 1994 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771 LIBRARY Michigan State University PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove thie checkout horn your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before dete due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE VEBE 0:3, )" —_l l ll I MSU Ie An Affirmetive Action/Equal Opportunity inetitution Walla-9.1 ‘ ‘e'.’ CONTEXTUALIZING RAPE: SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE BY Diane Andrews Henningfeld A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1994 ABSTRACT CONTEXTUALIZING RAPE: SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE BY Diane Andrews Henningfeld This dissertation investigates the literary representation of rape in Middle English literature. It takes as its subject not only the purpose served by the representation of rape in literary texts, but also the cultural attitudes which make those representations possible. In this study, the literary representation of rape serves as a nexus where ideas found in law, medicine, and religion intersect. The first three chapters treat cultural contexts. Chapter 1 examines theoretical and practical application of English law and provides a historical overview of the incidence of rape in medieval England. Chapter 2 turns to the writings of the Church Fathers in order to identify some of the influences of religion on the perception of women and women's sexuality. Vernacular texts such as Middle English sermons and the Ancrene Wisse provide clues as to how the religious thinking permeated the culture. Chapter 3 explores the theoretical medical writing of the Middle Ages and a practical vernacular medical text, Henry Daniel's Liber Uricrisiarum in order to uncover physiological and anatomical ideas about women. The second half of the dissertation provides close readings of texts in which rape or the threat of rape are represented. Chapter 4 focuses on Havelok the Dane, noting the Middle English author's close attention to law, crime, and punishment. Chapter 5 examines Middle English female saints' lives found in the South English Legendary to determine the ways that medical and religious ideas about women are manifested in these texts. Chapter 6 returns to the romance genre, looking primarily at Sir Deqarg and Middle English Arthurian romance. Chapter 7 investigates The Wife of Bath's Tale, exploring Chaucer's use of rape, cultural attitudes toward women, and the flow of power in the Wife's tale. The dissertation concludes by arguing that the presence of rape in a literary text brings into that text the legal, medical, and religious ideas which are part of the cultural milieu. Moreover, the study of the literary representation of rape can provide clues to the attitudes toward women during the Middle Ages. To Ken, Kate, and Anne iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to a number of people, including the members of my graduate committee, Dr. John Alford, Dr. Douglas Peterson, Dr. Emily Tabuteau, and Dr. Lister Matheson, who served as chair and who ably guided me through each stage of doctoral work; the faculty and staff of Adrian College, especially the members of the English Department; Cindy Bily, who carefully read and edited final draft; the staff of the Shipman Library at Adrian College; Marguerite Halversen, who not only helped with editing, but who also encouraged and supported me throughout this long project; and my parents, Jean and David Andrews. I am especially grateful to my husband of twenty years, Ken Henningfeld; and to my daughters, Kate and Annie. My family cheerfully endured both my physical and emotional absences over the years I worked on my degree. Their unflagging confidence in me and their unwavering love for me made this dissertation possible. TABLE OF CONTENTS IntrOduCtion.0.0.0.0000...0......OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0.1 1. 2. 7. Raising the Hue and Cry: Legal Perspectives on Women and Rape.......... ...... 19 Eve and Mary: Religious Perspectives on Women, Sexuality, and RapeOOOOOO ..... OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOO 47 Anatomy as Destiny: Medical Perspectives on Women and Sexuality ......... 80 Godrich's Ward, Havelok's Wife: Women, Rape, and Law in Havelok the Dane...........105 Holy Rape: Sexual Violence in Middle English Saints' Lives....136 Damsels in Distress: Rape in Middle English Romance.. ........... ........160 "The Lawe of Kyng Arthures Hous": Law, Gender, and Power in The Wife of Bath's Tale..191 Conclusion ......................................... ...209 Bibliography......... ...... . ....... . ...... ............215 vi INTRODUCTION "How does it happen that the representation of sexual violence is built into a variety of medieval genres and what purpose does it serve?"1 ‘With this question, Kathryn Gravdal opens her book, Ravishing Maidens. I, too, am interested in the connection between rape and literature. Unlike Gravdal, however, my interest is in Middle English literature and English culture. Moreover, I find myself concerned not only with the purpose served by the literary representation of rape but also with the cultural attitudes which make those representations possible at any given time. Thus, while Gravdal narrows her attention to the interplay of French literature and law, I have opened my study to a wider variety of Middle English texts, including medical, religious, and historical, as well as legal, and literary texts. In so doing, I have encountered studies by a number of other writers who are also interested in rape in medieval England. In their studies of medieval crime, John Bellamy and Barbara Hanawalt provide useful background information 1Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), xi. 1 2 through their examination of court records and 2 Sue Sheridan Walker, in several articles, proceedings. explores the legal treatment of convicted ravishers. Her lucid scholarship is especially helpful in sorting through the confusion surrounding the term raptus.3 .Also helpful in the legal understanding of rape is J. B. Post's study of the Statutes of Westminster.‘ Studies of medieval sexuality, which necessarily touch on rape, include those by James Brundage and Vern 2See John Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in the England of the Later Middle Ages (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), and Barbara Hanawalt, grime and Confiiet in English Communitie . 1300-1348 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979). John Marshall Carter's Rape in Medieval England: An Historicei and Sociological Study (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), while a more recent study, draws heavily on Hanawalt's information and methodology. However, his conclusions are frequently not supported by his evidence, and Hanawalt has distanced herself from this study in a recent review of Carter's work. See also Margaret Ruth Kittel's chapter, "Rape in Thirteenth-Century England" in Women and the Law: The Social Historical Pers ective, ed. Kelly Wiesberg (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1982), 2:101-15. 3See, for example, Sue Sheridan Walker, "Common Law Juries and Feudal Marriage Customs in Medieval England: The Pleas of Ravishment," University of Illinois Law Review 3 (1984): 705-18; and "Punishing Convicted Ravishers: Statutory Strictures and Actual Practices in Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century England," Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 237—50. See also Christopher Cannon, "Raptus in the Chaumpaigne Release and a Newly Discovered Document Concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer," Speculum 68 (1993): 74-94. ‘See J. B. Post, "Ravishment of Women and the Statutes of Westminster," in Legei Becorge end the Hieterien, ed. John Baker (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), 150-64. 3 Bullough.S Less directly influential, yet important studies for an understanding of women's sexuality, are those which address medical texts and ideas of the Middle Ages.6 In addition, those studies which examine the treatment of women in theoretical religious writing as well as sexuality in the penitentials and vernacular sermons offer yet another 7 way of viewing sexual violence. Finally, studies which examine rape in saints' lives further enrich the context 5See James Brundage, Law, Sex and Christiap Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Brundage, "Rape and Seduction in Medieval Canon Law," in Sexual Practices in the Medievai Church, ed. Vern Bullough and James Brundage (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), 141-48; and Vern Bullough, Brenda Shelton, and Sarah Slavin, eds., The Subordinated Sex: A History of Attitudes toward Women (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988). 6For example, see the excellent recent work of Monica Green, "Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts in Middle English," Studies in the Age of Chagcer 14 (1992): 53-88; "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe," Signs 14 (1989): 434-73; and "The Transmission of Ancient Theories of Female Physiology and Disease Through the Early Middle Ages," (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1985). Helen Lemay also offers helpful scholarship in her "Women and the Literature of Obstetrics and Gynecology," in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 189-209. 7See, for example, Jane Barr, "The Influence of Saint Jerome on Medieval Attitudes to Women," in After Eye, ed. Janet Martin Soskice (London: Collins, Marshall, Pickering, 1980), 89-102; Leonard E. Boyle, 0.P., "The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology," in The Popular Literature of Medievai England, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 30-43; and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Religion end Sexism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974). 4 into which rape in Middle English literature can be placed.8 Few scholars have examined the role of rape in Middle English literature; slightly more has been done with French 9 and German literature. In addition to Gravdal's study, Antoinette Saly and Danielle Buschinger offer insight into 8See Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints end Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Pierre Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code 550-1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Schulenburg, "Saints' Lives as a Source for the History of Women, 500-1100," in Medieval Women and the Sou ces of Histor , ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 285-320; Schulenburg, "The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation," in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 29-72. In addition, Gravdal includes a chapter on female saints' lives in her book, Ravishing Maidens. 9The writers who do examine rape in Middle English literature are nearly always working with Chaucer and/or Gower. For example, Carolyn Dinshaw is one of the writers who makes sexuality her subject in haucer's e ua oet'c (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); "Quarrels, Rivals, and Rape," in A va Ther Wae, ed. Juliette Dor (Liege: Liege Language and Literature, 1992), 112-22; and "Rivalry, Rape and Manhood: Gower and Chaucer" in Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mptuality, Exchange, ed. Robert F. Yeager (Victoria: University of Victoria Press, 1991), 130- 152. Robert Blanch also touches on rape in Chaucer in his "'Al was this land fulfild of fayerye'": The Thematic Employment of Force, Willfulness, and Legal Conventions in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale," Studia Neophilologica 57 (1985): 41-51. An older study, B. F. Huppé's "Rape and Woman's Sovereignty in 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,'" Modern Language Notes 63 (1948): 378-80, also focuses on Chaucer. One study which examines the Arthurian romance in Middle English is Rosemary Morris's "Uther and Igerne: A Study in Uncourtly Love," in Arthurian Literature IV, ed. R. Barber (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 70-92. 5 rape in the Arthurian literature of France and Germany.10 Saly, in particular, notes the way that rape functions across genres: "Le motif du viol se rencontre a travers toute la littérature du moyen age francais, qu'elle soit lyrique, épique ou romanesque."11 None of the above studies (with the notable exception of Gravdal, who nonetheless limits her examination to French literature and law) attempts to place the literary representation within a cultural context by examining a wide range of literary and non-literary texts. Further, some writers dismiss literary texts from their consideration, asserting that such texts have little to say about the "historical" reality of the period.12 To my knowledge, no one thus far has attempted the kind of global study of rape in Middle English literature that I undertake here. From the beginning, I have been interested in more than what have been traditionally called "literary texts," for a number of reasons. First, as Lister Matheson has demonstrated, the division of medieval texts into literary and historical genres may well reflect nineteenth-century m Danielle Buschinger, "Le viol dans la littérature allemande au moyen age," and Antoinette Saly, "La demoiselle 'esforciée' dans le roman arthurien," in Amour, mariagel et transgressions eu moyen age, ed. D. Buschinger and A. Crépin, (Goppingen: Kfimmerle Verlag, 1984), 369-88. 11Saly, 215. 12E.g., Carter. 6 scholarship rather than the thinking of medieval people.13 It is likely that romances, ballads, and saints' lives, for example, would not have been seen as something different in kind from historical texts. Further, perhaps it is time for us to reexamine what we define as a "historical" text. As Matheson argues, In the widest interpretation, all Middle English texts can be considered as "passive" historical documents in one way or another. Thus Chaucer and Langland are valuable witnesses in social history and are, indeed, first-rate social historians in their own right. Mystical, devotional, and Wycliffite writings are important documents in ecclesiastical and spiritual history. Medical and scientific works are the factual evidence for the history of science. All are witnesses in intellectual history or the history of ideas; all texts, no matter what their subject matter or literary quality, and all manuscripts, no matter how removed from the authorial original, are valuable for the history of the English language.“ Thus, literary texts can be important tools in unraveling medieval English culture, just as other Middle English documents can be important tools for the unraveling of literature. The process is not sequential, nor a one-to- one kind of ordering. Rather, the examination of texts is discursive and cyclic: a legal text may reveal some interesting possibilities for Havelok the Dane; a medical text may suggest the way an audience would have received the Uther and Igerne tryst; the Man of Law's Tale may offer a 13Lister Matheson, "Historicity and Middle English Literature," unpublished paper, 1989. Much of my thinking about genre and history in Middle English literature was influenced by a doctoral seminar that Dr. Matheson taught at Michigan State University during the winter of 1991. 1"Matheson, 11. 7 way of reading the South Engiish Legendary; Middle English romances may demonstrate some ways in which religious thought permeates the culture. I chose to examine rape because sexual violence in literature is often ambiguous, deferred, undercut, and hinted-at-yet-absent. Even the words used in Middle English to denote rape are often ambiguous, relying largely on the contexts in which they are found for meaning. Five of the most common verbs used to mean "rape" in Middle English are forcen, ravishen, repep, reyep, and forlien.1S A brief survey of these words, their definitions, and their connotations will illustrate the range of meanings available to a Middle English writer Forcen, from the Old French forcer, means "to exert force" in one of three ways: to fight against an adversary: to make someone do something he does not want to do; or to rape a woman. The author of the Alliterative Morte Arthure uses forcen when he describes the rape of the Duchess of Brittany by the Giant of Mont Saint Michel: He hade morthirede this mylde be middaye war rongen Withowttyn mercy one molde; I not watte it ment. He has forsede hir and fylede, and cho es fay leuede: He slewe hir vnseley and slitt hir to pe nauyll, And here haue I bawmede hir and beryede peraftyr.16 15The definitions and examples for the Middle English synonyms for rape are taken from the Middie English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952), unless otherwise noted. 1‘SMary Hamel, ed. 0 u e: A ' ' a E ’ '0 (New York: Garland, 1984), 136-37. 8 The use of forcep in a text generally implies physical overpowering as well as violence. While fipreen can be used in the ways noted above, when it is used in connection with a woman, it nearly always means rape, often leading to death. The definition of the verb ravishen takes up three full pages in the Middle English Dictionary, a sign that the meanings of this verb are both varied and complex. Beyienep in most cases carries with it the sense of theft, or robbery, or the carrying away of goods. From the Old French reyir, ravishen in one sense means "to carry off a woman by force, especially for the purpose of rape." The MED also notes that "ravishen of maidenhede" means to "bereave a woman of her virginity or to rape a virgin." The connections among abduction, robbery, and sexual violence make this verb a difficult one to unravel. Frequently, "ravish" appears in legal documents in connection with the abduction of wards, and no sexual violence is meant. On the other hand, "ravish" is used in both the first and second Statutes of Westminster (to be discussed at length in Chapter 1) to mean specifically "rape." In addition, "ravish" is a favorite word of writers of romance, including both the writer of Sir Degare and Malory. Ravishen seems to differ in connotation from forcen; the overt physical violence found in the use of forcen is replaced by abduction and carrying away. In a strange twist, the verb ravishep also connotes religious ecstasy: in this case it means "to 9 entrance, enrapture, delight the heart." Thus, although "ravish" can mean "rape" in Middle English literature, the use of the word also resonates with overtones of sexual ecstasy.17 The verb even, from Old English, has an even longer entry in the MEQ than does ravishen. Most definitions of the word include the sense of robbery, plundering and stealing. In addition, reven means to seize or to snatch. Thus, like ravishen, reven carries with it the sense of abduction. Further, in one sense, revep means to "overpower someone's heart with love; obtain love by force." Reven, however, also resonates with violence: one meaning of this word is "to kill an animal or to cut off a bodily member." Chaucer's use of the word rafte in the Wife of Bath's Tale suggests, then, the theft as well as violent detachment of the maiden's virginity. O. D. Macrae-Gibson, editor of Qt Arthour and Of Merlin, demonstrates the violence attached to this word when he defines reuen as to "plunder" or "kill." In this poem, yreued is used to describe a head cut off from a neck.18 The etymology of the word rapep, which becomes our modern English word "rape," can be traced from the Latin 17The representation of rape as erotic for the female is not unique to Middle English literature; any quick survey of contemporary romance novels or soap operas will also reveal representations of rape picturing the woman as victim both of the "hero" of the story and of her own passions. “o. n. Macrae-Gibson, ed., or Arthopr end or Merlin, EETS 279 (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 218. 10 rapere (past participle reptpe). The word is also found in Old French as repir and Anglo-French as reper. The first meaning of this word is "to abduct a woman, ravish, rape; also seduce (a man)." Interestingly, the second listed meaning is "to seize prey." The earliest use of repep in connection with the abduction and rape of a woman listed by the MEQ is from the mid-fifteenth century. Bepep also connotes the transportation of a soul from earth to heaven. The verb forlien from the Old English forlicgan is listed by the MEQ as being used as early as 1200. The primary meaning of the word is "to have illicit sexual relations with (someone), to lie with, seduce." The secondary meaning is "to rape." Although the word itself does not appear to connote violence, frequently the words "through force," or "with violence" are added to foriiep to differentiate this usage from simple adultery. For example, the MEQ offers this passage from St. Cuthbert: "Sho was adred...to be forlayne, With vyolence and synn agayne." In addition to the above words, other expressions such as "to do" or "to know" or "to have his way" are used euphemistically to imply sexual intercourse, even rape. When Layamon describes Uther's tryst with the unwary Igerne, he describes it thus: "be king hire wende to swa wapmon sculde to wimmon do."19 What a man should do, apparently, is to have sex with a woman, whether the woman wills it or 19G. L. Brook and R. F. Leslie, eds., Lagemon: Brut, EETS 277 (London: Oxford University Press, 1978), 2:494. 11 not. The language, then, used for the representation of rape within written texts is far from clear. At a linguistic level, it is difficult to determine how rape is viewed: is it a crime of violence or passion? Is it a crime at all? This confusion is with us to this day, for rape is sometimes rape by context alone. Like medieval writers, we too have difficulty determining what constitutes rape. Is it an issue of consent or circumstance?20 While the ambiguity surrounding the representation of rape can be both difficult and frustrating, this ambiguity can also provide a sort of space in which to operate, a place from which to examine the intersection of cultural codes informing the variety of texts noted above. In addition, the ways in which a Middle English author changes his representation of rape from that in his sources may reveal significant differences between his own culture 21 and the culture of his source. Therefore, an early task 20Contemporary culture and religion still grapple with the contextuality of rape. See, for example, Edward J. Bayer, S.T.D., Rape Within Marriage: A Moral Analysis Delayed (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985). Bayer maintains that sexual intercourse within marriage can only be termed rape when the wife has "objective" and "substantial" reasons for refusing. He argues that if a wife's refusal to consent is "out of mere whim or selfishness" then forced coitus would not be considered rape within marriage (3). 21See, for example, John Halverson, "Havelok the pane and Society," The Chaucer Review 6 (1971): 142-51; and Bruce A. Rosenberg, "Medieval Popular Literature: Folkloric Sources," in The Popular Literature of Medievei England, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville: University of Tennessee 12 in my study was an identification of the codes operating within the Middle English literary representation of rape. From that starting point, I have come to think about the literary representation of rape as a nexus, a place where language, law, religion, medicine, power, sexuality, and gender roles meet in necessarily violent and complex ways. In her recent book Feminist Theory, Women's Writipg, Laurie A. Finke discusses complexity, suggesting that the concept of complexity enables us more completely to articulate what we mean when we say that culture is the collective means by which societies represent themselves to themselves. In political theory, it is customary to think of society as a collection of preexistent individuals who relate to one another either randomly and voluntarily...or in ways that are overdetermined and coercive....But we might more productively envision society and culture as complex and interrelated systems that link individuals, institutions, texts, and material objects in relations of interdependence--of alliance and solidarity as well as struggle and conflict.‘22 The more I examined the literary representations of rape in Middle English, the more I began to see rape as one of thoSe complex links. The representation of rape as a focus allowed me to move among primary documents and secondary studies of sexuality, religion, medicine, marriage, feudalism, legal power, and women's roles. The study was not without problems, however. Each time I thought I had a bead on why rape was represented as it was, the target moved, shifted, and the study deflected in Press, 1985), 61-84. lnLaurie A. Finke, Feminiet Thepry, Women's Writing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 9-10. 13 another direction. Now, after three years, I have come to understand that my difficulty stemmed from my desire to present some sort of unified picture, some grand scheme which not only would explain the representation of rape but would also reveal the status of women in England in the Middle Ages. I realize now that it is impossible for me to find or unravel all the strands which lead to the literary representation of rape or to uncover all the ways that literary representation influences culture.‘23 As Foucault writes, And the great problem presented by such historical analysis is not how continuities are established, how a single pattern is formed and preserved, how for so many different, successive minds there is a single horizon, what mode of action and what substructure is implied by the interplay of transmissions, assumptions, disappearances, and repetitions, how the origin may extend its sway well beyond itself to that conclusion that is never given--the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations, but one of transformations that serve as new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations.“ The recognition that we will never arrive at the 23My thinking in this area has been influenced by a number of writers and works including Michel Foucault, Ipe Mietorv of Sexuelity, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), vol. 1 and The Arehaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Langpage, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); and Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical imagipatiop ip Nineteenth-Century Eprope (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) and Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cuitural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), among others. 2"Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 5. l4 origin of the literary representation of rape, the understanding that we will never be able to follow all the threads which weave together women's history, and the realization that we, too, are situated in this time and place can be disconcerting, to say the least. But such a stance does not necessarily mean academic paralysis. Rather, admitting at the start that this study will be necessarily incomplete and its conclusions contingent also admits the richness of the topic. That said, there still remains a number of difficult problems surrounding any study of the Middle Ages and any study of women from this time.25 First, and obviously, the documentary evidence available for insight into women's lives is fragmentary and elusive. Our understanding of the Middle Ages and of women of that time is limited to that which has been preserved in writing. As Frederic Jameson writes, "History is not in any sense itself a text or master text or master narrative....[It] is inaccessible to us 25See Sheila Fisher and Janet E. Halley, eds., Seeking the Woman in Eete Medieval and Renaissance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextuai Criticism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989). Fisher and Halley clearly delineate problems of women's history. See also Penny S. Gold, Ene Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitnde, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). In her introduction, "Literature and History," Gold identifies the major problems with the use of literary texts in historical studies. She does not reject the use of these texts but rather offers some methodological guidelines for their use. 15 except in textual or narrative form.”“ Many texts have been lost, and others have been damaged or deliberately destroyed. Those texts which do exist are nearly all male-authored; any representation of women or of rape, therefore, grows from a masculine understanding. The women who people these texts are masculine constructions. Further, because of the time which separates us from the Middle Ages, our understanding of the texts that we do have available will be situated in our own time and space. Even more problematic is trying to establish the relationship between written text and lived experience. Fisher and Halley describe the task: Not only must scholars contend with the widespread illiteracy of women themselves, but they must also confront the vexed relationship between the lives and subjectivities of "real" women and the ideological representation of them in whatever remains of the textual tradition.”' What use, then, can we make of written texts? Gold suggests, Rather than searching through literature for particular vignettes showing details of daily life, the historian needs to take each text as a whole, discern the major concerns that are embedded in it, and analyze the values and attitudes that are implicit in these concerns . 28 26'Frederic Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory: Eseays 1971-1986, vol. 2, Syntax of History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 150. 27Fisher and Halley, 1. 28Gold, 3 . 16 In other words, we should refrain from trying to establish any kind of one-to-one correspondence between the literary text and the reality of rape. We should look, rather, at the way the representation of rape functions within the text and at the way cultural attitudes manifest themselves in these representations. In addition, we should draw on other kinds of discourse, including legal, medical, and religious documents to inform further understanding of the cultural contexts of the literary texts. In this way, I believe, we can uncover concerns, assumptions, and attitudes. To that end, I have divided this study roughly in half. In the first three chapters, I put together the groundwork for the cultural/literary analysis I undertake in the remaining chapters. These chapters, then, are synthetic, rather than strictly new research. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of this material provides a richer context for the later literary analysis than would be otherwise possible. The last four chapters are informed by the material in the earlier chapters as well as by close reading of the Middle English literary texts themselves. In Chapter 1, "Raising the Hue and Cry: Legal Perspectives on Women and Rape," I examine both the theoretical and practical application of English law, as well as provide a historical overview of the incidence of rape in medieval England. In addition, I discuss the growth of English law, identifying the various strands of influence 17 which grew together to define and construct rape as a crime. Studies of court records also offer evidence which reveals how frequently men were tried for rape and how frequently they were convicted. In Chapter 2, "Eve and Mary: Religious Perspectives on Women, Sexuality, and Rape," I turn to the writings of the Church Fathers to identify some of the influences of religion on the perception of women and women's sexuality. Further, I look at samples of vernacular texts, including Middle English sermons and the Ancrene Wisse, as well as penitentials for clues as to how religious thinking was disseminated through the culture. Chapter 3, "Anatomy as Destiny: Medical Perspectives on Women and Sexuality," explores the theoretical medical writing of the Middle Ages as well as the practical vernacular medical manuscript. Specifically, I examine the physiological and anatomical ideas about women and sexuality which are present in these texts. In Chapter 4, "Godrich's Ward, Havelok's Wife: Women, Rape, and Law in Havelok the Dane," I identify the English author's close attention to law, crime, and punishment. The fear of rape, rather than an attempted rape, permeates Havelok, and I offer some possibilities for this shift. In addition, I demonstrate the differences between the English version of this tale and its Anglo-Norman/French sources. Chapter 5, "Holy Rape: Sexual Violence in Middle English Saints' Lives," examines the threat of rape in 18 Middle English female saints' lives. In addition, I look at the ways in which medical and religious ideas about women are manifested in these lives. In Chapter 6, "Damsels in Distress: Rape in Middle English Romance," I return to the romance genre, with an emphasis on Arthurian romance, to trace the way representations of rape shift from earlier French sources to later Middle English sources. In a subsection of this chapter, I apply the theoretical/cultural material from the earlier chapters to the case of Uther and Igerne and Arthur's conception as it is articulated in a variety of sources. It would be impossible to end a study of rape in Middle English literature without a close look at Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. Chapter 7, "'The Lawe of Kynge Arthur's Hous': Law, Gender and Power in The Wife of Eeth's Eeie," explores Chaucer's use of rape, cultural attitudes toward women, and the flow of power in the Wife's tale. Clearly, this is an ambitious project, and I do not pretend to provide the final word on rape in Middle English literature. What I hope my study provides, however, is a beginning, an opening through which both literary scholars and cultural historians can pass in their own explorations of the distant past. CHAPTER 1 RAISING THE HUE AND CRY: LEGAL PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN AND RAPE Any study of women, sexual violence, and literature in England during the Middle Ages must, of course, examine the law carefully. The quantity of records (although often incomplete) and theoretical writings surviving from this period suggests the importance of law to medieval people. That so much time and effort went into putting these records into writing at a time when writing was so difficult further strengthens this assumption. In addition, the survival of these manuscripts also as valuable across the The integration literature of medieval pervasiveness of legal Alford writes, What impresses us suggests that the documents were seen period. of legal terms and metaphors into the England further demonstrates the thinking in the culture. As John about the use of law in Middle English literature is more its nature than its extent. It is not a matter of the authors' simply inserting a legal expression here and there....[O]n the contrary, their use of legal forms and terminology generally grows naturally...out of a profound faith in law as the tie that binds all things, in heaven and earth.1 1 John Alford, "Literature and Law in Medieval England," PMLA 92 (1977): 941. 19 iiélif i. 20 The law, then, was not considered an isolated discipline during the Middle Ages, but rather a manifestation of divine order. It both penetrated and was penetrated by religious thinking as well. Thus, as Patricia Eberle argues, Concepts primarily associated with secular law--such as crime, punishment, and guilt--took on religious connotations in a society increasingly subject to the legal as well as moral jurisdiction of the church. In return, the medieval church saw itself and its role in society in increasingly legalistic terms.2 Furthermore, a look at English law can reveal to us peculiarly English concerns. According to the legal historians Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, by the middle of the thirteenth century English law was "recognized as distinctively English, and Englishmen were proud of it....In a case for which no English precedent could be found, our king's court refused to follow foreign, presumably French, precedents."3 A study of legal theoretical writing will also reveal what kinds of behaviors were deemed "criminal" by the theorists while also differentiating between "minor" crimes (trespasses) and "major" crimes (felonies). Perhaps even more telling, a comparison between the theory of the law and 2Patricia J. Eberle, "Crime and Justice in the Middle Ages: Cases from the Canterbury Talee of Geoffrey Chaucer," in Reugn Justice, ed. Martin L. Friedland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 19. 3Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History or English Law Berore the Time of Edward I, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898; reprint, London: Cambridge University Press, 1968) 188. 21 the actual practice according to court records will reveal the way juries looked at these crimes. Particularly important for this study is an understanding of the way law existed as a societal structure, reflecting the concerns of that culture while further shaping those concerns. The rules a culture makes for itself often reveal unstated assumptions about the people of the culture, the social tensions of the culture, and the ethical and moral systems in play at a given time.‘ By looking at the way medieval English law defined the quintessential crime against women, we may be able to learn more about the actual status of women in medieval England.5 ‘As John Alford argues, "It is a shallow writer indeed who tries to consider, in its public aspect, the relation of man to society without venturing into law, for that relation is hedged all about by law, and society itself is in large measure a legal concept." "Literature and Law in Medieval England," 941. 5Susan Mosher Stuard argues that law affected women deeply: "Canon law and civil statute became increasingly important in women's lives in the later Middle Ages. As social tradition was replaced by highly specific statute law in the feudal kingdoms of the north and in the Mediterranean city-states, women confronted in civic guise those Roman legal principles which had influenced the church's opinion on their position." She also identifies one of the biggest problems in using law for women's history: "One of the most baffling difficulties for women's studies [is] the attempt to determine whether legal principles and social custom coincide." Women in Medievai Spciety, ed. Brenda Bolton and Susan Mosher Stuard, introduction by Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 8-9. Michael Sheehan also warns of the limitation of using law as a mirror of a society: "Naturally enough, canon law, its jurisprudence, and the detailed information on decisions that the records of the ecclesiastical courts supply often tend to reveal marriage and human sexuality at the point where they pass beyond the acceptable. Thus canonical literature sometimes creates a foreshortening of visions 22 The classic statement of women's position under the law is from Pollock and Maitland: "In the camp, at the council board, on the bench, in the jury box there is no '¢ Nevertheless, there were several areas place for them. under the law in which women were treated specifically:as victims of rape, as wives, and as wards.7 Because the focus of this study is on sexual violence, I will concentrate on the development of rape law and on the prosecution of rapists in the Middle Ages in England. Nevertheless, laws concerning rape, marriage, and wardships often overlapped in both theory and practice, and a discussion of one will necessarily end up blurring into another. Therefore, although the major part of this chapter will be devoted to a legal consideration of rape, the points of intersection with the legalities of marriage and wardship will be discussed tangentially. that limits our understanding of what was expected in a positive way and, even more, of what was done in the society of the time." "Maritalis Affectio Revisited," in The Olde Daunce: Love. Friendship. Sex. and Marriage in tne Medieval World, ed. Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 32. These arguments are both well taken: although the law can provide valuable insight into the Middle Ages, we need always remind ourselves of the way written records can skew our understanding of a culture, and of the way our own "situatedness" limits our understanding of other cultures and times. 6Pollock and Maitland, 485. 7See Shulamith Shahar, The Fourtn Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, trans. Chaya Galai (London: Methuen, 1983), 11, for a discussion of the way law treated women as a separate class from men. 23 To a large extent, English law concerning rape grew out of canon law; and canon law had its roots in patristic and theological writings, extending back to Roman, Greek, and Hebraic thought. Early Roman law appears to have tolerated rape; Brundage notes that "Greco-Roman gods of n9 this period practiced rape frequently. However, over time, severe penalties were established. These laws were more concerned with damage to the household than with personal injury to the woman: The specific malice of the offense consisted not in the sexual ravishment of the woman, but in stealing her away from her parents, guardian or husband. Raptus might also be used to describe theft of property as well as of a person, so long as violence was employed in the act. In the ancient law, moreover, raptus was not a public crime; rather it was a wrong against the man who had legaltpower over the woman or property violently seized.1 Thus, from its earliest consideration under Western law, rape was considered a crime of property rather than one of personal injury. The ramifications of this kind of thinking were far-reaching. The defining of rape as a kind 8Brundage, Lawl Sex, and Christian Society, xx. Brundage writes, "One thesis of this book is that medieval canon law played a central role in shaping modern sex laws in the west....By about 1250 the canonists had crafted much of the legal framework familiar in our own time. After 1300, civil governments began to play increasingly important roles in controlling sexual behavior." Brundage argues elsewhere that "the canon lawyers of the medieval Church between about 1140 and about 1500 played the leading role in shaping the law from which our own notions of rape and seduction derive." "Rape and Seduction," 141. 9Brundage, Law Sex and Christian Societ , 47. 10Brundage, "Rape and Seduction," 141. 24 of theft as opposed to an assault reveals Roman assumptions about women as property. These assumptions made their way through the legal labyrinth of time and later emerged nearly intact in medieval English common law. Typically, the sections of the law concerning rape in medieval England can be found in the property codes. Because the term raptus can mean rape, abduction, or theft, ancient legal theorists spent a good deal of time trying to define the crime itself. A major change in the law occurred under Constantine: rape was no longer defined as a "private wrong" but rather as a "public offense."11 Furthermore, according to the law, all women who were raped were to be punished. Those who consented to the rape (in other words, eloped) were to be burned; those who were non- consenting victims of rape were punished, though less severely, because it was thought they should have resisted more strenuously.12 The canonists during the eleventh century and twelfth century further developed the idea of rape as a sexual offense worthy of punishment in the ecclesiastical courts. By the time of Ivo of Chartres, abduction and rape were linked together, and Pope Urban II (1088-1099) ruled that "abduction of a woman by a man created a presumption that 11Brundage, Lew, Sex, and Qhristian Society, 107; and "Rape and Seduction," 142. 12Brundage, Lew, Sex, and cnristien Society, 107. 25 the perpetrator sexually molested his victim."13 However, it was with the Decretum of Gratian (c. 1140) that canon law became a codified, organized legal 14 system. It was also under Gratian that rape law underwent significant modification. First, Gratian urged the courts to lighten the sentences for rape; no longer should rape be punishable by death, as under earlier 15 codes. Kathryn Gravdal succinctly summarizes Gratian's redefinition of the crime of raptus: 1. unlawful coitus must be completed; 2. the victim must be abducted from the house of her father; 3. the abduction and coitus must be accomplished by violence; and 4. a marriage agreement must not have been negotiated previously between the victim and the ravisher.“ What Gratian excluded from his definition of rape actually more interesting than what he incinde . For example, under his definition, a woman not living in her father's home (a wife, for example) could not legally be victim of rape. In addition, because abduction was considered a defining factor, a woman could not be raped her own home. Further, the emphasis on completed coitus 1-"Iioid., 56. 14Brundage, "Rape and Seduction," 142. is in 15See Kathryn Gravdal, "Chrétien de Troyes, Gratian and the Medieval Romance of Sexual Violence," Signs 17 (1992) 567. Gravdal thoroughly explores the contributions of Gratian to medieval rape law, using chiefly Brundage's material. 16Gravdal, "Gratian," 567. See also Gravdal, Eavishing Maidens, 8-11. 26 suggests that penetration alone was not enough to constitute rape. Once again, rape was defined as a kind of property theft, in this case, the theft of a woman's virginity; and further, it was defined as a crime against the father, rather than a crime against the woman. The influence of Gratian and the canonists on English civil rape law is well- documented and clear-cut. Another early strand of influence in later English law was Germanic and Anglo-Saxon law. At the heart of Germanic and Anglo-Saxon law codes was the notion of wergild, a monetary value placed on each person's life. Typically, under these laws, women had a higher wergild than did men. Rapists were required to pay the woman's wergild as a fine. A woman's rank (or the rank of her husband) made a considerable difference in her wergild, so the rapist of a higher-ranked woman would pay a greater fine.17 Under the Germanic codes it was possible to contract a marriage by forcible abduction or rape. Although the codes discouraged such marriages and sometimes imposed fines on men who accomplished their marriages in such a way, marriage-by- 17David Herlihy, "Life Expectancies for Women in Medieval Society," in The Role of Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Rosemary Thee Morewedge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), 8. Anne Klinck, in her article ”Anglo- Saxon Women and the Law," Journei of Medievel History 8 (1982): 107-121, argues convincingly that it was the rank of the husband, not the wife, which determined the size of the fine payable by a rapist or abductor. 27 capture (ranpehe) was still a legitimate marriage.18 Herlihy notes another dimension of the Germanic code: In another equally revealing provision from the Laws of the Alemanni, a free man whose wife had been abducted by another man retained his paternal rights over the children she might bear, even though fathered by another.19 This provision demonstrates an interest in regularizing inheritance practices. Even more to the point, it reveals that, under Germanic law, the wife and her offspring were the property of the husband. As Anne Klinck argues, In the earliest Anglo-Saxon period, women, whatever their rank in society or stage of life, remain in the guardianship of men. This situation is reflected in the fines payable for violation or abduction of women, offenses which are regarded as committed against the guardian/master, rather than the woman herself....Reference is made to taking a women away by force from her "owner".‘20 After the Norman Conquest, the punishment for rape was changed from a fine to "burning with a red-hot iron over 18Christine Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England (London: British Museum, 1984), 62. Fell discusses Anglo-Saxon marriage laws and customs at length. Also see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 129, for the ways marriages could be contracted under the Germanic codes. Finally, for an excellent overview of Anglo-Saxon women and the law, see Klinck's article cited above. Klinck refutes the current commonplace that Anglo-Saxon women enjoyed more independence under the law than did their later post-Conquest counterparts. 19Herlihy, 8. This provision will be especially crucial when considering the conception of Arthur in Chapter 6. 2"Klinck, 109 . 28 the eyes, and mutilation."21 Pollock and Maitland also report that castration was considered an appropriate punishment for rape. They suggest that, although the law did not clearly distinguish between rape and abduction, rape in the sense of vioientus eencnpitus is soon treated as a crime for which the woman and only the woman can bring an appeal. Probably from the Conquest onwards it was deemed a bootless crime if she pressed her suit.22 During the age of Glanvill (about 1170-1220), rape was considered to be a felony, punishable by death or dismemberment. The marital status of a woman was not considered under Glanvill.23 However, Bracton, during the period from about 1220 to 1275, distinguished between the rape of a virgin and that of a non-virgin. For the rape of a virgin, Bracton named blinding and castration as the punishment, although he also called rape a "felony" which by definition would carry the death penalty.“' Carter notes that Bracton is "unclear" about the penalty for the rape of 25 a non-virgin; however, Pollock and Maitland list Bracton's punishment for this crime as "corporal ”Arthur Rackham Cleveland, Women under the English Law: Fron the Landings of the Saxons to therPresent Time (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1896; reprint, Littleton, CO: F. B. Rothman, 1987), 97. 2ZPollock and Maitland, 490. 23Carter, 44-45. Carter's source for most of his historical information is Pollock and Maitland. “See Pollock and Maitland, 490-91; and Carter, 154. 25Carter, 44-45. 29 chastisement falling short of loss of limb."”’ Again, it seems clear that the law considered rape as a theft, specifically as the theft of a woman's virginity, a saleable good in the marriage market. For a woman to appeal a rape in England from the time of Bracton onward, she had to follow six steps: 1. The appellor must have raised the hue and cry; 2. then she had to go to neighboring townships and relate the traumatic experience to "men of good repute"; 3. she then had to explain the crime to the hundred reeve, the king's serjeant, the coroners, and the sheriff; 4. next she had to make an appeal at the first county court; 5. her appeal then had to be copied verbatim on the coroners' rolls; 6. finally, her appeal had to be repeated at the general eyre.2 In 1275, the Statute of Westminster I made all rapes trespasses, punishable by two years imprisonment;28 The text of the Statute reads as follows: E le roy defend qu nul ravyse ne prenge damysele de deinze age, par soun gre ne sanz soun gre, ne dame ne damisele de age, ne autre femme maugre soun. Et si le face, a la sute celuy ke suera de denz les .xl. jours 1e roy luy fra commune dreyture; et si nul ne comence 26901mm: and Maitland, 491. ”Carter, 198. ‘mstatute of Westminster I, c. 13, Statutes of the Realm, vol. 1 (London, 1810), 29. For the definitive treatment of the Statutes of Westminster, see J. B. Post. Carter also writes extensively on the Statutes of Westminster; however, his analysis is flawed, according to Barbara Hanawalt in her review of his book in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Eistory 17 (1987): 656-58. Kathryn Gravdal bases the bulk of her comments on English rape law on Carter's earlier work. See also Cannon for a more recent analysis of the Statutes of Westminster. ‘ 30 la sute de deinz .xl. jours le roy suyra, e ceus qu il en trovera copables si averount la prisoun de .ij. aunz, e puis soynt reinz a la volunte le roy, et si 11 ne ad dount rendre ou de estra reinz a la volunte 1e roy si soynt puniz par plus grevous e plus long prisoun, solom ceo qe le trespas demaunde. (And the king upholds that no one may ravish or take a maiden under age, with her agreement or without her agreement, nor a married woman or maiden of age, nor other woman despite her [without her consent]. And if convicted, of the suit started within forty days, the king will grant him common right; and if no one starts the suit in forty days the king will, and whoever is found guilty will be sentenced to two years in prison, and then will be ransomed at the king's will, and if he does not render or fails ransom of the king's will the king may punish him far more grievousLy and imprison him longer, as the trespass demands.)3 There are a number of interesting points in this legislation. At first examination, the most troubling aspect of this statute is the movement of rape from a felony to a trespass, and it is this feature on which most current writers focus. The reduced punishment under the law would seem to point to a cultural and governmental devaluing of rape as a crime worthy of punishment. However, I would argue that the shift from felony to trespass occurred for a different reason: it merely codified what was already happening in practice. Moreover, this shift paralleled Gratian's recommendation for lighter sentencing for the crime of rape under canon law. Virtually 29Post notes in his article that "there is no thoroughly satisfactory text of Westminster I, although the terms of c. 13 are not in doubt" (162). He provides an edited text of c. 13 from Liber Egrn, complete with notes, which provide a comparison with other early manuscripts. imUnless otherwise noted, translations are my own. 31 no men were executed or mutilated as punishment for rape during the period preceding Westminster I.31 Rather, they were fined or, even more frequently, they agreed to marry their victims. This solution satisfied the young woman's family in that her honor was restored; her husband now had the financial responsibility of supporting her; and a now otherwise unmarriageable daughter had a husband. Thus, a number of writers, Walker included, have suggested that appeals of rape were often brought before the courts by young women who wished to marry someone other than 32 the person her family had selected for her. Others go so far as to suggest that the number of appeals of rape brought against upper-class males by lower- class women had more to do with women trying to "catch" husbands than with any actual rape: The regularity with which this form of concord [marriage] can be traced or inferred suggests that the intention of forcing a marriage was the purpose of many appeals in the first place: this would also help to account for the high proportion of appeals which were not prosecuted. Who was forcing whom is a more difficult matter. The disparity of status which is apparent in many cases of failed and unconcorded appeals indicates, perhaps, the classic and hopeless plight in which a ruined peasant attempted to salvage honour if not revenge from a social superior. 31For example, see Hanawalt, as well as Carter and Post. 32See walker, "Punishing Convicted Ravishers"; and "Free Consent and Marriage of Feudal Wards in Medieval England," Journal of Medieval History 8 (1982): 123-134. Also see Post, 152; and Brundage, "Rape and Seduction," 142. 33Post, 152 . 32 I would argue, therefore, that the point of Westminster I was not merely to recognize that rape was not being punished as a felony, but rather to increase governmental control on marriage. On the one hand, feudal families wanted to regulate the marriages of their heirs; an appeal of rape brought to concord by marriage circumvented the role of the child's guardian. On the other hand, the royal government had more to gain by collecting fines than it had to gain by executing rapists. Thus the provisions of Westminster I: by disallowing marriage as a solution to an appeal for rape, children could not force a marriage on the basis of an appeal. By punishing rapists with a fine, or by allowing the offender to purchase a pardon, the treasury coffers could grow.“ There are, of course, other interesting aspects to this legislation. First is the still problematic term "ravishment," which implied abduction and/or rape. As a result, it is difficult to determine from court records whether a case under consideration was one of abduction or one of rape. In addition, this term still carried with it the connotation of "theft." Second, Westminster I specifically protected not only unmarried women, but wives as well. This is the first time “Post, 155. 33 that the law clarified that a married woman could be rapedx"5 Previously, because rape had traditionally been classified as a kind of "theft," that is, a theft of a woman's virginity, women who were no longer virgins could not be "robbed." Westminster I clarified that any ravishment of a women without her consent was legally considered rape. After ten years, this law was changed by Westminster II: Purveu est ensement qe si homme ravise femme epose, damousele, ou autre femme deshormes par la ou ele ne se est assentue ne avaunte ne apres eit jugement de vie e de membre; ensement par la ou homme ravise femme, damoysele, dame espose, ou autre femme a force, tut seyt ele assentue apres, eit tel jugement come avaunt est dist, sil seit attenint ala swyte le roy, et la eit le roy sa swytefi“ (When it is thus that a man ravishes a married woman, a maiden, or other woman without her consent either before or after, the judgment is life and limb; thus for the man who ravishes a woman, maid, married woman, or other woman by force, although she consent afterward, the judgment is still as said, if it is at the king's suit, and the pleasure of the suit is the king's.) 3”It should be pointed out here that although a married woman could be raped by someone other than her husband under this statute, nowhere in English common law did the concept of rape by a spouse even exist. Although we do today recognize that a husband can rape his wife, it is unlikely that any medieval husband or wife would have had any understanding of that particular idea. One additional point: although spousal rape was not mentioned in any legal codes, corporal punishment of wives (short of murder) was both legal and encouraged, according to Margaret Wade LaBarge, A Small Sound of Trumpet: Women in Medieval Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 29. :“Statute of Westminster II, c. 34, Statutes of the Realm, vol. 1 (London, 1810), 87. 34 Under Westminster II, rape was a felony, punishable by death. The woman had forty days to appeal the rape. In addition, for the first time, a man could be indicted for rape even if the woman did not appeal. Westminster II also stated that the king could bring suit in the case where a woman was abducted by a man intending to assault her sexually and take her property and her husband's property. Hanawalt notes the importance of Westminster II, arguing that it forms the basis of modern, western rape law.”' Carter asserts Westminster II was enacted because of the growing number of rapes: Because of the number of rapes collected in this study for the period before 1285 compared to the number after 1285, one can conclude that Edward I was consciously attempting to stop the growing rate of rape. One can also conclude that monetary fines, although they certainly helped to keep money coming into the royal coffers, were not much of a deterrent to rape as was the threat of death. Lastly, Edward I instituted Westminster II because he wanted to extend royal jurisdiction over all types of crimes, to weaken the baronial courtsJ38 Carter has based his analysis of these statutes on the notion of deterrence: a government defined a crime as a trespass or felony based on the theoretical punishment the perpetrator would receive for the violation of the law. The stiffer the penalty, then, the greater the deterrent. However, Carter's reasoning is faulty for a number of reasons. As he himself demonstrates, virtually no rapists 37Hanawalt, 104. 38Carter, 133 . 35 were punished to the full extent of the law, whether the crime was considered a trespass or a felony. More important, Carter overlooks the really central part of this legislation: Westminster I was considered inadequate, net because of the mild punishment for rapists, but rather because of the limited role that the king played. Before the Statutes of Westminster, appeal was the only way a rape could come to court. After these Statutes, the king could bring suit by indictment, whether or not the woman chose to appeal. The king's role was made larger in the Statute of Westminster I, thereby weakening the appellate process. After Westminster II, even fewer rapes reached the courts through the appellate process. Rather than serving as a stronger protector of women (as Carter seems to argue), the law limited women's legal voice even further while allowing the king to collect fines and forfeited property from convicted felons. As Post argues, It is evident from the terms of Westminster II, c. 34, that Westminster I, c. 13, was considered wholly inadequate. It is also evident from the structure and content of the later chgpter that peacekeeping was not its ma1n consideration. Finally, I think that it is important to look at the Statutes of Westminster in a larger context than does Carter. A shift in rape law may have nothing whatsoever to do with the question of rape or the incidence of rape in England. Rather, the shift from the appellate process to ”Post, 156 . 36 indictment seems to have been pervasive across the culture, not centered in the small section of the statute concerning rape. As Pollock and Maitland point out, In the thirteenth century this limitation of the right to make criminal charges was already becoming of little importance, since the procedure by way of appeal (that is of private accusation) was giving place to the indictment. The importance of the Statutes of Westminster for the literary representation of rape will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4. What evidence do we have that rape continued to be considered a problem in England during the Middle Ages? Because rape and abduction were mentioned in every English law code from Anglo-Saxon times through the sixteenth century, the assumption is that the incidence of these crimes was high enough to warrant attention. Bellamy speaks of the general lawlessness of the Middle Ages, particularly the late medieval period. He also notes that as early as 1294, Hugh Cressingham, a prominent royal justice, reported to his master that there were so many influential maintainers of false complaints, upholders of champerty and conspirators in league together, all bent on the malversation of legal process by such tricks as altering writs, manipulating the election of jurors, and procuring appeals by approvers, that justice and truth were completely choked."1 The general lawlessness was not confined to the lower classes. Both Hanawalt and Bellamy describe criminal bands ‘wPollock and Maitland, 485. “Bellamy, 5. 37 organized in the households of nobility."2 Brundage observes that in particular, rape and abduction charges were brought against upper-class males "far more frequently than their numbers warranted.w“ Although rapes during this period (as in most periods) were notoriously under-reported, a closer look at both the frequency and characteristics of medieval rape reveals several interesting findings. First, half of the reported rapes were gang rapes.“ Multiple rapes were also reported in connection with 5 In addition, rape abductions lasting two or more weeks.‘ emerges as a communal crime: rapists frequently banded together with other men (and sometimes women) to plan and commit rape . ‘6 'QHanawalt, 141; Bellamy, 6. ‘BBrundage, Lew, Sex, ang Chrietian §ociety, 530. The assumption that Brundage makes here, of course, is that marriage is the motive in these rapes and that lower-class women were trying to catch higher-class husbands. Although I do not disagree with the statement that these charges were brought against upper-class males far more frequently than their numbers would warrant, I would, however, suggest that perhaps the more obvious explanation be considered: that upper-class males considered the rape of lower-class females to be their prerogative and that they actually committed rape far more frequently than their numbers should have warranted. “Hanawalt, 109. “Ibid. , 109 . ‘“Carter, 155; Hanawalt, 109. Hanawalt offers this example: "When a vicar set out to procure the object of his desire, Agnes Manusel, he banded together with his servant and another woman for the abduction. Only the vicar engaged in the actual rape; and the other two were named as auxiliaries" (109). Another interesting case to consider in the corporate nature of medieval rape is that of Geoffrey 38 Second, the largest percentage of men accused of rape claimed to be clerics. Carter suggests that many men claimed to be clerics in the hope of avoiding the civil law and facing the ecclesiastical court instead.”’ Furthermore, large numbers of literate men had some connection to the church in the Middle Ages; it becomes extremely difficult to sort out all the connections implied by the word "cleric." It is nearly impossible, therefore, to determine the motives of men listed in the court records as clerics. Third, Carter suggests that the typical rape victim was a member of the peasantry.“8 Again, this finding is not particularly interesting nor even very surprising. Peasants made up by far the largest segment of the population. It seems only logical that the number of rape victims in the peasantry would be by necessity much larger than the number of rape victims in the aristocracy. Nevertheless, Hanawalt points to numerous cases where widows or wives of wealthy Chaucer and Cecilia Chaumpaigne. Although the records are unclear, there is some indication that Chaucer either had accomplices in the alleged rape of Chaumpaigne or acted as an accomplice. For a more thorough discussion, see Paull F. Baum, Qhancer: A Critical Appreciation (Durham: Duke University Press, 1958); P. R. Watts, "The Strange Case of Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecilia Chaumpaigne," Tne Ley Review 63 (1947): 491-515; and Theodore Plucknett, "Chaucer's Escapade," The Law Review 64 (1948): 33-36. See also Cannon, who brings to light new documentary evidence on Chaucer's role in the Chaumpaigne affair. 47Carter, 82. “Ibid . 39 and/or titled gentlemen were robbed, raped, and at times, abducted. Her hypothesis is that the motive for such rapes was revenge and humiliation of the husband: Not only were the rapists carrying away the wealth of their male victims in a robbery or burglary, but they were also humiliating him and calling his prowess into question by raping his wife. In other cases, the rapists seemed to intend revenge on a dead man by raping his widow....Raping the wife or widow of an enemy was a way of bringing shame on him. It showed that he was too impotent to protect his own property against defilement."'9 Fourth, for an act to be called rape, force had to be used. Assaults and woundings were not felonies, and woundings were rarely mentioned in court cases, probably because such woundings were expected results of the use of force. Furthermore, a woman had to be able to prove that she had resisted the attack for the act to qualify as rape.50 Another theme that emerges in the study of rape in the Middle Ages is the problem of abduction, particularly of “Hanawalt, 109, 272-73. 50Ibid., 108. Hanawalt cites the following case as illustration: "Hugh Fitz Henry, a local notable, was charged with the rape of Maude....The jurors said that Hugh was passing through the village of Ingleton one day when he saw Maud standing in her mother's doorway. He ordered two of his servants to seize Maud and take her to his manor house in the village. She put up a considerable fight by clinging to the doorway and raising the hue and cry, but she was dragged off. The jurors maintained that once at his house, she voluntarily submitted to him. It is questionable what sort of resistance she could possibly have made in his manor house, but the jurors simply charged him with a trespass of abduction and suggested a heavy fine of £100 on the 7 condition that 'the king accept it.‘ Obviously, the jurors were afraid to convict a local lord." 4O widows, heiresses, and wealthy women. As far back as early Anglo-Saxon times, laws were designed to protect widows and to provide compensation for their abduction.51 Brundage notes that, during the seventh and eight centuries, the church tried to repress sexual violence. He adds, however, that "despite the best efforts of both kings and bishops.... [T]he practice of seizing and making off with heiresses and other desirable women plagued early medieval society."” During the early Middle Ages, according to Herlihy, there were far fewer women than men,” and perhaps the continuing problem with abduction of wives and widows was at least partly the result of that shortage. By the late Middle Ages, however, women's longevity had increased and so had their numbers. The motivation for rape and abduction at this time seemed to be more an economic one than the earlier quest for a wife. It was the land and wealth of a woman which made her a desirable target for abduction.“ Further, marriage law in England gave a husband a virtual guardianship over his wife and her property. Donahue reports that 5'Fell, 61. 52Brundage, Law, Sex, and Cnristian Society, 33. 53Herl ihy , 10 . “Bellamy, 32. See also Brundage, 469; Herlihy, 9; Cleveland, 96-97; LaBarge, 72; and Luke Owen Pike, A Mistory of Crime in England Illustrating tne Changes in the Laws in the Progress of Civilization(London: Smith, Elder, 1873), 2:477. 41 during the marriage the husband had the power to manage and to alienate both his chattels and those of his wife, a fact which led later courts to suggest that he "owned" his wife's chattels.SS The husband's rights to the profits of the wife's lands continued on after her death if a child had been born during the marriage, even if the child did not survive, under what was known as "the curtesy of England."“’ Therefore, there was strong economic motivation for the abduction of wealthy heiresses and widows. After being imprisoned for a period of time, a woman could be convinced to marry the abductor. This, of course, was one of the practices the Statutes of Westminster sought to remedy; however, as Walker points out, The practice of coercive imprisonment [of the abductor] made for an attractive remedy but it seems to have been a poor deterrent, for the cases alleging ravishment of wards and wives continued to increase in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.57 Not only did the law attempt to address this problem, the abduction and holding of heiresses and wives was a common theme in Middle English literature throughout the period, as will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 6. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this study is the paradox that existed between the theoretical status of rape as expressed in the law and the practical application 55Charles Donahue, "What Causes Fundamental Legal Ideas?: Marital Property in England and France in the Thirteenth Century," Michigen Len Eeview 78 (1979): 65. SbPOllOCk and Maitland, 414. 57Walker, "Punishing Convicted Ravishers," 248. _———'-.d—- 42 of that law. Sharpe argues that the historian of crime must consider both the extent to which the perpetrator of the offense felt that what he was doing was not wrong, and the extent to which his views were a reflection of widely-held values....[T]he historian of crime must confront the problems that several forms of conduct classified as criminal by the courts and the statute book were regarded as legal, or at least justifiable on quasi- legal grounds, by large sections of the population at large: on occasion, indeed, popular attitudes might even have encouraged such conduct.58 Hanawalt agrees: she asserts that since medieval jurors were "sentencing all suspects to the same types of punishments...their convictions represent their attitudes "59 In other words, toward the different types of felonies. conviction rates for different felonies would not be influenced by the kind of punishment the law demanded for each crime, because the punishments were essentially the same. Rather, conviction rates depended on the attitudes of 58J. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England: i550 - 1750 (London: Methuen, 1984), 122. That popular attitudes continue to affect the way rape is described is clear in reading Luke Owen Pike's book, A Histor of Crime, written in 1873, cited above. He states, "There are some crimes which lie on the borderland between those which veneration for the past ranges in the class of the chivalrously venial and those which in modern times are considered unchivalrously mean. A bold lover, for instance, breaks into the house of the woman he desires to wed. She has no wish to place her fortune or person at his disposal, but he has a mind to secure one or both. He gives her a simple alternative--either be ravished on the spot or be married the following Saturday....If it is possible for Romance to represent the abduction of heiresses and the marriage of women by compulsion as gallantries rather than as crimes, it is at least out of her power to represent embezzlement as an act of virtue" (260-61). ”Hanawalt , 61 . “Z.- ‘_.-’-‘ 43 the jurors toward the crimes themselves. Therefore, by examining the fate of women's appeals in the medieval courts, and noting the discrepancies that existed between law and practice, we should be able to draw some conclusions about the attitudes of the culture. Perhaps even more relevant, because all jurors were, by law, males, we can focus on the attitudes of the male segment of the population. Pollock and Maitland note that appeals of rape were "often brought in the thirteenth century; but they were often quashed, abandoned, or compromised."“’ Joseph Hornsby and Fell concur: women rarely won appeals for rape; and when a man nee found guilty, he was most frequently fined rather than punished to the full extent of the law.61 Even after the Statute of Westminster II allowed for charges of rape to be brought by indictment, there is little indication that, unless the woman were a virgin, such indictments would occur. Even then, the extremely low incidence of indictments indicates that opinion was not strong about punishing rapists."2 In Carter's study of rape in medieval England between the years 1208 and 1321, he indicates that alleged rapists were found guilty only in 21% of the cases and, of the total “Pollock and Maitland, 491. 61Joseph Allen Hornsby, Chaucer and the Law (Norman, Okla: Pilgrim, 1988), 120. See also Fell, 164. 62Hanawalt, 105. 4 4 cases, only 17% of the men were punished. Conversely, 49% of the victims who brought the appeals were arrested for false appeal.‘63 Hanawalt's study of crime between the years 1300 and 1348 reveals that only 10.3% of the accused rapists were convicted.“ Thus, while the law demanded punishments such as death, castration, blinding, and dismemberment, male juries were unwilling to condemn other males to these punishments. Even if found guilty (and he rarely was), the convicted rapist could expect a fine or imprisonment as his worst punishment. Even then, it appears that it was often possible for him to purchase a pardon for his crime. In discussing felonies in general, Bellamy reports that by the late fourteenth century, "for a payment of 165. 4d. anyone could obtain a pardon for virtually every offense."65 That women occupied a legally inferior position in medieval society is scarcely open to debate: Bracton wrote that "women differ from men in many respects, for their ‘“Carter, 108. Carter's figures, however, are suspect. Barbara Hanawalt, in her review of Carter's book notes that "these records provide special problems because of their sporadic preservation. Since no county or town studied has continuous records, Carter was forced to compare different counties in different time periods. Any trend analysis with such intermittent records is useless. Furthermore, since rape was rarely prosecuted, his cases total only 145, spread over a period of 120 years." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (1987): 656-658. “Hanawalt, 59. 65Bellamy, 194 . 45 position is inferior to that of men."“’ Supporting this position was a whole body of literature defining women and their proper roles. Women's inferiority was easily explained as "the natural result of Eve's sin."“’ It seems likely that cultural attitudes and societal beliefs such as these (which will be examined more thoroughly in the next two chapters) would affect the way a judge and jury would decide a rape case. For example, a popular belief of the time was that a woman could conceive only during voluntary sexual intercourse.‘58 Thus, the pregnancy of a victim could be used as a means of defense for a man accused of rape. Patristic and early medieval religious writings also affected the way women were viewed legally and, by extension, the way rape cases were handled.“’ These writings described sex as filthy and degrading; moreover, sex was considered to be both the cause and the result of sin.70 Given the paradoxical images of woman-as-whore and woman-as-Virgin-Mary developed through medieval religious 6“Quoted in Carter, 108. "LaBarge, 29. “See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the medical theories of conception. ‘WPatristic and religious writing on sex and rape will be more closely examined in Chapter 2. ”See Brundage, Law, Sex, end Christian Society, especially chapter 3; and "Rape and Seduction." 46 writing, given the medical commonplaces which described women as both passionate and lecherous, and given the view of sex as moral defilement, it was an easy step for the rapist (and the jury) to blame the victim for her rape. Several defenses for rape could be built around these images: temptation, enticement, or deception. Furthermore, the elevation of virginity and degradation of married women helps to explain the differences in protection accorded under the law. In conclusion, the study of the legal definitions of rape, the growth and change in rape laws, and the paradox between the theoretical descriptions of rape and the actual punishments handed down by the courts provides us with a place to start in our investigation of women, rape, and literature. Next we will turn to theoretical religious writing about women as well as vernacular translations, sermons, guidebooks, and penitentials to provide further context for literary study. CHAPTER 2 EVE AND MARY: RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN, SEXUALITY, AND RAPE As should be evident from the discussion in the last chapter, it is nearly impossible to untangle the legal representations of women from the religious and theological teachings of the Church. Therefore, to explore more fully the contexts of sexual violence in the Middle Ages, we need to spend some time examining the religious texts which defined the nature of women and the nature of their sexuality. Further, religious texts can also shed light on medieval attitudes toward rape. The opposition of Eve and Mary as suggested by the title of this chapter is one developed by a number of writers who see in the medieval view of women the impossible paradox between sexual temptress and mother of God.1 However, while such an opposition provides a useful paradigm for thinking about attitudes toward women, it does not 1See, for example, Leo Carruthers, "'No womman of no clerk is preysed': Attitudes to Women in Medieval English Religious Literature," in A W f Ther Was, ed. Juliette Dor (Liege: Liege Language and Literature, 1992), 49-60; Joan Ferrante, Woman as Image in Medievai Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); and Eileen Power, Med'eval Women, ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 47 48 account for the rich complexity of thought, nor for the agonizing ambiguity present in medieval religious thought. As Penny S. Gold argues, This ambivalence is not only the simple intellectual opposition of Eve and Mary...but a complex of oppositions: women seen as helpful and harmful, as central and peripheral, as powerful and submissive. The contradiction within the actuality of women's experience encompasses women included and excluded, in control and controlled, autonomous and dependent. These are more complicated oppositions than "good" and "bad," but they help us to bypass the temptation of judgment, and they are more true, for in their diversity they force us to grapple with the complex texture of the lives of medieval women and men. Medieval thinking about women was rooted in scripture, as well as in the classical tradition. St. Paul and Aristotle influenced the patristic writers whose legacy is so apparent in medieval texts. Tertullian, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine, among others, provide us with the written texts which underpinned medieval religious thought articulated, for example, by Aquinas. These texts, of course, were first written in Latin; as such, they were read by a literate, clerical audience. Nevertheless, the ideas found in the texts worked their way into the culture through a number of paths: vernacular translations,3jpenitential 2 Gold, xxi. 3 Susan Groag Bell argues that women were at least partially responsible for the upsurge of vernacular translations which took place in the twelfth and thirteenth cneturies: "Most devotional literature in the early Middle Ages was written in Latin, a language accessible to only a small sector of lay society. Medieval laywomen's knowledge of Latin was even rarer than that of lay men....Since women were expected to read devotional literature, it is not surprising that they played an important role as instigators 49 handbooks, sermons, saints' lives, and didactic treatises bridged the gap between the literate and illiterate cultures. Aron Gurevich argues that many works, "although written in Latin, were intended for a wider public and were to be expounded to that audience by the clergy."" Of particular interest are works written in Middle English and intended for a feminine audience, such as the Katharine group, the Ancrene Wisse, and Haii Meibhag. Whatever the intended audience, the writers (with very few exceptions) were men. Thus, the representations of women found in these texts are male constructions, and must be read as such.5 The way men constructed women, and of vernacular translations from the Latin and of vernacular literature in general." "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture," in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Erler and M. Kowaleski (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1988), 165. ‘Aron Gurevich, Medieval Po u Cu ture: able 5 of Beliet and Pereeption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 3. For further examination of the dissemination of written texts in a largely illiterate culture, see M. T. Clanchy, Fro emo it e o : Engiang, 106§-1397 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Janet Coleman,M Medieval Readers and Writers: 1350- 1400 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Thomas J. Heffernan, "Sermon Literature," in Middle Engiisn Eroee; A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 177-208; and Julia Smith, "Oral and Written: Saints, Miracles, and Relics in Brittany, c. 850-1250," §peculum 65 (1990): 309-35. 5 Sheila Fisher and Janet E. Halley discuss the uses to which male-authored texts can be put. They argue, "Study of male-authored texts of these periods suggests, then, that the representation of women does not merely distort or interpret but can altogether ignore the historical existence of real women and their experience of self-hood. In order to understand these literary constructions of women, it is 50 particularly the way that religious men constructed women, reveals nonetheless the attitudes of those people who had the power to affect materially the conditions of women's lives. While legal writing established women's position politically in human society, religious writing established women's relationship to God and their place in God's universe. It would be difficult to ignore the influence of Aristotelian theories on early Christian thought, particularly as they affected the way in which the early Church viewed women. Aristotle's views (as well as the influential Galenic views) on the physiological nature of women will be examined more fully in the next chapter; what is particularly important here, however, is Aristotle's insistence that women were not men's opposite, but were rather defective males. As Elizabeth Robertson writes, It is important to recognize that in Aristotle and in subsequent medieval views, women are defined not by opposition or by otherness but by deprivation, a conceptualization which has determined the dualities traditionally associated with men and women: active/passive, form/matter, act/potency, perfection/imperfection, completion/incompletion, possesson/deprivation.6 necessary to assess them against the materiality of women's lives--the conditions in which they grew up, worked, worshiped, married, gave birth, and learned." Seeking the Wenan in Lete Medieyei end Renaissanee Writings: Esseye in Feminist Contextual Criticism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 6. 6Elizabeth Robertson, Early English Devotionai Prose end the Eenale Audience (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 34. 51 As incomplete, or defective males, women were clearly subordinate and inferior to men. Further, Aristotle associated women with matter, or with the flesh, and with the passive. By way of contrast, Aristotle associated men with the intellectual and with the active--clearly superior positions. In conception, the man provided the life force, while the woman provided the matter. This formulation led to the defining of women ee body.7 .A second Aristotelian concept important for the study of medieval religious thought was the belief that only through sexual intercourse with the male could a woman approximate completion.8 These twin doctrines affected the way the early Patristic writers as well as later medieval theologians constructed the image of women. Robertson writes that these views "dominate medieval thought so completely" that they affect both the content and style of works written for and about women.9 In addition, women's bodily nature, their natural inferiority, and their desire for intercourse with men are important for our consideration of women's spirituality, sexuality, and rape. The early Christian writers found the scriptural basis for writing about women primarily in the creation accounts of Genesis and in Paul's epistles. In addition, 7Ibid., 34. 8Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 30-31. 9Robertson, pevotional Prose, 33. 52 the Gospel accounts of various women as well as Old Testament women provided further fuel for the discussion of w Certain passages were emphasized and repeatedly women. interpreted. Thus, the same passages Tertullian used in his commentaries on women were also the passages on which Aquinas commented. The interpretations offered in the second century by Tertullian were reiterated and amplified by Jerome in the fifth century. With each interpretation, the answers to Tertullian's question, gnid est nulier? became accreted with accumulated authority. Ambrose, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine each addressed, in turn, the question of women, drawing on both scripture and received knowledge. By the time Aquinas wrote in the thirteenth century, he had a long tradition of scriptural commentary on which to draw. Further, by the time the ideas promulgated by the Church Fathers made their way into the vernacular in the Middle Ages, they had become nearly commonplaces, informing both men and women of the nature of women, their guilt for the Fall, and their role in the crime of rape. Scripture connected with women was cited by early writers for five major reasons: first, in order to establish the Church's position on the nature of women; second, to demonstrate women's responsibility for the Fall; third, to provide guidelines for appropriate female behavior; fourth, 10Ibid., 36. 53 to offer both positive and negative role models for women; and finally, to define sexuality and to support the call to virginity. The Bible offers two accounts of the creation of humans. Each provided specific problems for the early Christian writers in their consideration of the nature of women. The first, contained in Genesis 1:26-27, reads, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."11 It is the last phrase which seemed to bother the early Christian writers. Ruether notes that writers such as Athanasius and Origen (among others) often chose simply to quote the first part of this text.12 At issue was the two sex creation of the first humans; such differentiation implied a bodily creation. Because God is spiritual, without body, Genesis 1:27 was in apparent contradiction of man being created in the image of God. Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century neatly sidestepped this issue by suggesting a two-part creation: "In the image of God he created him." There was an end of the creation of that which was made "in the image." Then it makes a resumption of the account of creation, and says "male and female created He them." I presume that everyone knows that this is a departure from the 11Biblical passages are from the Revised Standard Version. 1ZRosemary Radford Ruether, "Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church," in Religion and Sexism, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 153. 54 Archetype, for "in Christ,“ as the apostle says, "there is neither male nor female."” The creation story more frequently cited by early Christian writers, however, is found in Genesis 2. In this version, God created man from the dust of the ground and then placed him in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2:18 states, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" From Adam's rib, God created Eve. This creation story was more palatable to the Church Fathers for a number of reasons: it allowed for man to be in the image of God, and woman to be in the image of man, a clearly subordinate position. Her creation was secondary, nearly an afterthought. Further, while Adam was created by God from the dust and God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7), Eve was created from previously created flesh, thereby connecting woman more firmly with the body. St. Paul gave priority to this account of creation; in I Corinthians 11:7-10 he asserted, For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made for woman, but woman for man.) That Paul privileged the second account had enormous implications; his Epistles became part of the canon of the New Testament, carrying apostolic authority. Jerome (c. 342-420) later wrote, "There was but one Adam and but one 13Gregory of Nyssa, De Opi.Hpn,1§, quoted in Ruether, 154. 55 Eve; in fact the woman was fashioned from a rib of Adam."“ The passages concerning the Fall found in Genesis 3 were the subject of much attention from the Christian writers. Not only did they want to affix the blame on Eve for Adam's expulsion from Eden, they wanted to blame all women for humankind's separation from Paradise, as well as for Christ's death. Paul used Eve's guilt to prohibit women from teaching or speaking in church: Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (I Timothy 2:11-15) The power Biblical writers attributed to language is clear: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). The Patristic writers took the power of the word seriously; in Eve's speech, they found deception and seduction, words powerful enough to topple Adam and all humankind. Further, it was the devil's word which seduced and deceived Eve. Thus, Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225), well known for his invectives against women, insisted that women were not only responsible for Adam's Fall, they were also responsible for the presence of evil in the world: they were the "devil's gateway." He wrote: The judgement of this sex lives on in this age; 1"Jerome, "Letter CXXIII: To Ageruchia," in Tne Principal Works of St Jerome, trans. W. H. Fremantle, Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vi (Oxford: James Parker; and New York: Christian Literature, 1893; reprint Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1954), 234. 56 therefore, necessarily the guilt should live on also. You are the gateway of the devil; you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree, and you are the first one to turn your back on the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting; you easily destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because of what you deserve, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.15 Both John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) in his Homily IE on St aul's ist e to Timoth w and Ambrose (c. 339-397)17 picked up on Paul's assertion that Adam was not the transgressor in the Fall, but that Eve should bear the blame. God's punishment of Eve provided for the Patristic writers a basis for women's subjection to men as well as insight into women's lustful nature. In addition, the punishment centered on that which defined women: their 15Tertullian, "The Appearance of Women," in Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medievai Tents, ed. Alcuin Blamires (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 51. This passage from Tertullian has been discussed at length by a variety of scholars including Howard R. Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 40; Brundage, Law Sex and Christian Societ , 64; Anthony Davies, "The Sexual Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons," in A Wyre Tner Was, ed. Juliette Dor (Liege: Liege Language and Literature, 1992), 81-82; MacLean, 15; and Bernard Prusak, "Woman: Seductive Siren and Source of Sin?," in Eeligion and Sexism, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 104-6. 16The Homilies of S. John Chrysostom on the Epistles pf St. Paul to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, Library of Fathers of the Catholic Church (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843) Homily IX, 69-72; quoted in Blamires, 58-60. V Ambrose, "Paradise," 0 era, ed. Schenkl, CSEL 32.1 (Vienna, 1896) 280, in Blamires, 61. (New translation by Blamires.) 57 reproductive systems:18 To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." (Genesis 3:16) The husband's rule over the wife was thus ordered by God; it is doubtful that either early writers or the medieval audience questioned the superiority of the male over the female. Physiologically, intellectually, and spiritually, she was born to be subordinate to man, both naturally, and as a result of her own special punishment. Eleanor McLaughlin notes The punishment for the Fall which relates to human bisexuality differs according to the proper function of each sex. The male of the species, who in the original creation was responsible as the head of the family for its material support, must now procure bread by the sweat of his brow. The woman, whose punishment Thomas [Aquinas] considered the more grave, suffered an aggravation of her natural state of subordination. After the Fall she became subject to male domination, under which she must obey her husband even against her 18The physiological definitions of women clearly see the reproductive systems as central. This is discussed at length in the next chapter. However, religious writers also took this stance. Augustine, for example, argued that the only reason women were created was to help men in reproducing children. He further asserted that in all other forms of help, a male helper would have been preferable. "Consequently," he concluded, "I do not see in what sense the woman was made as a helper for the man if not for the sake of bearing children." The Literai Meaning of Genesis, Ancient Christian Writers, 42, trans. John Hammond Taylor, S.J. (New York: Newman, 1982) 2:75. Aquinas follows Augustine in this point: "It was absolutely necessary to make woman, for the reason Scripture mentions, as a help for man; not indeed to help him in any other work, as some have maintained, because where most work is concerned man can get help more conveniently from another man than from a woman; but to help him in the work of procreation." Summa Theologiae Ia.92, article I, in Blamires, 92. 58 own will.” It is the last phrase of McLaughlin's statement which is the most bothersome, yet one with which both Patristic and medieval religious writers would seem to agree. The subjugation of the wife to the husband in all things automatically erased the possibility of rape within marriage. As noted earlier, sexual intercourse within marriage could never be legally considered rape. The foundation for this opinion was clearly religious. Augustine suggested that violence within marriage could be controlled by the complete submissiveness of the wife required by God. He wrote of his mother in admiring terms: Indeed there were many wives with much milder husbands who bore the marks of beatings, even in the form of facial disfigurement....Yet my mother, speaking lightly but seriously, warned them that the fault was in their tongues. They had all heard, she said, the marriage contract read out to them, and from that day they should regard it as a legal instrument by which they became servents; so, mindful of their station, they should not set themselves up against their masters. And they were often amazed, knowing how violent a husband she had to live with, that it had never been heard of, nor had there been any evidence to show that Patricius had ever beaten his wife;20 The second part of Eve's punishment mandated that although she would have pain in childbirth, she would desire ”Eleanor Commo McLauglin, "Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology," in Reiigion and Sexism, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 219. 20Augustine, "Confessions IX," Selected Writings, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Mary T. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 112. 59 her husband sexually. This punishment provided for medieval audiences a rationale for the widely held belief that women were by nature lustful. Just as Aristotle had posited that women sought completion through intercourse with men, the early Church Fathers assumed that, both by virtue of their bodily nature and by punishment from God, women were sensual, seductive, and lecherous. Jerome, commenting on Proverbs 30:15-16, wrote, It is not the harlot, or the adultress who is spoken of; but woman's love in general is accused of ever being insatiable; put it out, it bursts into flame; give it plenty, it is again in need; it enervates a man's mind, and engrosses all thought except for the passion which it feeds.21 Lust, according to the Fathers, was born in the Fall; and women were considered the primary exciters of lust in men. As such, women and women's sexuality were dangerous. Merely looking at a woman could evoke desire in a man; therefore, the woman was considered the instigator of the man's fall from grace. For this reason, writers from the time of Tertullian advised women to cover themselves, and to avoid contact with men. Tertullian himself wrote, Why are we a danger to another? Why do we cause desire in another? If the Lord in elaborating the law does not make a distinction in penalty between the fact of sexual intercourse and desire, I do not know whether He may leave unpunished a person who has brought someone else to damnation . 22 Ambrose, too, believed that the greater sin was that 21Jerome, "Against Jovinian," Erincipai Works, 367. ‘uTertullian, From the Appearance of Women, in Blamires, 52. 60 of the person who enticed another to sin: A woman covers her face with a veil for this reason, that in public her modesty may be safe. That her face may not easily meet the gaze of a youth, let her be covered with the nuptual veil, so that not even in chance she might be exposed to the wounding of another or ofaherself, though the wound of either were indeed hers. For Ambrose, it was not only the appearance of a woman which could lead a man to sin, but also her voice. As Eve led Adam to sin through her words, "The words of a lascivious woman are the snares of lust....““ Augustine believed that the punishment of Adam's and Eve's disobedience was disobedience.25 For Augustine, this disobedience manifested intself in the genitals: Even so might man have had the obedience of his lower parts, which his own disobedience debarred. For God could easily have made him with all his members subjected to his will, even that which now is not moved but by lust . 26 As Ruether points out, even in Augustine, while the "male erection was the essence of sin, woman, as its source, became peculiarly the cause, object, and extension of . 23Ambrose, "Concerning Repentance," §t_Amprpeer Pr1ncipal WorMs of St Ambrose, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, vol. x, trans. H. de Romestin (Oxford: James Parker, and New York: Christian Literature, 1896; reprint, Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1969), 340. 2"Ambrose, "Concerning Repentance," 341. 25Augustine, The City of God, trans. John Healy (London: J. M. Dent, 1947), 2:54. 26’Augustine, City of God, 55. 61 it."27 Thus, while the early writers in no way condoned rape (they, in fact, rejected sexual intercourse in all forms, as will be discussed below), they also neatly turned the greater responsiblity for the outcome of lust on to the woman who excited lust in the man. In other words, the woman who did not cover herself, keep silent, and lower her gaze could be held responsible for her own sin as well as for the sin to which she enticed the man. A woman who was raped, therefore, was not only responsible in some way for her own rape, but also for the sin of her rapist. Thus, the early writers frequently turned to the Epistles of St. Paul for apostolic authority on the proper conduct of women, most of which concerned insulating men from the dangerous gaze, word, and body of women. In addition, these writers, as well as the medieval theologians who followed them, turned to the scriptures as a treasure trove of examples of both positive and negative role models for women. Not only was the life of the Virgin Mary held up as the model for women to emulate, Anna, Susanna, Deborah, and Judith were favorite scriptural heroines offered to women. Jerome, in "Against Jovinian," offered a catalogue of good women from the Bible as well as from classical writing; tellingly, he presented Lucrece as one of the good women: ”Ruether , 162 . 62 I may pass on to Roman women; and the first I shall mention is Lucretia, who would not survive her violated chastity, but blotted out the stain upon her person with her own blood.28 Dinah and Bathesheba were frequently invoked as the models of wanton women. What I find most interesting in these catalogues is that while women could be labeled "good women" for a variety of reasons including chastity, submissiveness, or obedience, the negative models were nearly always based on the woman's sexuality. Thus, Dinah was impugned because she "went out and was seduced.W” Bathesheba was maligned because David saw her bathing. She was blamed for David's passion for her and indirectly, for the death of her own husband. Of all the scriptural commentary, however, the ones which would have the most profound effect on medieval women were those which advocated virginity. Nearly all the early writers commented on and advocated virginity for women.30 Schulenburg notes, There is a great deal of continuity in the didactic works on virginity. Beginning with St. Paul's injunction on the superiority of virginity, the writings of the Church Fathers firmly implant this concept in the mentality of the Latin West. Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine are 28’Jerome, "Against Jovinian," 382. 29'J'erome, "Letter XXII: To Eustochium," Principe; Works, 32. 30See Peter Brown, The Body end Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renuneiation in Eariy enrietienity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) for an excellent discussion of the roots of sexual virginity and its practice in the early Christian community. 63 especially articulate in their treatment of virginity for women."1 Of the Fathers named above, none was so influential in the medieval period as Jerome. His works, particularly his writings on women, have been found in the catalogues of every major medieval library:32 In the "Prolegomena to Jerome," W. H. Fremantle attributes Jerome's importance to his position as the translator of the Bible into Latin as well as to his introduction of asceticism into the West. Further, Fremantle asserts that He ranks as one of the four Doctors of the Latin Church, and his influence was the most lasting; for, though he was not a great original thinker like Augustine, nor a champion like Ambrose, nor an organizer and spreader of Christianity like Gregory, his influence outlasted theirs. Their influence in the Middle Ages was confined to a comparatively small circle; but the monastic institutions which he introduced, the value for relics and sacred places which he defended, the deference which he showed for Episcopal authority, especially that of the Roman pontiff, were the chief features of the Christian - system for a thousand years; his Vulgate was the Bible of Western Christendom till the Reformation."‘3 Jerome drew on classical as well as scriptural traditions in his call for virginity.“’ His writings on 31Schulenburg, "Heroics," 31. 32Jane Barr, "The Influence of Saint Jerome on Medieval Attitudes to Women," in After Eve, ed. Janet Martin Soskice (London: Collins, Marshall, Pickering, 1980), 99. ?”W. H. Fremantle, "Prolegomena to Jerome," The Principal flerks of derome, xi. For a more thorough discussion of Jerome's influence on attitudes toward women, see Barr, 89-102. “Heffernan, Sacred Biography, 241. 64 virginity took three basic positions: he praised virgins and strenuously urged the preservation of that virginity; he criticized marriage and wives; and he provided guidelines for how virgins should act in order to preserve their virginity. Moreover, when Jerome praised virginity, he included in his definition both physiological and spiritual definitions of virginity. For Jerome, it was not sufficient to be physically a virgin; one must be spiritually pure as well, as he makes clear in his letter to Eustochium. Both the notion of physiological virginity as well as spiritual purity pass from Jerome into the Middle Ages. As Schulenburg argues, For much of the Middle Ages the ideal state for woman, the perfect life as articulated by the Church, was that of integritas, total virginity, that is, uncorrupted sexual and spiritual purity. In the view of the churchmen, there was only one way in which women could transcend their unfortunate sexuality and free themselves from their corporeal shackles, and this was through a life of sexless perfectionQ” Because, as noted above, women were defined by their bodies, and because their bodies were defined as both hotbeds of carnal appetite as well as baby incubator, women who vowed chastity became something other than "women." In effect, Virginal women became like mend“ The emphasis on virginity during the Patristic and medieval periods also led to the degradation of wives. Augustine wrote that a man should :”Schulenburg, "Heroics," 31. 3”See McLaughlin, 234, and Schulenburg, "Heroics," 32. 65 love the creature of God whom he desires to be transformed and renewed, but...hate in her the corruptible and mortal conjugal connection, sexual intercourse, and all that pertains to her as a wife.”' For Aquinas, as well, marriage and the inevitable payment of the "marriage debt" led to a physical degradation of a woman's position. McLaughlin summarizes Aquinas's position: The marriage act has a fundamentally different and unequal effect on the male and female bodies, for in defloration the woman loses her virginity, and thereby loses irretrievably her bodily integrity. She is never whole again. She is as if castrated, despite the integrity of her sexual function, and, for examplefisis unable to enter certain rigorist religious orders. What emerges from this picture is that feminine virginity was so much considered a state of being (which it was for men) as it was considered a possession a woman held. As such, virginity qualified as a commodity, something that could be sold (on the marriage market, for example); stolen (by a rapist); given away (to a lover); or pledged (to Christ and his Church). The Patristic as well as medieval writers described virginity as a treasure; but it was a treasure which could be given only once, and once lost, never recovered}39 I believe that this kind of thinking is in concert with the legal and social constructions of virginity discussed in the last chapter; in those writings, 37Augustine, Ee Sermone Dom, in Monte, quoted by Ruether, 161. inMcLaughlin, 223. 39'Jerome wrote, "I will say it boldly, though God can do all things, He cannot raise up a virgin once she has fallen." "Letter to Eustochium," 24. 66 rape was commonly described as the theft of virginity. What implications, then, does this kind of thinking have for the Virginal victim of rape, for the virgin whose "treasure" is not given, but stolen? Who bears the guilt? In her excellent article, "Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation," Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg summarizes the positions of a number of religious writers on the basic question concerning rape and virginity: what was a virgin to do when threatened with ?m The problem, of course, is that suicide was rape expressly forbidden Christians. Ambrose did not answer this question directly. In Book III of Con ernin Vir ins, he answered his sister Marcellina's question of "what should be thought of those who to escape violence killed themselves?" Ambrose then related the story of Saint Pelagia, who, along with her mother and sisters, drowned herself rather than be taken. Because he used this story as an example of what one sainted virgin did, and because he did not condemn her actions, it would appear that Ambrose approved of this action.“1 Schulenburg quotes Jerome's Commentary en donan as evidence of his position: It is not man's prerogative to lay violent hands upon himself, but rather to freely receive death from others. In persecutions it is not lawful to commit ‘wSchulenburg, "Heroics," 29-72. “Ambrose, Seiect Worke, 386-87. 67 suicide except when one's chastity is jeopardized.“2 Jerome's use of Lucretia mentioned earlier also suggests that he would advise suicide for virgins at risk of losing their virginity. Augustine, on the other hand, took special effort to comfort and reassure women who had been raped during the sack of Rome. Consistent with his customary emphasis on the will and on consent, he cared less for the physical integrity of the virgin than for her disposition . ‘3 However, when discussing the loss of a maidenhead by a woman undergoing a physical examination, although he did not impugn the woman's chastity, he nonetheless wrote that "the integrity of that part had been destroyed."“’ For Augustine, as for other early writers, female virgins were "sealed" beings, their integrity maintained by an intact hymen . ‘5 Aquinas's notion of defloration as corruption, even within marriage, would also suggest that he would see the same kind of corruption in a rape victim. Even if she were ‘QJerome, Commentary on Jonah, quoted by Schulenburg, "Heroics," 34. ‘“Clarissa Atkinson, "'Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass': The Ideology of Virginity in the Later Middle Ages," Journal of Femily History 8 (Summer 1983): 134-5. “Ibid. ‘“The medieval preoccupation with "sealed" virgins is evident in the on-going debate about Mary's womb and the birth of Christ. Ruether reports that by the thirteenth century, it was generally accepted that "Jesus was born in a supernatural fashion" and that Mary's uterus remained closed (247). 68 in no way responsible for her rape (and that would be open to debate in most cases), she would still bear the physical mark of her bodily degradation. The thoughts of Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome found their way into medieval culture through a variety of paths. One point of intersection between the learned Latin culture and the vernacular culture was in the area of pastoral care. The years immediately following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 saw an upsurge of what Boyle calls "pastoralia."“’ Boyle defines this term as written texts, both in Latin and the vernacular, designed to help the parish priest take care of his flock. Included in this broad category were confessional handbooks, penitentials, sermons, and homilies. Bennett notes that "English bishops were eager to encourage their clergy to fulfil their duties instructing the laity in doctrine and especially in u 47 encouraging the practice of confession. He lists a number of texts written in Latin (including the Summa of Raymund de Pennaforte, c. 1234) which remained highly influential throughout the medieval period as well as later texts written in English, including Jacob's Well and The ‘“Boyle, 31. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, And Christian Society, especially 420-79. "J. A. W. Bennett, Middle E lish L'terature, ed. and completed by Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 292. 69 Ayenbite pf Inwit . "8 One effect of this growth of literature designed to disseminate doctrine was the establishment of sexual codes for both the clergy and the laity. Pierre Payer argues, The penitentials were the context in which the most comprehensive code of sexual behaviour was elaborated. They served to specify the whole range of proscribed activities and to establish a certain ranking among the various offences, the latter being accompliShed principally through the differentiated penances which were levied against each kind of offenseJ” Although sexual behavior occupied a prominent place in the penitential literature (nearly one-third of the canons of Theodore's Penitential concerned sexfl5, both Payer and Davies argue that the early penitentials have nothing to say about rape.51 The problem with interpretation of the penitential canons is similar to the one we have when we look at the law: how were the writers using the term raptus? Was raptus used solely as a term for abduction? Or did it imply sexual crime as well? It seems to me that the confusion is not merely linguistic, but is rather attitudinal and substantial. Raptus was considered a crime of property, and I think that it is highly likely that early writers did not differentiate ‘waid. Boyle also discusses what he calls "the second wave of penitential pastoralia" of around 1260, noting that while much of it is in Latin, there was "an appreciable amount in the vernacular all over Europe" (34-35). ”Payer, 116 . soDavies , 100 . S1Davies, 100; Payer, 117. 70 between rape and abduction because pptn were property crimes. Payer would seem to concur: he notes that while the early penitentials seem to interpret reptne as abduction, this does not mean that sexual relations did not take place, merely that the focus of the canons was on the carrying away of wives and virgins.” As noted earlier, Brundage argues that "by the last decade of the eleventh century the canonists had begun to redefine raptus as a sexual offense."”' Penance for the violation of a virgin was four years; for the violation of a neighbor's wife, a man was to "abstain from his own wife for three years; he shall fast for two days each week, and during the forty days of Lent."“' The comparative value of virgins over wives not only reflected the legal atmosphere of the times, it also revealed the continuing influence of the Patristic writers. In addition, in the penitentials we can find the continuing tendency to blame women and their appearance for the sins of men. In the Liber penitentialis of Alan of Lille (written 1198-1203), "sin with a beautiful woman is less serious than with a homely one because her attraction 52Payer , 38 . S3Brundage, Law, Sex and cnristianity, 209. S“Ludwig Bieler, ed., "The Bigotian Penitentials," Tne Irish Penitentiaie, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, vol. 5 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1963), 221. This section of the Bigotian Penitentials cites Theodore as its source. 71 diminishes the sinner's self-control."55 Sheehan notes correctly that while [t]here is nothing of great moment in these little insights...they do suggest the reflection on the mechanisms of sexual attraction and the broad understanding of it that lay behind the moral guidance that this type of treatise sought to provide.“’ One of the most interesting texts which demonstrates the way that the Patristic and early writings on women made their way into the vernacular and to an audience of women is the Ancrene Wisse, written in the West Midlands in the early thirteenth century, originally for three sister anchorites.”' Although the original audience was quite small, Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne argue that the Ancrene Wisse "seems to have been intended from the first for more than its immediate audience."58 Further, Its later history confirms its effectiveness as a work of general spiritual guidance. It was adapted for nuns, for male religious communities, for laymen, and for a general audience. In a period when translation was normally into Latin or French into English, it was translated once into Latin and twice into French; and it continued to be read, copied and borrowed from into the early sixteenth century.59 Thus, the Anerene Wisse had a much larger dissemination than might be at first thought. Most important for this study, 55Sheehan, 39. 56Iloid. 57Bella Millet and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Medieval English Prose for Women: §electigns from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), xi. 5“Millett and Wogan-Browne, xii. 59Ibid. , xii . 72 as Robertson argues, the author of the Ancrene Wisse reveals "contemporary views of female sexuality" in his treatment of "female anchoritic experience.ww Like the earlier writings, the author of the Ancrene Wisse used scripture, citing biblical women as models for proper female conduct. He demonstrated the ways in which even the female gaze was inherently dangerous, offering the result of Eve's gaze at the apple as evidence: Of eue ure alde moder is iwriten on alre earst in hire sunne in3ong of hir ehsihbe....Eue biheold o be for boden eappel. & she hine feier & feng to delitin ipe bi. haldunge. & toc hire lust per toward. & nom & et prof & 3ef hire lauered. low hu hali writ speko. & hu inwardli che hit teleo hu sunne bigon. pus eode sunne biuoren & makede wei to uuel lust. com pe ded prefter pe al moncun ifeleb. (Of Eve our first mother it is written that sin found its very first entry into her through her sight..."Eve looked on the forbidden apple and saw it was fair; and she began to delight in looking at it, and set her desire on it, and took and ate of it, and gave it to her husband." See how Holy Writ speaks, and how profoundly it tells the way sin began, thus: sight went before and made a way for harmful desire--and the act that all humanity feels came after it.)61 The passage echoes Tertullian's "devil's gateway" commentary cited above. Moreover, passages such as this were written to encourage the young anchorites to remain "sealed" to the outside world; even a look to the outside could be dangerous both for themselves and for those on whom 60Robertson, Devotional Prose, 45. 61J. R. R. Tolkien, ed., Ancrene Wisse, EETS 249 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 31; translation, Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality; Ancrene Wisse and Associeted Works, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 67. 73 they might gaze.“: The author offers the stories of Dinah and Bathsheba as examples:‘3 A Meiden as dyna het iacobes dohter was hit teleb i Genesy. eode ut to bihalden uncoube wummen. 3et ne seio hit nawt pet ha biheold wepmen. Ant hwet come wenest tu of be bihaldunge? ha leas hire meidenhad & wes imaket hore. prefter if pet ilke weren trowoen to brokene of hehe patriarches. & a muchel burh. forbearned. ant te king & his sunne & te burhmen islein. pe wummen ilead fora. hire feader & her brebren se noble princes as ha weren. utlahen imakede. pus eode ut hire sihbe. ("A maiden, Jacob's daughter, called Dinah," as it tells in Genesis, "went out to look at strange women"-- yet it does not say that she looked at men. And what do you think came of that looking? She lost her maidenhood and was made a whore. Thereafter, because of that same act, the pledge of high patriarchs were broken and a great city was burned, and the king, his son and the citizens were slain, the women led away. Her father and her brothers were made outlaws, noble princes though they were. This is what came of her looking . )6‘ The shift from active ("ha leas") to passive voice ("wes imaket") is particularly interesting; Dinah was both subject and object in her own rape. Moreover, her rape was clearly her own fault, and caused the ruin of her male family members as well as the city. The passage in which the author describes Bathsheba, ‘QSee Finke, Feminist Tneory, 75-98, for a discussion of the enclosure of religious women. She writes, "Women had to be enclosed, restricted, and isolated because, in the eyes of the Church, she was the quintessence of all fleshly evil, a scapegoat--the 'devil's gateway' or 'devil's mousetrap'--whose expulsion allowed the Church to purge itself of the corruption of the body"(87). ‘SSee Robertson, Devotional Erose, for a discussion of the connection between these passages and the Latin sermons of St. Bernard. ‘“Tolkien, 32; Savage and Watson, 68. 74 he also blames her for David's sin: she "caused him to sin with her."65 The concern of the writer is to warn the young anchoresses of what could befall both themselves and the priests they might happen to see. Again, the emphasis is on the enclosure of the dangerous feminine gaze. The following passages from the Anerene_flieee expand on the same theme: women should shroud their appearance, isolate themselves from men, and enclose themselves. If they uncover themselves, they are responsible not only for their own sin, but also for the sin of anyone who gazes upon them. The author compares women to a pit of evil ("Everything to do with her, whatever it may be, which might readily awaken sinful love, Our Lord calls all of it a pit.")“’that must be covered so that men do not fall into the pit. He concludes: You who uncover this pit, you who do anything by which a man is carnally tempted through you, even if you do not know it, fear this judgement greatly. And if he is tempted so that he sins mortally in anyway, even if it is not with you, but with desire toward you, or if he tries to fulfill with someone else the temptation which has been awakened through you, because of your deed, be quite sure of the judgment. For opening the pit you must pay for the animal, unless you are absolved of it. You must, as they say, suffer the rod, that is suffer for his sin.‘57 That is, should the anchoresses allow a man to view them, and if that man would commit any kind of sexual crime, 65Savage and Watson, 68. “Savage and Watson, 69. 67Ibid. 75 presumably even rape, the anchoresses themselves would be responsible for the man's sin. They are, therefore, advised to keep themselves covered, enclosed, and sealed away from the view of men. The image of the "sealed virgin" emerges again in HQIIEMQIQQQQ, a text contemporary with the Ancrene Wisse. In Hali Meionad, virginity is clearly defined as physicel virginity; an intact hymen was that which "sealed" her to Christ:‘58 Ant tu penne, eadi meiden, pet art iloten to him wio meibhades merke, ne brec pu nawt pet seil pet seieb inc togederes....Mei6had is pet tresor pet, beo hit eanes forloren, ne bib hit neauer ifunden. Meibhad is be blostme pet, beo ha fulliche eanes forcuren, ne spruteb ha eft neauer. 69 (And you then, blessed maiden, who are assigned to him with the mark of virginity, do not break that seal which seals you both together....Virginity is the treasure which, if it is once lost, will never be found again. Virginity is the blossom which, if it is once completely cut off, will never grow again.)m The influence of both Jerome and Ambrose are evident in this text; not only is virginity exalted, marriage and wives are described in the most dreadful terms imaginable. Once again, virginity is treated as a possession, something which could be lost, sold, or pledged. In several places, Jo Ann McNamara has persuasively argued that religious women's power steadily declined “Atkinson , 138 . 69'Millett and Wogan-Browne, 8, 10. "Millett and Wogan-Browne, 9, 11. 76 throughout the thirteenth century.71 It is tantalizing to conjecture what the effect the call to enclosure and virginity had on women's power during this period. The elevation of virginity made the threat of rape far more fearsome and isolation from men far more attractive. In addition, if women believed that they could condemn themselves to mortal sin because of their appearance, they would also be more likely to isolate themselves from men. Thus, the concentration on virginity and enclosure could have contributed to the declining role of women in the Church. Later in the period, sermon literature also worked to disseminate the doctrines concerning women to the population at large. Woodburn 0. Ross edited one such collection of Middle English sermons from British Library MS Royal 18 B. xxiii. He writes, Since these sermons are written in the vernacular, they are, as we have seen, in all probability designed for delivery to lay audiences. It is natural, therefore, that they should never deal subtly with theological questions, but should attempt to explain in a simple fashigp the significance and proper conduct of human life. 71See, for example, JoAnn McNamara"pe Qnipusdem Muiieribus: Reading Women's History from Hostile Sources," in Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 237- 58; and "The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages," in ma es 0 int ood in dieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 199-221. 72Woodburn 0. Ross, Middie English Sermons, EETS 209 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), lv. 77 Middle English sermons provided a host of exempla for women to follow in their own conduct as well as warnings to men to beware womanly guile. Not surprisingly, the female biblical figures cited by the early Church Fathers were the same ones chosen by the Middle English writers. Judith, for example, was called "pat nobull womman.“n Yet even in the story of Judith, the woman defeats the man through the beauty of her appearance. Thus, it is difficult in this sermon to know whether to read the story as an example to . women or a warning to men. The Virgin Mary was, of course, the prime example of maidenly virtue and beauty. Interestingly, the language used to describe the Virgin Mary in Sermon 49, written at the end of the fourteenth century, was strikingly similar to that of the descriptions of maidens found in contemporary romance 3 And when he [St. Denis] saw hure he was so gretely raueshed with be sight of hur, pat had he not ben pe bettur enformed in be fey3the, he would have beleued on no God but in hure alone. So pat it may well be seid of hure..."she was sondurly faire, and fayrer pan I may tell, and she was luffyng and gracious in euery mans sight." So pan pat she is fayrest, clennest, and wurthiest of all opure creatures. Jerome's reverence for virginity is also clearly Present in the Middle English sermons, as Sermon 51 demonstrates: Frendes, as wittenes a gret clerke Seynt Ierome in a 73Ibid., 153. 7"Iloid., 325. 78 boke pat he mad, Contra Ieuinianum, pe paynyms pat arn myslevyn...[i]n pe old tyme, pei had maydyns in so gret reuerence and wurshipp pat in be wurthy cite of Rome, iff pe emperour hym-selfe had met with a mayde in be strete, he wold haue 3eu[en hu]r pe veye and stond still til she had ben passed, in be reuerence of maydenhode and of clennes. But opur maner of pepull. pat is to sey pe Iewes, held not beest with maydeyns, but be wommen pat brou3the forthe children....Now Cristen men make a knotte of pise too togepur and worshippe pe moste a womman pat is Marie, for she is bothe clene mayden and also full of frute... It has been argued repeatedly that this elevation of Mary in some way demonstrated an elevation of the status of women during the later medieval period. Indeed, within the Middle English sermons, nearly every reference to Eve was balanced with a reference to Mary, and men were entreated not to despise women. Nonetheless, I find the exemplar use of Mary problematic: what woman could be both "clene and full of frute"? As McLaughlin asserts, although Mary provided a "feminizing element" in the patriarchal church, [T]he medieval cult of the Virgin at every level, theological and popular, displayed an androcentric bias that, rather than deepening an appreciation of the bipolarity of God's creation or female equivalence, underlined the weakness, inferiority, and subordination of real females{“ In conclusion, religious writing both in Latin and in the vernacular offered to later Middle English writers a host of texts to write and re-write. These texts offered often conflicting pictures of women and women's conduct; of physicality and spirituality; and of sex and sexual ”Ibid. , 329. 'nMcLaughlin, 246. 79 violence. In the next chapter, we shall turn to a discussion of the medical ideas and texts which permeated medieval culture. Like legal and religious ideas, medical ideas offer one more strand in the contextual tapestry. CHAPTER 3 ANATOMY AS DESTINY: MEDICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN AND SEXUALITY Medieval medicine may at first seem like a strange place to look for insight into rape in the Middle Ages. However, on closer examination, the pervasiveness of medical theory and medical texts in the culture implies that any study of rape, women, and power would be incomplete without an examination of these texts. Indeed, the discussion of religous writing in the last chapter should help demonstrate how closely intertwined were ideas from theology and ideas from medicine. First, medical and scientific texts survive in large numbers, suggesting that their dissemination during the period under discussion was widespread.1 Such widespread dissemination also suggests that the ideas produced and reproduced in these texts would find their way into the culture at large. Rossell Hope Robbins, in a reexamination 1See Linda E. Voigts, "Scientific and Medical Books," in Eopk Produetion and Publishing in Eritain:1325 - i575, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 345-402, for an overview of surviving scientific and medical manuscripts. See also Monica Green, "Obstetrical and Gynecological Texts," for a description of thirty manuscripts containing eleven different obstetrical and gynecological texts. 80 81 of the Singer Survey, notes that the number of medical manuscripts in Latin in the twelfth century is double of that from the eleventh.2 ‘When we look at the thirteenth century, we find that the number of medical manuscripts in Latin increased over eight-fold. This increased interest in medical and scientific texts intersected in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the rise of the vernacular.3 Consequently, these texts were the focus of wide-scale translation from Latin into Middle English. Translation into a vernacular, of course, implies that the texts would be accessible to a wider body of readers than texts which remained in Latin. Moreover, as should be evident from the preceding chapters, ideas from medicine, religion, and law migrated across disciplines during the medieval period. Issues of sexuality found expressions in each of these areas, and the discussions frequently bled from one perspective into another. Joan Cadden speaks of this blurring of boundaries when she points out that most of the medical writers and 2Rossell Hope Robbins, "Medical Manuscripts in Middle English," Speculum 45 (1970): 393-415. See also Robbins' earlier article, "A Note on the Singer Survey of Medical Manuscripts in the British Isles," gneueer Eeyiew 5 (1969): 66-70. 3See Lister Matheson, ed., Eepniar end Precticei Seience pf Medievai Englend (East Lansing: Colleagues, 1994). 82 natural philosophers were also clerics.‘ Furthermore, lawyers drew on both medical and religious writings to form opinions under the law. Medical definitions of conception, for example, became important in formulating laws concerning inheritance and rape. Increasingly, an idea found in one discipline migrated to other disciplines as a commonplace; as such, it carried with it the weight of authority. It became what "everybody knew."5 Therefore, although medical manuscripts make little mention of rape directly, the texts provide a context within which rape can be understood. As Nancy G. Siraisi argues, [T]he history of medicine...illuminates broad social and cultural patterns of the period....And--although here the historian needs to tread with caution-- attitudes, beliefs, and doctrines embedded in medicine may illuminate fundamental cultural assumptions about the human body, illness and wellness, the characteristics and relations of the sexes and the stages of human life from infancy to old age.‘ Thus, by describing the physiology and anatomy of women as well as discussing menstruation, conception, and female health problems, medical texts reveal commonly held attitudes toward women while illuminating a particular kind “Joan Cadden, "Medieval Scientific Views of Sexuality: Questions of Propriety," Medievaiia et Humanistice, New Series 14 (1986): 162. 5See Maclean, 4-5. Although Maclean's study is focused on the Renaissance, his understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of the period is based on his examination of medieval texts. 6Nancy G. Siraisi, Medievei end Eerly Benaissence Medicine; An Introdnction te Kneyiedge and Eractice (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990), ix-x. 83 of worldview. In addition, medical texts provide a commentary on attitudes toward sexuality and sexual intercourse, further situating rape. As Linda E. Voigts argues, Middle English medical texts can be approximately divided into two types: the theoretical, academic medical text on the one hand and the popular, practical remedy book on the other.7 The relationship existing between the theory and practice of medicine is similar to that existing between the theory and practice of law as suggested in Chapter 1 of this study, or that between philosophical religious writing and the vernacular guidebooks, treated in Chapter 2. This chapter, then, will first attempt to outline briefly the theoretical foundations of Western medicine as they concern women, before turning to an examination of a widely disseminated practical handbook, Henry Daniel's Liber Uricrisiernm. Medieval medical knowledge was based on traditions originating in Greece. Some of the most influential works 7Linda E. Voigts, "Editing Middle English Texts: Needs and Issues," in Editing Texts in tne History of Seience and Medicine, ed. Trevor H. Levere (New York: Garland, 1982), 44. 8A number of writers trace the transmission of Greek theoretical medical traditions from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, including George Corner, Anatomical Texte of the Earlier Middle Ages: A Study in tne Transmission of Culture (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1927); John M. Riddle, "Theory and Practice in Medieval Medicine," Vietor 5 (1974): 157-84; and Stanley Rubin, Medieval English Medicine (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974). Perhaps the best discussion, however, particularly in regards to the transmission of ideas about women, is provided by Monica Green in "The Transmission of Ancient 84 were written by Hippocrates and his followers, dating from the fifth or fourth century B.C.9 .Aristotle also wrote on medicine in his treatises of natural philosophy. Soranus, writing in the second century A.D.,10 produced a treatise entitled gynecoipgy, which proved to be particularly influential in the treatment of women's diseases. According to Nancy Siraisi, however, "Greek medicine reached its fullest development in Galen (c. A.D. 200)...one of the greatest scientists of antiquity."11 Galen's most important contribution may have been the way he synthesized the body of medical and scientific literature available to him. These early Greek writings made their way into the medieval world through one of two routes: in the West, many of these treatises were translated into Latin; in the East, the traditions passed first through Byzantium and then into 12 Arabic. It was through the Islamic route that the great medical encyclopedists, Rhazes, Avicenna, and Averroes, Theories of Female Physiology and Disease through the Early Middle Ages," dissertation, Princeton University, 1985. 9Siraisi, 1. 10Green, "Transmission," 2. 11Siraisi, 4. 12See the introduction to James Scanlan's translation of Albert the Great: Man and tne Beasts, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton Press, 1987); Eileen Power, Women Healers in Medieval Life and Literatnre (Freeport: Books for Libraries, 1968), 66-67; and Green, "Transmission,” 1-5. 85 contributed to medieval medical knowledge. The western Latin translations and the Arabic translations were brought together by Constantine the African when he brought the Arabic texts to southern Europe in the eleventh century.13 The physiological and anatomical writings of these early writers are of particular interest here. The Galenic tradition was certainly the most influential in this regard, although the more learned practitioners also drew upon Aristotle.“ It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the early writings were in agreement with each other over the fundamental questions of anatomy and physiology. Indeed, It became a medical commonplace that a series of differences over specific physiological issues separated "the philosophers and the physicians"....The differences were real enough, being those between the physiological doctrines of Aristotle, the master of the philosophers, and those of Galen and his followers.15 One of the most fundamental questions on which the theorists differed was the nature of women. Was woman a separate species from man? Was there a qualitative difference in physiology between men and women? Aristotle believed that woman was essentially a deficient male, incomplete in that her sexual organs have remained internal. Only through sexual intercourse with the male could she 1"'Green, "Transmission," 2. 1"Siraisi, 80. 1SSiraisi, 80-81. 86 6 become more nearly complete.1 Furthermore, Aristotle believed he had scientific evidence of female inferiority and held that women were not only intellectually but morally inferior to men. Proof for such a conclusion he said could be seen in nature where the male of each species was demonstrably more advanced than the female--larger, stronger, and more agile.17 Galen, too, believed in the inferiority of women: The female is less perfect than the male for one, principal reason--because she is colder; for among animals the warm one is the more active, a colder animal would be less perfect than a warmer. A second reason is one that appears in dissecting...think first, please, of the man's sexual organs turned in and extending inward between the rectum and the bladder. If this should happen, the scrotum would necessarily take the place of the uterus, with the testes lying outside, next to it on either side; the penis of the male would become the neck of the cavity than had been formed; and the skin at the end of penis, now called prepuce, would become the female pudendum itself....In fact, you could not find a single male part left over that had not simply changed its position; for the parts that are inside in women are outside in man....Now just as mankind is the most perfect of all animals, so within mankind the man is more perfect than the woman, and the reason for his perfection is his excess of heat, for heat is Nature's primary instrument. Hence in those animals who have less of it, her workmanship is necessarily more imperfect, and so it is no wonder that the female is less perfect than the male by as much as she is colder than he....For the parts were formed within her when she was still a fetus, but could not because of the defect in the heat emerge and project on the outside, and this, though making the animal itself that was being formed less perfect than one that is complete in all respects, provided no small advantage for the race; for there needs must be a female. Indeed, you ought not to think that our Creator would purposely make half the whole race imperfect, and, as it were, mutilated, unless there was to be some great 16Maclean, 30-31. 17Vern L. Bullough, "Medieval and Scientific Views of Women," Viater 4 (1973): 487. 87 advantage in such a mutilation.18 Soranus, on the other hand, concluded that there was not really any generic difference between men and women and that they should receive the same kind of medical treatment.” Averroes, too, found that men and women were essentially the same, although men were "more efficient" than women . 2° Complexion theory, developed by Galen and incorporated by later medical writers, was at the heart of medieval medical knowledge. Avicenna, in particular, wove together strands from Galen and Aristotle in his further refinement. The theory stated that each person had his own, unique "complexion," a point on a continuum between heat and cold, and between dry and moist. As a rule, women were colder and moister than men, although there were individual differences. In addition, individual organs of the body had their own complexions. The best complexion was one that was well-balanced; however, complexion theory also supported the superiority of men over women because, as noted above, hotness was better than coldness, and dryness was superior to moistness. Closely related to complexion theory was the notion of 18Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (Ee usu partinm), trans. Margaret Tallmade May (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), 2:628-30. ‘”Bullough, "Medieval Medical Views," 488. 2011616. , 488. 88 the four humors: blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile. Humoral theory found expression very early in the Hippocratic writings. Later writing on the humors was heavily influenced by Aristotle's writing on blood.21 Avicenna, again, systematized the theory, demonstrating that there were good and bad varieties of each of the humors. The bad varieties, or superfluities, must be expelled from the body in order to ensure health.‘22 Semen, for example, was considered to be refined, purified blood, a nearly perfect substance. On the other hand, menstrual blood, which, according to Aristotle, was "the secretion in females which answers to semen in males," was considered to be a dangerous superfluity, both to the men who might come in contact with it and to the woman producing it herself.‘23 Women were considered to have an excess of superfluities; thus, the purging of these superfluities was given a good deal of attention in gynecological and medical treatises. Perhaps not surprisingly, medieval medical writers devoted most of their writing on women to conception and the reproductive systems. At issue was what, if anything, a woman contributed to the conception of a child. According to the Aristotelian system, the woman provided only the 2'siraisi, 105. 22mid. , 105 . ‘aAristotie; Generetion of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck, (London: Heinemann; and Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), quoted in Blamires, 39. 89 place where conception took place, while the male provided the life force. "A woman," according to Aristotle, "is as it were an infertile male; the female, in fact, is female on account of inability of a sort, viz., it lacks the power to concoct semen out of the final state of nourishment."“‘ A female child, furthermore, was the result of some defect in the conception; the perfectly conceived fetus became a male. The Hippocratic writings, and later the Galenic system, however, held that the woman produced a seed, just as the man, and the ejaculation of these seeds must be simultaneous in order for conception to take placed25 Therefore, both parents contributed to the child, and the child could have characteristics of either parent.“’ Although the Aristotelian explanation was largely accepted by medieval scientists, the "two seed theory" and the notion of female semen put a strange spin on the legal definition of rape. The theorists argued that if the woman did indeed produce a seed, she must first have felt desire in order for her to ejaculate her seed. Thus, the woman who became pregnant must have experienced desire. Therefore, a woman who became pregnant would find it difficult to appeal rape legally, since her pregnancy offered proof of her consent to 2"Aristotle, Generation of Animeis, quoted in Blamires, 40. 25Helen Lemay, "William of Saliceto on Human Sexuality," Viator 12 (1982): 166. 2"’Siraisi, 110. 90 and desire for the sexual contact. Some theorists, William of Conches, for example, argued that a woman could still become pregnant through rape because although she might struggle at first, eventually she would feel desire and emit her seed.27 This issue remained apparently unresolved during the Middle Ages in England. Both ideas can be found in Middle English manuscripts, sometimes in the same manuscript. In addition, the fact that there were court cases in which the male built his defense against the appeal of rape upon the pregnancy of the woman also points out that a discrepancy existed between the theoretical medical writings and the practical application of those theories. Sexuality and sexual intercourse also interested the medieval medical writers. William of Conches believed that women in general were more passionate and desirous of sex than were men, due to their cold nature: When she has reached the age for coitus, she has much greater enjoyment from this activity than her hotter partner. Since the womb is naturally cold, and the sperm is naturally hot, the woman experiences pleasure from the temperate state that is brought about by the mixture of the two.“’8 Although religious writers believed that women's passion for men was due to the punishment inflicted upon them because of Eve's sin, the conclusion that women were more lecherous 27For a discussion of William of Conches's theory of conception see Ferrante, 51; and Lemay, "William of Saliceto," 171-72. ‘mQuoted by Lemay, "William of Saliceto," 171-72. 91 than men coincided with the belief of the medical writers. Thus, medieval writers had authority from two traditions reinforcing each other about the nature of women's sexuality. In addition, sexual intercourse was considered necessary for the health of a woman for a number of reasons. First, many medieval writers subscribed to the theory of the "wandering womb" or suffocation of the womb. According to Monica Green, "The notion of 'hysterical suffocation' or the 'wandering womb' permeates all the Hippocratic treatises on gynecology."”’ The theory was that the womb needed to be kept moist; if it were not, it would roam about the body in search of moisture. If the womb attached itself to the lungs, the woman would suffocate. If it attached itself to her stomach, she would lose her appetite. If it attached itself to her heart, she could lose consciousness or have convulsions.30 The most obvious way to prevent this dire problem was to engage in regular sexual intercourse; this presented, of course, a moral dilemma for young, unmarried women and widows alike. Although Galen rejected the theory of the wandering ”Green, "Transmission," 20. 30For descriptions of uterine migration, see Lemay, "William of Salecito," 177; Bullough, "Medieval Ideas," 495; and Green, "Transmission," 19-20. Beryl Rowland also discusses uterine migration at length in her introduction to Medieval Woman's Guide to Health (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1981). The so-called Trotula manuscripts nearly all devote long passages to the description of and treatment for suffocation of the womb. 92 womb, he nevertheless suggested that the same symptoms could be caused by a lack of sexual intercourse, although for a different reason. He argued that women who did not engage in sexual intercourse did not eliminate their seed, and that this seed would become corrupt, leading to a cooling of the body, which in turn would produce hysteria.31 Orgasm was the only way to expel the female semen. While sexual intercourse was presented most often as a cure for women's diseases, it occasionally was also prescribed for male maladies as well. Rubin reports that In 1114, the dying Thomas, Archbishop of York, was told by his medical advisers that recovery was impossible "except by means of carnal knowledge of a woman." His anguished reply came: "Shame upon a malady which requires sensuality for its cure!" and he chose to die in virgin purity.3 Another problem area for women, according to medieval medicine, was the retention of superfluities, specifically menstrual blood. As noted above, menstrual blood was considered by the writers to be corrupt and even dangerous to those who came in contact with it. This notion, of course, says something even more fundamental about the way women were viewed: because women had an excess of superfluities, or bad humors, which needed to be purged monthly, and because men had no such excess, women were physiologically and naturally more corrupt than men. Again, although the medical writers used different reasoning from 3”Bullough, "Medieval Medical," 495. ”Rubin, 124 . 93 religious writers (who connected women with flesh and the body because of the nature of their creation and because of Eve's punishment), the conclusions reached by both the medical and religious writers were the same. Further, should a woman conceive while having her menstrual period, it was thought by medical writers that her offspring would be leprous."3 The early Church Fathers specifically forbade coitus during the menstrual period and these injunctions continued on through the late medieval period.“’ A number of the medical writers suggested, however, that sexual intercourse during a woman's period was beneficial in the expelling of the menstrual blood and thus was beneficial for the woman's healthc"S Sexual intercourse was not always thought to be beneficial for men, however. Avicenna, Constantinus Africanus, and Albertus Magnus agreed that "indulgence in copulation depletes the body fluid, weakens the brain, reduces the potency of the sperm and leads to premature death.““ Intercourse could also be the source of leprosy 33'Henry Handerson, ed., Gilbertus Angiicus: Medicine pf the Thirteenth Qentnry (Cleveland: Cleveland Medical Library Association, 1918), 49. “See Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 53; 91- 2; 156; 199; 242; 283; 451; and 508. Brundage also describes fully other occasions for abstinence from coitus. 35See discussion of Henry Daniel, below. 36Scanlan, 20. 94 or arthritis for a man.“’ Medical writers did agree on one point: it was the right and responsibility of the male to initiate sexual intercourse. Isidore of Seville, for example, believed that men were stronger than women, and that women should be subject to men because of the difference in their strength: Man [vir] is so named because there is greater force [vis] in him than in women [feminis]--hence also the word "strength" [virtus]--or, he is so named because he controls woman [feminam] forcefully [yi]....For the two sexes are differentiated in the strength [fortitudine] and weakness [imbecillitate] of their bodies. Thus there is the greatest strength [virtns] in man [viri], and less in woman [mulieris] so that she might be forbearing to man; otherwise, if women were to repel them, sexual desire might compel men to desire something else or rush off to another sex. Isidore, in a brief space, neatly justified rape: men by nature should be able to overcome women sexually in order to prevent homosexuality or worse. By the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, the theories of the early medical writers found their way into the burgeoning number of medical texts being produced in Middle English. Although some texts were specifically gynecological in nature (the Middle English Trotula manuscripts, for example), nearly all the more general medical texts had portions devoted solely to the description of women's anatomy and physiology as well as to the ”Rubin, 153; 202 . 38Isidore of Seville, Etymplegiee, trans. Alcuin Blamires in Woman Defemed and Woman Eefended, 43. 95 39 treatment of women's diseases. One such text is Henry Daniel's Liber Uricrisiarnm. Thomas Kaeppeli lists twenty-three manuscripts of Henry Daniel's work."’0 All of these are in Middle English except for Glasgow University, Hunterian Mus. U. 8.30, which is in Latin. In most manuscripts, the prologue is in Latin, as it is in Trinity College MS. 1473. However, British Library Royal 17 D.i has the prologue in English. Most of 39Scholars have traditionally seen the Trotula manuscripts as being written for a female audience. Beryl Rowland calls the text "A landmark in women's attempts to seek solace and assistance from other women"(xiii). Monica Green, on the other hand, argues that while women may have initially provided for their own health care, and were probably responsible for childbirth through the sixteenth century, "there was also a world of interface between male practitioners and female patients--a world where women practitioners were gradually being restricted to a role as subordinate and controlled assistants in matters where, because of socially constructed notions of propriety, men could not practice alone. Women's health was women's end men's business, the latter being interested if for no other reason than their concern as husbands and fathers for the production of healthy (and legitimate) heirs or, as medical practitioners, for the potential profit to be made in treating the wives and daughters of their wealthier clients." "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe," Signs 14 (1989): 473. Green's arguments are compelling; although it is not within the scope of this dissertation to enter into the controversy, I believe that it is clear that when we are discussing medical manuscripts, we are talking about male writers writing to a male audience. While women may be the subject of the discourse, they are neither the producers nor consumers of that discourse. ‘wThomas Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordiniis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi (Rome: S. Sabinae, 1975), 2:192; see also Ralph Hanna III, "Henry Daniel's Liber Uricrisiarum, Book 1, Chapters 1- 3, " in Popular and Practical Science of Medieval En land, ed. Lister Matheson (East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues, 1994) 185-218, for further information on the texts. 96 the manuscripts listed in Kaepelli are dated from the fifteenth century, although there is one fourteenth-century manuscript and two sixteenth-century manuscripts. Short tracts using urine as a means of diagnosis were "among the first writings to be translated from Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages and formed part of the ertieelie or university curriculum.“1 As noted above, the Greek writings of Hippocrates and Galen did not come into Latin directly from Greek, but were rather first translated by the Arabic writers, most notably Avicenna and Isaac Israeli."‘2 To the Greek writing, the Arabic writers added their own interest in alchemy, astrology, and medical botany. Daniel worked as one of the first translators of these works into English; Kaeppeli dates the Liter Mrierieiernm to 1378-795“ Hanna notes, "Because it is in English, the work stands as a major (and very early) effort at popularization of sophisticated scientific materials.w“ Daniel's work was based on Isaac Israeli's De Urinis. However, Daniel did not limit himself to this source, and frequently quoted Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Gilbertus Anglicus, Avicenna, and even Augustine and Jerome. Daniel obviously wanted to include all information to which he had ‘“Peter Murray Jones, Medieyel Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), 57. ‘QEileen Power, Women Heeiers, 66-67. “Kaeppeli , 192 . “Hanna, 186. 97 access in order to help English physicians. Sometimes, however, getting his authorities to agree was difficult: Aftir thise things that ben said in the firste trete for to goo to owere purpos, undirstond that ther ben 20 colours of vrin and though it be so that som sai 40 som 48 som 50 som 52, neforthan the morer dele of auctours...of owere dais maken distinctions but of 20 colours and sain that this nombir sufficit. (After what has been said in the first treatise for our purpose, understand that there are twenty colors of urine, although some say that there are forty, some forty-eight, some fifty, some fifty-two, nevertheless, most authors...of our day distinguish only twengy colors and say that that number is sufficient.)‘ Although Daniel's text is primarily concerned with urine, it also contains a whole host of medical information.“’ Passages contain information on “ Trinity College Cambridge MS. 1473, f. 16v. All subsequent quotations from Liber Mrierisiarum are from this manuscript, unless otherwise noted; folio citation will appear in the text. All translations from Liber Urierisiarum are my own, unless otherwise noted. ‘“The following table of contents demonstrates the wide-ranging subjects covered by Daniel: The firste boke hath 4 capitles On Of significacion or of knowyng of be word vria 2. What vryne is were of. And how it is made 3. Of generacoun of vryn 4. Wyth purges and how many ben to be Consideryd of a leech and how he schall haue hym in demyng The secunde boke hath 14 capitlis 1. Of colurs in ordre 2. De nigro colore or blake coloure 3. De liuido colore or blo coloure 4. De Albo colore or wyte coloure 5. De Blanco colore or 3owh colore 6. De lacteo color or milke whyte coloure 7. De colore karapos, 8. De pallid colore or pale colors. De citrus colore or cykne coloure 98 bloodletting, veins, astrology, "wikid tokenes," complexion theory, and humor theory. In addition, scattered throughout the text are passages which relate directly to women and women's health. Some of these passages, particularly the test for fertility and the descriptions of suffocation of the uterus, bear resemblance to passages from the "Trotula" manuscript noted above. The sections of Daniel's work concerning women, while brief, are nevertheless revealing. Men were clearly the norm for the culture. At several points, in fact, 10. De ruso colore or redische coloure 11. De rube colore or rede coloure 12. De rubicundo colore or blod rede coloure 13. De color Yiropos or sumwhat rede coloure 14. De viride colore or grene coloure The thridde boke hath 20 capitlys 1. De contentis of vrie or Of the content of pe vryn 2. De cerclis vrine or cerclys of pe vryn 3. De Diuapullis or burablis of vryn 4. De Grime or of graynes of vryn 5. De nebula or of a clowde of vryn 6. De spuma vrine or of froth yn vryn 7. De stond vrie or of qutte in vryn 8. De pringuedie vrine or of fatteness of [of] vryn 9. De humoure ceudo or of raw humours yn vryn 10. De sangren vrine or of blodd yn vryn 11. De daxins or of griel yn vryn 12. De pisis vrie or of herys in vryn 13. De ffirabrum or of studys of brayne vryne 14. De cuodibrun or of resolucions of the appetite Of the thrydde perte of the whyche corn in vryn 15. De sirnamus or of socles in vryn 16. De asthois or of motys in vryn 17. De spermate or of sperme in vryn 18. De cunbrum or of assches in vryn 19. De ypostasy in vryn 20. Of the general rules That ysaac sethyt in the Ende of hys boke of vryns 99 discussions of women's urine are intermixed with discussions of beasts' urine. Men's urine was superior to women's, according to Daniel: For then euermore the vrin of a man is naturalli more li3th and more bri3t then the womans vrin, and the womans vrin more swartische & more derke and more dimisch than mannis. And the skill is for woman of what complexion sche be, sche is frigida & nnmi_e. And man of what complexion he be, he is naturalich caiidns & siccus or more hotter & drie then a woman. And also because of filthis and corupcions that bredin in hem more than in man. (f. 13r) (Always the urine of a man is naturally lighter and brighter than a woman's urine, and woman's urine is blacker and darker and dimmer than man's. And the reason is that no matter what complexion a woman might be, she is naturally cold and moist. And no matter what complexion a man might be, he is naturally hotter and drier than a woman. And also because of the filth and corruption that breeds in her more than in man.) For Daniel, menstruation was the purgation of filthy, corrupt superfluities; and although this was necessary for a woman's health, it was nonetheless described as a malady, or sickness: ry3t as be drestis and the felthe in a vesselle drawith done to pe botim ry3t so al pe corrupcion and a1 pe fole matere of superfluities of foule matere of pe humouris in a womanis body....pat foule matiere is of al pe superfluities pa 4 humours and it cometh from hem or from wemen by here neper membre, frome pe matryce, as filthe and grotte out of a kychene gope.....And it stondith most by here sperme and here foule corrupte blod and it stynkith and pei also ful foule. We callyn pis maladie menstruum engiiee monethe evyl or wommans sekenes. (f. 27r) (just as the dregs and the filth of a vessel draw down to the bottom, so shall all the corruption and the foul matter of superfluities of foul matter of the humors in a woman's body...[T]hat foul matter is of all the superfluities of the four humors and it comes from her or from woman through her 100 nether member, from the uterus, as filth and garbage go out of a kitchen.... And it is made up mostly of her sperm and her foul corrupt blood and it stinks and it is very foul. We call this malady menstruum, in English, monthly evil or woman's sickness.) Menstruation posed a double threat for men, according to Daniel. During her monthly period, a woman was particularly lecherous and in need of sexual intercourse; however, contact with menstrual blood could be dangerous or even fatal for a man: And yf a man knowe a womman whille sche hape pat sekenesse and sche hadde lever pen all pe worlde for pen is here most appetid to lecchere. And yf pei hadde helpe of man pat tyme pei schulde be holle, and he schall be inpoynt of deth per of. But yf he haue pe bettur helpe, his membur schal roten away or ell he schall become leprows. For pat tyme pei be so hote and pat matere is so venemowus and so corrope and corosif or so bytynge and so fretynge and malicious pat it so beep. per it comyth in so moche pat yf hit be layde betwene pe backe and pe body of a growynge tre, it schall neuer growe after. And also yf it were caste in a houndis mothe or on his tonge, he schall lepe, he wode. (f. 27r) (And if a man know a woman while she has that sickness and she would want it more than all the world, for then is her appetite for lechery the greatest. And if they have the help of man during that time, they should be whole, and he shall be at the point of death from it. But if he has the better help, his member shall rot away, or else he shall become leprous. For during that time they are so hot and that matter is so venomous and so corrupt and so corrosive or so biting and so devouring and malicious that it will be so. There it comes in so much that if it be laid between the back and the body of a growing tree, it shall never grow after. And also if it were cast into a hound's mouth or on his tongue, he shall become mad.) Daniel also commented on the lechery of women during pregnancy as well as women's innate liking of the sex act: Item: skelle whi wemmen cessith not from lecherie aftur pat sche hath conceyuid as unskilful best doth ys but becawse mynde pat sche hath of pe grete likyng pat sche 101 hadde of pe 3evyng of here sperme and in pe resceyuyng of mannis sperme and of pa maner of doenge. (f. 27v) (The reason why women do not cease from lechery after she has conceived as the unreasoning beast does is because she has great liking for the giving of her sperm and for the receiving of man's sperm and for the manner of doing this.) Daniel's writing resonated with the Church Father's interpretation of Eve's punishment: although a woman knew that childbearing would be painful and difficult, it would not deter her from desiring sex. Daniel also spent a portion of his treatise on the distension, suffocation, and migration of the womb. The womb was always in search of heat; if a woman's complexion were too cold, the womb would try to leave her body through her "nether member." If she sat on cold surfaces or bathed in cold water or if she were "wide beneath and cold enters into her body" (f. 28r), she would be in danger of her womb traveling upward into her body and suffocating her. The womb traveled upward in search of heat because the spine was warm by nature. Sometimes the womb began to wander because women "have not the company of man" (f. 28r). This illness was particularly dangerous for widows: And this befallith moche in by wideuis pat were wonte beforne for to haue manns helpe and han it not as pei veren wonte. For pei hauen moche in hem and grete plente of pe sperme and it torneth into corrupcion and venemous mater and may not awaye as hit was wonte. Item: vyvis haue it sum but fewe as pos pat ben most colde in kynde, or for here men ben frome hem which ben no3t ry3th in kynde, forto delyuer out pe sperme into filthes pat ben gedred in hem, but becawse of colde and of pe feblenesse in kynde, it rottith in hem and sumtyme sleth hem. (f. 28v) 102 (And this often befalls widows who previously had men's help and do not have it now as they want. For they have a great deal of sperm in them and it turns into corruption and venemous matter and it may not be purged as it was wont to do. Item: Only a few wives have it, those who are the most cold by nature, or who are with men who are not the right kind in order to deliver out the sperm into filth that has been engendered in them, but because of the cold and the feebleness of their nature, it rots in them and sometimes slays them.) Daniel also argues that young, Virginal maidens were passionate for sex as they came of age, and that if they were not careful, the build-up of superfluities could make them ill. Only intercourse with a man or alternately work, penance, and sweat could save them: Item: medenes han this passion oper whille for when pei comen to age as aboute pe 14 3ere or a litil aftur or a littl aforne. Here flessche wolde haue company of mane for pen pei ben wondurful of sperme of pe matrice whiche plente of sperme but hit be so pat sche may deliuere it out pourgh felawrede of a man or else on oper halfe as distroed as pe traivaile, and penawnce, or bi swote be pe poris. Els it gedrith into filthe and corrupcion and pe colde [superfluities] stren vp to pe perties aboute pe herte and pe longis and pe instrumentis of pe voys, and to pe artiries and per of is cawsed c to sis, an inpediment of pe speche and of pe spritis. (f. 28v) (Item: maidens have this passion when they come to the age of about fourteen years, or a little after, or a little before. Their flesh would have the company of man for at that time they are full of sperm in their uterus unless she is able to deliver it out through intercourse with a man, or unless she is able to destroy it through work, and penance, or by sweat through the pores. Otherwise, it becomes filth and corruption and the cold superfluities flow up to the parts around the heart and the lungs and the instrument of the voice and to the arteries, and there cause cytopsis, an impediment of the speech and of the spirit.) What emerges from a close reading of Henry Daniel's Ldper_grierieiernm is a picture of woman as less perfect 103 than man, closer to beasts, full of filth and corruption, lecherous, and in need of sex in order to maintain her health. She is simultaneously alluring and dangerous, the producer of a substance so poisonous that it could kill a man, or at least cause his "member to rot away." Her womb, unlike other body parts, seems almost magical in its ability to move about the body in its search for heat. Not surprisingly, those physiological characteristics which most differentiate a woman from a man are portrayed as malevolent and mysterious. What implications, then, do these medical commonplaces have for the study of rape? First, by showing a physiological cause for women's desire for sex, medical writers such as Daniel reinforced the religious idea that women are more lecherous than men. They are ruled by the demands of their flesh, rather than by the logic of their minds. Thus, a woman who is raped may have actually invited the sexual intercourse with a man by her lecherous behavior: although she might superficially resist, the demands of her body force her to submit and excuse the man who is really only giving her what she wants anyway. Second, women who do not engage in a sufficient amount of sexual intercourse are at risk from a variety of dire diseases. A man who rapes a virgin or a widow can, in a certain sense, be seen as her benefactor, saving her from her own wandering womb. Finally, the identification of women with beasts 104 physiologically does more than merely illustrate that women are inferior to men. It also implies that the rape of a women could be compared to a cow being serviced by a stud. Neither the cow nor the woman is damaged by the act. Thus, a study of medieval medicine adds an anatomical and physiological dimension to the study of rape and the way it is portrayed in literature. As Vern Bullough argues, medical texts worked in concert with the law and with the church: [T]hough clerical attitudes undoubtedly affected medieval attitudes towards women, the clerics themselves were reflecting not only their own prejudices but also those of ancient and medieval science....Medieval males had all kinds of learned reinforcement for treating the female as their inferior not only in terms of her creation and her "sinfulness," but because of her anatomy and physiology.“' Together, medicine, law, and religion created a powerful rationale and justification for the violent treatment of women. This context provides a rich matrix into which literary representations of rape can be placed, as well as providing clues as to how a medieval audience would receive those representations. In the next chapter, we will turn to a work permeated with the language of law and the fear of rape, Havelpk the Dane. ‘uBullough, "Medieval Medical," 484. CHAPTER 4 GODRICH'S WARD, HAVELOK'S WIFE: WOMEN, RAPE, AND LAW IN flAVELOE TEE DANE The story of Havelok, the young Danish prince who becomes king of both Denmark and England, provides a good starting point for our discussion of women, rape, and the traditions which informed the literary representations of both. In addition, the evident differences between the French and English versions of the story help to demonstrate the ways in which the English cultural attitudes toward women manifest themselves in literature. Havelok's story surfaces in several medieval versions, including Geoffrey of Gaimar's Estoire des Englee, the Lai d'Haveloc, and the Middle English Eeyeiok the gene.1 Modern writers have read the Middle English Haveler with interest, offering a wide variety of possible interpretations. Robert Hanning views Havelok as an 1See Alexander Bell, ed., Le Lai D'Eeveioc end Geimar's Haveloc Episode (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925); W. W. Skeat and K. Sisam, eds., Tne Lay of Haveiot the pane 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1915; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); and G. V. Smithers, ed., Havelok (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). Each contains descriptions of the versions of the Havelok story, including discussion on extant manuscripts; the relationships that exist among the various versions; and the dating of the versions. 105 106 articulation of the "loss to recovery" theme of romance, while noting the differences between the Middle English IHaveiok and the earlier Anglo-Norman versions.2 ZMaldwyn Mills argues that the Lei d'Haveloc is a more satisfactory piece of work than the Middle English version, and that the inconsistencies of Mevelok are largely due to the English 3 poet's reworking of his French sources“ Conversely, Judith Weiss suggests that the English poet offers a fuller, more sophisticated telling than the earlier French versions, and that this complexity is found primarily in character development and in the parallel plot structure of the English poem.‘ David Staines asserts that Havelor is an, idealized biography of Edward I, noting [T]he English romancer turns to the Havelok story because it offers interesting parallels to the contemporary political situation which he can develop during the course of his narration....By seeing the correspondences between the world of Havelok and Edward I's England and incorporating them into his version of the Havelok tale, the poet creates a romance which is a mirror of thirteenth-century political life and a portrait of the ideal king delineated from the point of view of the lower classes.5 2Robert W. Hanning, "Havelok the Dane: Structure, Symbols, Meaning," Studies in Philology 64 (1967): 586-605. Hanning argues that Havelok has no historical significance. 3Maldwyn Mills, "Havelok's Return," Medium Aeynm 45 (1976): 20-35. ‘Judith Weiss, "Structure and Characterization in Havelok the Dane," Speculum 44 (1969): 247-57. 5David Staines, "Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes," Speculnm 51 (1976): 602-23. 107 ‘ Wilson, too, argues that Haveiok was written for the lower classes; and like Hanning, he believes that the Middle English version has nothing to do with history.6 Finally, John Halverson reads Mayelok the Dane as a social commentary, arguing that the differences between the Anglo- Norman and English versions reflect differences in the Anglo-Norman courtly audience and the English bourgeois audience.7 On first reading, Havelok the Dane seems an interesting, amusing tale, reminiscent of folktales and fairy tales. We have a handsome prince (Havelok), and beautiful princess (Goldeborw), each done out of his or her inheritance by an unscrupulous villain. After a forced marriage of the prince and the princess, and after a number of fights (which, of course, Havelok wins), the villains are punished, the prince and the princess become king and queen, and justice is served. How, then, can this story be connected to a study of the contexts of sexual violence? Specifically, the Middle English poet, in his shifts from the French versions, creates a peculiarly English poem which reveals close attention to legal considerations, crime, and punishment, 6R. M. Wilson, Eariy Middle English Literetnre, 3rd. ed. (London: Methuen, 1968). 7Halverson, 142-51. 108 as well as to societal attitudes toward women.8 Furthermore, the role of the French Argentille is shrunk and diminished by the English poet into his creation, Goldeborw. How he accomplishes these twin tasks is what I would like to examine at some length. The dating of the English Meyeieg provides one clue to the legal interests of the poet as well as to his concern. Most scholars place the composition of Havelok sometime ‘ between 1272 and 1300.9 'This date, as I shall show, helps to convince me that the English poet is expressing, through his poem, bits of social history and pieces of cultural attitudes. Moreover, I find myself agreeing with Smithers, who writes that the English Havelok poet is not a minstrel at all, but rather someone intimately acquainted with both the language and the letter of late thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century law.1o Why does the date of composition seems so crucial to me in my reading of Havelok? I would like to briefly review some background information in order to answer that question. First, 1272 marked the ascension of Edward I. 8See Smithers, who argues in the introduction to his edition of Haveiok that while the poem was meant primarily for entertainment, the author demonstrated a remarkable understanding of thirteenth-century law. Moreover, in his notes, Smithers is careful to point out legal language and custom in the text. 9See Smithers, lxiv-lxxiii; Wilson, 221; Staines 622m: and Skeat, xxiii-xxiv for discussions of the dating of Havelok. 1oSmithers, lxiii-lxiv. 109 Edward was known as a "lawyer-king," and during his reign, the English Common Law found expression in a number of statutes and provisions.11 Many laws were codified and written during his tenure, both reflecting common practices of the courts as well as defining suitable punishments for a variety of crimes. For example, as Hogue points out, The Statute of Westminster I was in line with royal policies. Here, and in other declatory legislation, were set down, often in minute detail, authoritative statements of the law of England, much of which had been treated hitherto as immemorial custom.12 During this time, the laws governing rape found expression in the Statute of Westminster I in 1275 and again in the Statute of Westminster II in 1285. These statutes, discussed at length in Chapter 1, continued to have ”implications for the literature of the period, and particularly for Havelok the Dane. A flurry of legal activity characterized the closing years of the thirteenth century, as did confusion over the changes and growing complexity of the law. A second important characteristic of the thirteenth century was the essentially feudal nature of the society. By and large, the cases before the courts in the late thirteenth century dealt with that which had most value in a 11John Bellamy, 5; and Arthur R. Hogue, Origins of the Common Law (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1966), 66. For the authoritative treatment of English Common Law, see T- F- T- Plucknett, W. 5th. ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956). 12Hogue, 66. '110 feudal society: land. Moreover, as Frances Gies and Joseph Gies point out, Feudalism brought a reactionary shift in the status of women. A system by which a lord granted land to a vessel in return for services that were primarily military, it produced a society organized for war, an essentially masculine world. Pre-feudal society was already male biased and military, but by linking landholding to military service, feudalism meant the further disenfranchisement of women.13 Some of these considerations were biological. Women were smaller, weaker, and considered to be biologically inferior to men. Because women could not protect their own lands physically, they were in need of male guardians or husbands to perform their military service for them. Furthermore, the Church's position on the proper subjugation of women to their husbands created and reinforced feudal law designed to delineate women's role in the proper inheritance of land. In a society such as this, a woman's importance was in direct proportion to the land she inherited or obtained through dower. Although she often had little control over her land, she nonetheless represented a valuable commodity for the man who could legally control her lands for her, either as guardian or as husband. In addition, her virginity represented yet another potentially profitable commodity for her guardian. The virginity of a bride met 13Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, meen in the Middle Ages (New York, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978), 27. Also see Angela Lucas. WW end Letters (Sussex: Harvester, 1983), 84; Power; and Shahar. 111 with the approval of the Church, increased her market value, and ensured that children of the marriage were legitimate heirs to the family estate. Finally, a number of writers have commented on the lawlessness of the late thirteenth century.“ These comments do not, of course, imply that there were no laws. Rather, there seemed to be a disregard for the law and for the efficacy of the court system in handling crime. Bellamy and Hanawalt both write of bands of roving thieves, often housed by land-owning nobility, who robbed, stole, and abducted. According to Bellamy, [I]n 1300, Edward I acknowledged to the sheriffs that many more malefactors and disturbers of the peace were wandering about than in times past, and in 1304 the chronicler Langtoft, referring to the large number of men who specialized in violent assault, suggested that unless some drastic step was taken to stop the turbulence, open warfare might well result.1s After reflecting on these three areas, law, feudalism, and crime, and after reading accounts of the earlier versions of the Havelok story, Gaimar's Estpire des Engles and Le Lei D'Aveloc, I find myself noticing how the Havelok poet has adjusted his story to reflect peculiarly English concerns and attitudes toward law, toward rape, and toward women. 1"For example, Hanawalt. Although Hanawalt's study focuses on a period just slightly later than the proposed date of Havelok's composition, she frequently looks back to the period under discussion in this chapter. Also, see Carter; and Bellamy, 5, 91. 15Bellamy, 5. 112 John M. Ganim writes that the medieval poets of romance "anxiously pass over certain questions, almost unconsciously avoid certain paths of development that might radically challenge the values of their audience.““ He further asserts that the "medieval narrative poet structures a world for his audience.“17 I would argue that the world the MeveloM-poet structures for his audience is one which reflects the world in which he lives, a world that contains men of power and women of land, a world in which the actors are male and those acted upon female, a world in which men make and enforce the law and women serve no "public function. In the camp, at the council board, on the bench, in the jury box, there is no place for them."18 1‘John M. Ganim, St 0 us s ° English Narrative (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 13. 17Ibid., 14. See also Derek Pearsall, "Middle English Romance and Its Audience," in Historical and Editoriel Studies in Medievel and Early Modern English, ed. Mary Jo Arn et al., (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985). Pearsall writes, "Literary historians have returned on a number of occasions to the question of the cultural context and diffusion of the Middle English Romances, particularly the kinds of audience for whom they were an written and who must be presumed to enjoy them....It is in part a matter of cultural history, of trying to understand the circumstances in which literature was produced, the functions it served and the part that it played in the social and cultural life of the period" (37). Moreover, Halverson speaks of the Havelok poet's world-view (142-3); and Staines remarks on "his adaptation of the story to the social climate of the time" (620). “ Pollock and Maitland, 485. See also Judith Bennett, "Public Power and Authority in the Medieval English Countryside," in Women d o e ' e ' dl A es, ed. E. Erler and M. Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 18-36; and Bennett, Wom n 'n the edie al En sh 113 When I assert, therefore, that the thirteenth- century English poet expresses peculiarly "English" concerns, I am suggesting that attention to the law is just such a concern. In addition, the ambiguity surrounding English rape law also permeates the literature, including Hevel 3. Furthermore, just as women had "no place" in thirteenth-century law, the English poet marginalizes the roles of women in his version of Mavelok, most notably in his treatment of Goldeborw. Ironically, it is through his erasure of a central act of the French versions, a rape attempt, that the Middle English poet accomplishes this task. Pollock and Maitland note that by the time of the composition of Eavelok, English law was recognized as distinctively English, and Englishmen were proud of it.” Turning to Hevelok the Dane, we find the English poet early expressing his judgment that a good king is one who makes and upholds good laws: It was a king bi are dawes, Pat in his time were gode lawes. (27-28)20 In Athelwold's time (unlike in thirteenth-century England), pardons could not be bought for felonies: Qenntryside: gender end Houseneld in Erigsteck Eefore tne Plague (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) for further discussion of the public and private roles of women. 1"Pollock and Maitland, 188. 20All quotations from Maggi; are taken from Smithers. I will cite line numbers hereafter in the body of the text. 114 Wreieres and wrobberes made he falle, And hated hem so man doth galle, thawes and theues made he bynde, Alle that he micthe fynde, And heye hangen on galwe-tre; For hem ne yede gold ne fe. (39-44) For the English poet, a system of law represents justice; when the law protects the innocent and punishes the guilty, when the law is enforced equally and fairly, punishing whoever breaks the king's peace, then all is right with the world: Panne was Englond at hayse; Michel was svich a king to preyse, Pat held so Englond in grith! (59-61) Even England "at ease," however, has its problems; and sometimes it is difficult to define whether an act is truly criminal. Rape constitutes such an ambiguous act; as we have seen, medical, religious, and legal opinions varied widely at the time. Our poet thus gives himself room to maneuver when he describes this "wrong": And wo-so dide widuen wrong, Were he neure knicht so strong pat he ne made him sone kesten In feteres, and ful faste festen; And wo-so dide maydne shame Of hire bodi, or brouth in blame, Bute it were bi hire wille, He made him sone of limes spille. (79-86) The poet clearly states that under Athelwold, men are suitably punished for shaming maidens or widows; the language he uses brings to mind the actual wording of the law: a judgment of life and limb. However, in a nearly parenthetical expression, he undercuts the picture of women protected by the law: "Bute it were bi hire wille." The NC [)1 WC 115 words force us to reflect on the extent of woman's protection under the law as well as the medieval notions of women themselves. At the heart of that reflection is the question: What woman would willingly bring herself to wrong or shame? Nevertheless, the troubling little phrase "bi hire wille" establishes that, at least sometimes, a woman desires seduction. This phrase also reinforces the medically and religiously inspired notions of woman as lecherous temptress. Even allowing herself to be seen in public, as discussed earlier, could be interpreted as an expression of her will. According to the writer of the Ancrene Wieee as well as Church Fathers such as Tertullian and Ambrose, a woman who tempted a man with her appearance bore the onus of responsibility for his sin. Thus, wearing suggestive clothing, applying cosmetics, or allowing herself to be seen could be interpreted as "bi hire wille." With this neat insertion into the the poem, the poet establishes that a man cannot be held at fault if a woman in any way signals her consent. Certainly, "bute it were bi hire wille" reflects the confusion surrounding the crime of rape, not only in the fictional time of Athelwold, but in the thirteenth century as well, at the time of Havelok's composition. At issue is the concept of "consent." The Statute of Winchester I implied that if a woman of age gave her consent, either before or after the alleged rape, then it was not a rape and 116 the perpetrator could not be indicted. The Statute of Westminster II, however, reversed that decision, stating that even if a woman consented after the fact of the rape, and even if she did not appeal the rape, the king could still bring suit against the man, charging him with a felony, and penalty of life and limb.21 Interestingly, J. B. Post, in his study of "Rape and the Statutes of Westminster," found only one case in his period of study where a man was actually convicted of rape, and the "man was allowed to make fine for life and limb."2 If consent ("bi hire wille") is the issue, then it would seem to suggest that the poet is writing at a time when consent, either before or after the "shame," would absolve the rapist. As noted above, this was the case before the Statute of Westminster II in 1285. Returning to our poem, we find the English poet of Havelok, through the dying Athelwold, expressing the problem of minority heirs, and particularly heiresses: Yif scho coupe on horse ride, And a thousande men bi hire syde, And sho were comen intil helde, And Englond sho coupe welde, And don of hem pat hire were queme, An hire bodi coupe yeme, Ne wolde me neure iuele like, Ne pou ich were in heuvene-riche! (126-33) 21The relevant sections of the Statutes of Westminster can be found in Chapter 2. .u Post, 157. See also Kittel; and Carter. 117 Athelwold's worry is justified. According to Scott Waugh, in his study of royal wardships, "Minorities were profoundly troubling to families. Politics, law, and literature reveal their misgivings about the power of lords over minors."23 Nevertheless, I think that the important passages in this part of the poem deal with Athelwold's clear naming of Goldeborw as his heir; moreover, a few lines later, the nobility and barons acknowledge Athelwold's naming of his successor: "Nou ich wille you alle preye Of mi douther pat shal be Yure leuedi after me, Wo may yemen hire so longe, Bopen hire and Engelonde, Til pat she wman be of helde, And pat mowe hit yemen and welde?" (169-75) "He may hire alper best yeme Til pat she mowe wel ben quene." (183-84) To our legal-minded poet, I think that these acknowledgements establish Goldeborw's uncontested right to the throne, something which will be essential later for the "happy" ending to come. In addition, I think that it is significant Athelwold uses identical language when he hands over Goldeborw to Godrich, and when he hands over England. In both instances, Godrich is instructed that "he shulde yeme hire '3Scott L. Waugh, The Lordsnip of Englend; Eoyel Wardships and Marriages in English §ociety and Politics, 1211:1121 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 194. 118 well." As Lucas suggests, "A woman was often merely an appendage to a fief, and it was difficult to separate a n 24 woman from land. For all intents and purposes, to our poet, Goldeborw ie the land. We are prepared for Godrich to be one of the villains, and to our modern ears it sounds as if he is doing something he shouldn't do when he riche erl ne foryat nouth pat he ne ded al Engelond Sone sayse intil his hond; And in pe castels let he do pe knictes he micte tristen to; And alle pe Englis dede he swere, pat he shulden him ghod and fey beren; He yaf alle men pat god him poucte, Liuen and deyen til pat moucte, Til pat pe kinges dowter wore Tuenti winter hold and more. (249-59) In actuality, Godrich is acting in accordance to his rights as a guardian.” As Sue Sheridan Walker points out, "Feudal wardship was a lucrative right, not an onerous burden, for the guardian enjoyed the profits of the fief and was entitled to the value of the heir's marriage."”’ Gies and Gies put it more bluntly: "The lord pocketed the income 2"Lucas , 84 . ”See Weiss, who argues that Godrich's "methods of establishing authority are above reproach, but the motivation behind it is double and suspect" (255). 26Sue Sheridan Walker, "The Feudal Family and the Common Law Courts: The Pleas Protecting Rights of Wardship and Marriage, c. 1225-1375," Journel of Medieval History 14 (1988):14-15. See also, "Free Consent and Marriage of Feudal Wards in Medieval England, " 123- 35; Theodore Plucknett, Ago mnei eMis tgry pf tne Qommon Len, 478ff.; and Waugh's book mentioned above. 119 of his ward's estate until she married, and she had to marry a man of his choice or lose her inheritance."”' In Goldeborw's case, her "fief" is all of England, and Godrich skillfully brings the entire country under his own adminstration. Hogue reports, in words reminiscent of HaveloM the Dane: "In the most remote counties of England, royal judges, sheriffs, and commissioners drilled Englishmen of all classes in the procedures of the royal government and in the law of the land."” A wardship of this nature would have been immensely profitable; no wonder Godrich fails to find a husband for Goldeborw at the earliest allowable age of twelve, and rather holds on to the wardship until she is twenty.”’ Godrich himself reflects on his proper handling of the wardship : "Sho is waxen al to prud, For gode metes, and noble shrud, pat hic haue youen hire to offte; Hic hauve yemed hire to softe."(302-5) Legally, the guardian was required to provide maintenance ("gode metes, and noble shrud") and suitable education. Because Goldeborw is a girl, a suitable education is not an issue in the poem, and Godrich, at this point, is still 27Gies and Gies, 27. Z”Hogue , 3 1 . 29'See Bernardine McCreesh, "The Problem of Goldeborough's Age in 'The Lay of Havelok the Dane,'" Ngtes and Queries 19 (1972): 442, for an interesting discussion of Godrich's motivation in delaying Goldeborw's marriage and in the apparent discrepancy of her age. 120 within the letter of the law. Even when he moves Goldeborw to Dover and forbids her to see her family and friends, he is acting within the law. In fact, he is, in one sense, acting in a highly sensible manner: in most cases, "ravishment" of a ward did not mean rape, but rather the abduction of a ward away from her guardian's care. The Statutes of Westminster addressed this issue as well, under the same chapter as rape. Frequently, the ravishment of a ward was carried out by her family, in an attempt to rescue her from a difficult wardship or, more likely, in order to arrange a marriage for her (in a sense, to steal from the guardian the right to profit from the marriage). Ravishment was a ubiquitous problem in the late thirteenth century, and the court rolls are filled with case after case of people suing each other for the return of wards.30 By confining Goldeborw to a castle, Godrich is merely placing a piece of extremely valuable property in a safe place. Although such an action seems both repugnant and criminal to the twentieth century reader, I think it is important to place this into the medieval cultural context. Moreover, although we are not told about the rest of Goldeborw's family, the possibility remains that some kin of Athelwold could inherit England if Goldeborw were dead. If, as Waugh asserts, society was troubled about the power of a 3”See Post; and Walker, "Punishing Convicted Ravishers," 237-50, for case studies and statistics concerning the abduction of wards. 121 lord over his ward, society equally distrusted members of the family who stood to inherit in the event of the ward's death.31 In such a case, Goldeborw's custody could be interpreted as a measure protecting her life. At this point in the poem, at least, Godrich has acted not necessarily as a villain, but rather as a responsible guardian of both Goldeborw and the land. When we shift to Denmark, we find that guardian Godard has isolated Havelok and his two sisters in the same way that guardian Godrich has sequestered Goldeborw. However, Godard has failed to meet any of his responsibilities as guardian: as noted above, a guardian must provide his ward with maintainence and with suitable education. As we know, Birkebeyn's children get nothing. In the French versions of the story, Havelok's mother, through her wit and wisdom, is responsible for saving him from the evil king Odulf. Moreover, in this version, Havelok has no sisters. Our English poet, in his marginalization of his female characters, omits Havelok's mother and instead gives Havelok the words that stay Godard's hand. Although he is young, Havelok demonstrates that he has the power of speech, something which the poet specifically denies Goldeborw. Furthermore, as if to emphasize Havelok's active nature, the poet allows the “Waugh, 194-96 . 122 sisters he has created to be passively victimized by the evil guardian. Returning to England, we find that Goldeborw is now twenty and that Godrich is hatching a plan. Godrich has held his wardship to the last possible moment and must marry Goldeborw off or risk losing his rights not only to her land, but to her marriage as well.:32 It is then he hits upon the plan of marrying her to a thrall, an unfree man, someone who certainly cannot inherit the kingdom.333 Because this is in direct violation of Magna Carta, that a guardian shall not disparage the ward by offering her in an unsuitable marriage, Godard finally actually breaks the law when he coerces Goldeborw into marrying Havelokl“ Our poet clearly views Godrich's intentions as felonious: 32There is some discrepancy over the age at which a ward must be offered a marriage. McCreesh argues that Godrich holds Goldeborw until she is twenty because twenty- one is the age of majority for an heir. Walker, however, argues, "A guardian who failed to offer suitable marriages before the heir's majority--16 for unmarried females or 21 for ma1es--lost the right to the ward's marriage" ("Feudal Families," 21). Pollock and Maitland are unclear on this point, noting, "If the heir was a woman, the lord's right of wardship was much the same; but whether the wardship of a woman was to endure until she attained the age of twenty- one, or was to cease when she attained the age of fourteen, seems to have been a moot point" (320). 33Smithers, lxiii. Smithers uses this point to argue "The author further shows unusual knowledge of legal facts and documents in turning to advantage the mixed marriage of a free wife (and her 'disparagement') and a supposedly unfree husband as the reason (for Godrich) why he would be able to cheat Goldeborw out of her inheritance." 3"'See Pollock and Maitland's chapter, "Wardship and Marriage," 318ff. Also, Smithers, 88. 123 "Hauelok is pat ilke knaue Pat shal Goldeborw haue!" bis pouthe he trechery, Wit traysoun, and wit felony. (1088-91) Godrich's treason, then, is not the result of putting his own men into positions of power across Goldeborw's realm: nor is it the result of sequestering her away in a castle. Rather, his crime is that he makes a disparaging marriage for her, one that would cast the succession of the crown into doubt. Havelok does not want to be married. What is of special interest here is that our poet gives him the chance to list everything that he does not have, clearly establishing that at the time of marriage, Havelok has no property or movable goods: "Hwat sholde ich with wif do? I ne may hire fede ne clope ne sho. Wider sholde ich wimman bringe? J ne haue nones kines pinge, J ne haue hws, y ne haue cote, J ne haue stikke, y ne haue sprote, J ne haue neyper bred ne sowel Ne cloth but of an hold with couel pis clopes pat ich onne-haue Aren be kokes and ich his knaue!"(1138-47) Although Goldeborw does not want to marry, and Havelok does not want to marry, after threats from Godrich they acquiesce. The poet describes clearly the actual legal ceremony of the wedding at the church door: Pat he sholde hire spusen and fede, and pat she sholde til him holde, per weren penies picke tolde, Mikel plente upon be bok: He ys hire yaf, and she is tok.(1171-75) 124 Because marriage was essentially a legal transfer of property, the law required that it be public. The ”pennies" placed on the book represent Goldeborw's dower. By law, the wife was entitled to one-third of the husband's property at the time of the marriage. Sometimes this was settled with coins, or with other goods; but if the bride accepted these, she was not entitled to anything more that her husband might 5 In the case of attain during the course of the marriage.3 Havelok, he acquires Denmark. In a neat little scene, the English poet establishes that while Havelok may have a right to England, Goldeborw has no similar right to Denmark. After the marriage, Havelok is worried about staying in Lincoln, as well he should be: Ne he ne wisten wat hem douthe, per to dwellen, or penne to gonge. per ne wolden he dwellen longe, For he wisten and ful wel sawe pat Godrich hem hatede, pe duele him hawe! (1185-1189) The abduction of a wife was just as prevalent as the abduction of a ward, and often for the same reasons. The ravishment of wives and wards grew throughout the late ”Pollock and Maitland, 375, 420-21. "The wife's right of dower is attributed to a gift made by the bridegroom to the bride at the church door: but, says Glanvill, every man is bound both by ecclesiastical and by temporal law to endow his spouse at the time of espousal....If he names no particular lands, he is understood to endow her with one- third of the lands of which he is seised at the time of the espousals:...of lands which come to him during the marriage she can claim nothing....Sometimes a dower of chattels or money will be constituted, and if the bride is content to be married with a dower of this kind, she will have no right to any share of her husband's land" (420-21). 125 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.“’ The value of the lands rightfully belonging to Goldeborw is enormous, certainly motivation enough for the murder of Havelok by a noble or a baron wishing to marry Goldeborw and thus gain control of England. In the Anglo—Norman versions of the poem, it is Argentille who insists that they go to Havelok's home in Grimsby; our English poet assigns all such decision making to Havelok. Goldeborw's speech is severely restricted throughout the poem. Thus, Havelok is the active decider, while Goldeborw remains at the edge of the story:y' Sho bouthe it was Godes wille: God, bat makes to growen be korn, Formede hire wimman to be born. (1167-69) In other words, because Goldeborw is born a woman, her God-given role is to remain passive to her husband's will. Although she did not choose the marriage, once the marriage has taken place, Goldeborw is under her husband's guardianship. This silent passivity of the English character is in direct contrast to the strategizing of the French character and certainly closer to the ideal woman of the Church Fathers. While in Grimsby, Goldeborw discovers that she is married to a nobleman. After seeing the light emitted from 3"’Walker, "Punishing Convicted Ravishers," 248. 37Both Staines and Weiss comment on the strange passivity of Havelok in the earlier French versions, and the activity of Argentille. 126 Havelok's mouth while he sleeps, Goldeborw is visited by an angel. The angel informs her that Havelok is a "kinges sone and kinges eyre." Havelok awakens and tells Goldeborw about a strange dream he has just had. In the Anglo-Norman versions, it is Argentille who dreams the prophetic dream which turns their view toward regaining Denmark. Our English poet, in his continuing marginalization of Goldeborw, lets Havelok have the dream. In her one chance to speak, Goldeborw interprets the dream for Havelok and encourages him to take her to Denmark.338 Once in Denmark, everyone is afraid that Goldeborw will be abducted. One explanation for this is that in the earlier Anglo-Norman versions, this is exactly what happens: six of Sigar's retainers do abduct Argentille in a rape attempt. However, in the English version, while the fear of rape remains, an actual rape attempt does not. Instead, robbers break into the house where Havelok is staying, not to rape, but to steal. Mills offers one suggestion why this is the case in the English poem: Our author, it could be argued, knew well enough that the heroine was to be threatened by rape, the hero 38See Hanning's description of Goldeborw's counsel. He discusses the military strategy given to Haveloc by Argentille in the French versions of the story, noting that this counsel is omitted by the English fiavelgk poet. Rather, Hanning argues, "The poet of Havelok the Dane transforms his sources by moving the queen's advice to a central, climactic position in the story, and by making her counsel at once more intimate and more appropriate to a wife" (603-604). Clearly, Manning's choice of wording ("appropriate to a wife") suggest the discrepancy between private and public power. 127 forced to battle against a great number of adversaries, the earl moved by strongly protective feelings towards the hero--but did not at the same time remember the precise terms in which these themes were to be worked out, or exactly how they were to be related to one another . 39 In other words, according to Mills, the English poet gets confused between the story he is telling and his sources. I would argue that the English poet constructs his scenes far more thoughtfully than Mills believes. First, as Mills points out, the English version of the fight scene takes about 170 lines out of 563: in the French Lg; D'Haveloc, the scene lasts for but 11 lines out of 286."’0 This scene obviously is an important one for our English writer, and it seems unlikely that he would "confuse” crimes due to his incomplete knowledge of the earlier French versions. Furthermore, there seems to be little reluctance on the part of the English poet to change his story to fit his English world. Thus, I would argue that the change is deliberate. I think it is another example of how the English poet wants to move Goldeborw out of the center of the story, and push her into the margins. According to Weiss, "The writer's wish to diminish her part may well explain the contradictory and confused motivation given to Havelok by the thieves.“1 It seems to me that there is something else at work 2""Mills, 23. “’Mills, 24. “weiss, 254. 128 here; by allowing the fear of the rape to remain, but erasing the rape from the text, the poet shifts attention away from Goldeborw's role as victim and toward Havelok's role as fighter. In her discussion of rape in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, Gravdal notes that the consistent result of Chrétien's rape scenes is to shift attention toward the guilt of characters who are from other sociopolitical groups....The effect of his romance is to turn the audience away from a consideration of the consequences of sexual violence and from a reflection of the physical suffering of women and to focus its attention on the chivalric dilemmas of male feudal culture."‘2 The Havelok poet goes one step further: he only allows his audience the vague uneasiness that an impending rape might induce before focusing attention solely on Havelok's ability to fight. Moreover, the robbers come to steal; as noted above, when rape is considered a crime of theft, it is the theft of virginity. While the consummation of Havelok and Goldeborw's marriage is necessary for the the rest of the story, that consummation renders the potential of rape problematic in the English story. Further, I think that we need to recall the poet's scrupulous attention to the law when we consider why the Anglo-Norman rape scene is transformed into a robbery in the English version. Again, as discussed in Chapter 2, the Statute of Westminster I of 1275 ruled that by indictment, rape was not a felony, but rather a trespass, punishable by a maximum of two years in prison and a fine. If a woman ‘QGravdal, "Gratian," 584. 129 chose to appeal a rape, it was still treated as a felony. However, there was some legal opinion that a non-virgin could not appeal rape because only a virgin could be robbed of her virginity."'3 What does this law have to do with the robbery scene and the fear of rape in Havelok? I think it is tied up with the English author's concern not only with law, but with justice. Throughout the poem, he assures his readers that criminals should be treated with punishments suiting their crimes. Thus, if the marriage of Havelok and Goldeborw has been consummated, then Goldeborw is no longer a virgin. If she is raped, legal opinion questions whether she can appeal the rape or not. As stated, if brought at private suit, rape was still considered a felony, punishable by death. However, if Goldeborw is unable to appeal the rape, then the only remaining legal consequence for the rapist is to be indicted for trespass, carrying a maximum sentence of two years in prison and a fine. For the English poet, Havelok's heroism and centrality to the story demand that he fight these attackers to the death. It is a scene in which the poet can show Havelok's physical prowess. On the other hand, the poet is concerned with Havelok as the future king and just law- giver. How can he punish someone with death who is only guilty of a trespass? ‘“Pollock and Maitland, 491. 130 Robbery, however, doesn't present the ambiguity that rape does. It is a felony, punishable by law by loss of life and limb, and our poet clearly knows this: And yif he liuede, bo foule theues, (bat weren of Kaynes kin and Eues), He sholden hange bi be necke (2045-47) In 1285, The Statute of Westminster II changed the ruling making rape a trespass. From 1285 onward, rape is considered a felony whether appealed by the woman or indicted by the king. The law further stated that if found guilty, the rapist should be punished by death. Although the connection is somewhat tenuous, I think that the ten-year window between the two statutes might offer an appropriate date for the composition of Havelok, as well as explain why the poet changes the Anglo-Norman abduction/attempted rape into an English robbery. When the fights for Denmark and for England finally come, I think it is interesting to compare the different punishment for treason offered by Havelok to Godrich and Godard. While Godard is placed on a horse, shamed and debased even before his trial, Godrich is offered forgiveness because he looks like such a great knight: "Yeld hire be lond, for bat is rith. Wile ich forgiue bebe lathe, Al bi ded and al mi wrathe, For Y se bu art so with, And of bi body so god knith." (2718-22) After surrendering, Godrich is handed over to the queen by Havelok with these instructions: And to be quen he sende him, 131 bat birde wel to him ben grim, And bad she sholde don him gete And bat non ne sholde him bete Ne shame do, for he was knith, Til knithes hauden demd him rith. (2761-66) Havelok makes it very clear that Goodrich is up; to be shamed, because he is a knight. Evidently, stealing Goldeborw's land and intending to disparage her by marrying her to a kitchen knave are not considered to be as traitorous actions as Godard undertook when he killed Havelok's sisters and stole Denmark. Moreover, although it may seem poetically just that Godrich is delivered into Goldeborw's hands, I would like to point out that she has absolutely no say in either the poem or under real English law about how Godrich will be tried or punished. Women could not be jurors nor judges in the thirteenth century. Thus, while Goldeborw is described as "blithe" about Godrich's eventual incineration, she is dependent on the male peers to pass such a sentence. The acknowledgement by the English barons and nobles of Goldeborw's right to the English throne and their acknowledgement that Havelok has both wedded and bedded their queen presents the next interesting point. According to Maitland and Pollock, during the thirteenth century it was not likely that a queen could have inherited the throne herself, as did Elizabeth or Victoria.“’ Rather, thirteenth-century English marriage laws entitled the “Pollock and Maitland, 433. 132 husband to the use and profits of his wife's land. He could alienate these lands, meaning he could turn them over to whomever he wished in return for whatever favors he demanded. He did not need her permission for this. He was also entitled to all of her movable goods and chattels and could sell or give away these items as hewished.‘5 If this sounds familiar, it is because the terms of marriage, for the husband, were nearly identical to that of a guardian: and as we have already seen, guardianship of a ward (or a wife) was immensely profitable. As Pollock and Maitland note, The husband is the wife's guardian: that we believe to be the fundamental principle: and it explains a great deal, when we remember that guardianship is a profitable right....[T]he husband's rights in the wife's lands can be regarded as an exaggerated guardianship. The wife's subjection to her husband is often insisted on; she is "wholly within his power," she is bound to obey him in all that is not contrary to the law of God: she and all her property ought to be at his disposal; she is "under the rod.W“ Although Havelok might be a just and heroic king and husband, Goldeborw has no more rights under his guardianship than she had under Godrich's. Moreover, under English law, Havelok is entitled to the equivalent title of his wife. In other words, had Goldeborw been a baroness, Havelok would have become a baron ‘“See Pollock and Maitland's chapter on wardship and marriage: the three articles by Walker listed in the bibliography; and Donahue, 59-88. ‘“Pollock and Maitland, 406. 133 by virtue of their marriage. As we know, Goldeborw is a queen, and this is how Havelok becomes King of England. Thus, when the people of England come to pledge "manrede," it is Havelok, not Goldeborw, who receives their oaths: Hauelok anon manrede tok Of alle Englishe, on be bok. (2851-52) Lines 2680-760 in Smithers's text of Havelok describe Havelok giving Godrich's holdings in Cornwall to Bertram the cook and marrying Grim's daughter to the Earl of Chester. Although Havelok's motivations are different from the earlier actions of Godrich, he nonetheless repeats those actions: he places his own people in holdings belonging not to himself, but to Goldeborw. Moreover, Grim's daughter, no matter how lovely, is nonetheless the daughter of a fisherman. Although the Earl of Chester seems happy enough to marry her, this arranged marriage is nonetheless legally a disparaging match. The English poet marginalizes Goldeborw to such an extent that when the coronation is celebrated, it is Havelok alone who bears the crown not only of Denmark, but of Goldeborw's England as well: ber-after sone, with his here, For he to Lundone, forto bere Corune, so bat it sawe Henglishe ant Denshe, heye and lowe, Hou he it bar with mikel pride, For his barnage bat was unride. (2942-45) Goldeborw is not mentioned in the coronation ceremony. I find myself recalling Havelok's statement, after his long-ago dream in Grimsby, when he tells Goldeborw what 134 he did with England in his dream: "And, Goldeborw, y gaf it be." (1312). For Goldeborw, the dream has not proved prophetic; rather, she is the one, by virtue of her identification with the land, who gives England to Havelok. She, of course, does not become Queen of Denmark through her marriage to Havelok, nor is she entitled to any of his Danish holdings. As Bullough argues, Women's contibutions have often been trivialized and hidden by the power of men to label their own labor with praise, money, and status.“' Trivialized and hidden, Goldeborw moves to the edges of the text, and of England, bearing heirs to the throne, thereby giving Havelok, through what was legally termed "The Curtesy of England," rights to England for as long as he lives, even if he survives her and remarries. Through his treatment of Goldeborw, and through his erasure of her action, the English poet of Hayglgk presents for us a surprisingly realistic picture of the legal status of, as well as a glimpse into the cultural status of, thirteenth-century English noblewomen. Whatever their power might have been within their own homes, their public power was nonexistent. Whatever importance a woman might hold was directly linked to the land she held. As a ward, the most she could hope for was a guardian who did not mistreat her and who would arrange a good marriage. As a wife, the most she could hope for was a husband who managed her lands well, "'Bullough, et al., The Subordinated Sex, 3. 135 or, at least, died early. The English poet of Hayelgk_thg Dane grants Godrich's ward and Havelok's wife two out of four. CHAPTER 5 HOLY RAPE: SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH SAINTS' LIVES Perhaps the largest body of surviving Middle English texts is the saints' lives.1 In the past, much of the information found in the lives was discounted, and the texts themselves were deemed not worthy of scholarly research.2 Historians discredited saints' lives by claiming they were inaccurate and fantastic, a corrupt and degraded form of biography, full of impossible tales, and loaded with internal inconsistencies. As literature, the saints' lives suffered in comparison to the work of Chaucer or the Bear; Poet (although, of course, Chaucer himself included several saints' lives in the Canterbury Tales). However, in recent years, scholars have begun to view the Middle English saints' lives as a rich resource for cultural studies. In answer to the question, "Are they 1See Charlotte d'Evelyn and F. A. Foster, "Saints' Lives," in AManga al of the Writings in MigglgE nglish, ed. J. Burke Severs (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1970) for an overview of texts; see also J. A. W. Bennett, 60-67, 259-90. 2 Schulenburg, "Saints' Lives," 285. 136 137 historical?" the answer has been, increasingly, "Does it matter?" Regardless of whether the saints' lives give us "accurate" information about the lives and times of the saints themselves, they offer us a glimpse into medieval English culture and into the time in which they were written. As a result, cultural historians and literary scholars alike have mined collections such as the Sggrh English Legendary, both the Latin and Caxton's "Englisshed" versions of the ngenda Aurea, and the "Katherine Group" of saints' lives.3 Why such recent interest in saints' lives? As noted above, the lives were exceedingly popular: hundreds of lives of both female and male saints survive. Heffernan writes, In England, the period between the second decade of the thirteenth century and the middle of the fifteenth century witnesses the single greatest increase in the composition of sacred biography in the history of that 3Numerous studies have been undertaken in recent years of saints' lives, most notably by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Michael Goodich, Vita Perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Centur , Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 25 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982): Thomas Heffernan, Sacred Biography; Elizabeth Robertson, "The Corporeality of Female Sanctity in The Life of Saint Margaret,"in Images of Sainthood: Schulenburg; Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982): and Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Sgints and Society: 1g; 139 Wgrlgs of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Kathryn Gravdal also writes on female saints in Ravishing Maidens. In addition, in Med'eva En lis Pros for Wo e , editors Bella Millet and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne provide an excellent introduction in the lives found in the Katherine Group, particularly the life of Saint Margaret. 138 vernacular.‘ Heffernan attributes this popularity to audience demand, calling the outpouring of saints' lives from this period a "flood": he posits the "existence of a veritable industry attempting to meet audience demand."5 This popularity also implies that saints' lives occupied a position between written and oral literature, which makes them of special interest to the cultural historian. Heffernan cites contemporary evidence to demonstrate that saints' lives were often sung by minstrels in court yards.6 Thus, although few people could read during the Middle Ages, illiteracy did not prevent the common person from hearing the saints' lives. In addition to the minstrel versions, these lives were often included during worship services in place of the sermon. As noted in Chapter 2, even those lives written in Latin were disseminated through the culture by clergy who regularly read the lives aloud as part of worship.7 For these reasons, saints' lives can provide us with a way of viewing ‘Heffernan, Sacred Biography, 255-56; Schulenburg, "Saints' Lives," also reports that "Despite the widespread existence of these early lives in the vernacular, the use of the vernacular in the writing of yitae became especially popular in the twelfth century" (292). 5Heffernan. SesreQ_Biegreph¥. 265. ‘Ibid., 253. 7 Gurevich, 3. Also see Ward, 167, for the discussion of the wide audience for saints' lives: and Clanchy, 216-18, for an explanation of how Latin works were intended for the whole community, not merely the literate. 139 the values of the culture at large, not merely the values promulgated by theoretical, Latinate writings. As Schulenburg argues, "[T]he value of sanctity is first of all situated in the collective memory of the community."8 Saints' lives offer us a glimpse into that community. Saints' lives are also particularily valuable for this study for a number of reasons. As Gurevich argues, popular literature, like folklore, is subject to a kind of "preliminary censorship" by its collective listeners: the community chooses acceptable productions and rejects others; hence only that survives which was approved or accepted by the audience and suited to its taste.9 That the lives of certain saints were written first in Latin, then subject to redaction after redaction in the vernacular, strongly suggests that the audience found these productions representative of their belief systems. That is, if the audience did not find something in a particular saint's life consistent with their own values, it is unlikely that the life would be reproduced multiple times. That certain lives yer; repeatedly reproduced (sometimes with subtle changes to reflect the changing audience) leads me to believe that the audiences found something compelling in the life. (It might also be worthwhile to note here the similarity of this process to the reproduction of vernacular Arthurian literature, which will be discussed further in the 8Schulenburg, "Saints Lives," 286. 9Gurevich, 4. 140 next chapter.) In addition, a close look at the lives of female saints reveals the ways in which the legal, religious, and medical ideas about women discussed in earlier chapters permeated the culture; as Atkinson argues, the lives and legends of female saints provide a lens through which to observe the behavior of individual persons in society and to apprciate the force of an ideology that shaped human relationships and social institutions.10 Thus, while the female saints' lives may not provide any kind of verifiable historical insight into the actual experience of medieval women, they nonetheless reveal the attitudes and value systems of their male authors. As Schulenburg asserts, [O]ne constantly needs to be reminded that saints' lives are ultimately reflections of the mind-set and world of the hagiographer.... [A]s works of propaganda,’ the lives reflect the hagiographers' intense views of these [social] realities, their own (sometimes skewed) personal visions of sanctity and society. Therefore, on one level, the vitae frequently tell us as much or perhaps even more about the mind-sets of the hagiographers and their world, the ideas and stereotypes prevalent in their own society, than factual information about the saint.11 What we find when we examinine closely the lives of female saints in Middle English is a preoccupation with sexuality, specifically violent articulations of sexuality. Kathryn Gravdal notes, "The construction of sexual assault runs through hagiography like a shining thread in a ”Atkinson, 133 . 11Schulenburg, "Saints' Lives," 307. 141 tapestry, highly valued and useful."” Heffernan argues that this preoccupation with sexual violence found in the female saints' lives is "an anomaly in medieval literature," although he clearly connects saints' lives with romance generically.13 As demonstrated in Chapters 4, 6, and 7 of this study, rape is scarcely anomalous in romance; rather, it is firmly at the core of the genre. Therefore, while the sexual violence in female saints' lives is perhaps the most vicious and the most brutal of any found in Middle English literature, it would be in error to suggest that saints' lives are somehow different from the rest of Middle English literature in this focus. One way to demonstrate the centrality of rape as well as the ways ideas about women filter through the culture is to examine some of the differences in portrayal of female and male saints. Robertson points out that the central feature of female saints' lives is sexual temptation of a virgin.“ While male saints may wrestle with sexual temptation (St. Bernard, for example), this is but one of many possible temptations. In addition, sexual temptation is rarely at the center of a male saint's life: in general, 12Gravdal. W. 22. 13Heffernan. W. 271. 275- 1‘See Elizabeth Robertson, Eariy English Devoriohal Prose and the Female Aggighge (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990) and "The Corporeality of Female Sanctity," cited above. 142 male saints work miracles, convert pagans, and actively pursue religious life. Male saints act as subjects in their own lives. Female saints' lives, on the other hand, generally offer a young, barely pubescent virgin, who, through no wish of her own, is the object of male desire. Frequently the male character is in some way connected to the pagan power structures of the community; he may be a judge, or, as in the case of St. Agnes discussed below, the son of a police figure. The female saint wins sanctity, not through actively pursing it, but rather through her endurance of the physical pain and torture inflicted on her because of her refusal to give up her chastity. The story of St. Agnes, found in the South English Legehdary, offers an illustration of this kind of saint. St. Agnes is a beautiful young woman, described in terms reminiscent of the romance heroine: "In Rome ber heo wonede so vair womman was non/ As bis maide forbward was of fel & of bon" (19:5-6).15 She is very young, young enough to be still in school, when she is spotted by the constable's son. The son's description is that of the conventional courtly lover of romance: his love for the young Agnes threatens to be his death: 15All citations from the South English Legendary are from Charlotte D'Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, eds., T e South English Legendary, 2 vols., EETS 235, 236 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956). Page and line numbers will be noted in the body of the text. 143 be constables sone hure isey & huld hure for fole He louede hure in folie & was in gret mornynge And carede hou he mi3te best bis to ende bringe For stille mornynge bat he made he werb swube lene Perof wondrede much is frendes & much him gonne bimene Hi esste a day in priuete wat were him so to uare He tolde ham fram ende to ober war of was is care & hou he wolde hym sulf asle bote he mi3te hure loue wynne. (19:8-15) As a result of the son's infatuation with her, Agnes is threatened with torture if she refuses to wed him. Agnes reiterates that she is betrothed to Christ: consequently the constable strips her naked ("so naked so heo was ibore" [20: 42]), so that everyone should see her private parts ("Pat echman ssolde hure deorne lymes" [20:43]). Miraculously, Agnes's hair grows immediately past her knees so that no one can see her body. After being taken to a brothel, encountering an angel, defending her virginity against the son of the constable (who dies for trying to rape her), bringing the son back from death and healing him, and being thrown in a blazing fire, Agnes of the white limbs is martyred. The story of Agnes demonstrates, it seems to me, an important distinction between sexual temptation in the female saints' lives and in male saints' lives: while a male saint's carnal appetites may be tempted by the devil, he is never made an object. He wrestles with his devil, and preserves his chastity by his defeat of these temptations. Although he may be tortured for his commitment to his faith, he is not generally tortured for refusing to have sex with 144 an authority figure. In addition, the implication is that, if he succumbs to the devil's sexual temptations, he will actively commit fornication, and thereby sin. In short, the male saint does not have to contend with rape or with the threat of rape. Sexual intercourse would be something he would choose to do, not something which could be forced upon him. Obviously, differences in male and female sexual physiology make rape something that only happens to females in these lives. Nevertheless, whether it is because of obvious physiological differences, medical theories, legal status, or religious dogma, the threat of rape clearly distinguishes the female lives from the male lives. For the female saint, chastity is at the core of her being and of her textual life. Her temptation is not one of carnal appetite nor of her own sexual desire. Rather, she is generally faced with a choice between bodily torture and death or sex with a man who desires her. Her temptation, then, is to give her virginity in payment for life. At no time is she described as being tempted by desire. Given the Aristotelian identification with woman as passive, and woman as flesh, as well as the tightly knit connection between female and body found in the Patristic writers, it is little wonder that female saints were tempted through their bodies. Because women were physiologically defined through their reproductive systems, the stories of their lives demonstrate an assault on those systems, on those very body parts which are definitively female. A 145 woman's vagina was considered the passive receptacle for male sperm, her womb the passive receptacle for the male life-force. Likewise, the female saint's body represents a passive receptacle for male violence precipitated by male sexual lust. The male authority figure in the female saint's life finds his lust frustrated by the saint's devotion to Christ. He often, then, turns to bodily violence in response to her refusal of his advances. Thus, Middle English female saints' lives are filled with not only the threat of rape, but also with mutilated and, often, severed breasts. In the South English Legendary, St. Agatha is graphically mutilated as a result of enflaming a duke's passion: Neltou no3t quab be duk bi folie 3ute bileue Strong pine and torment in bi limes me ssel be do are eue Hokes and wibben he let nime & to hure breste binde And let berwib is tormentors hure bresten of wynde. (56: 57-60) As a sidelight, Gravdal notes that in the early eleventh- century French manuscript of St. Agatha, at least three of the seven illustrations are sexually violent, the most notable picturing the severing of Agatha's breast.16 Quite clearly, this early French fascination with sexual violence has been carried over into the later Middle English version of Agatha's life. Another interesting point in the South Ehglieh 16Gravdal , W. 24-25 . 146 Legehgery life of St. Agatha is the character Affrodose: "An old quene ber was ber biside strong hore and baudestrote" (54:7). Thus, within the one story, we have the two poles of female sexuality: the old, foul, lecherous, sexually defiled, Dame-Sirith-like procuress in opposition to the young, beautiful, chaste, Virginal Agatha. Further, the emphasis on virginity found in the early Church Fathers also seems to be at the center of female saints' lives. At risk is not the state of being chaste, as it is for male saints, but rather the loss of an invaluable possession, virginity. Heffernan, too, views female saints' lives as distinct from male saints' lives. His identification of the three archetypal stages in Middle English female saints' lives is particularly illuminating, and I would like to summarize his descriptions briefly. The first stage is what Heffernan terms renunciation, in which the young virgin turns her back on her family (specifically her father), suitors, and country."' In the second stage, the young virgin is threatened with rape and frequently is tortured. As Heffernan writes, Broken, naked bodies are the concern of these narratives. Here, in the guise of suitor, magistrate, governor, or emperor, the saint's male antagonist combines his interest in forcing her to recant her Christianity with his desire to possess her sexually. The action turns on both her ability to defend her religious principle and her chastity at once. The subject is enmeshed in an erotic matrix. It is 17Heffernan, SQQEQQ Biography, 269. 147 precisely because she is comely, because she remains Virgo intacra, that she is attractive and will be forced to suffer and die. Sexual dominance is the game and intercourse the forbidden prize.1a Physical torture, as noted above, is an important part of female saints' lives. In general, good women in medieval English literature are depicted as sufferers,19 women who bear up heroically under whatever pain is inflicted upon them. Female saints are the quintessential suffering women, their pain far greater than any ordinary woman could imagine, their courage all the greater because, paradoxically, they are women, weaker in the flesh and in the spirit than men. After the temptation, pain, and torture, according to Heffernan, comes the third stage of the female saint's life. In the third stage, the saint dies and is united with Christ, who is frequently described in terms reminiscent of a knightly lover.20 The young virgin consummates her marriage with Christ at the moment of her death. It seems to me that while this stage has none of the sexual brutality found in the torture scenes, it is nonetheless highly sexually charged. Many of the Middle English female saints' lives found 18Heffernan, Sheree Biography, 273. 19Both Fell, 192, and Robertson, Qevotiohel Prose, 96, comment on the role of suffering in medieval portrayals of women. According to Robertson, "Physical suffering has often been viewed as the primary corrective to female sexual temptation." lmHeffernan, Secred Biography, 273. 148 in the South English Legendery and the three lives of the "Katherine Group" demonstrate the characteristics theorized by Heffernan. An examination of these stories in contrast with Latin versions of the same stories demonstrates some of the concerns of Middle English writers and audiences. In his study of the influences of the Legehge_hpree on the Sopth English Legeheary, Klaus P. Jankofsky notes four ways the Latin lives are changed in their transformation into Middle English lives: --a simplificarion of theological-dogmatic and hagiographic problems; --an explanatory, interpretative, and didactic expansioh of subject matter; --a process of ephererizerieh through the creation of enlivening dialogues and scenes where the sources have plain third person narrative: i.e., drematizetien: --a process of acculpuratioh, the adaption of essentially Latin sources to an English audience, thereby creating a distinctive flavor and mood, "Englieliing- "21 Jankofsky's examples of the "Englishing" of the saints' lives include primarily shifts in language, from the more formal, distant Latin to the homely, colloquial, "not- a-straw" exclamations of Middle English.a: Much more disturbing are the shifts observed by Robertson, in her 21Klaus P. Jankofsky, "Legepg__e_ree Materials in The South English Legendary," in Legepde hurea: §§B§ Sieeies ge Diffusion, ed. Brenda Dunn-Lardeau (Montreal: Editions Bellarmin, 1986), 320. 22See also Jankofsky, "National Characteristics in the Portrayal of English Saints in The South Ehgiieh Legen dery, in l2Q9Q__Qi_§QiDEDQQQ__D_H§Q1§¥QL_EE£QP§p Ed- Renate Blumenfeld- Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 81-96. 149 study of St. Margaret.23 She notes in particular an emphasis on the graphic physicality of sexual abuse in the Middle English that is less pronounced in the Latin versions, attributing this to the influence of both Aristotle and the Patristic writers on the later redactors of Middle English saints' lives. Although I certainly agree with her assessment, I will argue below that the spectacular torments suffered by female saints may also be the result of audience demand. The legend of St. Margaret is perhaps the most popular of all saints' lives in England. Bennett reports that the life exists in a number of Latin texts, as well as in at least six Anglo-Norman verse redactions, dating from before the fourteenth century.%' In addition to a number of other English translations, Seipre Margarere is part of the early thirteenth-century "Katherine Group" of saints' lives (which also includes Seihre Iuiiene and Seinte Karerihe), as well as the South English Legeneery. St. Margaret's popularity is evident not only in the number of translations of her life, but also in the over two hundred churches dedicated to her in England.”’ I would agree with Millett and Wogan-Browne, who suggest that at least part of this popularity can be attributed to the spectacular nature 23Robertson, "The Corporeality of Female Sanctity." 2"J. A. W. Bennett, Migdie Ehglish Literappre, 281. 25Heffernan, Saered Biegrephy, 289. 150 of her story . 2° The story of St. Margaret bears many resemblances to other Middle English female saints' lives. Like Agatha, for example, Margaret unwittingly attracts the attention of a man named Olibrius who immediately lusts after her: his clene maide he bihuld heo bo3t him uair inou Anon riBt in fole loue is herte to hure drou Him longede sore after hure his men forb he sende And het hom bat hi hasteliche after hure wende 3if heo were of gentil blod is wif heo ssolde be and wib gret nobleie lede hure life & 3if heo nere no3t fre Bugge he wolde hure deore inou to holde hure in folie Wiboute spoushod is lemman in sunne of lecherie. (293:43-50) Margaret's refusal of Olibrius's advances and her refusal to sacrifice to false gods lead to the inevitable horrible bodily tortures in which the author of the §22£h English Legendary St. Margaret seems to take particular delight: So grislecche he clupede tormentors bat men miBte agrise Nimeb he sede bis hore anon & hongeb hure in a treo And todraweb hur so uel & fleiss bat me hure gottes iseo... be maide hy strupt naked sone & bond hure faste inou A1 from be eorbe hi honge hure up & liede hur on to gronde Wib scorgen and kene pricken & made hure many a wonde Al hi todrowe hure tendre vleiss bat reube it is to tell. (295:109-11: 116-l9) Before the life is over, Margaret defeats the devil who comes to her as a dragon, gets thrown naked into a fire, is cast into a vessel of water, converts five thousand men 2bMillett and Wogan-Browne, xxi-xxii. 151 (who are immediately beheaded as a result), and is finally beheaded herself. One female saint's life which appears in both the geigeh_Legehg and the goprh Engiish Legendery is that of St. Lucy. While not so spectacular as the life of St. Margaret, the life of St. Lucy offers particular interest for this study. Within this story, we find the strands of legal, medical, and religious thought tightly wound together. Briefly, St. Lucy was a young woman of Sicily whose mother suffered from "meneisoun," or bloody dysentery.”' Hearing of the miracles of St. Agnes, Lucy takes her mother to the tomb of St. Agnes and prays for her healing. St. Agnes appears to Lucy and tells her that her mother has been healed by Lucy's faith. Lucy awakens her mother, tells her the good news, and begs her mother to release her from her marriage to a heathen man arranged in her youth. She also begs her mother to give her the money set aside for her dowry so that she can distribute it to the poor. Lucy spends the next three years giving away her money. When her spouse hears of this, he takes her to the Justice, Pascas, and accuses her of being Christian. Pascas orders her to sacrifice to their gods; Lucy refuses. Pascas accuses her of whoredom and lechery and orders her taken to a brothel where any men who wish might sexually abuse her. One thousand men and a team of oxen try to move the virgin from 27The geography is slightly different in the Legende Auree; Lucy is from a wealthy family of Syracuse. 152 her spot before Pascas, but she cannot be moved to the brothel. Pascas builds a fire around her, but she is not harmed and never stops preaching. In desperation, Pascas runs her through the throat with his sword to stop her voice. She continues to preach until she is given the holy sacraments and is led to heaven by angels. Several passages are of special interest here. Early in the life, the Middle English author writes, "To an hebene man Lucie was iwedded in 3unghede / Ac nabeles clene maide he was" (566:21-22). This calls into question Lucy's marital status. Is Lucy married here? If so, how would this have been received by the audience of the SQQLD_EEQli§h Legendary? Her mother's possession of the dowry money implies that the marriage had not been completed; thus, it is possible that what is being described is a betrothal or an espousal. In the Legehda huree, it is clear from Lucy's speech to her mother that she is betrothed, not married: "But in the name of her to whose prayers you owe your cure, I beg of you to release me from my espousals and to give the poor whatever you have been saving for my dowry."“"8 The Middle English is much more ambiguous on this point: "iwedded" implies marriage. Nevertheless, Lucy's virginity is evidence that the marriage has not been consummated. Furthermore, the passive voice ("was iwedded") 28’Jacobus de Voragine, The Geiden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 27. 153 and the mention of Lucy's youth also suggest that she had no consent in the marriage. In theory, the Church required mutual consent between partners for a marriage to be considered valid, although there was a good deal of discrepancy regarding consent in actual practice.”’ Thus, it is likely that medieval English audiences would not see Lucy in a legally binding marriage but rather in a form of espousal that either party could break so long as there had not been sexual intercourse. Nevertheless, the language is unclear, as is canon law concerning marriage. This ambiguity Opens room for debate. The story of St. Lucy, then, is not just a story of sanctity, but also a story of debt: marriage debt, dowry debt, and Christian debt. The tension among these debts moves the story forward. Further, Lucy's conviction that her debt to Christ takes precedence over her temporal, sexual, legal, and marital debts undermines the conventions of marriage and dowry as they existed in medieval England. In some ways, the story of Lucy prefigures medieval women like Margery Kempe who left behind their marital debt in their quest for sanctity. Lucy, however, never sought permission from her espoused to lead a chaste life, something St. Paul clearly requires even while he urges couples to refrain from sex. Thus, how one interprets the question of the marriage of Lucy and of the marriage debt ‘NSee, for example, Brundage, Lew, Sex, end Christian Society, 36-37, 88, 92, 236-38, and 288. 154 will affect how one understands the rest of the story. The story of Lucy also offers some surprises: unlike many male antagonists in the female saints' lives, Lucy's spouse does not threaten her with rape, or demand payment of the marital debt. His concern is strictly economic. Lucy has given away her dowry to the poor, a dowry that he would have expected to come under his control. Because of the terms of medieval marriage law, it is likely that the audience would have recognized the spouse's right to the money Lucy was distributing. Nevertheless, it is also likely that they would have viewed her decision to give away this money as proof of her own sanctity.30 Pascas, as the representative of civil authority in this saint's life, and his response to Lucy's independent actions are particularly interesting. He could, of course, cite her (as well as her mother as guardian) for breach of contract. She has, after all, misappropriated her dowry. However, Pascas chooses to accuse Lucy of spending her money on adultery and lechery ("For in hordom & in lechours bu 30See Jo Ann McNamara, "The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages," in Images ef SQiDLEQQd in Medieval Eur , ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 199-221, for the ways wealthy women distributed large portions of their holdings to the poor. McNamara argues that the power to give away wealth was one that was increasingly restricted for women during the Middle Ages. She summarizes, "Nuns of the early fourteenth century found themselves generally constrained to a single expression of the spiritual life. In secular and ecclesiastical life, the increasingly restrictive property laws of the age had made even the wealthiest women dependent on men for whatever power to give remained to them" (221). 155 hast ispend bi god," [568:82]), demonstrating his belief that women left to their own devices and with a source of money will pander to their carnal appetites. Clearly, Lucy interprets the consummation of her marriage as moral defilement. Pascas, on the other hand, seems to believe that any woman who would leave a lawful marriage is morally corrupt. Further, as the representative of civil authority, Pascas asserts that any woman who would act in such a way is a whore: For in hordom & in lechours bu hast ispend bi god & whan bu nast nomore to spene bu saist in bi speche Peron bwolt spene a1 bi bodi & berof bu dost preche For bu spext as an hore strong whan bu wolt forsake Pi louerd to wham bu ert iwedded & to lechours take. (568:82-86) What is especially striking in this passage is its emphasis on speech. In just four lines, there are three separate references to speaking. Pascas, like the early Church Fathers is apparently aware of the power of female speech: to diffuse this power, he labels Lucy's speech as the speech of a whore, and thus attempts to send her to a place where that speech will be enclosed and devalued: the brothel. Again, the linking of Lucy's speech with moral corruption curiously echoes Tertullian's description of Eve. That female speech is at the heart of this saint's life is patently clear by line 150. Not only does Pascas fail to move Lucy to the brothel, not only does he fail to burn her naked flesh in the fire (an appropriate demise for the witch he thinks she is), he is completely unable to stop 156 her words ("Ac prechede euer wib glade hurte" [570:1461). Ultimately, it is her speech which angers Pascas the most, driving him to physical violence in order to silence her. He runs her through the throat with his knife, "To bynyme hire speche" (570:150). Killing her is almost an afterthought: "& hire holi lyf also" (570:150); it is the speech he primarily wants to stop. However, even a sword through the neck does not stop Lucy's powerful voice. Not until the act of eating Christ's body in the Eucharist is over does Lucy silence herself. Lucy emerges as the triumphant virgin-speaker. Like Juliana, Katherine, and Margaret, she wields words powerfully. The story of St. Lucy, then is ultimately a story of power: medical power in that she is responsible for the healing of her mother's bleeding; legal power, in that she chooses not to give her virginity to the man who legally owns it; economic power, in that she chooses to give away all of her wealth; sexual power, in that in the face of gang rape she cannot be moved; and religious power, in that through her voice she preaches of Jesus Christ. Obviously, the lives of the virgin female saints like Agatha, Agnes, Margaret, Katherine, Juliana, and Lucy are disturbing for modern readers for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the constant undercurrent of rape that runs through the stories. Although no rape is ever committed in these lives, the saint's chastity is always at risk, and she undergoes extreme bodily anguish. The threat 157 of rape, indeed, is what pushes the saint's virginity into relief: against the dark background of sexual assault, virginity stands out, bright and white, just as the Church Fathers promised. For most female saints' lives of the South Engiish Legehdary, without the threat of rape there would be no saint to write about. Given that the threat of rape functions as both plot device and commentary on the nature of women, we are still left with the question of why there is so much graphic physical violence in these lives, and why these lives were so very popular. I believe that the answer to both of these questions can be found in what the saint's life provides for its listening audience, and I would also suggest that the saint's life provides something different for each gender. On the one hand, the story of the female saint, undergoing terrible torture, demonstrates the Church's commitment to virginity as the means of female sanctity. She is chaste, and men who would violate that chastity are depicted as villains. On the other hand, however, by simultaneously glamorizing and idealizing the female saint as the perfection of womanhood in her physical beauty, the female saint's life serves to elevate the virgin. Nonetheless, this glamorization and idealization serves to make the virgin all the more sexually desirable to men. Consequently, I would argue that the female saint's life serves to increase the attraction of male audience for virgins. That is, by glamorizing virgins and graphically 158 picturing their suffering at the hands of powerful men, the female saint's life covertly encourages what it overtly condemns. The saints' lives establish the ideal of virginal sexuality for the male audience, allowing the men in fantasy to possess the most beautiful, most chaste, and most pure women. In many ways, it makes rape all the more attractive. What, then, does the saint's life provide for the women of the audience? It offers them a fantasy in which they take charge of their own lives and their own sexuality, something which medieval culture did not allow. Like Lucy, a woman could walk away from a spouse, distribute money as she chooses, and make decisions regarding her wealth and her body. She could be the beloved of the most glamorous knight of all (Christ) and she could exercise power over the temporal authorities who defined her existence physiologically, religiously, and legally. For both genders, the saint's life offered everything offered by romance and more: beautiful women, violent conquest, naked bodies, horrible torture, and happy endings. Even better, these stories were sanctioned by the Church, so the laity could listen to them without guilt. In addition, these stories were true, at least in the minds of the 31 listening audience. (The current popularity of "real- ”See Suzanne Fleischman, "On the Representation of History and Fiction in the Middle Ages," History and Iheory 22 (1983): 278-310, for a discussion of generic distinctions between history and fiction. She examines the authenticity, intent, reception, social function, narrative syntax, and narrator involvement in the historical writings of the 159 life" docu-drama in the tabloids and on the television might suggest that perhaps not much has changed in audience taste over the centuries.) Finally, on the darker side, I would raise one last question concerning the reason saints' lives remained a viable genre for such a long time, in favor with not only the laity for the reasons outlined above, but also sanctioned by the authority structures of the church and state. Is it possible that the saints' lives uncover a cultural value, one that says that dead virgins are better than raped women? A father's profit on the marriage of his daughter depends on her virginity: a raped daughter becomes an economic burden and a social embarassment. Further, her lack of virginity could throw the inheritance of a family estate into question. In the case of rape, is a daughter's duty to opt for death rather than defilement? In conclusion, the lives of the female saints and the representation of rape within those lives provide for us one more way to examine codes underpinning medieval English culture. In the next chapter, we will examine the secular counterpart of the saint's life, the Middle English romance. Middle Ages, concluding that "the issue of the time was not objective truth as distinct from subjective belief.... [H]istorical truth was anything that belonged to a widely accepted tradition" (309). CHAPTER SIX DAMSELS IN DISTRESS: RAPE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ROMANCE In his study of rape in medieval England, Carter asserts that "the fictional literature, generally, provides so little evidence about rape that such literature is not a useful source for the subject of rape."1 He further calls medieval fiction both "unmanageable" and "fruitless" for the study of rape. Carter's statements reveal his assumption that the twentieth-century opposition of "fiction" and "non- fiction" applies to all written texts, regardless of the age in which those texts were written. By so doing, Carter eliminates a particularly rich body of written artifacts, the Middle English romances, and particularly the Arthurian romances, from his study. Although the Arthurian stories can be considered "fiction" in the sense that it is difficult or impossible to connect them with anything like an "historical" Arthur, these stories nonetheless convey very real information about the culture and society out of which they grew. Further, while we may not read them as history, there is strong indication that to medieval audiences, romances were 1Carter, 114. 160 161 considered historical. Finally, by looking at the development of romance across time, we may be able to uncover changes in attitudes within the culture. As Kennedy argues, A work's context, linguistic, social, and above all, literary, will change; and if it is to survive as a living piece of literature, there must be interaction between the text and its changing environment.2 Arthurian romance has indeed survived, right up into the present day. During the Middle Ages, Arthurian literature was very popular, at least according to the manuscript evidence and the number of early printings.3 As such, it would seem evident that the body of romances still available to us would provide an insight into medieval culture. As Stephen Knight argues, Taken as a whole, read in their historical position and their social function, the Middle English romances are a wide-ranging and powerful body of cultural production. They are the best testimony to the hopes and fears of the medieval English ruling class, and a part of the cultural pressure on those who permitted them to rule.‘ Thus, because rape and sexuality are at the heart of 2Elspeth Kennedy, "The Re-writing and Re-reading of a Text: The Evolution of the Prose Lancelot," in The Chengihg Face of Arthuri n Ro ce, ed. Alison Adams, et al. (Cambridge: Boydell, 1986), 1. 3See, for example, Stephen Knight, "The Social Function of the Middle English Romances,"in Medieval Litereppre: CriticismI Ideologyl and History, ed. David Aers (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), 99-119; and Edmund Reiss, "Romance,"in The Po ular Literature of Mediev 1 En land, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 108-30. ‘Knight, 119. 162 Arthurian literature,5 I believe that it is impossible for this literature 29: to tell us something about medieval attitudes toward both. As Dorothy Colmer notes, ”One need not be obsessed to find rape and sexuality in Arthurian romance both medieval and modern,"6 ‘While some work has been done on rape in medieval French romance, most notably by Kathryn Gravdal and Antoinette Saly, the question of rape in Middle English Arthurian romance has gone largely unexplored. Romance itself is an ambiguous term, used as a generic description for a genre that seems to defy definition. Paul Strohm's work on generic distinctions in Middle English has been particularly helpful in this regard, most notably his study of the origins and meanings of Middle English "romaunce." He traces the meanings of the Old French term romans from the twelfth century through the Middle English word romaunee used in the late thirteenth, fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, demonstrating the ways the word changes from meaning any story written in the vernacular, to meaning a story which has a particular kind 5See Antoinette Saly, 215-224. Saly calls rape "le motif central de la littérature arthurienne" (215). See also Gravdal, "Gratian": "Sexual violence is built into the premise of Arthurian romance: medieval romance is a genre that by definition must create the threat of rape" (654). 6Dorothy Colmer, "Character and Class in 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,'" gournal of English ehg German Phiiology 72 (1973): 332. 163 of subject matter.7 ‘What Strohm's study reveals is that by the fourteenth century, Middle English "romaunce" has come to mean a story about someone. Further, "we learn that the center of interest in the portrayal of this central figure is generally in his major exploits and especially in his '“ This central figure is always male; while martial deeds. women figure in the Middle English romances, they do so as objects rather than subjects. The Middle English romances nearly all have French sources, and for years the Middle English romances have been seen as "merely" translations of their French sources. As Francoise Le Saux points out, Implicit in such an attitude is the belief that the act of translation is a purely mechanical process, a matter of merely giving different names to the same things, which is of an entirely different nature to poetic creativity. Modern translation theory, however, has demonstrated the fallacy of such a view.9 Increasingly, however, scholars view the English romances as the products of writers who made shifts and changes in their translations to accomodate English audiences and English concerns.” Thus, Middle English 7Paul Strohm, "The Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romance," Genre 10 (1977): 1-29. 8Strohm, 9. 9Francoise Le Saux, Layamoh's Erpr: The Poem and Its Sources (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), 25. 10See, for example, Knight; Le Saux; Dieter Mehl, The Middle English Eemance of the Ihirreehth and Fourreenph Cenrhries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968): and Reiss. 164 romances differ from their French sources in a number of ways. Mehl notes that the Middle English romances tend to be shorter than their French counterparts, with "sparser use of description and less reflection."11 The English poets seemed to like more action and a more quickly paced narrative than did the writers of the French sources. Additionally, there is a marked difference in focus between the French and English romances. The French romances of Chrétien, in particular, explore the relationships between knights and ladies, focusing on courtesy. Women figure far more prominently in these romances. The English romances (as will be demonstrated below) often focus on the military prowess of King Arthur and his knights. Women are peripheral, yet necessary, often present in the text to provide a rationale for military action on the part of a knight. The "damsel in distress" of Middle English romance often serves as a point of conflict between opposing males. Her attacker is generally a knight, bent on conquest of land and/or fame, as is her rescuer. The pastourelle, another genre in which there are marked differences between the French and the English productions, should be mentioned here in passing. In the pastourelle, a knight encounters a young woman, generally a shepherdess, in a secluded location. William D. Paden "Mehl, 22. 165 offers this definition of the genre: 1. The mode is pastoral, commonly realized in a country setting and in the description of the heroine as a shepherdess. 2. The cast includes a man and a young woman. 3. The plot comprises a discovery and an attempted seduction. 4. The rhetoric involves both narrative and dialogue. 5. The point of view is that of the man.” In the French versions of the pastourelle, the encounter between the knight and shepherdess sometimes ends in rape, sometimes in seduction, and sometimes in the shepherdess outwitting the knight.13 The meetings between the knight and shepherdess are reminscent of Andreas Capellanus's advice to young men in Ihe Art of geurhly Leve. Writing in France during the 1180's, Andreas Capellanus voiced the attitude of the nobility toward common people, particularly peasant women. He advised noblemen as follows: But if the love even of peasant women chances to entice you, remember to praise them lavishly, and should you find a suitable spot you should not delay in taking 1“’William D. Paden, trans. and ed., The Medieval Eesrohrelle (New York: Garland, 1987), 1:ix. Paden's book contains 210 pastourelles in a variety of languages. 1"’See Gravdal, "Camouflaging Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in the Medieval Pastourelle," Eomahrie Review 76 (1985): 361-73 and "The Game of Rape: Sexual Violence and Social Class in the Pastourelle," in Ravishihg Maidens, 104-121. She argues, "The pastourelle uses the representation of sexual violence as a symbolic system which functions as a locus of political thought, inscribing its reflection on law, power, and social class on the body of the female character. The pastourelle tropes rape as the inevitable encounter between the members of two different social classes" (104). Paden responds to Gravdal's article in "Rape in the Pastourelle," gomantic Eeviey 80 (1989): 331-49. He takes issue with Gravdal's reading and with her centering the genre around representations of rape. 166 what you seek, gaining it by rough embraces. You will find it hard to soften their outwardly brusque attitude as to make them quietly agree to grant you embraces, or permit you to have the consolations you seek, unless the remedy of at least some compulsion is first applied to take advantage of their modesty.“ Although the pastourelle was far more popular in France than in England, and appeared much earlier in France than it did in England, it still seems apparent that the genre was known in England.15 The encounter between the parents of Sir Degare (described below) resonates of the pastourelle. In addition, Chaucer draws on the form for Ihe Mire of Bath's Tale discussed in the next chapter. Of the three extant Middle English pastourelles, none involves a rape, or a seduction. While rape remains a generic convention in the Middle English poems, it is covered and deferred, hinted at, yet absent. As in Mevelek and other English romances, the threat of rape remains as a plot device. While the threat of rape provides an impetus for glorious deeds by the Arthurian knight in romance, actual representations of rape are relatively rare. A woman worth fighting for is a virginal woman, a "clene mayde" in Malory's words, and a knight's success often depends on 14P.G. Walsh, ed. and trans., Andreas Capellahhe on Love (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1987), 122. 1SPaden lists 109 French pastourelles, dating from the early twelfth century through fifteenth century. He only lists three English pastourelles, one from the thirteenth century and two from the fourteenth century. Medieyel Pestourelle, i-vii. 167 whether he can keep her a "clene mayde." There are cases, however, in Middle English romance where rape does occur, such as in the early fourteenth- century Eir_hegere or the late fourteenth-century air Leunfal. In these romances, rape is constructed in a markedly different manner from the attempted rapes found in Malory, for example. In romances where rapes occur, the poets emphasize the woman's beauty and shift our perception of the male perpetrator. While the act he performs is clearly rape, both by medieval and modern standards, the poets fashion the male as a lover, rather than as a criminal. The rape occurs because of the beauty of the woman or because of the love the rapist holds for the woman. Men who rape women for these reasons are not punished in romance: they are able to keep their reputations intact. The appeal to beauty and love as motives for rape remind us of the penitentials cited in Chapter 2: penance for the rape of beautiful woman was less than for an ugly woman, because presumably the beauty of the woman was temptation enough to justify the lack of control on the part of the man. Further, the construction of rape as an act of love rather than as an assault on a woman's body not only shifts blame away from the male, but also allows the later marriage of the couple. Sir Degare provides a useful example to illustrate the above as well as to expose some of the characteristic tendencies of Middle English romance containing sexual 168 violence. Sir Degare opens with a description of the powerful king of Little Brittany and of his lovely daughter, his only child: his Kyng he hadde none hair But a maidenchild, fre and fair: Here gentiresse and hir beauté Was moche renound in ich countré.(17-20)16 The king will only wed his unnamed daughter to a suitor who is able to defeat him in a tourney. Because the king is so strong himself, none of her suitors is successful. One day, while riding in the woods, the daughter and her two serving ladies become separated and lost from the rest of the king's court. The two ladies fall asleep, and the king's daughter is left alone in the woods, an inherently dangerous position for a lone woman to be in. She is accosted by a handsome young man who identifies himself as a a fairy knight and who tells her she should not be afraid: "Damaisele, welcome mote bou be: Be bou afered of none wih3te: Iich am comen here a fairi kny3te; Mi kynde is armes for to were, On horse to ride wi3 scheld and spere: Forbi afered be bou nowt: I ne haue nowt but mi swerd ibrout. (96-102) We soon learn that the sword is hot the only weapon the knight has brought. The poet spends a good deal of time 16All references to §ir_pegere are from Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale, eds., Middle English Metricel Romahees (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 1:287-320. Future references will note line numbers within the text. 169 assuring us that this young fairy knight is fair and handsome and there seems to be no reason for the young woman (or the reader) to doubt his good intentions; however, the beauty of the woman, the isolation of the setting, and the love of the knight lead to inevitable rape. Ironically, the knight twice assures the young woman that she has nothing to fear, revealing the belief that rape is not something which can harm a woman if perpetrated by a handsome, loving man. His rationale for committing the rape is that they are alone, and he has loved her for many years: "Ich haue iloued be mani a 3er, And now we beb vs selue her, bou best mi lemman ar bou go, Weber be likeb wel or wo." bo nobing ne coude do she But wep and criede and wolde fle; And he anon gan hir atholde, And dide his wille, what he wolde. He binam hire here maidenhod, And sethen vp toforen hire stod. (103-12) That medieval audiences would view this as a rape is clear: the young woman is a virgin, she raises the hue and cry, she resists strenuously, and he "binam hire here maidenhod." In spite of that, the knight is not_described in any negative way. It is possible that the audience would, in part, blame the young woman for her own rape: wandering in the woods is asking for trouble. In addition, like the knight who apparently did not see the harm in raping the woman, the audience might agree that rape committed by a man who is both handsome and in love is an 170 expression of that love, rather than a violent assault.17 In addition, the medical and religious belief that it is the male's responsibility to initiate the sexual act, even in spite of female resistance, would allow the audience to see the rape as something other than rape.18 The result of this unwilling union is the conception of Sir Degare, who becomes the hero of the story. That the conception takes place further supports the notion that the rape itself was not all that unpleasant for the young woman. What follows is a complicated series of events which leads ultimately to Sir Degare unwittingly marrying his own mother. After mother and son recognize each other (luckily, before the consummation of the marriage), she gives him the means of identifying his father, the fairy knight. Subsequently, Sir Degare fights an unknown knight, who turns out to be his father. The two happily return to Sir Degare's mother, and the fairy knight marries her. For medieval audiences, the story has a happy ending. The rape of the maiden results in the birth of a fine young knight, and she marries the rapist, absolving him. What does this romance suggest? Stephen Knight argues, in a "general summary of romance ideology," ‘WOne need only examine popular contemporary culture as expressed in soap operas, paperback romances, and movies to find that audiences still find rape acceptable under similar circumstances. 18These beliefs are investigated in both Chapters 2 and 3. Again, these beliefs are still evident in contemporary culture: "Her lips said 'no,' but her eyes said 'yes.'" 171 The romances confront problems seen from the viewpoint of a landowning, armed class, and resolve those problems with values felt to be potent and admissable. Threats and values are coded to produce a self-concept for the powerful and to present an acceptable image of power to those without it.19 The problems in Sir Qegare begin with a father who is powerful and strong, and who refuses to marry his daughter to a suitor, an obligation of any parent or guardian. His refusal to allow her to wed through traditional channels throws the inheritance of his kingdom into question. That the English poet was concerned about inheritance is evident from his clear naming of the daughter as the king's only heir within the first seventeen lines of the poem. In addition, when Sir Degare seeks his father toward the end of the romance, he encounters a young woman whose story in some ways parallels that of his mother: she was beloved of her father and was his only heir. This damsel is besieged by a mortal male who wants to rape her and take possession of her land. Sir Degare defeats the knight, and the damsel offers him all of her land. The above scenarios illustrate the problem of feudalism for women as articulated in romance: the feudal system, which requires the use of armed cavalry to maintain an estate, puts women at the mercy of whoever can defend their holdings. Thus, female inheritance can not only mean the potential loss of a family's land, it can also create instability and bloodshed as armed men fight for that land. ”Knight, 102 . 172 The ravishment of the heiress, then, parallels the capture of the land. A second problem for the poet is the king's relationship with his daughter. When the daughter discovers that she has been made pregnant by her rape, her only worry is that people will say that her father is the father of her child. Further, she worries that if her father discovers her pregnancy "bat neuer bli3e schal he be." The eventual wedding of Sir Degare to his own mother also makes clear the poet's concern with incest. In a feudal system where great families attempted to control ever-larger pieces of land through marriage and intermarriage, the questions of incest and inheritance were always present. Religious taboos concerning incest and political/economic considerations of inheritance practice are in conflict over who owns the reproductive rights of the woman. The poet solves these problems with the introduction of the fairy knight. The knight seizes the young woman away from her father's grasp (circumventing incest) and begets on her a young man who can eventually inherit his grandfather's holdings (solving the problem of inheritance). The fairy knight, as a supernatural being, is not subject to the laws and morals of the land. His fair visage and body, along with his gentle speech suggest that, although he rapes the young woman, he is doing it for her own good. Besides, he rapes her only because she is beautiful and he has loved her for many years. His eventual 173 return and marriage to Sir Degare's mother accomplishes two things. First, the return and marriage demonstrate the knight's good intentions; and second, they solve the problems above by reiterating culturally held values. That is, not only has a male heir been produced, one who has proved himself capable of winning and holding additional land, the rape itself is erased through the marriage. Thus, in §ir hegare, the rape serves as both a plot device which provides the romance with its hero and as an answer to cultural concerns about incest and inheritance. The romances containing stories of King Arthur's life offer further insight into the role of rape in romance. They also provide an intriguing glimpse into the ways sexual violence is inscribed and reinscribed into the Arthurian codes. Even in early Welsh literature, rape figures prominently in the Arthurian cycle. One of the earliest allusions to abduction and rape occurs in the Celtic tale of Culhwch and Olwen: [T]he king went to be advised where he could find a wife. One of his advisers said, "I know a woman well suited for you to marry. She is the wife of King Doged." They agreed to go seek her. And they killed the king and carried his wife home with them, and an only daughter she had with her. And they conquered that king's land. 2° This passage from is very short, and it is the only 20RichardM. Loomis, "The Tale of Culhwch and Olwen," in Th Romance of A thur, ed. James J. Wilhelm and Laila Zamuelis Gross (New York: Garland, 1984), 31. 174 mention of how the queen came to the court of Culhwch's father. However, within the short passage, we have murder ("And they killed the king") and abduction ("and carried his wife home with them”). That no further explanation is offered seems to imply that obtaining a wife by abduction would be something not unfamiliar to the audience. In addition, the wife-by-capture theme was present not only in early Welsh literature, but also in the Germanic law codes as outlined in Chapter 1. Abduction and rape are central to the story of Gwenhwyfar/Guinevere as well. As early as the Welsh Triads, Gwenhwyfar is attacked at the court: Three Unbridled Ravagings of the Isle of Britain: The first of them, when Medrawd came to Arthur's court in Celli Wig in Cornwall; he left neither food nor drink in the court he did not consume, and he also pulled Gwenhwyfar out of her chair of state, and then he struck a blow upon her.21 Arthur, in return, ravages the court of Medrawd. In Caradoc's Eire of Gildas (written in Latin), Melwas attacks and rapes Gwenhwyfar and carries her off to Glastonbury. Arthur spends a year trying to locate his queen, finally laying siege to Melwas's castle at Glastonbury. In this version, Gildas intercedes and negotiates for Gwenhwyfar's release.22 21John K. Bollard, "Arthur in the Early Welsh Tradition," in Ihe Romehce of Arrhur, ed. James J. Wilhelm and Laila Zamuelis Gross (New York: Garland, 1984), 34. 22E. K. Chambers, Arrhpr of Britain (Cambridge: Speculum Historiale, 1927: reprint, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1964), 263. 175 Perhaps the most graphic depiction of sexual violencealso includes a long bibliography of articles and books on in early Arthurian material is sculpted in stone at the cathedral of Modena. Dating from the opening years ofthe subject of the medieval pastourelle. the twelfth century, the scene offers another version of Guinevere's abduction. Guinevere's abduction from Arthur's court does not surface in the either Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histery of rhe Kings of Britain or in any of the Middle English texts until much later, in the time of Malory, who drew on French sources for his story of Lancelot. The French, however, continued to include this early Celtic episode in their redactions. Chrétien de Troyes in his Lehcelet tells the story of Guinevere's abduction by Meleagant. In this telling, Meleagant comes to Arthur's court and throws down a challenge: he will release imprisoned knights, ladies, and maidens from his land if Arthur will entrust one of his knights with Guinevere. Saly, among others, offers a mythological basis for this story, citing the Persephone story.3’ Certainly, a case for such an interpretation can be made. In addition to the similarities between the Guinevere and Persephone 23Saly, 215. See also Jean Markale, Le rei Arrhur e; le_eeeiere_gelrie (Paris: Payot, 1976): and John Rhys, Studies in the Arthuriah Legeng (1891; reprint, New York: Russell and Russell, 1966) for mythological interpretations of Arthurian literature. 176 abductions, the Uther-Igraine story (discussed below) recalls the Alceme-Zeus myth. However, I am not convinced that we have to dig so deeply to find reasons for the rape of Guinevere or for other sexual violence in Arthurian literature. I would argue that the mythological interpretations gloss the rapes, by pulling our attention away from the cultural and societal milieu out of which these stories grew. Rather than looking to archetypes or myth for explanation, I would suggest looking to what we know about medieval culture. By comparing the stories with what was mentioned earlier concerning the rape and abduction of heiresses and wives, certain connections can be made. First, because rape and abduction of wives and widows were ongoing throughout the Middle Ages, it is not surprising that they would emerge as a central theme in the story of Guinevere. Second, in each case, the assault on the queen seems to be delivered more as an insult to Arthur than as a personal attack on Guinevere. Rather, Guinevere serves merely as a pawn, a piece of property on whom Medrawd/Melwas/Meleagant plays out his challenge to Arthur. In each subsequent version, the character of Arthur becomes weaker: in the first, he "ravages" Medrawd's court: in Gildas, he lays siege: in Chrétien, he is helpless. Hanawalt's conjecture about the motivation behind the rape of a man's wife seems particularly appropriate here: rapes were often committed as revenge on the husband. In each case, Medrawd/Melwas/ 177 Meleagant attempts to shame and humiliate Arthur; in Chrétien's version, Meleagant is successful, exposing Arthur's impotence and inability to protect his wife. I would also argue that it is for this reason the English writers do not pick up on this particular story. In the English versions of the whole life of Arthur (most notably Layamon and the alliterative Merre_hrrhpre), the focus is on Arthur himself as a warrior and as a hero. In the English romances, Arthur never loses his ability to fight. When Malory recounts the story of Guinevere's abduction, the setting has changed. Guinevere is no longer seated in Arthur's court as she is in Chrétien's version. Rather, she is a-Maying in the woods with ten knights and ten ladies when she is accosted by Sir Mellyagaunte. As in Sir Degare, the attacker gives his long-standing love of the lady as his reason for the attack: "For wyte you well, madame, I have loved you many a yere, and never ar now cowde I gete you at such avale. And therefore I woll take you as I fynde you."(651)“ The shift in focus is subtle here; however, Guinevere's insistence that her party go Maying in the woods, not properly attired for combat, and without her protector Sir Launcelot or her husband, may be partially to blame for the predicament in which she finds herself. In 2"All references to Malory are from Eugene Vinaver, Melory; Worhs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Page numbers will be noted in the body of the text. 178 addition, Mellyagaunt's protestation of love for Guinevere provide a motive other than humiliation of Arthur for the attack. Presumably, Guinevere's own beauty has made her vulnerable to attack. Her abduction, then, provides ample opportunity for heroic deeds on the part of the knights, without impugning Arthur's manhood. Guinevere's roles in the later English versions find their roots in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Miehery_efi_rhe_§ihge of Erirain. In these versions, Guinevere is not a helpless victim of attack but rather a perpetrator of betrayal. Geoffrey's work is the most influential of all the early sources of the Arthurian tradition. Written in Latin in 1136, Geoffrey's history covers the history of Britain from its mythical founding by Brutus, great-grandson of the Trojan Aeneas, to the last British king, Cadwallader, who was defeated by Saxons in the seventh century. Geoffrey's account of Arthur's life forms the central part of his narrative. Guinevere is first introduced when she marries Arthur. Geoffrey reports that Guinevere "was the most beautiful woman in the entire island."25 Her fate as a traitor is sealed by Geoffrey, however, when he tells the story of Arthur's campaign against Rome. Arthur leaves England in the care of Mordred and his Queen. After numerous battles and exploits, Arthur receives word that 25Geoffrey of Monmouth, Ihe Misrory er the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1966), 221. 179 his nephew Mordred, in whose care he had left Britain, had placed the crown upon his own head. What is more, this treacherous tyrant was living adulterously and out of wedlock with Queen Guinevere, who had broken the vows of her earlier marriage. About this particular matter, most noble Duke, Geoffrey of Monmouth prefers to say nothing . 2‘ Attitudes toward Guinevere and toward women in general seem to manifest themselves in the stories poured into the Gaufridian silence. Wace, the French poet, who reworked Geoffrey's history by 1155, retains the earlier Guinevere-as-victim language: Mordred did whatever was good in his own eyes, and would have seized the land to his use. He took homage and fealty from Arthur's men, demanding of every castle a hostage. Not content with this great sin he wrought yet fouler villainy. Against the Christian law he took to himself the wife of the king. His uncle's queen, the dame of his lord, he took as wife, and made of her his spouse. These tidings were carried to Arthur. He was persuaded that Mordred observed no faith towards him, but had betrayed the queen, stolen his wife, and done him no fair service.”' Layamon, the English poet who reworked Wace at the end of the twelfth century, also retains the image of Guinevere as victim of abduction: bus hafeb Modred idon. Pine quene he hafeb ifon. and bi wunliche lond isat on his a3ere hond. (14043-44)28 Once again, Guinevere is abducted. The connection between the queen and Arthur's lovely land points to an 26'Geoffrey of Monmouth, 257. 27Eugene Mason, trans., Wage and Layamon: Arrhurian Qhronicles (London: Dent, 1962), 109. 2W3. L. Brook and R. F. Leslie, eds., La3amon: Erht, EETS 277 (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 2:736. 180 abduction of an heiress for economic gain. Layamon tells us a few lines later that neither Mordred nor Guinevere expect Arthur to return: it is possible that each considers Guinevere a widow, able to inherit Arthur's land. Nevertheless, the prophetic dream which Arthur experiences prior to his knowledge of Mordred's betrayal undercuts the notion of Guinevere as innocent. In their final words on Guinevere, however, Wace and Layamon differ subtly. Wace permits Guinevere to reflect, show remorse, and repent. Wace's Guinevere clearly understands that she has wronged Arthur and committed sin. Wace's last words on Guinevere are as follows: Never again was this fair lady heard or seen; never again was she found or known of men. This she did by reason of her exceeding sorrow for her trespass, and for the sin that she had wrought.” The English antipathy to Guinevere manifests itself in Layamon's version: he calls Mordred the "dearest of men" to Guinevere, and also adds a passage in which the Queen goes directly to Mordred and reveals Arthurs battle plans. She is clearly a traitor in this version; as such, she is given no chance to repent. Layamon describes her as a wretched, sorrowful woman, but the implication is that she is sorrowful, not for her sin, but for her loss of Mordred. Layamon's last words on the subject reveal his distaste for this woman: Pa quene lei inne Eouwerwic nas heo neuere swa sarlic. 29Mason, 113. 181 bat wes Wenhauer ba quene ser3est wimmonne. Heo iherde suggen sobbere worden. hu ofte Modred flah and hu Arbur hine bibah. Was wes hire bere while bat heo wes on life. Ut of Eouerwike bi nihte heo i-wende. & touward Karliun tuhte swa swibe swa heo mahte. bider heo brohten bi nihte of hire cnihten twei3e and me hire hafd bi-wefde mid ane hali rifte and heo wes ber munechene kare-fullest wife. Pa nusten men of bere quene war heo bicumen weore. no feole 3ere seobbe nuste hit mon to sobe whaaer heo weore on debe. ba heo hire-seolf weore isunken in be watere. (l4203-l4216)3° The writer of the alliterative Merre_hrrhpre, finishing his work sometime just before 1400, adds another touch to the picture of Guinevere: Mordred has "wrought her with child."31 The inclusion of this bit of information emphasizes the illicit sexual union of Mordred and Guinevere, clearly aligning her with the negative examples of womanly behavior offered by religious writers. Perhaps even more important, this child represents a threat to the succession of the throne and offers even further motivation for the battles with Mordred that Arthur undertakes. The writer of the alliterative Morte Arrhur manages in this way both to discredit Guinevere ahd to reduce her importance to the story. Arthur does not act out of revenge for adultery; he acts in order to ensure his throne. Consequently, while Chrétien and the French romancers construct a Guinevere who betrays her husband sexually with Lancelot, the English 5”Brook and Leslie, 746. 31Mary Hamel, ed., Merge Arrhure: A Critical Edition (New York: Garland, 1984), 228. 182 writers from Layamon onward seem more concerned with the political implications of Guinevere's sexual liason with Mordred. One of the most intriguing stories of rape recurring in Arthurian literature concerns the begetting of Arthur. First told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the story of Uther and Ygerne provides source material for numerous writers after Geoffrey. I would like to discuss a few of these versions, noting how the concerns of medieval authors manifested themselves in the literaturefi32 In Geoffrey, Uther is immediately filled with desire the first time he sees Ygerne. Gorlois, Ygerne's husband notices the king's attention and is so annoyed that he leaves the court. Uther becomes angry and orders Gorlois to return to court. When Gorlois refuses, Uther gathers an army and hurries to the Duchy of Cornwall. After one week, Uther's desire for Ygerne becomes so strong that he believes he will "die of the passion" which consumes him. Merlin is summoned, and he changes Uther into the shape of Gorlois, Ulfin into Jordan, and himself into Britaelis. So changed, they enter Tintagel. Geoffrey writes, :RSee Rosemary Morris, "Uther and Igerne: A Study in Uncourtly Love," in Arthurian Literature IV, ed. Richard Barber (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 70-92, for an excellent study of the ways the characterizations of Uther, Ygerne, and Merlin change chronologically as well as according to the nationality of the writers. Especially interesting in this article is Morris's discussion of the Scottish chroniclers, Boece and Buchanan, and their depiction of the begetting of Arthur. 183 The King spent that night with Ygerna and satisfied his desire by making love with her. He had deceived her by the disguise which he had taken. He had deceived her, too, by the lying things that he said to her....She naturally believed all that he said and refused him nothing that he asked. That night she conceived Arthur....Meanwhile, when it was discovered that the King was no longer present...his...army tried to breach the walls and challenged the beleaguered Duke to battle....As the struggle between them swayed this way and that, Gorlois was among the first to be killed.” Wace also reports that Uther changes shape, that he spends the night with Igerne, and that Gorlois is one of the first killed. Layamon's account of the tryst between Uther and Ygerne expands on Wace's considerably. Layamon devotes many lines to establishing that Ygerne in no way encouraged the advances Uther made toward her. Merlin is called, he effects the shape change, and Uther spends the night with Ygerne: and Ygaerne lei adun bi UBere Pendragon Nu wende Ygerne ful iwis bat hit weoren Gorlois. burh neuere nanes cunnes bing. no icneou heo Vber bene king. . be king hire wende to swa wapmon sculde to wimmon do. & hafded him to done wib leofust wimmonne & he streonede hire on eenne selcubne mon. kingen alre kenest ba auere com to monnen & he wes on arde Arbur ihaten.(9505-9511f“ According to Layamon, Uther is still in bed with Ygerne when he hears the news that Gorlois is dead. The thirteenth-century author of Percival 1i Gallois changes the story somewhat: Uther changes shape, lies with :flceoffrey of Monmouth, 207. :“Brook and Leslie, 494. 184 Ygerne, and conceives Arthur. However, the author closes the story, "And what became of King Gorlois?" "Sir," saith he, "The King slew him on the morrow of the night he lay with his wife, and so forthwith espoused Queen Ygerne, and in such a manner as I tell you was King Arthur conceived in sin that is now the best King in the world . "35 In the Prose Merlin and the Suite de Me 11 , the author describes the same scene: And anoon alle thre thei come be-fore the chambir where Ygerne that yet was in her bedde; and in all haste that thei myght, thei mad their lorde redy. And so he yede to bedde to Ygerne: and that nyght he gat vpon hir the gode kynge that after was cleped Arthur. The lady made grete ioye of the kynge, for she wende verily it hadde ben the Duke hir lorde, that she loved moche with a trewe herte. Thus thei lay to-geder, till on the morowe, in the dawenynge, the tidinges com in to the town that the Duke was dedefi“ In the above version, Merlin tells Uther that the king has fathered an heir. They both then write down the day and time of conception. Clearly, what is at issue here is her that Uther has had sexual intercourse with Ygerne, but rather that there be verification of the time and date of Arthur's conception.”’ 3”Pe c'val ' llo's, quoted by C. A. Ralegh Radford, "Romance and Reality in Cornwall," in Geoffrey Ashe, ed. Ihe Quest for Arthur's Britain (New York: Frederic A. Praeger, 1968), 75-76. 3“Henry B. Wheatley, ed. Merlin; er The Early Misrory of King Arthur, EETS 10 and 21 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1899), 77. 37For additional insight into the Prose Merlin, see Carol M. Meale, "The Manuscripts and Early Audience of the Middle English Pr se Merlin," in The Changing Face of Arthu ian Romance, ed. Alison Adams, et al., (Cambridge: Boydell, 1986), 92-111. 185 Malory is more specific concerning the duke's death: But the duke of Tyntigail aspyed hou the kyng rode from the syege of Tarabil. And therfor that nyghte he yssued oute of the castel at a posterne for to have distressid the kynges hooste, and so thorowe his owne yssue the duke himself was slayne or ever the kynge cam at the castel of Tyntigail. So after the deth of the duke kyng Uther lay with Igrayne, more than thre houres after his deth, and begat on her that nyght Arthur. (5) When we compare these stories to what has already been said about medieval rape and law, some surprising features emerge. First, both Carter and Hanawalt have remarked on the corporate nature of medieval rape, reporting that in many cases, a rapist would act with accomplices to plan and perform rape.:38 The actions of Uther, Merlin, and Ulfin mirror in literature what occurred frequently in reality. Second, in each of these versions, Uther acts with twin motivation: he has an overwhelming passion for Ygerne and he is angry with Gorlois. Although his passion for Ygerne is the driving force behind his actions, there is, nonetheless, the additional clear statement that Uther feels himself to have been insulted by Gorlois. His subsequent siege of Tintagel and rape of Ygerne illustrate Hanawalt's conjecture that rapes and robberies against wealthy wives were often acts of revenge and retribution. However, had he acted only because he was angry with Gorlois, his rape of Ygerne would have been brutal and his own character would 38See Chapter 1 for a discussion of Hanawalt's and Carter's findings. 186 have been blackened. The fact that Uther is passionately in love with Ygerne renders his action less rape-like to his audience: like the fairy knight of §ir_pegere, his subsequent marriage to Ygerne makes everything all right. Third, when Morris calls Uther's action "rape" because the queen is deceived, she is imposing modern concepts of rape on this act.:39 No medieval court or medieval audience would view Uther's action as rape. Indeed, Ygerne would not be able to appeal the rape, even if she became aware of it later. The reasons for this are manifold. The courts defined rape as forced sexual intercourse. In none of the descriptions above was Ygerne "forced." She willingly gave herself to the man she thought was her husband. Furthermore, for a woman to appeal rape, she must be able to prove that she raised the hue and cry and that she resisted the man's advances. Again, Ygerne did neither. When Ygerne discovered that the man who lay with her on the night of the siege could not be the duke, she kept quiet. She knew that she had no case to accuse anyone of rape. When her pregnancy became obvious, she was forced to throw herself on Uther's mercy. The pregnancy was proof of punishable sexual misconduct: and Ygerne's honor, and even life, were in Uther's hands. Fourth, the writers after Geoffrey increasingly emphasized the passion with which Ygerne greeted Uther, who 39Morris, 72 . 187 she thought was her husband. I believe that the reason for this is tied up with that medieval medical notion that woman cannot become pregnant except through voluntary sexual contact. By showing that Ygerne willingly gave herself to Uther, the conception of Arthur became possible. It also seems clear that if Ygerne had resisted Uther, but subsequently became pregnant, medieval audiences would doubt Arthur's parentage. Therefore, Merlin's magical changing of Uther into the likeness of Gorlois was necessary for two reasons: to avoid the charge of rape against Uther, and to account for Ygerne's pregnancy. When Boece and Buchanan dropped the shape change from their versions, they not only blackened the character of Uther, as Morris argues:“o they also called into question Ygerne's pregnancy, Arthur's parentage, and the legitimacy of his birth. But Arthur's legitimacy appears to have been a problem even for those writers who include the shape change. In Geoffrey, Wace, and the Prose Merlin, the time of Gorlois's death was uncertain. Indeed, in Geoffrey and Wace it was entirely possible that Ygerne's pregnancy might have been the result of intercourse with Gorlois, not Uther. The author of the Prose Merlin tried to remedy the latter question by Stating directly that first, Ygerne "knows" that it was a mysterious visitor who fathered her child; second, “Morris, 89-90 . 188 Gorlois had been away from the queen ”for a long time" before his death: and third, Uther and Merlin wrote down the exact day and time for Arthur's conception."1 However, all three writers share a problem: is Arthur conceived before or after Gorlois's death? Anglo-Saxon law tried to discourage the abduction of wives by decreeing that children born to the abductor and the abductee were considered legitimate offspring of the first husband.“2 After the Norman Conquest, however, confusion and discrepancy existed between what the law considered legitimate and what the Church considered legitimate. For the Church, a marriage performed after the birth of a child would confer legitimacy retroactively upon that child. The common law was much less clear, and the number of cases brought to court involving just this question speaks to that confusion . "3 Any reading of medieval law after the Conquest will reveal an overwhelming concern with property and with what constitutes rightful title to property. A corollary concern with property was who could be considered legitimate heirs to that property. Gorlois's death, therefore, was necessary for all the writers; otherwise, Uther could not marry Ygerne, and there would be no question about Arthur's bastardy from the point “S. Rosenberg, 238. “Fen, 61. ‘“Pollock and Maitland, 375. 189 of view of the Church or the law. But the time of that death plagued later writers who wished to establish that Arthur was both Uther's son and the legitimate offspring of Uther and Ygerne, worthy of inheriting both Uther's property and his title. It seems to me that it is this question that prodded Malory into noting specifically that Uther lay with Ygerne three hours after the death of Gorlois. Although Malory could not eliminate the problem altogether (given the source material with which he worked), he could, nonetheless, attempt to clarify Arthur's parentage. The reception of the stories of Arthur's begetting, therefore, depends largely on the audience's understanding of the medieval view of rape, adultery, pregnancy, legitimacy, and law. I would argue that the lengths to which writers went to address these problems imply that their audiences were both knowledgeable and concerned with these very issues. Morewedge believes that "historical, economic, sociological, anthropological, and literary data" can be "consulted for clues as to how women's role was conceived and depicted by medieval society."“’ She also argues that the constructs of a society both shape and are shaped by art."°5 When considered in the context of legal theory, practical application of the law, medical information, “Morewedge,'viii. ‘SIbid. 190 religious texts, and the incidence of rape in medieval society, I would maintain that Arthurian literature is an especially rich source of information for uncovering those constructs: and that this literature provides one more way of determining how society viewed both rape and women during the Middle Ages. CHAPTER 7 "THE LAWE OF KYNG ARTHURES HOUS": LAW, GENDER, AND POWER IN IHE WIFE OE BATH'§ TALE Oure Hooste cride "Pees! And that anon!" And seyde, "Lat the womman telle hire tale. Ye fare as folk that dronken ben of ale. Do, dame, telle forth youre tale, and that is best." (850-853)1 "The womman," Chaucer's Wife of Bath, does indeed tell her tale to the other pilgrims; and readers ever since have tried to determine just what that tale is about. Perhaps the reason for this is located within the portrait of the Wife herself: in the Wife of Bath, Chaucer has given us a character who is at once both a "type" and the source of complex, conflicting, and often contradictory discourse. As Peggy Knapp argues, "Behind the immediately funny joke that she makes her living by being...married are some potentially painful ambiguities about estate, identity, and independence."2 The ambiguities the Wife presents as a character spill over into her prologue and into her tale, offering rich possibilities for interpretation. 1All citations taken from The Wife of Bath's Iale from Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). 2Peggy Knapp, Chaucer and the Social Contest (New York: Routledge, 1990), 117. 191 192 Within that fertile ground, I would like to plant the seed of one more reading: that far from being a tale of wish-fulfilling female supremacy, or a tale of the growth of a knight from ignorance to wisdom, The Wife of Bath's Iale is rather an exploration of power and powerlessness, of gender and law, of rape and its consequences. The Wife of Bath's Tale has close analogues in Gower's "Tale of Florent," "The Marriage of Sir Gawain," and "The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell."3 However, alone among these analogues, Chaucer's story opens with a rape, a violent crime committed by a man of power against a woman of no power. Why does Chaucer choose to open the Wife's story in this way? Why does Chaucer choose to picture his Arthurian knight as a rapist? For that matter, why does Chaucer choose to make his rapist an Arthurian knight? These questionS'intrigue me: and although the answers are elusive, I think that examining Chaucer's actual description of the rape might serve to shed some light on the rest of the tale. Chaucer describes the rape in a few short lines: And so bifel that this kyng Arthour Hadde in his hous a lusty bacheler, That on a day cam ridynge fro ryver; And happed that, allone as he was born, He saugh a mayde walkynge him biforn, Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed, 3See Bartlett Whiting, "The Wife of Bath's Tale," in Sources and a s of C c r's nterbu Tales, ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1941; reprint, New'York: Humanities Press, 1958.), 223-68, for a detailed discussion of the sources and analogues. 193 By verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed; Of which oppresioun was swich clamour And swich pursute unto kyng Arthour, That dampned was this knyght for to be deed By cours of lawe, and sholde han lost his heed. (882-92) In the passage, we find the young bachelor riding alone. He sees a maid, on foot, also alone. Because the maid is on foot, and not on a palfrey, and because she is described as a "maid" rather than as a "lady," it would seem that she is not of the same social standing as Arthur's knight, but is in all likelihood a young peasant woman. Further, the situation as set up by Chaucer echoes the medieval pastourelle discussed in the last chapter. As noted, in the pastourelle, a knight meets a lower-class woman, often a shepherdess, in a secluded country setting. Their encounter is often sexual in nature, sometimes resulting in seduction, sometimes in rape. Chaucer appears to draw upon this generically conventional situation for the opening lines of The Wife of Bath's Tale. This resonance of the pastourelle further supports the argument that the maid is of a lower social standing than the knight. The language used by Chaucer to describe the rape of the maid by the knight reflects the language of fourteenth- l. century law in several ways. First, as noted earlier in 4 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of rape law in medieval England. In addition, for the student of literature, Joseph Allen Hornsby's Cheheer ang the Law (Norman, Okla: Pilgrim, 1988) is somewhat helpful: however, Hornsby merely notes the places Chaucer refers to the law without drawing any conclusions about why Chaucer chose to make such references. 194 this study, in order for a sexual act to be legally termed "rape" under the law, the victim must prove that she resisted the attack and that the assaulter used force. The words "maugre hir heed" in this passage suggests that the deed was committed despite the woman's resistance: and the text also tells us directly that the knight used force. Chaucer's use of the word "rafte" also suggests a theft, demonstrating that his understanding of rape was much like that found in the law and in religious writings. Furthermore, the law required that a woman must raise the hue and cry for the act to be considered rape. Her appeal in court depended on proof, then, not only of resistance and force, but also that she had raised the hue and cry. Again, the words "swich a clamour" and "swiche pursute" clearly indicate that the maid has done so. Chaucer economically establishes that this was an unprovoked attack on the maid which must be interpreted both legally and morally as rape. For this action, the knight is "dampned...for to be deed / By cours of lawe." Again we find Chaucer's concern with the law: in this story Arthur's court and Arthur's law function in much the same way as did the court of Chaucer's own time. Just as in Arthur's court, the penalty for rape in Chaucer's time was theoretically death. In Chapter 1 we reviewed Hanawalt's argument that the way a society convicts felons of various crimes reflects the 195 attitude of that society toward a particular crime.5 In the case of rape, study after study confirms that juries were unwilling to send a man to his death for rape. Moreover, during the late fourteenth century, even in the cases of those few men who were convicted of rape, pardons could be purchased.6 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, rapes were common in English records, and charges of rape were frequently brought against upper-class males, as Brundage has observed. He also points out that generally mild punishments were meted out, in spite of the law, and that sexual assaults on lower-class women were treated trivially.7 The treatment afforded Chaucer's knight and his victim clearly reflects the discrepancy between theoretical punishment and actual practice. However, I think we need to go beyond merely citing rape law in order to address why Chaucer has chosen begin this tale in this way. First, of course, Chaucer places the rape within the context of the Arthurian setting. As noted in Chapter 6, fear of rape and rescue from rape are motifs which drive the entire Arthurian tradition. Saly believes that the reason rape figures so frequently in the Arthurian romances is that the rescue of a "damsel in distress" is the illustration of the fundamental act of chivalry, the act SHanawalt, 61. 6Bellamy, 195. 7Brundage, 530. 196 that any knight worthy of his name ("tout Chevalier digne de ce nom") ought to accomplish.8 Ferrante further notes, "One of the prime responsibilities of the Round Table is the protection of women, who seem to need it."9 "Damsels in distress" are at the core of many of the Arthurian stories. The protection of these damsels from rape and abduction is the job of the Arthurian knight. Moreover, as argued above in Chapter 6, I think that the Arthurian stories serve to emphasize both the vulnerability of women and the power of men who can either rescue or rape. There is, however, a notable difference: in nearly every case, the rapist in Arthurian romance is an outsider, a knight from a court other than Arthur's.1o In The Wife of Bath's Tale, because it is one of Arthur's own knights who commits the crime, the rape is disturbingly ironic. As such, his conduct undermines the notion of the Arthurian knight and, by extension, the Arthurian genre. This subversion also renders problematic the Arthurian motif of the growth of a knight from youth to maturity, a motif commonly cited in studies of The Wife of Bath's Tale. 8Saly, 217. 9Ferrante, 120. 10The obvious exception to this generalization is Gawain. Christine Ryan Hilary notes, "It [The Wife er Bath's Tale] could as easily been suggested.byWGawain's casual seduction of a damsel (told.in the Middle English 'Jeaste of Sir Gawayne'), in which he fathers the hero of the 'Fair Unknown' romances, or it may be Chaucer's own invention." "Explanatory notes to The Wife of Bath's Tale," in Benson, 872-73. 197 Furthermore, rape functions in this story as a crime of the powerful over the powerless. In medieval literature in general, rape is something that can only happen to women, and it serves to underscore women's vulnerability to male violence. In the case of The_fli§e_efi_§ephle_Tele, the rape victim's power is nil, due to both her gender and her social class. The rape in The Wife of Bath's Tale is not described in sexually graphic terms, nor is it presented in any way that could be considered sexually provocative; the bald "he rafte hire maydenhed" uses the language of robbery, not sex. As such, the maid's virginity is something she is powerless to protect, and something the knight has the physical power and the political clout to steal. Nevertheless, the maid appears to have some legal recourse in Arthur's court just as she would have had in the fourteenth-century courts of Chaucer's time. She comes to Arthur's court to appeal the rape. This is implied within‘ the text of the story: we assume that the maid is part of the "clamour" and "pursute unto the kyng Arthour" (890). Furthermore, Arthur's court is a royal court, the appropriate place for the trying of a felony. However, in the story, the Queen and her ladies beg that they be given the knight's life: But that the queene and other ladyes mo So longe preyeden the kyng of grace, Til he his lyf graunted in the place, And yaf him to the queene, al at hir wille, To chese wheither she wolde hym save or spille. (894-98) 198 Arthur obligingly turns the knight over to the women. At first thought, such an action seems poetically just; since we already know that this man is guilty of raping a woman, who better to determine his punishment than a group of women? Furthermore, by allowing the Queen to determine the knight's punishment, Arthur appears to be empowering the Queen and, by extension, all women. But what is really going on here? In the first place, Arthur's action, while giving the Queen a voice, completely disenfranchises the maid, the victim of the crime. She is legally able to appeal the rape in Arthur's court; however, once the rapist is turned over to the Queen, she has no voice. The Queen's court has often been identified as a "court of love," in the tradition of the literary convention of courtly love. However, the whole notion of "courts of love" resides squarely with the noble classes. When the peasant maid's case is thrown out of Arthur's court and sent to the Queen, the maid disappears, voiceless, from the story. Furthermore, the women to whom Arthur grants the power to determine the knight's fate have no legal power in their own right. In Chaucer's time, women were unable to sit on.a jury, make laws, hold public office, serve in an army, or appear in court for any other purpose than to appeal the death of their husbands or appeal rape. Shulamith Shahar describes the medieval woman's position: 199 By law, a woman had no share whatsoever in the government of the kingdom and of the society. A woman could not hold political office, or serve as a military commander, judge or lawyer. "The law barred her from filling any public office and from participating in any institutions of government, from manorial courts to municipal institutions, royal councils, and representative assemblies in the various countries. The literature of the estates declares explicitly "Women must be kept out of all public office. They must devote themselves to their feminine and domestic occupations." Or, as the English jurist Glanville put it: "They are not able, have no need to, and are not accustomed to serving the lord the king, either in the army or in any other royal service."11 In other words, women had essentially no voice in legal matters during Chaucer's time. Likewise, it seems apparent that the women of Arthur's court are not usually wielders of legal power. Chaucer's description of the way the women beg Arthur for control of the man confirms this: the Queen would not make a point of thanking Arthur "with all her might" for something that is already within her jurisdiction. Only through regal edict is the women's petition granted, and I think that it is implied within the text that this is not the normal course of events in the court of law. Furthermore, in The Wife of Bath's Tale, the Queen's power is granted to her by Arthur. She sits in jurisdiction over the knight's future solely through the whim of Arthur, who also has the right to revoke the Queen's legal privileges. In the Tale of Florent, The Wife of Bath's Tale's closest analogue, a woman also holds the future of a young man in her hands. Yet this woman does not have to beg 11Shahar, 11. 200 for that power: it is accorded her because she is the slyest person in the court. Her own wit wins for her the personal authority to wield power. Chaucer's Queen, in contrast, does not wield the power of personal authority, nor authority of position. Hers is delegated power, the weakest kind of authority. But here is the question which interests me the most: what does it mean that Arthur is willing to turn over a rapist to a group of women? As I said earlier, this appears to be poetically just. But appearances are often deceiving in Chaucer, and I find myself looking beyond the mere appearance of power for my answer. What I wish to argue is that Arthur turns over the rapist simply because the crime does not matter to him. He trivializes the crime by handing over the criminal to legally powerless women. While Blanch sees Arthur's empowerment of the Queen as a dangerous affront to the hierarchical structure of the universe,12 I see Arthur's willingness to hand over the knight as simply business-as-usual. In a culture where rape is a crime in nothing but the letter of the law, a crime which is a felony only in theory, a crime which is more often treated as a misdemeanor, particularly when perpetrated against a lower- class woman, what difference does it make whether or not a rapist is punished by the royal court? Arthur's choice to turn the knight over to a "lower court" implies that the ” Blanch, 43-45. 201 rape is not a felony in actual practice, although his law clearly indicates that it is so in theory. My question is this: would Arthur have been so willing to turn over to the Queen a traitor, someone who threatened the stability of his government and of his power? It seems to me that the answer to this question is clear: Arthur turns over the rapist to the women because the rapist poses no threat to himself or to the hierarchical power structure in his court. The realization that the Queen's power is in appearance only, that her "court" is not a court of power, but merely a pale imitation, undermines the notion that this Tale has anything to do with the empowerment of women. Rather, the power delegated to the Queen to punish the rapist in her "court of love" only serves to distract the women from where the real power of the culture lies, in the courts of Law, while simultaneously diverting attention from the disenfranchisement of the maid. The knight's sentence in the Queen's court is to answer the question, "What do women desire most?" If he is unable to answer that question satisfactorily within one year, his life is forfeit. In Florent, the knight finds an old women who agrees to tell him the answer if he will marry her. Florent at first refuses the offer, not wanting to marry the old woman. Finally, however, he gives in. In The Wife of Bath's Tale, the knight finds an old woman who will give him the answer if he will grant the next thing she asks 202 of him. These are the lines Chaucer uses to describe the contract: "Plight me thy trouthe heer in myn hand," quod "The figite thyng that I requere thee, Thou shalt it do, if it lye in thy myght; And I wol telle it yow er it be nyght." "Have heer my trouthe," quod the knyght. "I grante." (1009-13) Chaucer subtly changes the relationship between the knight and the hag depicted in Elorent by having his knight agree immediately to grant whatever the hag wants in return for the answer he needs. I believe that Chaucer makes this change in order to show us something about the knight. The rashness he showed in raping the young woman is the same rashness he shows in entering into the bargain with the hag. He grants his trouthe immediately and without thought. His concern is with immediate gratification; he is incapable of thinking out the consequences of his actions, nor is he prepared to take responsibility for those consequences. Just as the knight used the lower-class woman for the gratification of his own sexual urges, he now uses the lower-class hag as a way to save his own neck. What this reveals is a portion of the knight's worldview: lower-class women exist only for his own use. When the knight returns to the Queen's court, he successfully answers the question "What do women desire most?" using the answer the old woman supplies for him. At this point, however, the knight tries to renege on his contract with the old woman and get out of his impending 203 marriage. The Queen forces him to honor his commitment. The nature of the wedding forces he to examine the extent of that commitment, however: I seye ther nas no joye ne feeste at al; Ther nas but hevynesse and muche sorwe. For prively he wedded hire on morwe. (1078-80) The wording of this passage is especially interesting when contrasted with the same scene in The Weddynge of Sir Gawein and Dame Ragnell, another analogue. In this instance, it is the queen who urges the early marriage; however, Dame Ragnell will have none of it: The queen prayd Dame Ragnelle sekerly, To be maryed in the morning erly, "As pryvaly as we may." "Nay," she sayd, "by hevyn kyng, That wolle I neuere for no-thyng, Ffor ought that ye can saye; I wol be weddyd all openly, Ffor withe the kyng such covenaunt made I: I putt oute of dowte, I woll nott to churche tylle highe masse tyme, And in the open halle I wolle dyne, In myddys of alle the rowte."13 The operative words in the two passages are "prively," (meaning "secretly") and "openly." The contrast between the secret and the public weddings in the two analogues should alert us to Chaucer's implication here. What does it mean that the knight will not wed the hag at the church door, in a public ceremony? (Incidentally, we know that the Wife of Bath herself has been wedded five times at the church door in public weddings.) The issue of clandestine marriage was a tricky one during the medieval 13Whiting, 257. 204 period, and both canon and common law give confused accounts of what constituted a "legal” marriage. Secret marriages were sometimes recognized as legal, and sometimes not.“ The question, of course, that I think Chaucer wants us to ask is this: Is the knight's marriage to the hag legal? The legality is further called into question by the knight's refusal to pay "the marriage debt" by consummating the marriage with the hag. The hag certainly understands the legal implications of the knight's refusal. As her "husband" writhes in the bed, she says, "0 deere housbonde, benedicitee! Fareth every knyght thus with his wyf as ye? Is this the lawe of kyng Arthures hous? Is every knyght of his so dangerous? (1087-90) The knight's refusal provides evidence that he, at least, does not view the contract, nor the marriage, as legal and binding. The knight gives reasons for not consummating the marriage: the hag is (in the knight's words) "so loothly and so cold also, / And thereto comen of so lough a kynde" (1100-1101). His refusal to engage in sex with the hag is an ironic reversal of the opening scene, and causes the hag 1"The legality of clandestine marriage under canon law is discussed at length by Brundage throughout Law Sex Christian Society; see, for example, 361-64, 440-43, and 496- 501. Pollack and Maitland describe marriage law during the same period. In Woheh ih rhe Middle Ages, Geis and Geis describe the actual wedding ceremony at the church door while Lucas describes the social and cultural role public weddings played. 205 to launch into her famous lecture on the nature of gentillesse. A number of critics suggest that the knight grows and learns as a result of this lecture, preserving the Arthurian motif of the growth of the knight from youth to maturity. Meredith Cary, for example, argues that when the knight wallows wretchedly in bed at the mercy of his tormentor, the author is indicating that the knight is achieving sympathetic insight into the results to the maid of his own earlier and brutal act.15 Meyer, on the other hand, writes that the initial rape becomes a moral reference point by which we can measure the bachelor's growth from folly toward wisdom as he progresses from rape to obligatory marriage to the conjugal bliss of mutual submissiveness."‘ Finally, Carolyn Dinshaw believes that the "correction of the rapist" is the central problem of the narrative: The rapist, and the patriarchal power structure of. . possession that he enacts, must learn "what thyng 1s it that wommen moost desiren"--must acknowledge the integrity of the feminine body and act in reference to feminine desire.17 But we have already seen the Arthurian genre subverted by the opening rape. So does anybody learn anything at all? Unlike those critics who see a correction in the knight's behavior as a result of the lecture, I see 15Meredith Cary, "Sovereignty and the 01d Wife," Papers on Lan ua e and Literature 5 (1969): 382. 16 Robert Meyer, "Chaucer's Tandem Romances: A Generic Approach to the Wife ef Bath's TQJQ as Palinode," Qhaucer Belle! 18 (1984): 224. 17Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 127. 206 no growth in the knight throughout the story. The knight never acts in reference to any desire but his own. His final acquiescence to the hag is more the result of simply giving up than of handing over sovereignty. Moreover, the knight's answer obscures the nature of the choice he has been given. His final concession to the hag does her imply that he is granting mastery of himself to her, nor does it admit feminine supremacy. He merely grants the hag the choice of determining what her eyh body will look like. Furthermore, even if we read his response to imply that he grants mastery to her in the marriage bed, what has he lost by this ? His grant of power to the hag is parallel to Arthur's grant of power to the Queen: as grantor of power, he can also be revoker. And ultimately, what does it matter if his wife has mastery in love? As an upper-class male in this society, he has the power to determine his life: he can ride off to a crusade, if he so chooses, and the whole issue of who has sovereignty in bed becomes moot. Furthermore, this particular male has made it clear that promises mean little to him and that women are objects for his use. Although he grants mastery to his wife in the choice she has offered him, he has the physical strength as well as the character to do whatever he wills with a woman in his bed, his promises not withstanding. For Blanch, the hag's transformation is the manifestation "of the same kind of humility and personal 207 freedom which the knight had displayed" in his "voluntary act of generosity," the act of allowing her to choose her m For me, however, the hag's choice to transform own form. herself into a woman who displays all those qualities valued and idealized by the male power structures (youth, beauty, obedience) signals her co-option into the very hierarchical structure the Wife of Bath has been accused of upsetting. In fact, I think that Chaucer underscores this co-option by giving this story a female narrator who seems to find nothing wrong in the hag's choice. Furthermore, the knight never pays his debt to the hag; he is never subjected to what he considers the disagreeable task of consummating his marriage to an older, ugly, lecherous woman. He does not allow himself to be legally wedded to the woman in the bed with him until she has been transformed into a beautiful, obedient, young woman. Although numerous interpretations of this story call it female wish-fulfillment, a call for feminine supremacy, or an inversion of the traditional male power structure, none of these accounts for the way the story actually ends in a dele fantasy: a man goes to bed with a hag and ends up with beautiful woman. Therefore, it seems to me that if the knight has learned anything at all, it is that peasant women can be raped with impunity; bargains with old women need not 18Blanch, 47. 208 be kept; and for the knightly class, all is right with the world. At the end of the story, we realize that Alison from Bath has woven a tapestry that changes as we watch it, a richly dark fabric, in whose folds we read a story about a maiden without power, a Queen who appears powerful, a wife who has the power of appearances, and a rapist who lives happily ever after. CONCLUSION The study of sexual violence in Middle English literature, as should be obvious by now, is both complicated and complex. We necessarily have to base our research on written records, records primarily written by men, about women. We know from the start that no matter how many textual trails we follow, any conclusions we reach will be tentative and contingent. Our ability to reach back into the distant past is limited by our own situation in time and space as well as by the paucity of data available for study. And yet, given all of that, it still seems to me that it is worth the time, the effort, and the thought to try to understand the past. As Lee Patterson has argued, That no historical agency has access to the Real does not mean that that historical investigation is per se preempted, nor does the fact that we cannot reproduce the past wie es eigentlich gewesen, in the notorious phrase, mean that we can say nothing about it that is both illuminating and useful...to recognize that the problematic of representation need not paralyze the literary historian is not to imply that it can be ignored. Textuality is inescapable: the literary historian can neither read history off literary texts nor use a determinative or "objective" historical context to stabilize the "subjective" meaning of indeterminate literary texts. And, on the positive side, if "history" is itself a text, if the founding distinction between history and literature can no longer be maintained, then the barrier that formalism erected between them can be taken down, and the way opened to a kind of historicism that can range freely across the discursive field as a whole and is no longer 209 210 blind to its own historicity.1 In the preceding pages, I have attempted to "range freely" among a variety of texts, searching not for an "'objective' historical context," but for a point of entry into the Middle Ages. I wanted not only to study how rape is represented, but also to offer possibilities of why it is represented as it is in Middle English literature. I chose to concentrate on rape because it offered a point of intersection among cultural codes. Further, by focusing on the words of rape in front of me in Sir Qegare or in female saints' lives, for example, I began to discern in my peripheral field of vision the cultural values which allowed these words to be written. What do these peripheral flickerings allow me to conclude about the representation of rape? First, that rape or the threat of rape serves as the primary impetus for action in a variety of Middle English genres. In both romance and saints' lives, the fear of rape makes possible the genre itself. In romance, for example, the protection of the damsel gives a reason for being for the Arthurian knight; that knights from other courts engage in the ravishment of women creates both contrast and tension between these knights and those of King Arthur's court. Further, although the damsel 1Lee Patterson, ed., Literary Eractice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 7. 211 is at risk, the knight is at the center of action. It is his heroic deeds which move the story forward, but it is her vulnerability which make those deeds necessary. In the female saint's life, the threat of rape focuses attention on that which defines her as female: her body, and specifically, on her reproductive system. No other temptation, no other threat, could bring her virginity into such sharp contrast with the carnal lust of the man who desires her. I think that it would be possible to extend this study into other genres including chronicles, ballads, Breton lays, pastourelle, and fabliaux, among others, and find that rape fills both literary and cultural roles here as well. The representation of rape is a fluid device, and it works within literature in a multitude of ways. A second conclusion from this study is that rape and the threat of rape place female characters in Middle English literature in oddly passive positions. They are objects in these stories, serving as the receptacles for male lust and male violence. The textual representation of female characters is caught up in the textualization of medical, religious, and legal ideas. These ideas define and border the existence of female characters. As male constructs, female characters represent both fantasy and nightmare for their male writers: the ideal virgin; the lewd, lascivious hag; the perfectly beautiful and obedient queen, Goldeborw; the royal whore, Guinevere. 212 Further, the presence of female characters in the stories is a vulnerable presence, a space on which competing males and competing authorities vie for power. In the saints' lives, temporal power battles divine power on the playing field of the female body; in the Arthurian romances, Arthur's knights joust with outsider knights for the possession of the damsel and her palfrey. In addition, I found that the cultural contexts of sexual violence in Middle English literature allow rape victims to be blamed for their own rape. The medical and religious constructs of women provided for writers a picture of women who were less in control of their sexual desires than men, and more in need of sexual intercourse than men. Because of her own physiology and her inheritance of Eve's sin, a woman was the source of temptation for all who looked upon her. The legal writings recognize these constructs as well: the issue of consent can be construed in many different ways. Thus, the rape of a woman in literature could easily be framed to demonstrate her own consent and her own blame. In the case of the anchoresses of the Ancrene Wieee, for example, it was clear that not only would they be blamed for their own rapes, should they occur, they would also be responsible for the sins of the men they "tempted." While working through this study, I discovered that the presence of rape in a piece of literature never means just one thing. Rather, the rape itself brings into the 213 text the legal, medical, and religious ideas which are part of the cultural milieu. In addition, the representation of rape demonstrates the way that power flows within a text, and perhaps within a culture. In addition, I found that the strands of legal, medical, and religious writing are so tightly bound together that they can never be totally separated. The law derives its power from God: the religious writers draw on Aristotle; canon law underpins civil law; human nature has religious, physiological, and political dimensions. Any study of one leads necessarily into another. It would be interesting to continue with an examination of a variety of additional "nonliterary" genres, such as astrological, historical, geographical, scientific, encyclopedic, and didactic texts, among others. Such additional work would add to the richness of the matrix I have established here. 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