“THAT PRATY, FOWLLE DAMESELLE:”

THE AGING FEMALE BODY, SOCIAL MONSTROSITY, AND THE POWER OF

CHIVALRY IN THE WEDDING OF SIR GAWAIN AND DAME RAGNELLE.

by

Natalie Williams-Munger

A thesis submitted to

Sonoma State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

English

------Sherril Jaffe, Chair ------Dr. Brantley L. Bryant ------Dr. Anne Goldman ------Date

Copyright 2011

by

Natalie Williams-Munger

AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER'S THESIS/PROJECT

I grant permission for the reproduction of parts of this thesis without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorb the cost and provide proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Permission to reproduce this thesis in its entirety must be obtained from me.

I do not approve the reproduction of this thesis [project], either in part or in its entirety.

DATE: ------Signature

"THAT PRATY, FOWLLE DAMSELLE:" THE AGING FEMALE BODY, SOCIAL MONSTROSITY, AND THE POWER OF CHNALRY IN THE WEDDING OFSIR GAWAIN AND DAME RAGNELLE.

Thesis by Natalie Williams-Munger

ABSTRACT

The genre ofmedieval romance has often been written-off as "escapist" by scholars, who argue that these texts which are fantastical, humorous, and imaginative are not reflections ofactual medieval life. However, this thesis asserts that romances are accurate representations ofmedieval culture, as they explore and contest the social boundaries and forces which construct their world, albeit in a playful and creative manner. One such exploration can be seen in the figure ofthe loathly lady, who has long since permeated the mind of the scholar; she is elusive, changeable, and subversive, often hijacking the narrative energy ofthe text in which she resides. And while she has long been regarded as an important literary figure by medieval scholars, this thesis examines the extent to which the loathly lady is made monstrous in the romance The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. This paper suggests that Dame Ragnelle is the embodiment of what can be called "the social monster," a figure marked by two things: the appearance ofan "other" and culturally subversive behavior. Ragnelle's monstrosity results from her socially transgressive actions in a patriarchally-dominated court, and by her magically-imposed aging body, which is made into something ofmarvel and derision by the text. At times, Ragnelle's appearance is in itself an act oftransgression, which reveals the extent to which female roles were extremely limited within the world of romance: the more she contests societal norms, the more monstrous she becomes. By highlighting the principles of romance and medieval beliefs concerning the aging female body, and through a close-reading ofRagnelle's form, this paper argues that as a social monster Ragnelle defies categorization and exists outside the bounds of proper social and gender behavior. Through a discussion ofRagnelle's final narrative fate this paper also argues that as a social monster, Ragnelle reveals the guiding force behind the romance narrative: Chivalry. In this text chivalry is put forth as both a micro and macro force capable of righting great wrongs and suppressing figures who threaten its authority. Thus when we examine the loathly lady, we are really examining the great narrative and societal power ofchivalry, which continues to influence our culture today.

Chair: Brantley Bryant

Signature

MA Program: English Date: ___~+-II--{_5/,--il____ Sonoma State University

IV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people I would like to thank for help in completing this thesis; without them this project would not have been possible. I have to first thank my thesis advisor and chair Dr. Brantley L. Bryant, whose class on Medieval Monsters sparked the idea for this thesis and led me into a world of research that I might never have come upon myself. I am truly grateful for all of Dr. Bryant’s helpful comments, suggestions for research, and hard work during all the various steps of this process. I also must thank my second reader Dr. Anne Goldman, who has provided much-needed prospective to my work and has supported my work during my last two years at Sonoma State.

I would also like to thank my family and friends for all their encouragement and patience – especially in putting up with my discussions of medieval literature for so long. To those whom have lived with me during the thesis-writing process, I give an extra-large thanks.

To my Mother, who has always understood what I was doing in grad school and why it was a worthy task, this is for you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. Introduction: Bringing the loathly lady into monster studies 1

Recent Scholarship 8

II. The Genre of Romance: Principles and principals 12

Principles of Romance 17

Principals: Gawain as the embodiment of chivalry 20

Women in Romance 26

III. Dame Ragnelle, The Vetula 30

Ragnelle and Animal Imagery 34

Beliefs and Images of Old Age 38

Medieval Attitudes Towards the Aging Female Body 47

IV. The Lady is a Monster 57

Ragnelle and Society 62

Ragnelle’s Transformation 69

V. Conclusion: Endings 75

Pretty Woman? 78

Works Cited 82 Williams-Munger 1

Chapter I: Introduction: Bringing the loathly lady into monster studies

One might begin to rationalize the pursuit of monster-studies by reiterating Jeffrey

Jerome Cohen’s compelling phrase, “We live in an age of monsters.” 1 However,

contained in this phrase is a sense of contemporality, and while monster studies have

gone in and out of vogue, humans have never lived in an age which did not contain

monsters. The further one delves into history and literature, the more it seems that society has never existed, and perhaps could not exist without the uneasy companionship of its monstrous counterparts. Therefore through Cohen’s expressed desire to create a “new modus legendi: a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender,” we may not only study these cultures, but also explore how the existence of the monsters did, in turn, “engender” the cultures around them. 2 When we expand our understanding of what monstrosity is and who monsters are, we are able to see how culture inevitably manifests monsters out of everyday occurrence and familiarity.

Therefore we may also expand our examination of texts to include those which do not contain monsters in the traditional sense – though that is in itself a contradiction, for the majority of texts contain monsters in one way or another, whether they are presented as fire-breathing dragons or treacherous villains. While each literary period has its own trend of monstrous exhibition (as today the romanticized vampire and werewolf are enjoying a particularly intense revival in the popular Twilight novels and in the series

True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Being Human, and so on) when we turn to the study of medieval literature we come upon a textual world rich with archetypal and archetype-

1 Cohen 3. Cohen’s book Monster Theory is a key text of modern monster-studies, as it uses monsters to understand the culture which created them. Cohen argues that the monster’s body is a cultural body, thus bringing new light to what we might call medieval cultural studies. 2 Cohen 3. Williams-Munger 2 betraying characters. Though it is a common move in medieval scholarship to focus on creatures which are undeniably-monstrous, such as Beowulf’s Grendel, or Dante’s

Cerberus,3 I would like to turn your attention to those characters which may not at first glance appear to be monsters, but are made thus by the texts in which they exist: specifically, the loathly lady (Ragnelle) as seen in The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame

Ragnelle, whose aging body fails to form proper corporeal boundaries. 4

The loathly lady has recently became a popular object of study, as more and more scholars recognize the unique position she holds within her text; a position that confronts not only medieval notions of culture, but of gender and power as well. While the simplest definition of a loathly lady would be a woman that is old and ugly, there are many variations on this theme: some are magical or under a spell, some are truly old or actually young, some have special knowledge or power, and some are well-known Arthurian figures in disguise. As S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter argue in the introduction to the recently-published The English “Loathly Lady” Tales, a book which is built around close examinations of different loathly lady tales, it is a worthwhile effort to promote the

3 J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” is an excellent example of this kind of scholarship which argues for the importance and significance of monsters and other fantastic elements within a work of fiction. 4 The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle survives in one manuscript: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS 11951 (formerly Rawlinson C.86). It is dated sixteenth-century and has been described by Madden in 1839 as being “very carelessly written.” It is unclear whether certain words are ended up a flourish or with an indication of an unstressed –e, and the i and y are often indistinguishable, which has made it difficult for different editions to choose the correct spellings. Capitalization and punctuation are also added by each editor. While The Wedding appears without stanza breaks in the manuscript, there is a clear tail-rhyme scheme similar to many other Middle English romances. However there are also a great number of individual lines in the original, therefore stanza divisions are irregular and often uneven. There is at least one missing leaf after line 628, but it does not impede with the movement of the plot (Hahn, TEAMS introduction) I have standardized the spelling here for clarity; the edition used is The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle (also called The Weddyne of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnelle for Helpyng Kyng Arthoure. Quotes, line breaks, and line numbers from the text are of the TEAMS edition. Line numbers will appear in parentheses, all other citations in footnotes.

Williams-Munger 3

non-canonical Loathly Ladies (that is, those not only found in the works of Chaucer and

Gower ) worthwhile subjects for scholarly consideration because they are so multi- faceted, and rich with textual resources such as metaphor, allegory, and cultural significance.

While often downplayed as a simple farce or satire – and we should not deny the

power of humor in conveying culture’s more uncomfortable messages concerning gender

and power – The Wedding in particular presents us with Dame Ragnelle, a monstrous

loathly lady whose exact character does not appear in other loathly lady narratives, such

as Gower’s Tale of Florent or Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. However, the romance

follows a similar plotline as its analogues: While hunting in the forest King Arthur is

accosted by Sir Gromer Joure (who we later find is Ragnelle’s brother), who accuses

Arthur of giving away his land to Sir Gawain. He poses a challenge to Arthur and gives

him one year to “To shewe me att thy comyng whate wemen love/ best” (92-93) [to show

him what women love or desire most]. Arthur returns to the court heavy-hearted and

Gawain encourages him to take on this challenge, pledging to take on the challenge

himself and to help out in any way he can. During the search for answers, Arthur comes

across Dame Ragnelle, a terrifically-ugly old woman with useful knowledge, who is later revealed to be under her stepmother’s spell. She says she will give Arthur the correct answer if he will promise to wed her to his best knight, Gawain. Arthur reluctantly agrees and meets Sir Gromer, giving him the correct answer that “Wemen desyre sovereynté…And that is ther moste desyre,/To have the rewlle of the manlyest men”

(468-470) [Women desire sovereignty…And that is their pleasure, to have the rule of the manliest men], which frees Arthur and infuriates the slighted Gromer. Williams-Munger 4

The rest of the romance deals with the consequences of Arthur’s promise, and

focuses on Gawain’s interactions with Ragnelle. After being freed from Gromer, Arthur

reveals to Gawain his unpleasant fate, which Gawain, always eager to serve, accepts

without question. Ragnelle insists that her wedding take place in the center of court, and

despite the ladies’ protests Gawain weds Ragnelle in court (the wedding scene has been

lost from the original manuscript). After the wedding feast Ragnelle insists that Gawain

“Shew [her] cortesy in bed” (636) [consummate the marriage sexually] and as he goes to

kiss her she transforms into a young, beautiful woman. Ragnelle then tells Gawain that he

must choose whether he wants her to be beautiful during the day or at night – juxtaposing societal day with sensual night – and the bewildered Gawain decides that she should make the decision herself, which gives her the “sovereynté” she desires and breaks the spell. Rid of her ugliness she becomes the perfect wife, gives Gawain a son, and dies abruptly after five years – freeing up Gawain for new adventures. Of course, this brief summary may remind you of several other tales, and it should, for it is not the plotline that makes The Wedding stand out, but rather the text’s characterization of Ragnelle as seen in the long passages which describe her appearance and behavior.

As previously stated, Ragnelle is a monstrous loathly lady because of the text’s specific construction of her appearance and behavior. It is her physical appearance as an other and her subversive boundary-breaking behavior that make her into what I would like to call the social monster.5 This figure is not new, in fact it is our most common form

of monster both in literature and beyond: that which is us and not us – Prospero’s “thing

5 While the term “monster” can have many different implications (and to flesh out all the various definitions and uses is not the purpose of this project), here it will refer to the character which is figured as outside culture, whether by intent or design, and specifically the social monster will refer to those figures who though technically human are socially transgressive in both behavior and appearance. Williams-Munger 5 of darkness,” so commonly seen (and not seen). These cultural monsters are so compelling because they are of our own making, yet they have diverted from the path of humanity in some way. They are defined with an active participation in two factors: the physical appearance of an other and socially transgressive behavior. Their physical appearance is often human, yet with an added difference – extreme age, disability, ugliness, or deformity – that pushes them outside the realm of cultural ideals. While by definition loathly ladies always embody this first characteristic, many do not demonstrate culturally-digressive behavior. When we look to Ragnelle, we find that in her loathly, untransformed state she possesses these two important characteristics in a very active manner.

This coupling of traits is essential: if Ragnelle was only old she might be disliked and cast out but not monstrous. If she was subversive, textual evidence informs us that she could still infiltrate the court, as Morgan le Fay does repeatedly. It could even be argued that some versions of Guinevere are subversive, but that her youth and beauty allow her to remain at Arthur’s side (for most romance narratives). Ragnelle’s behavior and characterization – her sexual desire, eating habits, wearing of fine clothing, riding next to Arthur ,and betrayal of Gromer – might be overlooked if they were not done by an outsider with her appearance. However there is no disassociating Ragnell with her body; her appearance and behavior combine to form monstrosity and reveal the limits of medieval cultural acceptance.

The narrator’s exaggeration of both traits also reinforces their coupled importance.

They overlap one-another: at times her actions worsen her appearance (as seen in her first appearance at court) or her appearance worsens her actions. The loathly lady’s Williams-Munger 6

appearance in court is in itself a culturally transgressive act, and thus we shall see how

Ragnelle’s old age and “foulnesse” is as every bit as important as her subversion of

patriarchal power. Once both things are changed – she gives power up to Gawain in the

bedroom scene and transforms into a young beautiful woman – she is no longer

monstrous.

Here the narrative reveals its most essential guiding force: Chivalry. In The

Wedding, when knights act according to the guidelines and rules of chivalry, it is a force

powerful enough to reverse and neutralize social monstrosity. The more socially

monstrous Ragnelle is in the context of the patriarchal culture of chivalry – which in turn

is a representation of the guiding forces of medieval society, such as philosophy, science,

and Christianity – the more physically monstrous she becomes. Since the text believes

that chivalry can “fix” social wrongs, Ragnelle is not a slain or killed; she can be

transformed, and her hybridity is reconciled to form one congruous being. At its core,

chivalry replicates and supports patriarchy, which makes it possible for the textual world

of romance to continue. Unlike old age, monstrosity can be reversed under the right

conditions and romance can maintain stasis. Therefore, though Ragnelle is textually- subversive for a time, she reinforces and rationalizes the power of chivalry.

While The Wedding is not typically categorized as a text whose main conflict is

between Gawain and a monster (and there are indeed many of those), it is in actuality a

perfect model for a more in-depth study of the social monster evidenced in the form of a

loathly lady. As many scholars agree that Ragnelle has a central significance in that The

Wedding “incorporates almost all the elements to be found in medieval loathly lady

tales,” this project will argue that she is indeed an encapsulation not only of the loathly Williams-Munger 7 lady but of the social monster as well, which will allow future scholarship to connect her to the social monsters found in other works of literature. 6

This paper will begin with a discussion of recent scholarship surrounding the issues of aging, the female body, and monstrosity, because while there has been a great deal of insightful work on the subject, there has yet to be a single articulation of the direct connection between theories of the aging loathly lady and monstrosity. Chapter II will also show how The Wedding fits within the general principles of romance and explain how Gawain is a representation of patriarchal forces of chivalry, which both reject and accept certain female figures (seen in the section dealing with female heroines and counter-heroes). Chapter III will contextualize medieval attitudes towards aging and female senescence in order to demonstrate how age can other a character, and will reveal how these views are represented and replicated by the text. The concepts put forth in romance, Arthurian texts, and cultural beliefs about aging will bring light to the narrative depiction of Ragnelle, and through a close-reading of her two monstrous components

(appearance and behavior) in Chapter IV, we will gain a greater understanding of the relationship between the social monster and medieval culture’s defensive forces.

While arguments about monstrosity can be very broad, I do not wish to downplay the importance of female senescence; rather the reverse is true. The aging female body is an integral piece of the puzzle which often dominates the entire scene, making actions and appearances unacceptable and monstrous in the cultural world of the text. This paper focuses on Ragnelle because she has not received the critical attention that she deserves, attention that identifies her as the cultural harbinger that she is. She reveals not only medieval issues of gender and the female body, but the limits of medieval humanity and

6 Carter 89. Williams-Munger 8

culture – what is acceptable and what is not. If semper monstrum monstrat [the monster

always shows], the loathly lady of The Wedding shows what cannot be fixed by intellect,

religion, or science alone can be subverted and “fixed” by chivalry.

Recent Scholarship

As the premise of this argument hinges of filling the gap between the field of

loathly lady and monster studies, it is necessary to contextualize some recent and

significant critical work. The concept of a monstrous female body is not new in the field

of medieval scholarship, though it is now getting the attention it deserves. Instead of

being only a mention in chapter or the subject of one article in a collection, gendered

monster studies can now be found as the subject of entire critical works.

One of the most recent of these works is Sarah Alison Miller’s Medieval

Monstrosity and the Female Body (2010). Miller’s central thesis argues that the female

body exists in special relation to medieval conceptualizations of the monstrous, due to its

very nature. Since female corporeality (as seen in medieval texts) is inescapable,

unstable, and forthcoming, it illustrates the “supreme allure and danger of the monster,

thereby highlighting the powers and problems of teratology.” 7 Miller explains that while

all monstrous bodies violate boundaries, the female body is out of bounds, not only

because it transgresses the boundaries of proper human form, but also because it

transgresses “the epistemological and ontological boundaries that structure the very

ideologies that give birth to the monstrous female itself.” 8 This suggests that the female body can be both human and strange, logical and confusing, with each stage of life

7 Publisher’s summary. 8 Miller 2. Williams-Munger 9

attempting to erase that which came before it. Thus the old woman can become

monstrous as she moves beyond those same boundaries that her youthful body created

and existed within.

Miller also follows Elizabeth Grosz’s argument that the physiological stages of

woman are cast as “modes of seepage, so that the female body and indeed womanhood

itself bear the tokens of monstrosity.” 9 The female body can be untraceable, as stages of life seem to erase preceding ones. As it is impossible to spot the young woman within the body of the aged Ragnelle (whom Miller does not discuss specifically, though she references the loathly lady) so the aged-woman exists outside the bounds of acceptable womanhood, creating the possibility for monstrosity.

Passmore and Carter also devote the entire work of The “English Loathly Lady”

Tales to a similar argument, which presents a full exploration of the loathly lady as a motif in medieval literature. The numerous articles contained in their book support the hypothesis that loathly ladies are a highly significant presence in medieval literature. In their view, the loathly lady is a unique locus for the intersection of national politics and gender issues:

[The loathly lady as a motif] contests gender roles, being trangressively sexually

active; the shape-shifting body defines codified ideals of female beauty,

undermining the objectification of women through appearance. 10

While Passmore and Carter argue that the lady is not “reproved” for her actions, this

paper furthers the ideas of this objectification, by suggesting that it can still directed

towards shape-shifting body, except the women is no longer an object of beauty, but one

9 Miller 5. 10 Passmore, Carter xi. Williams-Munger 10

of derision and frustration. It also examines the moments which occur after the female

body has been stabilized, or made beautiful and acceptable again. In these moments we

see how the characters who, according to Passmore and Carter, previously avoided

objectification are made into objects of patriarchal utility and desire once more.

The role of patriarchy is taken on by an article contained within the Loathly Lady

collection. “Brains or Beauty: Limited Sovereignty in the Loathly Lady Tales” by Ellen

M. Caldwell, also argues this paper’s proposition that the transformation of Ragnell into a

beautiful woman signifies the dominance of a patriarchal system of power. Caldwell

locates the problem in the fact that once loathly ladies become beautiful, they revert to

their conventional roles, losing their power and submitting to the men around her:

In general terms, it is only when a Loathly Lady is loathsome and “ungendered,”

that is, outside of her female role, that she is beyond male control. Then she is

sought after, not as a sexual object but as the source of special powers, the provider

of advice and superior knowledge. Thus, the happy ending of beauty and union that

makes Dame Ragnelle desirable as a woman returns her to a woman’s subordinate

position. Neither beauty nor feminine brains can truly penetrate the homosociality

of the Arthurian court. 11

The subsequent argument of this paper will depart from Caldwell’s: I disagree that a

loathly lady can ever be made “ungendered,” in fact her gender is a label which she is

never rid of, and it intensifies her plight. Whether she is “foule,” or animalistic, she is

always female and never without a sex. 12 She may become monstrous, but she is at the

11 Passmore, Carter xix. 12 The difference between “sex” and “gender” is a most-interesting discussion, but for the purposes of this paper I propose a joining of the two terms: Ragnelle’s sex is always female, and her gender is female as well, despite what her physical condition might be at the time. Williams-Munger 11 core a female monster. However I do agree that male-centric society within the text is continually powerful and that Ragnell can only exist within it as a subjugated female; as a powerful, old woman she is an outsider. The aging female body becomes a challenge to the male, chivalric world because it resists conventions and may cause men to stray from their proper courses of action. Even Arthur hesitates to keep his promise with Ragnelle; to marry a loathly woman to his best knight is an affront to knightly culture.

But while these recent works of scholarship are all working together towards the same postulations, and even cite the same sources (one would be hard-pressed to locate a work in this field that does not quote Jeffrey Cohen) this project puts critical pressure on the particular combination of gender, appearance, and behavior that is crucial in understanding Ragnelle’s significance.

Williams-Munger 12

Chapter II. The Genre of Romance: Principles and principals

Romance as a genre is particularly suited to the study of monstrosity as it has a

similarly conflictual nature; it brings attention to and points out issues in medieval

society and culture, but also operates by certain conventions and rules that support the

manufacture and preservation of already-dominant cultural values. At the very head of what we could call the romance-machine, “lies the question of how the unknown, the marvelous, or the demonized are brought into line with normative, idealized chivalric values.” 13 Romance as a system wants to bring things into harmony by dominating and subverting all that which doesn’t fit into its preferred scheme of operation; patriarchy.

The world of Medieval European romance is a courtly one, constantly rearranging itself so that it may preserve a harmony that is constantly in flux. A romance text begins with

conflict, and ends with a resolution – however hasty or wrapped-up it may seem (often by

a controversial act by a deus ex machina ). It is a world ruled by constructs of power and gender, by heroes and not heroines, and by socially-acceptable behavior. It is threatened by anything that confronts it, or attempts to redirect power away from the center.

Romance thus “ratifies the power of custom and civility in maintaining traditional order.”

14 While we can see this purpose in many different texts, the ending of The Wedding in

particular is one such example of how threatening forces can be redirected towards the

benefit of the dominant culture.

But even though romance appears so suited to medieval cultural studies, it can be a largely overlooked resource, partly due to its clever use of fantasy and archetype in conveying attending issues. In the book Chivalry, for example, Maureen Keen argues that

13 Hahn 230. 14 Hahn 231. Williams-Munger 13

romance can be difficult to work with; she states, “An ideal of knighthood culled from

what appears so often to be essentially a literature of escape is scarcely a promising

model for a historian to make much of.” 15 However, even Keen later admits that

romance depiction of chivalry makes it a relevant object of cultural study. She writes;

In this matter, fifteenth-century chivalric literature is a little more true to life than is

sometimes recognized… In the fifteenth century, both in life and in literature,

[issues seen in romance and those of actual life] did not seem so remote from one

another: they were different but closely connected preoccupations of the aristocratic

martial world. 16

Even though romance may employ colorful literary devices, we should not consider it

apart from actual cultural concerns, but rather a fictionalization of them. Entertainment is

perhaps our greatest source on how cultures dealt with difficult issues.

The Wedding, for instance, is often labeled as the most lyrical of the shorter

romances, due to its entertainment value and energetic use of description, but that does

not mean it’s akin to a medieval puff-piece. While there is indeed humor in the negative descriptions of Ragnelle, they are a dark reminder of how outsiders are made into jokes – revealing a patriarchal and systematic defense mechanism. Once we look past how a

romance text might have amused audiences, it becomes clear that romance does in fact act as a mirror; perhaps not to the life of the average medieval person, but to medieval ideology, cultural beliefs, and practices. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval

15 Keen 3. 16 Keen 208. Williams-Munger 14

Romance, Richard Kaeuper writes that romance is “one of our best (if least used) sources on medieval society,” and truly, it is. 17

Romance was also a mode of identity for certain social classes, whose ideas

trickled down through the social strata. As editor Roberta L. Krueger explains in the

introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance;

For an elite minority, romances were a vehicle for the construction of a social code

– chivalry – and a mode of sentimental refinement – which some have called

“courtly love” – by which noble audiences defined their social identities and

justified their privileges, thus reinforcing gender and class distinctions. 18

This minority was in turn seen as existing at the center of the fictional worlds constructed by romance. Opposite this central sphere of chivalry, most medieval romances establish, or at least assume the presence of, other social worlds or creatures.19 Readers were then

directed to locate themselves in this center, persuaded to see the central aristocratic

society of “the court” as in some sense their society. 20 This forced readers to

automatically see the outside figures as contradictory or different from themselves, and to

support the dominant culture’s attempts to sort out and eliminate whatever is outside of

them. We desire to align ourselves with Arthur, not Morgan or Ragnelle. Therefore even

though The Wedding can still be considered a text infused with courtly and chivalric

ideology despite the fact that it may have been written for a very narrow audience.

Romance is able make this alignment through clever persuasion; one of its most

important features (as related to our study) is its duplicitous and deceptive nature.

17 Kaeuper 97. 18 Krueger. “Introduction.” 5. 19 Rider 115. 20 Rider 116. Williams-Munger 15

Romance is hardly ever exactly as it seems, and narratives are rarely written as simple

reflections of courtly ideals. 21 Rather they are layered machines designed to reproduce

ideals and beliefs through literary devices. This is not to say that subversive elements do not exist, or that the text’s beliefs will always align with a predictable side, but romance will always align itself with the dominant culture.

In addition, the multi-layered nature of romance is not always a tactic of persuasion, but a consequence of the world surrounding an author. English romances are never single romances, rather they are collections of related versions, versions “that may or may not have been directed at the same audiences or transmitted in the same way.” 22

Tracing the origins of any one romance is a difficult task, for most names, places, and

narrative features have been used before by another author, whether consciously or not,

sometimes not even in a remotely similar way. Take, for example, the name Ragnelle:

Ralph Norris, in the article “Sir Thomas Malory and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and

Dame Ragnelle Reconsidered,” explains that the author of The Wedding must have taken

the names from minor sources, but for reasons that are unclear. Ragnelle can be found in

the late-fourteenth century as the name of a demon in the poem “Patience,” thought to be

the work of the Gawain or Pearl-Poet. The name is also found in the Chester play

Antichrist, one of the four surviving cycles of medieval English religious drama dated

mid fifteenth century. It might also be traced to “due de raguel,” a figure from the French

early thirteenth century Prose Lancelot, whose story involves entering a dangerous forest

and confronting a young woman – a plotline similar to The Wedding. 23 The search for exact sources in romance may never yield an exact answer, or foundation for a particular

21 Krueger 1. 22 Bradbury 3. 23 Norris 9-10. Williams-Munger 16

argument. What we then must look to are the characters who function as archetypes,

carrying with them certain assumptions (like Gawain). Untraceable characters, such as

Ragnelle, can then be examined individually for their performance in the text.

What makes a romance then interesting individually is the author’s particular

treatment of the narrative and their use of intrusive characters. The beauty of romance,

and what makes it unique, is its ability to keep the same stories alive while making

changes to the narrative. As the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Medieval

Romance suggests;

Romances of all national origins are remarkable for their authors’ capacity to

remake their shared stories anew in different contexts and to reposition their ethical

systems as they respond to particular audiences, in distinct geological locations

and social contexts – often with a critical perspective that calls social ideals or

practices into question. 24

Indeed it is this feature that allows us to see more clearly where the text’s loyalties and

prejudices lie, to see how a particular character may be adhering to tradition, or not. It allows us to see that while The Wedding may share characters and plotlines with other romances, it’s depiction of Ragnelle and social monstrosity is singular. There is no other loathly lady quite like her; she belongs to the author and the text.

24 Krueger. “Introduction.” 1. Williams-Munger 17

Principles of Romance.

Of course, to be able to see read into the choices which a particular text makes, one must have a baseline understanding of the building principles which govern romance.

Chivalry, as the most important foundational concept, was more than just an idea: it was an entire structure of power, belief, and behavior. Medieval chivalry can be defined in several ways: physically, as deeds in a fight with “edged weapons;” socially, as a group of knights together or even all knights as a social class; or abstractly, as ideas and ideals, the “ethos of knights.” 25 According to Diane Bornstein, author of Mirrors of Courtesy, chivalry emerged as a social code around 1400, forming this ethos “in which martial, aristocratic, and Christian elements were fused together.” 26 From that point on, chivalry influenced medieval cultures’ conception of honor and its relation to nobility. As

Bornstein explains;

Chivalry’s most profound influence lay…in setting the seal of approbation on

norms of conduct, recognized as noble when reproduced in individual act and

style… It did so by enmeshing in a web of mental association [a knight’s] social

accomplishments, his “courtliness” (especially in regard to women). 27

Therefore this “web” of chivalry became a powerful system of meaning and behavior, connecting all the aspects of a knight’s life to his overall status: the way he serves his sovereign, how he performs on the battlefield, and the relationship with his lady all work together to support a societal ethos.

The text of The Wedding emphasizes the importance of this ethos in the very first stanza, as it explains “In his countrey was nothyng but chivalry” (10) – the country being

25 Kaeuper 91. 26 Bornstein 16. 27 Bornstein 249. Williams-Munger 18 the land of King Arthur, who allows nothing to exist except chivalry – “for cowards were evermore shent” (12) [removed from the land]. In placing immediate emphasis on chivalry as the governing force of the court, we see how everything outside it could operate by other means that transgressed or broke the boundaries of chivalry. Ragnelle’s location in this outside space also implies that she is not governed by chivalry and may act according to a different set of guidelines. As we see in the text, these guidelines put her needs and desires above those of the people around her, and above the desires of a patriarchal system. Ragnelle’s force eventually loses out to chivalry, and her power is subverted so that it no longer serves only her needs but the needs of the dominant culture.

Thus the power of chivalry should not be underestimated in romance, nor in medieval society. Richard Kaeuper takes on this issue in the article “The societal role of chivalry in romance: northwest Europe,” as he argues that chivalry was not confined to texts – it stretched far beyond the page into the societies of actual medieval people. As

Kaeuper argues,

To read chivalry in romance simply as a set of personal qualities in a knight risks

reducing chivalry to a “micro” force; it was, in fact, a “macro” force doing major

social work. As the practice and ideal code of the dominate strata of lay society

for roughly half a millennium…it became the framework for…real issues with

real consequences. 28

Authors and redactors of medieval romance were eager to explain that the stories of their heroes presented “a model of true chivalry.” 29 Keen also argues that the Grail story made

28 Kaeuper 99. 29 Keen 12. Williams-Munger 19

it possible for romance to be included in the “sacred history of Christianity,” thus linking

the figures of Arthurian romance to those in the Bible. 30

Therefore if chivalry was a way to connect the Arthurian tradition with history,

religion, society, and cultural standards, we should view assaults to chivalry very

seriously, not simply as challenge to personal beliefs but wide-reading social ideology.

When Ragnelle arrives in court riding before Arthur, she is challenging not only Arthur’s

authority, but the authority of the court itself, and the world which it governs. Since the

plot of romance is often completely built on these challenges, romance literature then

becomes one of the best places to interrogate this system. Since romance literature is one

of the major purveyors of chivalric ideals, we should follow Kaeuper’s assertion that it is

also the locus of debate about such basic social issues. As he writes, “Romance is not

simply a literature of celebration or agreement; it is a literature of debate, criticism,

reform,” suggesting that romance was a space where chivalry was tested and proved to be

worthy and legitimate. 31 The Wedding takes on this debate about the rightness of

chivalry and ultimately concludes with the strong statement that chivalry has the right to

dominate other forms of power possessed by the other. Ragnelle cannot be fulfilled without chivalry; without it she will remain an outsider, an ugly old woman who is a social monster. Chivalry is the cure for what ails her, and she is willing to give up all sovereignty and independence to obtain it.

30 Keen 118. 31 Kaeuper 99. Williams-Munger 20

Principals: Gawain as the embodiment of chivalry

The cure for social monstrosity could not be achieved without Gawain, because for

all interpretive purposes, he is chivalry. Chivalry can be broken down into different

qualities – courtesy, wisdom, prowess, etc. – but Gawain is often presented as the best

example of whatever quality happens to be under discussion in each particular romance.

32 He does not waver in his devotion to Arthur and the court, even when Arthur himself

wavers. Unlike other knights of romance who may represent different cultural beliefs (as

Lancelot might be connected to courtly love, for example), Gawain is much more about

proper social practices. But let us here examine what specific what characteristics and

movements he implicates, to contextualize how the author of The Wedding interacts with them.

To begin with, there are more narratives devoted to Gawain than any other knight, and he often overtakes Arthur as a main character. 33 Indeed an exhaustive study of

Gawain could overtake this entire project, but his more significant appearances in

romance texts can be summarized somewhat succinctly. 34 One of Sir Gawain’s first

appearances in a text can be found in the stanzaic Morte Arthur (late 1300s) which is less of a historical chronicle than Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.35

It begins with Arthur engaged in a foreign war, and includes the story of Guinevere and

Lancelot’s affair. Arthur is usurped by Morded, his steward, but Arthur’s death in the

32 Harper. 33 Harper. 34 Source for titles and dates, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. 35 The Alliterative Morte Arthur is not included in this list as it is generally considered a historical- chronicle, not a romance. Williams-Munger 21

narrative is due as much to the feud between Lancelot and Gawain (over the affair) as it

is to Mordred’s betrayal. 36

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1350-1400) features Gawain in a starring- role, on a quest to complete the challenge of the Green Knight. His chivalry and loyalty are supremely tested, and while he does commit one wrong (not revealing that he was given a magical girdle) his mistake, reinforces the power and importance of upright behavior. Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle (c. 1400) demonstrates Gawain’s superior chivalry in the unexpected setting of a Carl’s castle – “Carl” used as a condescending term marking someone who is of a lower class and also crude or violent. As Thomas

Hahn explains in the introduction to Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, “a ‘carl's castle’ is therefore…a contradiction in terms…and such a locale could only exist inside this hybrid literary form.” 37 The narrative shows that Gawain is capable of maintaining

“his knightly courtesy even when he is not exclusively among gentles” – as we also seen

in his interactions with Ragnelle in The Wedding. 38 However, The Green Knight is

considered to be one of the most sophisticated of all the Arthurian texts, below only

Malory’s Morte Dathur (1469-70, published 1485). Malory’s text tells a more

encompassing story of Gawain, from how he became a knight to his many battles and

encounters. Malory’s Gawain is also much more amorous than other versions, and he

interacts with many different ladies throughout the narrative, not always in the best way.

However, the texts which follow Malory – The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame

Ragnelle (c. 1500); The Greene Knight, The Turke and Sir Gawain, Gologras and

Gawain (c. 1500); The Jeaste of Sir Gawain (c. 1560); and the ballad version of The

36 Foster. 37 Hahn, “Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle: Introduction.” 38 Hahn, “Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle: Introduction.” Williams-Munger 22

Wedding of Sir Gawain (after 1600) – all feature a generally upright Gawain who

encounters a challenge and is able to defeat it using his various chivalric qualities.

The fifteenth and sixteenth century prove to contain the largest concentration of

Gawain narratives that were produced in the medieval period and into the early Middle

Ages, with The Wedding right in the middle. 39 While these works differ greatly in

premise, storyline, and character, what brings this collection of popular Middle English

romances together is this figure of Gawain. He is not what we might call a “modern”

character, however;

The consolidating pressure that emanates from Gawain arises not, however,

through some novelistic sense of “character,” dependent upon a unique and

consistent personality with individualized traits, complexly drawn motives, or

psychologized feelings. Instead, Gawain plays a role; he routinely facilitates the

extravagant adventures that happen around him, and does so to such an extent that

one might even think of him almost as a narrative function. 40

This function often means he is off on a quest; although Arthur is a very active figure he

is often bound to the throne and the court and away from the focus of the narrative,

whereas Gawain is as comfortable on a quest as he is in Camelot. 41 As Arthur’s nephew,

he can be both counselor and warrior of the romance-tradition, with an elasticity that

allows him a wide range of action – a very attractive quality for storytellers. 42

39 Major analogues to The Wedding are dated as follows: Gower’s Tale of Florent from Confessio Amantis (1386-1390), Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale (1390-1394), The Wedding of Sir Gawain (1600), The Marriage of Sir Gawain (1650) . 40 Hahn, Thomas. “Gawain and popular chivalric romance in Britain,” 223. 41 Hahn, “Gawain.” 42 Harper, teams. Williams-Munger 23

Thus within each narrative he behaves in a very similar way, and is often motivated

by a mysterious outside force that threatens Arthur or the court (as in The Wedding, The

Awntyrs off Arthur, and The Turke and Gawain). Therefore when Gawain appears in a

narrative he is not there to be his own man, in any sense – he is there to represent certain

qualities, beliefs, and actions that must be represented and seen as dominant or preferred

in society. The root of sir Gawain’s power then “might be exactly its careful negotiation

of multiple traditions encoded in a staggering number of individual texts.” 43 His chivalry

is adaptable, changing to suit the needs of each particular narrative. In The Wedding, we

see how his courtesy towards Ragnell, his wisdom, and courage are brought together to

make up chivalric power. He repeatedly proves “the worth of familiar values by facing

the marvelous or unknown, and rendering it manageable for the rest of his society.” 44

This ability to render threats “manageable” is most important to our narrative as he is set up as the ideal knight to encounter Ragnelle, in all her threatening monstrosity. His courtesy and calm composure in critical moments (as in the climax of The Wedding) endow him with heroic stature.

It follows then that Gawain represents and embodies an exemplary model of masculine chivalry which outshines many other men, occasionally even King Arthur, and makes him a perfect figure to place in conjunction with monstrosity. Thomas Hahn elaborates on this point in the article “Gawain and popular chivalric romance in Britain,” arguing that Gawain exists not to completely destroy the monster, but to create a reconciliation or reappropriation between the strange or unknown and the world of the court. It is this resolution that “secures the audiences’ identification with the hero, and

43 Rushton 3. 44 Hahn 224. Williams-Munger 24

with the naturalness of the social order he represents.” 45 And when audiences identify

with Gawain they are also acknowledging, unconsciously or not, the importance of

chivalry and proper social behavior.

This righteousness is particularly important to the British tradition (as opposed to

some French traditions which entail Gawain straying from the path occasionally,

particularly with women) which did not allow Gawain to become corrupt. There is no

sense that Gawain might support wrong behavior or act sinfully without just cause:

English poets reject the idea of a degenerate Gawain; with them he remains the

loyal lieutenant of dynastic romance, the embodiment of the basic knightly virtues

in accounts of his own chivalric adventures, but also as the most prominent

protagonist in a group of folk romances in which Arthur and his companions are

subjected to the kind of test by which popular heroes establish their identity. 46

Since Gawain consistently passes these tests he is also honored in death, as he is given a

noble exit on the page, and even one as mysterious as Arthur’s (taking him to a far-away location), which allows him to reappear for new adventures. Gawain is the put forth as the ultimate peacekeeper, the ideal protector and stand-in for Arthur.

The text of The Wedding also depicts Gawain as a superior knight: even King

Arthur acknowledges that he lies in Gawain’s debt:

“Garamercy, Gawen," then sayd Kyng Arthor;

“Of alle knyghtes thou berest the flowre

That evere yett I fond.

My worshypp and my lyf thou savyst forevere;

45 Hahn 223-4. 46 Barron 159. Williams-Munger 25

Therfore my love shalle nott frome the dyssevyr,

As I am Kyng in lond.” .

(377-382)

“Many thanks, Gawain,” then said King Arthur;

“Of all knights thou bearest the flower [excels]

That ever yet I found.

My worship and my life thou has saved forever;

Therefore my love shall not part from you,

While I am King of the land.”

Arthur is not the hero of the narrative, and in fact his actions against Sir Gromer – giving away Gromer’s land to Gawain, ironically (line 58) – are what causes the quest to be necessary. But Gawain demonstrates that chivalry can be used to eliminate threats and bring about social stasis.

Therefore it is Gawain that makes Ragnelle’s entrance possible; the hero is introduced and established before the subversive counter-hero. The narrative structure itself is one of enclosure, trapping Ragnelle within a patriarchal world: The Wedding opens with Arthur and then Gawain, focuses on Ragnelle entrance and her interactions with Gawain and the court, and ends with her relationship with Gawain in which she dies, leaving Gawain and the court behind. Any power or agency she has only flourishes within the middle of the text, before being quickly and effectively neutralized and appropriated to Gawain. The author could allow Ragnelle to exist, disgust, and wield control over Arthur’s court because the text relies on Gawain’s power of reconciliation, Williams-Munger 26

which could reappropriate her in a way that was believable to the audience and consistent

with his previous textual-appearances.

Women in Romance

While the appropriation of Ragnelle is striking due to her physical transformation,

women in romance are often appropriated socially so they might function within the

confines of a patriarchal system. And as Gawain carries with him certain assumptions of

behavior and attitude, so does the appearance of these “Arthurian Women.” Gawain

narratives in particular feature Gawain as the magnet for the desire of a very long

sequence of women who constantly come out the woodwork to help or hinder him in his

knightly pursuits. 47 Therefore it is important to understand the basic function of women in romance in order to see how Ragnelle subverts and is subverted by it. Her interactions

with romance gender roles both bring attention to the limited movement of women in

these texts, but they do not seem to ask for any change in these roles.

Romance literature is heavy on the male protagonist/hero, perhaps witnessed in the

fact that we would never use the term “Arthurian Men” because it is more or less

redundant. Romance females are marked by the use of passive verbs, while romance men

are given use of the active ones – Ragnelle is “mett” [met] in the forest, Arthur is the one

who “metts” [meets] her (232). Even when Gromer, an outsider, encounters Arthur the

grammar is ambiguous: the text states “Streyghte ther cam to hym a quaynt grome”

[Straight there came to him a strange man] (50) and even though Gromer is coming

towards Arthur he is still allowed movement.

47 Hahn 224. Williams-Munger 27

In the simplest terms, men do the action and women are acted upon. 48

In romance and Arthurian literature there is also an overall containing of female figures. Women are frequently trapped or situated in enclosed spaces – towers, bedrooms, castles – cordoned off like textual captives. As Thelma Fenster writes in the introduction to Arthurian Women: A Casebook,

The term [Arthurian Women] mirrors the texts: in spite of their

extraordinary malleability from culture to culture and throughout the centuries,

female Arthurian figures seem to arrive in each new work with a full set of

already-givens that carry the freight of the problem that is woman. 49

Strangely enough, while romance so frequently makes textual use of this problem to drive

narrative it was often considered an art form that was directed towards women – as

opposed to the historical works of clerical authors, written to education young men in

military strategy – and yet it is a highly misogynistic tradition. 50 While it is tempting to

see romance an exception to this tradition due to its numerous female characters and

various female-driven plotlines, it is generally the opposite, enforcing patriarchal systems

through text. 51

Romance focuses on male heroes, not female love-objects. As Maureen Fries observes in the book Popular Arthurian Traditions (in the romance narratives which focus on Lancelot and Guinevere);

48 Fenster 8. 49 Fenster xx. 50 Barefield 2. 51 This is not to say that there are no works of medieval romance that do not take up a feminist agenda, but that the majority of British romance texts align themselves with male characters. Works by Marie de France or Chaucer provide some excellent examples of narratives which are more female-centric. Williams-Munger 28

As was consistent with medieval religions, political and moral theories, men are

the agents of actions and women – when they are heroines – the instruments. On

the level of deep structure, Lancelot glorifies himself in his campaign to save the

Queen. Guinevere exists, like other heroines of Arthurian and other romance, to get

into trouble the hero must get her out of. The incentive to heroic action, she is at the

same time its reward. Functionally, Guinevere is unable to act on her own. She is

carried off and imprisoned fight for and defended; freed and returned home; and

fought for again: all at the will and /or agreement between the males in the tale. 52

These kinds of plotlines only function with a male protagonist, as heroines are not

allowed to make choices as Gawain does or to show independent qualities that do not

affect their male audiences in some way. It is significant that Ragnelle allows Gawain to

make the final decision over her fate by selecting the fate of her appearance; Gawain,

being courteous allows her to choose, but the real control is given over to him. Heroines

may not “demonstrate a new and more socially considerate side to their characters, by

making the right choice in knotty moral dilemmas or by acting altruistically instead or

pursing fame and fortune.” 53 The decisions Ragnelle makes in the beginning of the

narrative are self-serving and not in the interest of the court, but when the most important decision about her future is at hand, she gives it away. This signifies a turning point in

Ragnelle’s possession of agency: she is no longer ugly, and no longer powerful or subversive.

The Wedding is altogether explicit in these standards for female characters, except in the case of the loathly version of Dame Ragnelle, who for a time may stand apart from

52 Slocum. “Introduction,” 8. 53 Archibald 156. Williams-Munger 29 them, both through her action and appearance. She has agency, influence, even the ability to disgust – all things romance heroines are not allowed – until the moment she gives it up to Gawain on her wedding night. But for the majority of the narrative, she is apart both physically and behaviorally, from all the women she encounters in the text. And for this act of separation she becomes a social monster.

Williams-Munger 30

Chapter III: Dame Ragnelle, The Vetula

Now that we’ve seen how the principles of romance literature and chivalry combine to structure the narrative of The Wedding, let us examine the role of Dame Ragnelle in her loathly form. Separation is key for interpreting Dame Ragnelle – she is separated physically, geographically, and behaviorally – but also key for interpreting The

Wedding’s narrative structure. As we have established, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and

Dame Ragnelle begins in a traditional manner: King Arthur is hunting in the forest, separated from his court, only to be threatened by Sir Gromer Somer Joure (Ragnelle’s brother), who believes he has been wronged by Arthur. This encounter between the central world and an outside one (in this case, between Arthur’s land and the land of

Gromer and the forest) is one of the most common ways to begin a romance, but “the nature and consequences of this encounter differ according to the status of the central aristocratic society at that moment.” 54 There is an atmosphere of separation between nobles and their subjects which caused injustice, and it is clear that what is at stake in this

story is sovereignty in all its different forms. The encounter is not a friendly diversion,

and it lacks the sense of jest that we see in other romances like Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight. The events of The Wedding are interacting with serious social issues. This is not only a test rooted in the spirit of adventure, but in a real criticism from a powerful outside

source against Arthur and his chivalry. During the encounter Arthur is clearly at a

disadvantage as he pleads for his life:

Now,” sayd the Kyng, “so God me save,

Save my lyfe, and whate thou most crave,

54 Rider 116. Williams-Munger 31

I shalle now graunt itt the;

Shame thou shalt have to sle me in veneré,

Thou armyd and I clothyd butt in grene, perdé.

(79-83)

Now,” said the King, “so God save me,

Save my life and what thou most crave,

I shall grant now it;

Shame thou will have to slew me in hunting

Thou armed and I clothed but in green, indeed.

Gromer and Arthur are mismatched: Gromer is in armor and Arthur only in his green clothes of the hunt. This sets up a slanted relationship of power between the outside land and Arthur’s kingdom – again we are shown that power and sovereignty are going to be at stake in this romance.

The question of the quest also supports this imbalance and brings in the complication of gender. Arthur’s need to discover “Whate wemen desyren moste, in good faye” (173) [What women desire most, in good faith] means that he will need to depend on women to save his life and regain his honor, but not in the most basic sense: the will of women is not truly what is being questioned, rather it is the will of those who are slighted that is the key. While this group may be socially diverse, women come to represent it since they are often overlooked or overpowered in romance – but women are not the subject. This analogy is different than in The Wedding’s analogues, such as in

Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale where a woman is raped and the quest is instigated by

Guinevere, who sends Gawain as a punishment for his usurpation of female power. Here Williams-Munger 32

Gromer poses the question, and in doing so he becomes the subject: Arthur is meant to

discover not what women want, but what the powerless want – what Gromer wants:

sovereignty, both physically and politically.

It is in this flux of power that Dame Ragnelle appears – not to Gawain, but to King

Arthur – as the solution to the problem and the question. The setting of this appearance is

significant; Ragnelle is figured in the forest somewhere around of Inglewood (a common

romance location also used in the romance The Awntyrs of Arthure) to the west – the

direction which characters often travel when they experience unusual happenings. The

western part of forests is often a path towards the underworld or the land of the fairies,

and is also referred to as “the land of the mystic West” and the “unknown, misty west” in

various works of medieval romance. 55

The forest is in many ways a place with more agency and liberty than in Arthur’s

court; Ragnelle is riding by herself, not waiting at home, which immediately indicates

that she is not the typical romance-heroine. While a heroine “usually waits in her castle for adventurous knights to come her way,” Ragnelle waits for no one. 56 She may depend

on Gawain to break her spell, but she isn’t lying under a tree hoping that he will ride by.

57 This appearance places Ragnelle in category that is harder to define – she may be a

counter-heroine, helpful or not, “free” or not. Any woman found alone outside of the

court in romance is instantly distinctive from other heroines; she falls into the ranks of

Morgan le Fay, the Fairy Queen, or the mysterious, powerful hag. As an unmarried (and

presumably virgin) woman Ragnelle experiences a temporary freedom – despite the spell

55 Spence 294. 56 Fenster 8. 57 Archibald 157. Williams-Munger 33

of her stepmother, which we only learn about at the end – which is significant, since only

unmarried women are capable of consistent action. Thus Ragnelle is very similar to the

characters that Maureen Fries labels “counter-heroines.” Fries explains the roles of these

women in the article “Female heroes, heroines and counter-heroes: images of women in

Arthurian tradition;” she argues that these virgins escape domination and achieve their title by acting the part of the man, for at least a time. While in this role these women evoke older models of female agency. As Fries explains,

An ancient archetype influencing this model is that of the huntress goddess

Artemis/Diana, whose very occupation implies freedom from women’s’ usual

social bonds – especially from the house symbolic of women’s role as keeper of the

patriarchal flame. Thus such Arthurian women are frequently connected with both

the forest and the moon. 58

Whereas Ragnelle is literally frowned upon by Guinevere and her ladies at court, in the forest she experiences some liberty and agency, encountering Arthur while out on her own.

But if this agency is indeed a counter to the male romance characters, it is no surprise that Arthur’s immediate impression of Ragnelle is negative; the text states, “She

was as ungoodly a creature/As evere man sawe, withoute mesure/ Kyng Arthure

mervaylyd securely,” (232-234) [She was an ungodly a creature/ As ever a man saw,

without measure/ King Arthur marveled transfixed – ungoodly suggesting extreme

ugliness or unpleasantness]. Arthur does not fear her, but he regards her as something to

58Fries 11. Williams-Munger 34

“marvel” at. 59 The narrator then spends the greatest narrative energy in the romance in

describing Ragnelle, in all her spectacular and disgusting glory. These descriptions form my basis for labeling Ragnelle as a social monster; the particular combination of her appearance, age, action, and behavior make her a creature that is wholly at odds with romance’s dominant culture. And while I have said that the pairing of appearance and behavior is needed to make social monstrosity, it is often the case that Ragnelle’s appearance is an action in itself, making her very existence socially transgressive. Let us

now examine these moments in which a text so consumed with narrative gives its greatest

energy to description and imaginative depictions of Ragnelle.

Ragnelle and Animal Imagery

Several instances of these actions-though-appearance occur when the author of The

Wedding others Ragnelle is by endowing her with animalistic qualities and physical

traits. One such intriguing incidence is the play on words about being referred to as “lady

fowll” by Arthur, after she compares herself to an owl; “No force, Sir Kyng, thoughe I be

foulle;/ Choyse for a make hathe an owlle” (312-314) [No matter, Sir King, though I be foul/ Choice for mate is eveb allowed to an owl] – suggesting that even though she is

“foulle” she has the right to desire Gawain. She then makes a pun on the words “fowll” and “owl,” ignoring the other definition of foul which suggests uncleanliness: she says,

“Ye, Sir," she sayd, "ther is a byrd men calle/ an owlle.../ And yett a Lady I am” (321-

59 “Marvel” as a verb (from 1382 – present) is defined as “To be filled with wonder or astonishment; to be struck with surprise.” (OED) It is interesting to note that in the Medieval period and beyond the object of marvel was often more negative in nature, as in Gower’s Confessio Amantis (1393); “So that upon his ignorance The wyde world merveileth yit,” (ln 4481) translated by Richard Brodie as “Still men marvel at the measure of his folly.” Popular uses of the Middle Ages include marveling at sin or rage, more positive uses become popular in the nineteenth century (as in to marvel at love or confidence). Williams-Munger 35

323) [Yes Sir, she said, there is a bird men call/ an owl, and yet a Lady I am]. These are

some of the most ambiguous lines in the poem, toying with the fact that Ragnelle is not

really what she says, and emphasizing the fact that her true identity is obscured. She

insists that she is a “Lady,” yet clearly she is disturbing Arthur. It is also interesting to

note that Ragnelle is the one who compares herself to an owl, which carried rather

negative meanings in the medieval period. According to The Medieval Bestiary;

The owl haunts ruins and flies only at night; preferring to live in darkness it hides

from the light. It is a dirty, slothful bird that pollutes its own nest with its dung. It is

often found near tombs and lives in caves. Some say it flies backwards. When other

birds see it hiding during the day, they noisily attack it to betray its hiding place.

Owls cry out when they sense that someone is about to die.. 60

Pliny the Elder also labeled the owl as “a very bad omen, being as it is a funeral bird.” 61

In addition, the owl is connected to religious allegory and symbolism. It was said to

“represents the Jews, who showed that they preferred darkness to light when they rejected

Christ,” and signifies “those who have given themselves up to the darkness of sin and

those who flee from the light of righteousness.” Leviticus 11:13-18 states, “The law says

that a variety of owls are included in "the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable.” There are some positive Christian mentions of owls in bestiaries; the

Aberdeen Bestiary states “In a mystic sense, the night-owl signifies Christ. Christ loves the darkness of night because he does not want sinners - who are represented by darkness

- to die but to be converted and live.” 62

60 Badke. 61 Badke. Original source: Natural History, Book 10, 16. 62 Badke. Williams-Munger 36

What is most intriguing about all these definitions is their similarity to Ragnelle; her aged and ugly appearance is detestable, ringing of death, and she is an outsider, perhaps similar to the way that non-Christians were outsiders. But she also has a positive influence on the text in that she “rescues” Arthur from Gromer with her knowledge, which draws an interesting parallel with the Christ-allusions.

However, all the animal imagery in The Wedding can be seen in a positive light.

Before the wedding scene (which has been lost from the manuscript) the narrator gives us a most monstrous description of Ragnelle, who grows in ugliness while he speaks of her.

This is not the first description of Ragnelle, but it employs the greatest amount of animal imagery:

She was so fowlle and horyble.

She had two tethe on every side

As borys tuskes, I wolle nott hyde,

Of lengthe a large handfulle.

The one tusk went up and the other doun.

A mowthe fulle wyde and fowlle igrown,

With grey herys many on.

Her lyppes laye lumpryd on her chyn;

Nek forsothe on her was none iseen –

She was a lothly on!

(553-563)

She was so foul and horrible.

She had two teeth on each side Williams-Munger 37

Like boar’s tusks, I will not hide,

The length of a large handful,

One tusk went up and the other down.

A mouth full wide and grown foul,

With many grey hairs on,

Her lips lay lumpish on her chin

Her neck, in truth, I did not see –

She was a loathly one!

Within the lines author moves from simile straight into description; at first her teeth are only like “borys tuskes,” but in the second stanza they are tusks. There is also a change from her first description (which will be discussed in the next section) which states, “Her nek long” (242) – now it is “non iseen;” it has sunk into her body, as she seems to shrink within herself.

Ragnelle is no longer simply an ugly woman, she has become a hybrid; a human that has been combined with an animal or monster. Boar’s tusks can be found on many different ancient and medieval monsters but tracing the history of this characteristic is not so important; what is important is the fact that the tusks have appeared on an old woman, who is no longer being described in human terms. Though she remains female throughout the narrative, in this moment the focus is not only on her gender but on her body, which has crossed the boundaries of normal human form. If you tried to sketch Ragnelle based only on this passage, the picture would likely not resemble a woman, but rather a creature found in some chapter of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Williams-Munger 38

However, in the next descriptive passage, we are reminded how Ragnelle’s gender

marks her as an outsider; when Ragnelle attempts to cover her age with clothing she is

also compared to an animal. The narrator states;

For alle her rayment, she bare the belle

Of fowlnesse, that evere I hard telle -

So fowlle a sowe sawe nevere man.

(597-564)

Despite all her arrayment, she took the prize

For foulness, that ever I heard –

So foul a sow never a man saw.

Sow is a particularly gendered term to use here, referring to a female pig, reinforcing the

gender criticism occurring here. Ragnelle is breaking the rules; it is not wrong for women

to wear fine clothes, but it is wrong for Ragnelle to attempt to distract from her age.

Beliefs and Images of Old Age

Let us move deeper into Ragnelle’s appearance as an aging woman. Ragnelle’s

body can be best categorized not only by the popular term “loathly,” but by the word

“foul” in all its various spellings, which is rather extraordinary in its repetition (used in

The Wedding 16 times to loathly’s 2). If “courtly” or “courteous” is the label for Gawain,

“foul” is the label for Ragnelle. And this term could not be better suited to the task, with its multiple medieval definitions. It may first be said that the etymology of the world

“fowl” comes from the Old English, meaning strong or masculine (and therefore not ladylike). Foul also holds the following meanings in the Middle English Dictionary: Williams-Munger 39

1a. Dirty, filthy, soiled.

1b. Rotten, carrion, decayed; evil-smelling, stinking.

1c. Ceremonially or religiously unclean, taboo: of a wound or sore: gangrenous,

mortified; also, festering, purulent; of a humor: corrupt; of a disease or injury:

filthy, ugly; causing deformity or disfigurement, disfiguring.

2. Unattractive, ugly; as noun: ugliness; hideous, horrible; terrible to look upon;

harsh or disagreeable; of speech, language, etc.: crude, unseemly, unbecoming,

vile, indecent.

3. Evil, sinful, wicked; of sin, vice, crime: grievous, heinous, damnable; of persons,

etc.: guilty, sinful, wicked; –wight, a demon, a devil; also, a monster, one who

looks like a devil.

4. Of persons: abject, low, miserable, wretched. 63

All these meanings are implicated in the text, and descriptions of Ragnelle explicate her foulness. The first stunning use of this description appears when Arthur first discovers her in the forest:

Her face was red, her nose snotyd withalle,

Her mowithe wyde, her tethe yalowe overe alle,

With bleryd eyen gretter then a balle.

Her mowithe was nott to lak:

Her tethe hyng overe her lyppes,

Her chekys syde as wemens hippes.

A lute she bare upon her bak;

Her nek long and therto greatt;

63 “foul, adj.” Middle English Dictionary. Williams-Munger 40

Her here cloteryd on an hepe;

In the sholders she was a yard brode.

Hangyng pappys to be an hors lode,

And lyke a barelle she was made.

Ther is no tung may telle, securly;

Of lothynesse inowghe she had.

(235-249)

Her face was red, her nose snotted withal,

Her mouth wide, her teeth all-over yellowed,

With bleary even greater than a ball.

Her moth was not lacking (in size):

Her teeth hung over her lips

Her cheeks wide as women’s hips.

She bore a lute-shaped hump on her back;

Her neck long as long as it was thick;

Her hair clotted in a heap;

In the shoulders she was a yard broad

Hanging pappies large enough for a horse’s load,

And like a barrel she was made.

And to rehearse the foulness of that Lady,

There is not tongue that may tell surely;

Of ugliness enough she had.

Ragnelle gives the impression of someone close to their expiration date: she is stretched Williams-Munger 41

out and sagging, with a contorted shape like a bent-over barrel and hips that seem to be

widened from repeated child-bearing. Her eyes are “bleary” and blurred, suggesting that

age has obscured her vision.

Her shape is indescribable; even the narrator states that he is even at loss to

describe her true form – “Ther is no tung may telle” – and since he created her

appearance, we must assume that he desires there to be an air of mystery around her, or

an inability to fully pin her down. This instability follows Cohen’s thesis that “The

Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis:”

[it is] the living embodiment of the phenomena Derrida has famously labeled the

“supplement”…it breaks apart bifurcating either/or syllogistic logic with a kind of

reasoning closer to and/or introducing what Barbara Johnson has called “a

revolution in the very logic of meaning.” 64

Ragnelle’s changeable and paradoxically describable-and-indescribable appearance

confronts the text’s ability to fully capture her and place her in a category: she is both an

ugly old woman and a monstrous creature, there to help Arthur complete the quest but

also to subvert his authority.

This follows the nature of the aging female body, which is instable and even

dangerous in medieval thought. And while the descriptions of Ragnelle may seem harsh

or unkind, they are a representation consistent with the general beliefs about old age that

were circulating in the medieval period, beliefs that very often thought ill of the aged. As

Richard Freedman has argued, “The greatest literature, indeed, frequently reveals with unblinking truth…very negative attitudes towards the elderly.” 65 Let us also state a most

64 Cohen 7. 65 Aging in Literature 1. Williams-Munger 42

important fact, as explained by Shulamith Shahar; “When positive images stereotypes of

old men or women appear, bodies are not mentioned.” 66 While the ancients viewed old age in more positive manner – as a period of wisdom and honor, the Latin antiquus meaning old, ancient, and aged but also simple, classic, and venerable – medieval authors did not enforce this belief in most of their writing. In romance, only the protagonists of heroic epics are endowed with powerful and dignified bodies as they age, King Arthur being the prime example. When Arthur becomes middle-aged and older, which he is for the majority of Arthurian texts, we are not told how age has changed his appearance, we only read how he has become as wise and tested king who remains strong. While some very modern retellings of the Arthur legend may feature a physically aging Arthur, there is no mention of any physical symptoms of age in Morte, Chretien, or any of the Gawain chronicles. Since Arthur hardly, if ever, wins in a battle against his knights we may assume that he is older than them, but it is not a point of emphasis.

But if you were not a heroic protagonist the older years were a time of decline, and not just for the lower classes – in the study of aging medieval belief drew no distinction between various social classes; the body was indeed the same, no matter the rank of the person. 67 Health manuals became popular during the Middle Ages, and while many

focused on the aging body their basic assumption was this there was no way to restore

youth or revive aging organs, since aging is an irreversible decline of the organism. 68

Indeed, physical aging was a very concrete issue for medieval scholars;

…senescence was approached as a scientific question before it was identified as a

social problem or as a subject of analysis by the social scientist. It is important,

66 Shahar 171. 67 Shahar 161. 68 Shahar 161. Williams-Munger 43

however, not to overstress the abstract quality of medieval gerontology: the fact

that the scholars under discussion reflected on how to delay the onset of old age is

evidence enough of the trials they knew it to bring. 69

In no subtle-sense, the old body stood as a reminder that a person must prepare themselves for death, separate themselves from the world, and strive to save their soul.

However it is not only the coming of death that makes the aging body so disliked, the accompanying moral decline also contributed to derision. English poets knew that ancient tradition idealized old age, and they often drew from Biblical passages advising reference or age. Yet no English writer from the fourteenth century on presents

“idealized, venerable old people in his works; nor does any of the poets provide us with the realistic portrayals of the old and their position in society. They draw, instead, on the counter-tradition that sees in old age the image of man’s physical and spiritual corruption.” 70 Aging was a time when negative character traits and vices such as avarice, envy, jealousy, and hypocrisy were developed, and man experienced mental deterioration. This stereotype runs rampant through all types of texts, from religious writing to works of fiction.

One such work that displays the negative effects of aging is Chaucer’s Canterbury

Tales, in the Reeve’s Prologue. After hearing the Miller tell a story about a carpenter that is tricked, the Reeve, a carpenter himself, decides to tell a story about a miller who is deceived.

“So theek,” quod he, “ful wel koude I thee quite

69 Shahar 202. Original source Lewry Demaitre. 70 Magnan 8. Williams-Munger 44

With bleryng of a proud milleres ye,

If that me liste speke of ribaudye.

But ik am oold; me list not pley for age;

Gras tyme is doon; my fodder is now forage;

This white top writeth myne olde yeris;

Myn herte is also mowled as myne heris.

“As I may prosper,” said he, “very well could I repay thee

With (a tale of the) blearing of a proud miller's eye (tricking him),

If I wanted to speak of ribaldry.

Grass time is done; my fodder is now dry straw;

This white head reveals my old years;

My heart is as moldy as my hairs. 71

Here Chaucer compares aging to the season after the harvest when everything is dried out, and there is also an apparent emotional decline or neglect as well, as the Reeve’s heart is “mowled.” The Reeve then goes on to explain that certain ill desires to not decline as the body ages, but rather the reverse:

Foure gleedes han we, which I shal devyse -

Avauntyng, liyng, anger, coveitise;

Thise foure sparkles longen unto eelde.

Oure olde lemes mowe wel been unweelde,

But wyl ne shal nat faillen, that is sooth.

Four live coals have we, which I shall describe –

Boasting, lying, anger, greed;

71 Chaucer, lines 3865-3870. Translations by Larry D. Benson. Williams-Munger 45

These four little sparks belong to old age.

Our old limbs may well be feeble,

But desire shall not be lacking, that is truth. 72

Contained in this passage is a sense that the old are bitter because they have lost their youth, and thus become deceitful or spiteful towards others – emphasized by the fact that the other pilgrims laugh at the Miller’s Tale while the Reeve grumbles. The Reeve also expresses the idea that the old are not without “desire,” which is likely sexual since the

Reeve’s tale involves sexual antics. But there is a clear sense in this narrative that there was a divide between youth and old age, and being old implied a physical and behavioral or moral decline.

Thus medieval thought presents an overwhelming impression that there were two stages of medieval growth: youth and old age, and one easily slipped into the latter at an age as early as 30. 73 This split meant that in old age you could quickly become an

outsider, which we see in many different texts, as “old people’s sense of ‘otherness’ in

medieval literature is intensified by the vulnerability and isolation that they feel.” 74

These two categories then translated to other splits found in the world;

This dichotomy of junventus [youth] and senectus [very old age], these “vexed

polarities,” invite comparison with dichotomies of other natural and supernatural

phenomena, such as day and night, light and dark, good and evil, as well as life and

death. 75

72 Chaucer, lines 3883-3888. 73 Interestingly, in the Roman period, 45 was the age a citizen officially became a senior. Many medieval texts offer up even younger ages for this distinction, as young as 30 or 40, especially for women, who were considered aged the moment their beauty began to fade. (Whitaker’s Words) 74 Nitecki 110. 75 Magnan 17. Williams-Munger 46

If a monster can be defined as a creature that exists between these distinctions, it is clear

that the aging body carries the same problem of categorization; both entities border the

lines between what is known and unknown, positive and negative. It is also interesting to

consider that juventus is defined in Latin as youth and young age, but can also refer to a

knight, suggesting that there is a relationship between being young and being knightly:

the word “knight” evokes the image of a young man, and the two ideas become

perpetually tied together. Senectus, on the other hand, means not only old age and senility

but also the shedding of snake skin, which draws forth an interesting connection with

transformation and the dramatic mutations which occur in the natural world (the snake

also being a sneaky or treacherous figure). 76

There are also many descriptions of old age that bear striking similarity to those of

Dame Ragnelle. Antonois Pucci begins his “Canzone della Vecchiezza” (c. 1375) with a

line reminiscent of Horace; “Old age comes to man, when it comes/ With every suffering

and every deficiency,” and he then devotes some 130 lines detailing all these sufferings

and deficiencies that put forth the same pitiful state of aging that Ragnelle embodies. One

of the best-known ballads that deals with aging is Deschamps’ “Je deveins courbes et

bossus,” which lists the physical symptoms of a 60 year-old man: “His cold, thin, dry

body is bent, with a humped back, pains in his chest, and limbs trembling; he is unable to

walk…his nose is runny, his teeth are long, pointed, and yellow…he has little appetite.”

77 Here both Ragnelle and the old man are afflicted with a terrible appearance, though

Ragnelle maintains a much stronger life-force and grasp on knowledge and power.

However the description of the old man is almost sympathetic, as the author presents his

76 Whitaker’s Words. 77 Magnan 23. Williams-Munger 47

ailments without any words of judgment; it is simply a list of symptoms. When the author

of The Wedding describes Ragnelle, there is always judgment, seen through the reactions

of the other characters, in the voice or word-choice of the narrator.

But this is no surprise, for while medieval attitudes about aging were rather unkind,

attitudes towards the aging female body are significantly harsher and filled with the type

of fear we find in the way a culture views its dangerous others, its monsters. Following

Alicia Nitecki assertion that the medieval view of old age “exposes man’s fear and

repugnance in the face of aging, that treats the aged as grotesques, as vehicles of metaphor rather than as characters” it is truly the medieval view of women that causes the

strongest reaction in the readers and the lines of the text itself. 78

Medieval Attitudes Towards the Aging Female Body

This strong reaction appears in many different aspects of medieval life: science,

philosophy, literature, and even ritual, as the fear of old age and oblivion were represented by the images of old women. During the lent fast in the Roussillon region, which took place during the Middle Ages, two puppets in the image of ugly old women were fashioned as ritual objects. These puppets were then burnt at the stake during Easter,

to signify the birth of new life and the end of death, among other things. In rural areas of

Italy and France during the Middle Ages, villagers used two puppets in the image of the

two oldest, ugliest women in the village for the ceremony of banishing winter and death,

in which the puppets were sawn in two. These puppets were used like masks worn at

religious ceremonies in other cultures, and they “gave gave an outlet to fear through

78 Nitecki 116. Williams-Munger 48

protecting against it, and were a means of mitigating it.” 79 Just as Prospero states, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,” the images of these old women belong to their cultures, though they are envisioned as outsiders. 80 The aging female body is both a

thing of familiarity and of fear.

As Dame Ragnelle’s body becomes difficult for the narrator to describe and as it

shifts into different states of ugliness throughout the text it reveals one of the main issues

with the aging female body: it does not form proper corporeal boundaries. The line

between young virginal woman, mother, animal, and old infertile woman is blurred,

especially through Ragnelle’s actions in The Wedding. Ragnelle is both human and not,

woman and not, useful and not, all at the same time, which produces concern about her

social position and her cultural role.

But why is there such concern over the physical changes of medieval women? One

must look to the role of women in medieval culture for the answer, which rests heavily on

a woman’s ability to bear children. While a woman is able to do so she holds a certain

position in society, both politically and personally. As Laura Barefield writes in the book

Gender and History in Medieval Chronicle,

For aristocratic culture, the proper succession of stability and power depended on

women’s bodily integrity, and so medieval women’s political power can be

grounded by their role in the succession. Eleanor of Aquitaine serves as an example

of a woman who achieved political power in a complex and contradictory way –

79 Shahar 167. 80 The Tempest, Act 5 Scene 1, ln 278-279. Williams-Munger 49

she was accused of adultery, yet her production of three daughters and five sons

gave her huge political powers in the court. 81

Eleanor, who was married serially to the Kings of France and England, ended up ruling more land than any of her husbands, but her children maintained her role as a mother.

Though Eleanor’s behavior may have been unconventional, as a woman who was not physically othered she could maintain her position in the court; as a young woman her children secured her position. In theory, as long as she secured patriarchal succession she was safe. In general, or perhaps ideally, once a woman is married her main source of

power becomes her children: bear strong sons and she will retain her position as wife and

mother, bear daughters or children who die and she may lose her security in the family

and court. As an old woman Ragnelle does not have this ability, and she must look

elsewhere for a source of power – thus her reliance on knowledge and cunning in solving

Gromer’s question. While Barefield’s concept of bodily integrity refers mainly to her

body remaining fit for childbirth, it can be expanded to suggest that the female body

needed to be stable and predictable in order to be useful. Ragnelle is neither stable nor

predictable until she is transformed out of her aged state.

Therefore when women begin to age they are no longer able to gain power through

motherhood, and when their children have died or become adults, they are left in a

confusing position, where any sexual desire is no longer tied to childbearing. While they

do not retain their beauty, they do retain their power in a way that can be manipulative

and threatening to the male: they become matriarchs which cannot be subjugated by

sexual conquest or marriage. Thus we see figures such as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, whose

experience and frank sexual knowledge can make for a potentially dominating woman.

81 Barefield 8. Williams-Munger 50

This occurrence leads many medieval authors to eliminate their female characters

before they reach this stage – hence the sudden death of many Arthurian and romance

women such as Igraine, Isolde, Isolde de Blonde, Elaine, even Guinevere in the end – it is

hard to find a knight who hasn’t witnessed the death of a wife or lover. Most of these

women die from grief or heartbreak, suggesting that they were young enough to not yet

be afflicted with the disease of age, but old enough to have served their purpose in the

narrative. As Fisher writes, “This strategy [of eliminating female characters] appears in the romances of the three best-known writers in Middle English: the Gawain-poet,

Geoffrey Chaucer, and Sir Thomas Malory… Even if these writers were not self-

consciously constructing a distinctly English tradition of representing gender in romance,

in hindsight at least, they gave a national inflection to such representations, despite their

other differences.” 82 These authors created something of an English trend in getting rid of textual women. Female old age is not something these male authors were fond of writing, and very often it is the kind of age seen in The Wedding; age magically imposed on a young woman. This aging can be remedied by chivalry, real aging cannot.

This fear of female age is not helped by the imagined medieval life-span. The time which a woman had before she started to age was quite short, and intensified by the medieval belief that women aged earlier than men, because their value depended much more on physical traits than did a man’s. 83 Beauty began to wane much earlier than one

might assume: According to Robert Magnam,

There is much evidence that the prime age for women was thought to be a virginal

youth between the ages of 15 and 20… By 40 the years have definitely taken their

82 Fisher 150-151. 83 Magnan 19. Williams-Munger 51

toll on women. We find Anne de France advising her daughter, “As soon as a

woman reaches 40, whatever beauty she may have had, it is obvious that not even

the best designed clothing can conceal the wrinkles on her face.” 84

In didactic works, the mention of this loss of beauty is usually paired with critical

comments (sometimes quite sarcastic or ill-tempered) on “the vain efforts of old women

to conceal this loss by lavish clothing, cosmetics and female wiles.” 85

The Wedding does not shy away from making such judgments against Ragnelle,

turning her social faux pas into a moral one, and reinforcing the idea that how she behaves is not right. These judgments can be seen in several different sections of The

Wedding, when Ragnelle is dressed richly or accompanied by finery. The first moment occur when Arthur meets Ragnelle in the forest:

She satt on a palfray was gay begon,

With gold besett and many a precious stone.

Ther was an unsemely syghte:

So fowlle a creature withoute mesure

To ryde so gayly, I you ensure,

Ytt was no reason ne ryghte.

(235-256)

She sat on a palfrey that was richly draped

Adorned with gold and many a precious stone.

There was an incongruous sight:

So foul a creature without measure

84 Magnan 20-21. 85 Shahar 166. Williams-Munger 52

To ride so handsomely, I assure you,

It was neither proper nor right.

Ragnelle’s horse intensifies the oddness of her appearance: since a palfrey usually

referred to the most expensive and highly-bred types of riding horses during the Middle

Ages it should only be ridden by the socially-elite, which Ragnelle is not. 86 The narrator

not only comments on how unpleasant is it to see an ugly old woman richly arranged, he goes further to say that there is no reason or justification for it – “measure” here even suggesting justice or natural order, implying that Ragnelle is breaking a fundamental law.

We don’t see this kind of critique in other romances where the mysterious woman is

young and beautiful; therefore this presents us with a wonderful example of how the

female body is both an appearance and a behavior, both combining to create something

monstrous in the eyes of the narrator and the culture of the text. In Sir Launfal and Marie

de France’s Lanval, for example, a knight comes across a mysterious fairy queen who has

a great amount of riches and beautiful clothing, but she is not negatively viewed because

of her beauty, and he falls in love with her.

Another moment of narrative judgment (as referenced earlier in the “sow” passage)

describes Ragnelle’s appearance on her wedding day, which due to her age is an

abomination in and of itself:

She was arayd in the richest maner,

More fressher than Dame Gaynour;

Her arayment was worthe thre thowsand mark

Of good red nobles, styff and stark,

So rychely she was begon.

86 Davis 137. Williams-Munger 53

For alle her rayment, she bare the belle

Of fowlnesse, that evere I hard telle -

So fowlle a sowe sawe nevere man.

(597-564)

She was arrayed in the richest manner,

More fresh that Dame Gaynour,

Her arrayment worth three thousand mark

Of good red coin, stiff and hard,

So richly she was done up,

Despite all her arrayment, she took the prize

For foulness, that ever I heard –

So foul a sow never a man saw.

Ragnelle insists on being married in front of the entire court and not only does she dress

the part she even out-dresses Arthur’s queen – a clear breach of etiquette. 87 There is

great emphasis here on the sheer amount of money she is wearing; her clothing costs

three-thousand marks of red nobles (a large amount of gold) and everything is “rich,” but

it does not cover the fact that she is so “fowlle.” It is improper for a woman of her age to

be dressing so “fresshe” – freshness referring to youth, as seen in the text when Ragnelle

asks “to be holden nott old, butt fresshe and yong” (415) [to be regarded as not old, but

fresh and young]. The Wedding does nothing but support medieval stereotypes that old

women trying to distract from their age are vain, and their efforts are futile – no one is

buying it.

87 Consequently this also happens in Lanval and Sir Launfal, but instead of the fairy-woman being critiqued, Guinevere is the one depicted as jealous and shameful because the knight chooses the fairy- woman over her. Beauty is the ultimate defense, it seems. Williams-Munger 54

However, the attempt to distract from age is only a symptom of the real object of

fear, which is the aging body itself. As Shulamith Shahar explains in the article “The old

body on medieval culture,” most medieval works on aging give the impression that the authors were thinking only of men as their subjects, and such works treat aging in a more even manner, with negative physical effects but also positive mental or spiritual effects.

However some authors did write separately on the physiological change in the body of the old woman, which centers mainly on the cessation of the menstrual flow. In this discussion the authors distinguished between the different social classes, a distinction that is never made in the case of men. Economic standing became very important here, as the authors “claimed that the destructive results attributed to this change were manifested mainly among old women from the poorer classes.” 88 However, the real monster here was not class; it was the female body itself, which became venomous as it aged. The

guiding principle here can be explained thus:

the theory, implicit in scientific texts and explicit in some works of scientific

popularisation, being that the old female body was capable of producing poison…

menstrual blood was considered impure, harmful, and possessing destructive

power. After the menopause the woman was even more dangerous because she had

become incapable of eliminating the superfluous matter from her organism. 89

Therefore the substance that gives young women the power to bear children and be

sexual becomes “destructive” as she can no longer put it to use. From a Biblical

standpoint, menstrual blood is thought to be impure throughout a woman’s life, and even

though it is an essential expression of fertility, it is hardly ever discussed in conjunction

88 Shahar 163. 89 Shahar 163. Williams-Munger 55

with fertility or reproduction. Leviticus 12-15, “Menstruation and other impure

discharges” gives instructions about how to deal with this problem, and prohibits sexual

activity for a certain period of time after menstruation. 90

It is thus no stretch to suggest that medieval authors found the aging female body

dangerous, and viewed the change between young and old woman as something to be

feared. In Medieval Monstrosity and the female body, Sarah Alison Miller sources the thirteenth-century Psuedo-Ovidian “De vetula” [On the old woman] as a powerful example of this medieval thinking, and argues that changing bodies change categories of

knowledge. While the long poem was originally attributed to Ovid, it is now attributed by

some to Richard de Fournival, who ironically wrote Bestiaire d'amour [The Bestiary of

Love]. 91 The poem is so titled, we are told, because “an old woman (vetula) was the

cause by which [Ovid] changed (mutavit) his way of living.” 92 It explains “Ovid’s”

(Ovid being the narrator) experience of “the horrific transformation of a female body.” 93

He is led into a dark room where he believes a young beautiful virgin will be waiting for

him, but as he embraces the figure reclining on the couch he “discovers in his arms a

revolting old woman, her body a monstrously ill-proportioned, overflowing jumble of

parts.” 94 The poet then becomes witness to the most unbelievable and disturbing

transformation: “the beautiful, pure, meticulously ordered body of the puella [young

woman/girl] has become the ugly, disordered body of a vetula.” 95 The metamorphosis

here shows that there is a connection between two bodies who may not resembles each

90 Philip 2 91 Rouhi 96. 92 Miller 12. 93 Miller 12. 94 Miller 12. 95 Miller 19. Williams-Munger 56

other – the change of puella into vetula is what creates the story “‘the virgin will become an old woman,’ or, ‘the old woman used to be a virgin,’ depending on whether the story is read forward or backward.” 96 The Wedding then provides an example of this storyline,

with old Ragnelle becoming young and Gawain’s life not being destroyed as a result,

while Ovid’s is surely disturbed. These two works emphasize the instability of the female

body, which is exaggerated through instant transformation. It is interesting to note here

that while these two works share plot elements, they have reverse plot-structures, in which “Ovid” is damaged for life and Gawain is vindicated with a happy marriage. The happiness of the protagonist relies on possessing the young beautiful woman, it seems.

Therefore Ovid’s poem shows how the old woman’s appearance turns “Ovid” away from erotic desire and suggests that the old woman’s monstrosity “issues from an association between the reproductive life-cycle – embodied in the instability of female corporeality – and mortality.” 97 The unstable, aging female body makes connections

between sexuality and death, submission and power, thus drawing connections between things which are not meant to be seen together and making the embodiment of these connections threatening. In a sense, Ragnelle threatens to take over the Arthurian myth, which is dominated by patriarchal ethos and masculine behavior. In the world of romance, what is mythological is also social in that certain myths of behavior, like chivalry, are major cultural forces. This fact thus allows us to connect Ragnelle with social monstrosity, because although her aged appearance is magical and at times beyond human, it is always social.

96 Miller 20. 97 Miller 13. Williams-Munger 57

Chapter IV: The Lady is a Monster

Since the mixture of Ragnelle’s appearance and behavior create a social monster, it

is helpful to think of her aged form as a hybrid – an unstable combination of ideas or

attributes in one body – because it emphasizes the extent to which she is a constructed being made up of different parts. Ragnelle is not a physical hybrid along the lines of creatures who are simply two animals in one (usually mythological), but in the sense that she is an incongruous combination of an aging body and a young woman whose appearance is so exaggerated that it becomes something not entirely human. She doesn’t make sense to cultural world of the text until she changes back into the young woman.

We must remember that Ragnelle isn’t just an old woman; she is a loathly lady, and always mysterious.

Ragnelle is not simply an old woman, but a new form that is neither here nor there; she crosses and dissolves social boundaries through her movements and actions, making her into a social monster. According Metamorphosis and Identity, by Caroline Walker

Bynum, a mixture is in itself a monster, “the addition of one species to another. Or a

mixture…or an addition of unlike to radically unlike can be marvelous or miraculous…

Mixtures are objects of stupor or admiratio, unusual occurrences at which we feel terror

or wonder.” 98 Ragnelle instigates this kind of stupor within the text, as seen in the

moments when she evokes wonder and marvel from characters watching her. These

moments are mainly caused by a visual performance (Ragnelle riding into court, eating, etc) which reinforces the highly visual nature of hybrids. As Bynum explains,

98 Bynum 117. Williams-Munger 58

A hybrid is a double being, an entity of parts, two or more. It is an inherently

visual form. We see what a hybrid is; it is a way of making two-ness, and the

simultaneity of two-ness, visible. 99

Monsters in this sense produce what Freud referred to as the “uncanny,” or the

experience of making something “heimlich” (homely) “unheimlich” (un-homely). These

monsters remind us of something familiar, something of us, but also are not like us and

possess characteristics that are disturbing and unfamiliar. In the case of Ragnelle, she

reminds us of an inevitable stage of life, one which many people refuse to accept as

inevitable. It may be this uncanniness that causes Arthur to question his chivalry (seen through his promise) with Ragnelle; he knows she is woman and thus deserves to be served, but she doesn’t behave or look like a lady. If he allows her to marry Gawain she may cause him to question his chivalric beliefs, and she has the potential to usurp his patriarchal lineage (because she cannot have children). But in using Gawain, whose

chivalry does not waver, The Wedding suggests that Ragnelle will be dealt with

accordingly.

The threat that Ragnelle poses is then both personal and political; she is dangerous not only to the private life of Gawain but to the public image and reputation of the court.

As an old woman, Ragnelle refuses to participate in what Cohen calls “the order of

things” in that she forms her own category. She follows Cohen’s third thesis, “The

Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis,” which explains how a monster’s hybridity

is threatening:

99 Bynum 30. Williams-Munger 59

[Monsters] are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist

attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is

dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threaten to smash distinctions. 100

Therefore it is not that Ragnelle is so far from being human, or that a medieval person could not find actual old women out in the world, but that her hybridity is disgusting and disturbing to the narrator of The Wedding.

Ragnelle is thus a hybrid not only in her physical existence but in her social existence; she embodies a kind of social hybridity which features a mixture of behavior which is incongruous with itself and the surrounding culture. She attempts to fit in with the Arthurian court (by marrying Gawain and asking him to treat her like a normal wife) but also subverts it, doing what she pleases. Take the description of Gawain and

Ragnelle’s wedding feast, for example:

She ete as moche as six that ther wore;

That mervaylyd many a man.

Her nayles were long ynchys thre,

Therwith she breke her mete ungoodly;

Therfore she ete alone.

She ette thre capons, and also curlues thre,

And greatt bake metes she ete up, perdé.

Al men therof had mervaylle.

Ther was no mete cam her before

Butt she ete itt up, lesse and more,

100 Cohen 6. Williams-Munger 60

That praty, fowlle dameselle.

Alle men then that evere her sawe

Bad the deville her bonys gnawe,

Bothe knyght and squyre.

(611-624)

She ate as much as six people that were there;

Many a man marveled.

Her nails were three inches long,

Therewith she broke her meat unmannerly;

Therefore she ate alone.

She ate three capons, and three curlews also,

And great baked meats she ate up, to be sure.

All men thereof had marveled.

There was no meat that came before her

But she ate it up, less and more,

That pretty, foul damsel.

All men that ever saw her

Bade the devil gnaw her bones,

Both knight and squire.

Here Ragnelle’s eating habits are not just impolite, they push the limits of normal men.

She eats alone because she does not follow the social norms and because there is a frightening aspect to her eating; she consumes as much food as six men, and again, she becomes something to be “mervavlyd” at, bringing up the terror and wonder emphasized Williams-Munger 61

by Bynum. There is a sense that she offends tradition by eating “ungoodly” –

presumably ignoring etiquette by beginning to eat before the king or before grace had

been said. The suggestion that the “devil gnaw her bones” is a particularly ironic punishment since she is such a glutton. While this scene could be done with humor – and there is certainly the potential for ridiculousness here – there is more derision than amusement. The court doesn’t view her as a side-show but as an offense that should be destroyed by the devil.

The sense of decadence and public spectacle in this scene also rings of the carnivalesque, as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin to include ritual spectacle, humorous speeches or compositions, and various types of abusive language. 101 These three

elements are here: the ritual feasting, the description of Ragnelle’s manners and habits,

and the derision from the court. But most important is the carnival’s ability to “represent

a theory of resistance, a theory of freedom from all domination,” which Bakhtin says

makes it possible to extend the narrow sense of life.” 102 As real-life carnivals allowed

people to break down barriers and create new forms of social interaction, here Ragnelle

as the star of the carnivalesque-scene undermines and threatens to destroy “the hegemony

of any ideology that seeks to have the final word about the world,” or in other words,

patriarchal chivalry. 103 And since those around her are observers and not participators in

the carnival, Ragnelle is isolated in her actions and thus becomes socially-monstrous.

Ragnelle threatens not only the court’s sensibilities, but its equilibrium; she disrupts

balance by placing emphasis on a monstrous female instead of the patriarchal authority

around her.

101 “Mikhail Bakhtin.” 102 “Mikhail Bakhtin.” 103 “Mikhail Bakhtin.” Williams-Munger 62

Ragnelle and Society

These moments of social imbalance are occur numerous times within The Wedding,

giving us a clear picture of how Ragnell interacts with the central culture of the romance

as an outsider. Russell A. Peck’s article, “Folklore and Powerful Women in Gower’s Tale

of Florent,” provides a helpful encapsulation of the loathly lady’s role as other. As he

explains, “the Loathly Lady lurks on the fringe of society, an outsider at the edge of night

or the outskirts of the forest, whose marginality has a power unto itself that can

challenge, even destroy, complacent male assumptions or normalcy.” 104 Ragnelle’s

appearance as an outsider is marked by such moments of social betrayal, in which she

pushes or breaks the boundaries of medieval gender and power. For even though

Ragnelle is a woman, she does not behave in a way that is expected from romance or

Arthurian women: she is more counter-hero than heroine. She never exists wholly on one

side: she helps Arthur answer his question, but only so she may marry Gawain, and she

allows Gawain to make the choice over her appearance (whether to be ugly during the

day or the night – a question of public, social life versus a private, sexualized one) so she

may be freed from the spell. If we follow the logic that women in romance who try to

make exchanges on their own are figured as profoundly threatening, then we see how

Ragnelle disturbs the men around her.

Ragnelle follows the rules of a counter-hero who works against the hero more often than not, an act which aligns her with other threatening Arthurian figures such as

Morgan le Fay. While the heroine or female-hero can be any woman who performs a

104 Peck 101. Williams-Munger 63

traditionally-identified, female sex-role – as we discussed earlier – the counter-hero is a

completed figure, as Maureen Fries explains:

All Arthurian counter-heroes reveal a split tendency. Never completely committed

to the knightly ethos which dominates their world, they often act in their own

interest instead of males’ (thus differing from the female heroes). Their actions are

bold and often sexual. More than the female heroes, they are capable of

transforming their environments(s) and doing so for their own benefit. Examined in

terms of the prime function of romance as a mirror of the male warrior ideal, these

Arthurian women are truly counter-cultural. 105

While the Arthurian female-hero may, for a specified time, play certain female parts to

effect transformation in their male-dominant world, they always act for knightly benefit

and the enforcement of chivalric norms. But counter-heroes refuse to accept these

supportive roles and use direct action to change their patriarchal surroundings, though

they are still limited “by their inability to assume such traditional male roles as the

warrior one of physical combat.” 106 As we recall Ragnelle does not challenge Arthur

directly; her brother is the one who confronts him physically. Therefore, in place of these

male roles female counter-heroes use guile, both verbal and magical. In Ragnelle’s case,

she keeps quiet about her true appearance (though the narrator does give clues in many

ambiguous statements about who she really is) and uses her knowledge of “what women

want” to enact change. Though, as is always the case in romance, this does not earn her

honor; Arthur would rather she not marry Gawain at all, and if it weren’t for Gawain’s

105 Fries 15. While the loathly lady is not treated in Popular Arthurian Traditions, editor Sally Slocum does identify the connection between counter-heroines and loathly ladies, and gives suggestions for further reading. 106 Fries 16. Williams-Munger 64 extreme courtesy, perhaps it would not have happened and she would be stuck as an old hag forever.

But let us look at the moments which make up Ragnelle’s betrayal of social boundaries. Her giving of the answer to Arthur is most significant. As Gromer poses the question to find “Whate wemen desyren moste” (172) he is not truly asking about women, as discussed earlier, but about the powerless; however Ragnelle steps in and makes it about women and female sovereignty again, stealing the power away from her brother. As Arthur remarks, “And then ar they welle. Thus they me dyd ken/To rule the,

Gromer Syre,” (478-9) [And then are they well. Thus they did teach me/ To rule thee, Sir

Gromer]; in other words, not only has he found out that answer, in providing the answer a woman has obtained sovereignty over Gromer. When Gromer hears of this, he is furious:

"And she that told the nowe, Sir Arthoure,

I pray to God, I maye se her bren on a fyre;

For that was my suster, Dame Ragnellee,

That old stott, God geve her shame.

Elles had I made the fulle tame;

Nowe have I lost moche travaylle.

(470-484)

And she that gave the answer, Sir Arthur,

I pray to God, I may see her burn on a fire;

For that was my sister, Dame Ragnelle,

That old cow, God give her shame. Williams-Munger 65

Else I had made thee full tame;

Now I have lost much effort.

Ragnelle has usurped Gromer, putting her desires above his, which is (in his eyes at least) a damnable offense; he wishes to see her burned as a witch. However, this is also a great example of how male leaders achieve their power through women, who are usually cast off after they are not longer useful – the fate of many a female hero. Since Ragnelle is not a female hero, but a counter-hero, she will not shrink away into a traditional gender role.

But Ragnelle does not stop at Gromer, she also crosses boundaries in her interactions with Arthur. She first refuses to have her wedding conducted in private or pushed to the private sphere where women are expected to retreat to; she states, “Nay, Sir

Kyng, nowe wolle I nott soo;/Openly I wol be weddyd, or I parte the froo/ Elles shame wolle ye have” (506-508) [Nay, Sir King, I will not have it so;/ Publicly I will be wedded, before I leave you/ Otherwise shame you will have]. She brings up Arthur’s obligation to her, and reminds him that if he doesn’t give her what she wants, he will be the one who is shamed, because he has betrayed courtesy and chivalry. She then pretends that she will comply with the norms of the court upon her entrance, saying “Ryde before, and I wolle com after,” (516) [Ride before, and I will come after]. But once they enter the court she changes her tune, as we see in the following stanza;

The Kyng of her had greatt shame,

Butt forth she rood, thoughe he were grevyd;

Tylle they cam to Karlyle forth they mevyd.

Into the courte she rode hym by; Williams-Munger 66

For no man wold she spare, securly –

Itt likyd the Kyng fulle ylle.

Alle the contraye had wonder great

Fro whens she com, that foule unswete.

(521-528)

The King has great shame of her,

But forth she rode, though he was grieved;

Till they came to Carlisle forth they moved.

Into the court she rode beside him;

For she would hold back for no man, truly –

It displeased the King greatly.

All the country had great wonder

From whence she came, that foul unlovely person.

Instead of following Arthur, as members of the court would be accustomed to doing, she rides in next to him, in a position of honor and equality. While Ragnelle has just saved

Arthur’s life and reputation, no other member of the court would exhibit this kind of behavior: even Gawain, who also is helping out Arthur by marrying Ragnelle, always restates that he is a mere servant of God and the King, eager to stand in for Arthur but never to overshadow him. He acts as an agent of the king, not himself. As Susan Carter agrees in the article “A Hymenation of Hags,” Ragnelle seems to enjoy her power to shame Arthur and his court, so that “a sense of something like female solidarity leaks into the shape-shifting motif.” 107 This act further marks her as a counter-hero and an outsider.

107 Carter 90. Williams-Munger 67

Ragnelle’s final break (and I do mean final – after this moment she transforms and

is no longer an outsider) of social boundaries occurs on the wedding night, where her

sexuality is unlike that of a typical Arthurian heroine. She is fully aware that as Gawain’s

wife, she has certain sexual rights, and despite her appearance, she demands them of him.

She states, “A, Sir Gawen, syn I have you wed,/Shewe me your cortesy in bed;/ With

ryghte itt may nott be denyed” (636-639) [Sir Gawain, since I have wed you,/ Show me

your courtesy in bed;/ By right it may not be denied]. Ragnelle demands action from her

husband, ignoring the fact that as an old woman she shouldn’t be doing so. It is not that

lusty women do not exist within patriarchal romance-narratives, as sex plays a very

important role in “legitimizing a patriarchal empire and in establishing heterosexual,

marital love as the norm for romance.” 108 It allows women to produce heirs for their

knights and also fulfills certain requirements of courtly love (which was certainly not

chaste). And actual medieval women did often celebrate their sexuality – as long as it was

proper, i.e. heterosexual – as Mary Talbot concludes in her study of women’s pleasure in

romance. She writes, “romances fill a vacuum. They provide something for which

feminism has so far had little to offer; namely a celebration of women’s heterosexual

desire.” 109 The sexual dynamics found in romance literature are often mirrored in the

writing of heterosexual woman about their sexuality. However these writings align more

with the actions (or passive actions) of romance heroines love-objects rather than those of the counter-hero. For Ragnelle to be demanding action from Gawain when she looks and behaves as she does is a culturally radical act.

108Krueger, Roberta. “Questions of gender in Old French romance.” 144. 109 Sylvester 39. Original source “An Explosion Deep Inside Her: Women’s Desire and Popular Romantic Fiction.” Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance, and Intimacy. Ed Keith Harvey and Celia Shalom. London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 106-22. Williams-Munger 68

Therefore an important difference between these two groups of women (subversive and not) is their proper expression of libido: Ragnelle is demanding sex from her husband without any promise of childbirth or furthering patriarchy. The expression of an old woman’s sexual desire for a young man like Gawain is a cultural taboo. This impropriety is demonstrated in the court’s reaction to the marriage when the ladies express their sadness;

Ther Sir Gawen to her his trowthe plyghte

As he was a true knyght;

Then was Dame Ragnelle fayn.

"Alas!" then sayd Dame Gaynour;

So sayd alle the ladyes in her bower,

And wept for Sir Gawen.

(539-544)

There Sir Gawain pledged to her his troth

As he as a true knight;

Then was Dame Ragnelle glad.

“Alas!” then said Dame Gaynor;

So said all the ladies in her bower,

And wept for Sir Gawain.

The ladies essentially view Gawain as being wasted, bound by his chivalry to a monstrous woman who desires him for her own means. And what could be more disturbing than imagining the couple consummating their marriage? (This consummation is of course hinted at by Ragnelle but seemingly does not occur until after her Williams-Munger 69 transformation.) The pairing is clearly undesirable to all who witness it within the text.

The Wedding then supports an important function of romance, which is to reproduce the conditions for successful patriarchy time and again. One of the chief ways it does so is by dramatizing the attractions and dangers of those relationships it does not approve of, including homosexual and unproductive unions. Therefore the marriage of Gawain and

Ragnelle, which is never consummated before she turns into a young beautiful woman capable of bearing children, highlights yet again the extent to which Ragnelle crosses social boundaries and acts in a culturally disruptive manner by breaking rules of etiquette, asking Gawain to engage in disturbing behavior and shaming the court, which adds to her textual monstrosity.

What is desirable in romance is a sexual dynamic in which women are powerless, which Ragnelle certainly is not – until she transforms into a young woman capable of fitting into cultural boundaries. Ragnelle’s transformation reveals her loathliness and monstrosity as it emphasizes the massive difference between her two forms.

Ragnelle’s Transformation

The transformation of Dame Ragnelle into the young, beautiful Ragnelle thus changes her from a hybrid creature into one of change, of metamorphosis. This is significant, for while a hybrid breaks and resists boundaries with its duality, metamorphosis moves “from an entity that is one thing to an entity that is another, and the relative weight or presence of two entities suggests where we are in the story… Williams-Munger 70

Nonetheless metamorphosis is about process, mutatio, story – a contestant series of replacement changes, or, as Bernard of Clairvaux puts it, little deaths.” 110

Whereas hybridity reveals a world of difference, “a world that is and is multiple,”

metamorphosis “reveals of world of stories, of things under way. Metamorphosis breaks

down categories by breaching them; hybrid forces contradictory or incompatible

categories to coexists and serve as commentary each on the other. 111 As a old woman,

Ragnelle’s body brought up issues of aging, death, and monstrosity, but as a young

woman Ragnelle breaches the divide between what is other and familiar, feared and not.

She reveals the gender norms which were accepted, not derided, in medieval culture. She

can no longer be considered a hybrid because all traces of her previous body have been

erased, including her behaviors – there is no lingering indication that points back to her

loathly and monstrous self.

In every way, Ragnelle then becomes the rational, archetypal heroine whose chief virtue will always be her beauty, “the prime impelling force behind any hero’s activity.”

112 The heroine’s agency is selfless in that “it exists for the patriarchal – male rather than

female – purposes;” 113 Ragnelle gives up her schemes (for what does she need them

now?) and becomes a wife whose chief duty is to please Gawain and bear children: she

says,

Therfore, curteys Knyght and hend Gawen,

Shalle I nevere wrathe the serteyn,

That promyse nowe here I make.

110 Bynum 30. 111 Bynum 31. 112 Fries 9. 113 Fries 12. Williams-Munger 71

Whilles that I lyve I shal be obaysaunt;

(781-786)

To God above I shalle itt warraunt,

And nevere with you to debate."

Therefore, courteous Knight and gracious Gawain,

Shall I never hurt you surely,

That promise I make here now.

While I live I shall be obedient;

To God above I shall warrant it,

And never with you to debate.

As she pledges to be obedient she acknowledges that she has not been obedient in the past, but due to Gawain’s “curtesye” [courtesy] she is now set free from this transgressive behavior, and the court is put back in balance. There is no chance that she will regress in the future. As a young woman she holds up “a mirror to male social values, not female ones.” 114 The genres of medieval romance and chivalric literature are after all referred to as “mirrors for princes,” not princesses.

This is a fitting moment to remember that the author of The Wedding is a man, not a woman. Maureen Fries nicely sums up the importance of this:

As Chaucer has his Wife of Bath note, the portrait depends on who paints it, the

lion or the man. In medieval Arthurian literature, to make thus figure further ironic,

the image of the woman is not ever the product of the lioness, but always of the

lion. 115

114 Fries 15. 115 Fries 15. Williams-Munger 72

While the narrative may, at times, seem to belong to Ragnelle (who holds most of the narrative energy) at the end of the day it does not, and cannot. Male authors of romance do not allow women the true role of protagonist, and in narratives where it seems that the male and female characters are equally important they are not granted equal importance.

Even in the story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot you will never find a romance titled

“The Adventures of Guinevere.”

Therefore the author of The Wedding must eliminate old Ragnelle in order for the romance to be successful, thus the presence of the transformation scene, which shows how the author brings about closure and safety to the text. Like a villain in a soap opera,

Ragnelle was created to be destroyed (or specifically, transformed) in order to reinforce the importance of the force that destroys her: chivalry. Chivalry then effects a process of reconciliation between female and male, private and public, old and young, wretched and handsome, peasant and noble.

Through the physical transformation of the loathly lady into the beautiful young woman, the threatening hag is neutralized, “literally transformed by Gawain’s gentilesse into refined, handsome figures who ‘naturally’ take their place among the ruling elite.”

116 There is a formation of identity for the young woman, but also an erasure of identity for the loathly one who has been eliminated – and with her elimination her power and agency also disappears. As she passes the question of her existence – “’Syr,’ she sayd,

‘thus shalle ye me have:/ Chese of the one, so God me save” (664-665) [Sir, she said, thus shall you have me:/ Choose one of them, so God save me] – she also passes the control she had over to Gawain, who she will now submit to. As The Wedding’s

116 Hahn 225. Williams-Munger 73 translator Thomas Hahn puts it, “The happy ending allows the hero (putting it crudely) to have his cake and eat it too.”

The shift in power is also revealed during the transformation through Gawain, as we see in the following passage:

He turnyd hym her untille.

He sawe her the fayrest creature

That evere he sawe, withoute mesure.

(640-642)

He turned towards her.

He saw there the fairest creature

That ever he saw, without compare.

Again the male is given the active verbs, turning towards the female and gazing while the woman is silent. Gawain’s gaze effectively erases Ragnelle’s previous identity, as he does not recognize her until she says “Sir, I am your wyf, securely,” [Sir, I am your wife, without doubt] (645). Though Ragnelle refers to herself as Gawain’s wife in several other passages, the first time Gawain calls her as such is after the transformation; the morning after he says to Arthur, “Syr, this is my wyfe, Dame Ragnelle” (746). Her form has been stabilized, and thus her social role is pinned down.

While this may appear as a simple exchange of sovereignty between husband and wife, it becomes much more interesting when we consider Ragnelle as a monstrous presence within the text. What occurs here is not just a domestic affair; it is the negation of a threat, the neutralization of a monster that must be neutralized in order for patriarchal power to succeed, the moment when romance displays its cards as a genre that “ratifies Williams-Munger 74 the power of custom and civility in maintaining traditional order.” 117 If we take on the idea that “at the heart of the romance lies the question of how the unknown, the marvelous, or the demonized are brought into line with normative, idealized chivalric values,” this metamorphosis answers the question of how Ragnelle’s hated body and behavior can be brought “into line” with the conventions of romance. 118 The text’s reliance on this transformation reveals the extent to which the world of romance relies on chivalry and the behavior of its male protagonists for the rationalization and reproduction of patriarchal medieval values

If “The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body,” then this is how a medieval culture makes it safe; by turning it into something that can be usurped. Because what Ragnelle represents as an old, terribly ugly woman is not just old age and death, but female old age, which cannot be subverted by the traditional means of patriarchy. She acts in front of men and shakes off cultural norms; she will wear expensive clothing and eat in a horrendous manner, ride next to the King and ruin her brother’s plans for power. Sexual force does not conquer Ragnelle because she is sexually undesirable; she is a matriarch with power and knowledge of her own, which she uses to get what she wants. And because of this combination of appearance and behavior, she becomes the monster of the text; the dragon which threatens the city or the witch who persuades Arthur into committing obscene acts. She is the thing which must be neutralized in order for the story to end pleasantly, and with purpose – the purpose being to enforce a reader’s support of the power of chivalry.

117 Hahn 231. 118 Hahn 230. Williams-Munger 75

Chapter V: Endings

If there is one thing we can say with certainly about monsters, it is that they always come back: “They can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse, hidden away at the edges of the world and in the forbidden recesses of our mind, but they always return.” 119 And as many romance narratives feel the need to “eliminate” their women at the end of the story, so the author of The Wedding eliminates Ragnelle in order to prevent the return of her monstrous- self. And he does so quite neatly:

Nowe for to make you a short conclusyon,

I cast me for to make an end fulle sone

Of this gentylle Lady.

She lyvyd with Sir Gawen butt yerys five;

That grevid Gawen alle his lyfe …

In her lyfe she grevyd hym nevere;

Therfor was nevere woman to hym lever.

Thus leves my talkyng.

(824-833)

Now in order to make you a short conclusion,

I purpose me to make an full ending soon

Of this gentile lady.

She lived with Sir Gawain but five years;

That grieved Gawain all his life …

In her life she grieved him never;

Therefore was never any women more dear to him.

119 Cohen 20. Williams-Munger 76

Thus leaves my talking.

Interestingly enough, he does not make a “short” conclusion at all; the narrative continues

for 30 or so lines which discuss the life of the author himself. And while it may seem a

little sad to lose Ragnelle after only five years of marriage, for Gawain and ourselves –

the editor of the Norton edition, Steven Shepherd, deems it “pathetic” – it makes some

sense if you look at it in a certain way. To keep the “monster” from returning, Ragnelle

must die. Ragnelle has fulfilled her purpose as an Arthurian heroine and becomes one of

the virtuous dead. She also fulfills her duties as a wife by giving Gawain a son,

Gyngolyn – who goes on to star in his own romance, Libeaus Desconsus 120– and she

keeps her promise to be obedient, never grieving Gawain while alive.

However heroines romance do not often age (unless they are Morgan le Fay, who is

typically more of a counter-hero than a heroine), and if they do we aren’t witness to it. If

we recall Anne de France‘s words that “As soon as a woman reaches 40, whatever beauty

she may have had, it is obvious that not even the best designed clothing can conceal the

wrinkles on her face,” it becomes clear that one possible reason for which Ragnelle dies

(from an unspecified cause) is because she can’t get old in the text, which would mean

that the old Ragnelle would return to haunt the text once again. If we place Ragnelle’s

original age at the start of the romance to be in her early-to-mid twenties (the usual age

for most romance women), then after 5 years she would be reaching 30; the ideal end

stage of life for women before they sink into old age and ugliness. If the prime age for a

woman was “between the ages of 15 and 20,” it is no stretch to see the beginnings of old

age approaching of woman of 30. If Ragnelle was allowed to age it would also mean the

120 Libeaus Desconsus is contemporary to The Wedding, dated sometime around the mid-fifteenth century, thought to be written by Thomas Chestre. Williams-Munger 77 aging of Gawain and the end of his story; he has eliminated the old woman as a threat and now must move on to new narratives, and new monsters.

As I have said before, medieval authors believed that old age was a disease that could not be reversed nor cured, but Ragnelle is not simply an aging woman; she is a social monster whose condition can be cured by chivalry. But what does this mean for medieval studies, or rather, what does tell us about the role of women in chivalric romance-literature?

For one, it reveals the connection between what is female and the monstrous. We see the beginnings of this connection in the actual writings of Medieval authors, as the conflation of women and monstrosity was a familiar move:

For instance, it is a trope remarked upon by Christine de Pizan, in the opening

pages of The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), where she announces that the

negative perceptions of women in learned writings inspired such disgust and

sadness in her that she began to despise herself and the whole of her sex as an

“aberration in nature.” 121

We see here how certain female behaviors were viewed as culturally transgressive to the extent that females began to dislike member of their own sex and believe that they are somehow separated from what belongs in society. Therefore when Ragnelle appears in

The Wedding, her aged body and offensive behavior immediately makes her a target for this kind of thinking. And this is where romance steps in by presenting a solution to the problem of Ragnelle: if as a social monster she defies categorization and breaks cultural

121 Bildhauer, Bettina. Robert Mills. “Introduction: Conceptualizing the Monstrous.” 12.

Williams-Munger 78

boundaries, the logical solution is to transform her into something more manageable that

will follow the rules for proper gender-behavior.

Here the desires of the romance-machine are revealed: to be able to fix what

science, religion, and intellect cannot. To effect change that will bring balance to the

text’s central society, which, as we have established, parallels the society the reader exists

in or desires to align themselves with. Chivalry is therefore not only a set of guidelines

for personal behavior, but the foundation for a cultural system of authority and meaning.

A culture ruled by chivalry will replicate and rationalize the conditions for patriarchal

dominance, making all transgressive figures outsiders or insiders who must be changed.

With the elimination of old Ragnelle there is also the elimination of female counter-

heroes who hold agency and power, and the success of heroes who ultimately make the

world of romance successful. Thus when we call Dame Ragnelle a monster, we are really

calling all sources of power and cultural subversion which exist outside patriarchy and

chivalry monstrous.

Pretty Woman?

For a moment, let us return to the line where the author of The Wedding refers to

Ragnelle as “That praty, fowlle dameselle” (615). Within this phrase is ambiguity; is

Ragnelle “pretty foul,” or “pretty and foul;” is she very ugly or clever and ugly? At this

point in the narrative Ragnelle is cloaked in uncertainty but the potential for

transformation is there – she still has the possibility of fitting into society if changes

occur. This raises the question of what role women play in a chivalric world, which in its most basic form is very simple: women were there to support and inspire the men, and if Williams-Munger 79 they didn’t, they were not included. Geoffrey de Charny, who wrote three very popular works on chivalry in the mid fourteenth century including Livre de chevalerie, wrote that it was good for a knight to be in love, as he would seek “even higher renown for the honor that it will do for his lady.” 122 After Chrétien, “no literary description of a tournament would be complete without its word-picture of the watching ladies, and of the tokens from their dresses, the sleeves of their gowns or their hair, which the champions proudly bore.” 123 As young-Ragnelle becomes the ideal companion for Gawain, the end of The Wedding shows us how a strong and threatening woman can be brought into harmony with chivalry.

And of course, the idea of chivalry did not disappear after the medieval period. At the time when we believe The Wedding was being composed, changes were occurring in the social and political structures in which chivalry had previously succeeded. As

Maureen Keen explains,

What we see at the end of the middle ages is in consequence not so much the

decline of chivalry, but the alteration of its appearance… The forces that in the

medieval past had given it life and impetus were still at work, but the outward in

which they found expression were changing, and the old name was losing its

appositeness. 124

Chivalry became known as proper behavior, politeness, courage, bravery, fairness – unlike modern colloquialisms would have you believe, it is not dead and continues to struggle with the presence of women.

122 Keen 13. 123 Keen 91. 124 Keen 239. Williams-Munger 80

So where do we seen these modern narratives of chivalry? The short answer is:

everywhere – but if you ever decide to do a basic search on the term “loathly lady” you

will inevitably come across being the film Pretty Woman. We all know the story: a

uncouth prostitute (Vivian) enters into a “business arrangement” with a wealthy

businessman (Edward) after he asks her for directions one night, and she wins him over

with her sexuality and frank-behavior. He in turn gives her money and transforms her

(through clothing and behavior, and by teaching her conversation and table manners) into

a beautiful and elegant woman, allowing her to enter the high society which previously

rejected her – there is a striking similarity between the entrance of Ragnell into court and

Vivian’s attempts to shop on Rodeo Drive wearing her “street” clothes. Both women experience derision from onlookers, though it is possible that we are more sympathetic towards Vivian than we are towards Ragnell, who seems not to care if we like her or not as long as she gets what she wants. Vivian temporarily overpowers Edward, getting him

to focus on her and not his business, and in the end he overpowers her as she lets go of

her “no-kissing” rule and falls in love with him. The end gives watchers a mock-romance

balcony scene in which Edward “rescues” Vivian, and she presumably goes away with

him, and both of their lives are better for it. Seems familiar, no?

Both narratives present us with strong women who provide assistance and

temporarily take control of them male protagonist, only to be conquered themselves in

the end. Therefore, are we still trying to put forth the same concepts that romance desired

to reproduce in medieval society? Is patriarchal culture still legitimizing itself through the

appropriation of threatening or subversive women? Are we replicating the same Williams-Munger 81 constructs by romanticizing those roles and situations which remind of what we image to be simpler times, “when men were men and women were women?”

These questions are too complex for simple answers, but certainly deserve further study. I think it is safe to assert that social monsters – whether they are male, female, or other – will never disappear from the page, because cultures will never fail to create them. And one thing is certain: everyone loves a pretty woman.

Williams-Munger 82

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