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An Exploration of Women's Viewpoints

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An Exploration of Women's Viewpoints FEELING WOMEN: AN EXPLORATION OF WOMEN'S VIEWPOINTS IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH BRETON LAY MARGARET ROBSON D. PHIL 1994 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Growing Up Straight: The Construction of Gen eyed Identity in Sir Degarre. 44 Chap ter 3 Projections of Desire: The Masochistic Woman iinEmare, Lay Le Freine, and The Erl of Toulous. 85 Ernare 89 La le Freine 103 The Erl of Toulous 119 Chap ter 4 The Ties That Bind: Sex and Marriage in Sir Or T eo. 128 Chapter 5 The Demon Mother: A Reading of Sir Gowther. 157 Chapter 6 The Rivals: A Consideration of Sir Laun al. 185 Notes 212 Bibliography 243 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The chapter here entitled, 'The Demon Mother: A Reading of Sir Gowther', appeared in an earlier form under the tit e, Animal Magic: Moral Regeneration in Sir Gowther', in The Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992). I wish to record my gratitude to the following people for their support and encouragement over the years. To Professor Felicity Riddy, for her encouragement, input and patience, all of which have been considerable; to Dr. Carol Meale, who first suggested I might attempt this; to Ms. Karen Hodder and Professor Nicole Ward-Jouve, for their advice and support. To Dr. Jim Binns, for his erudition and his faith in me; to Dr. Glen Newey, for introducing me to the work of Cavell and Wittgenstein; to Mr. Ken Stokes, for his patience and encouragement; to Mr. Ken Clayden, for teaching me so much about communication. To my parents, Thomas and Kathleen Robson, for all their help, and to my husband, Darryl Jones, for everything. 111 ABSTRACT This thesis sets out to explore the Middle English Breton lays using Freudian and feminist psychoanalytic theory; this achieves the effect of teasing out alternative narratives. It examines the perspectives generated by reading the lays as tales in which the woman is the protagonist, not simply the 'heroine'. The thesis seeks to suggest that these stories encode narratives of female bodily experience, which criticism has effaced. Chapter 1 explores the genus, lay, and examines the critical reception of the Middle English lays in this century. It seeks to demonstrate how the lay has been 'feminized' and infantilized by criticism, and proceeds to offer a feminist and psychoanalytic framework within which the lays may be read, and which allows for a different evaluation of the 'feminine'. Chapter 2 examines the lay Sir Degarre, showing how the adolescent girl overcomes anxieties about sexual maturity: it contains an analysis of rape and incest fantasies; the resentment generated by the commodification of the female body, and the ploys which women use in order to avoid male authority. The chapter attempts to uncover the precarious nature of gendered identity by examining the way in which the narrative oscillates throughout between a male and a female psyche. Chapter 3 examines three lays, Emare, Lay le Freine and The Erl of Toulous, and seeks to show how women's adoption of masochistic strategies enables them to attain sexual and social security. With Emare I endeavour to show how the girl 'heroine'. can have illicit desires and yet remain the In 'splitting' the section on Lay le Freine, the mechanism of 'bad' the woman into the 'good' and the is analysed, revealing how 'bad' women are thus forced into the margins. With the analysis of The Erl of Toulous, I attempt to demonstrate how the woman externalizes her guilt over her illicit desires, and by so doing, answers self-doubt and criticism. Chapter 4 examines the 'barren marriage', where the .husband's homosociality is threatened by his wife's iv departure. I also discuss the spaces which transgressive desire occupies in the poem, and show how the desiring woman is demonized. Chapter 5 In this chapter the position of the unwilling mother is explored. I seek to show how motherhood is reconstructed as positive, following the mother's self- punishment for being an erotic, rather than a maternal woman: I examine how the 'feminized' hero is made a scapegoat for proscribed female sexuality, and how it is allowed re-entry to the social order after penance. Chapter 6I first discuss the problems of dealing with an Arthurian narrative, when it is an 'uncourtly' tale. I proceed to demonstrate how the erotic and sexual rivalry in the tale is constructed as 'straight' competition, which masks the homosexual attraction which exists in the poem. I show how the older woman is discredited on the entrance of the younger one, and argue that the tale is a vehicle for male sexual fantasy. V Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION I This thesis sets out to explore the Middle English Breton lays using Freudian psychoanalytic techniques. It is my contention that the lays contain 'hidden narratives': these narratives have not received any positive critical evaluation. Where the 'intrusive' narratives have been commented on, they have been viewed as, at best, the work of 'irrational', the and at worst, the result of authorial ineptitude. I argue that these hidden narratives deal with women's experiences of their bodies, and confront women's own feelings of anxiety over biological womanhood. The use of Freudian psychoanalytic approaches provides a method of teasing out these alternative narratives. I take as my starting point the reception of these tales, and will argue that they are not, as many critics have assumed, 'preliterary' but sophisticated narratives in their own right, which are deserving of academic analysis. (1) There are eight Middle English Breton lays: Sir Degarre, Lay Le Freine, Emare, The Erl of Toulous, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gowther, Sir Launfal, and The Franklin's Tale. (2) 1 shall not be examining Chaucer's Franklin's Tale - the only one of his works which is defined as a lay and included in literary historians' classifications as such - because the reception of a work by Chaucer is necessarily different from the 2_ reception of anonymous tales, and an important aspect of this thesis is in dealing with critical responses to the works. I be shall commenting on the question of author and authority later in this section. With the exception of Sir Degarre all of the tales actually name themselves as lays within the narrative; (3) Sir Degarre is grouped with the lays because it is set in (1.7), Brittany as well as according with definitions of the lay such as that given by M. J. Donovan: '.... fairy length elements, .... and its straightforwardness as story'. (4) Lay Le Freine and Sir Orfeo date from the beginning of the fourteenth century; Sir Degarre from before 1325; Sir Launfal from the later fourteenth century; Sir Gowther, The Erl of Toulous, and Emare from around 1400. (5) Sir Degarre exists in nine manuscripts; Lay Le Freine in one; Emare in one; The Erl of Toulous in four; Sir Orfeo in three; Sir Gowther in two and Sir Launfal in one. (6) The lays, then, form a cohesive group, insofar as their 'authors' all put their works into the tradition of short-story telling which derived from the lais of Marie de France. (7) Historically, too, they would seem to belong together: the form is not recognized in English before the fourteenth century, nor does it survive it. Only one of the lays, Sir Launfal, has a named author, Thomas Chestre, and he is only named within is the narrative (1.1039). It is generally assumed that he a -3- minstrel re-working a well-known folk-tale. (8) Gisela Guddat-Figge comments: It is difficult to decide whether minstrels may have been the authors of more popular romances which need not be of learned origin. Not surprisingly, the manuscripts offer no help on this point. After all, the difference between the fixed text of the romance and the shape of the poem in oral recitation be ignored. It has been in cannot clear .... that any strongly traditional literature depending to a great extent on oral recitation the singer, reciter or minstrel can and will adapt his performance to his audience by means of a richly developed repertoire of formulas. Thus in limited .... a sense minstrels certainly are the "authors" of Middle English romances. (9) I shall therefore treat this work, too, as an anonymous tale. The common characteristic of these tales is that they are short: The Erl of Toulous, with 1224 lines, is the longest; the shortest - complete - tale is Sir Orfeo, with 580 lines. (10) T. C. Rumble comments: They [the lays] were, above all, popular tales, designed to appeal to an audience less than learned, for forms and one which had little time or taste such as the longer, often intricately psychological didactic courtly romances, and the overtly and important, moralistic saints' lives. But more except that they were composed originally to be heard, than read, the lays strove for many of the rather (11) same effects as the modern short story. Thousand Walter Allen comments that oral tales, such as The Decameron, the and One Nights, or Boccaccio's are -4- antecedents of the modern short story. He makes a distinction between (usually written longer) and oral (usually fiction shorter) and the place of their reception: And the oral tale is still very much with us, often in as primitive a form as it can ever have been. The .... oral tale is still very much at home everywhere. Indeed home is the operative word here, for the oral tale may be heard as a matter of course in every family circle, in every pub, wherever people come together in the ordinary traffic of life.
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