ABSTRACT

HUMAN WICKEDNESS AND MONSTROUS GOODNESS: THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE MONSTROUS AND MYSTICAL IN THE LAIS OF MARIE DE FRANCE AND CALVINO’S ITALIAN FOLKTALES

This thesis examines positive portrayals of anatomically monstrous characters—such as shapeshifters, sirens, and witches—in the Lais of Marie de France and Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales. It explores the ways in which physically monstrous—but essentially virtuous—figures are contrasted with morally bereft human characters. In these folktales, the juxtaposition with human characters is necessary in order for the positive qualities of the physically monstrous to become apparent. This thesis also discusses the function of monstrosity in the texts. In Marie’s Lais, unlike Calvino’s tales, monstrosity is associated with a critique of the medieval system of matrimony. Finally, this thesis will focus on the prerequisites for redemption for human characters who possess monstrous morals. In the Italian tales, villainous humans are more likely to be redeemed and reintegrated into society if they are male; female characters who question male dominance are largely condemned.

Eryn Natalia Baldrica-Guy December 2016

HUMAN WICKEDNESS AND MONSTROUS GOODNESS: THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE MONSTROUS AND MYSTICAL IN THE LAIS OF MARIE DE FRANCE AND CALVINO’S ITALIAN FOLKTALES

by Eryn Natalia Baldrica-Guy

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English in the College of Arts and Humanities California State University, Fresno December 2016 APPROVED For the Department of English:

We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree.

Eryn Natalia Baldrica-Guy Thesis Author

Steve Adisasmito-Smith (Chair) English

Ruth Jenkins English

Samina Najmi English

For the University Graduate Committee:

Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS

X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship.

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

Signature of thesis author: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would likely not have been completed if it were not for the financial assistance of the Tokalon Alumnae Scholarship, the Professor Emeritus Eugene Zumwalt Scholarship, the James B. McClatchy Scholarship, and the CSU Fresno English Department. The members of the Department of French at Rutgers University also gave me valuable feedback on a draft of this thesis at their 2016 conference. I would like to extend my gratitude to my colleagues at the Graduate Writing Studio, William Anderson and Greta Bell, both of whom provided excellent advice as I was drafting and revising. I would, of course, like to thank my advisor, Steve Adisasmito-Smith, for his guidance during the sometimes maddening process of choosing a topic, reading critically, and—eventually— writing. Finally, I would like to thank Kevin—who has read and reread this thesis more than any person should have to—and my parents for their unending support. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

LIST OF TABLES ...... vi

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 2: THE LAIS OF MARIE DE FRANCE ...... 7

Marriage, Adultery, and Monstrosity in the Lais ...... 9

Bisclavret ...... 13

Yönec ...... 18

CHAPTER 3: CALVINO’S ITALIAN FOLKTALES ...... 27

The Role of Women ...... 27

“The Wildwood King” ...... 28

“Water in the Basket” ...... 33

“Buffalo Head” ...... 36

“The Siren Wife” ...... 42

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION ...... 47

WORKS CITED ...... 52

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table 1. The Possibility of Redemption in the French and Italian Folktales ...... 49

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Fig. 1. Detail of Christ displaying his wound to a nun, Egerton 945, f. 237v (illuminated manuscript, late thirteenth-century France), British Library...... 21 Fig. 2. Image of Christ displaying his wounds, MS Additional 3704, f. 20r (c. 1460-1500, England), British Library...... 22 Fig. 3. Foliate head carving near Trieste, Italy (photo by John W. Schulze)...... 29 Fig. 4. Greek terracotta vase (c. 550-500 B.C.) in the shape of an avian siren, The Met...... 43

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

From Richard III to The Little Mermaid’s Ursula, physical strangeness has long served as a marker of evil in fiction and folklore. Beautiful protagonists abound in folktales across cultures, suggesting that attractiveness has widely been considered synonymous with virtue. Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, for instance, is blessed with the “gift that she should be the most beautiful person in the world,” and Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid is “the most beautiful” of her six lovely sisters (Perrault 35; Andersen). Even male heroes are described in attractive terms, with Rapunzel accepting a strange man’s marriage proposal after “[seeing] that he was young and handsome” (Grimm). It is far rarer to see monstrous characters, such as werewolves and witches, as sympathetic figures in folklore. As a result of its acceptance and reproduction by a society, folklore— despite its often fantastic nature—reflects values of the culture from which it arises. This thesis will focus on six folktales from Italy and France; these tales suggest that some degree of popular sympathy for the animalistic—even the monstrous—existed as far back as the twelfth century in these regions. I will focus on depictions of the favorable reception of monstrous, “othered” figures. I will also explore the prerequisites for the redemption of physically human characters who possess monstrous morals. Supernatural or corporeally monstrous characters are portrayed heroically in Marie de France’s Bisclavret and Yönec, and in four of Italo Calvino’s Italian folktales. In some of the following tales, supernatural, “othered” figures offer acceptance to those who are shut out of human society. In others, monsters are integrated, or reintegrated, into human culture because of their demonstration of 2 2 morality. This morality, it should be noted, does not always coincide with dominant social practices. I will explore the conditions for permanent acceptance, or reincorporation into human society, of monsters in these folktales. In each of the tales, the human qualities of supernatural figures become clear only when the monstrous aspects of people are acknowledged. In Bisclavret and Yönec, Marie’s use of monstrosity functions, consciously or not, as part of her critique of the institution of marriage. In the Italian folktales, monstrous creatures obscure the line between ‘normal’ and ‘unnatural,’ emphasizing the superiority of inner goodness over moral monstrosity. In both the French and Italian folktales, moral monstrosity constitutes a far greater evil than physical or social strangeness. Both Marie and Calvino took artistic liberties with the folktales they recorded, creating hybrids of folklore and traditional literature. In the prologue to the Lais, Marie explains that she has chosen to record folktales both to assist in their preservation and to distinguish herself as a writer (lines 32-40). Marie’s word choice often makes it difficult to determine if she is composing or recounting the Lais (Ewert xiii). Among scholars of Calvino, there is some contention concerning the extent to which Fiabe italiane, or Italian Folktales, qualifies as representative of Italian folklore. Beckwith, focusing on Calvino’s many deletions, rationalizations, and expurgations, believes the collection occupies a space between scholarship and popular fiction (261); in other words, the tales are neither untouched by Calvino nor are they his own creations. In contrast to Beckwith, Miele writes that Calvino “increased the value of the tales” by incorporating new elements as an additional storyteller (243). Upon hearing from a colleague that Fiabe italiane was unsuitable for both literary critiques and folklorists, Calvino said: “Anch’io ho diritto di produrre delle varianti”: “I too have the right to create variants” (qtd. in Beckwith 261). It is unlikely that the tales passed unchanged 3 3 from teller to teller before reaching Marie and Calvino. Consequently, for the purposes of this thesis, I have chosen to consider them additional raconteurs who helped to preserve the stories even as they modified them. Marie’s Bisclavret and Yönec and Calvino’s “The Wildwood King,” “Buffalo Head,” “Water in the Basket,” and “The Siren Wife” emphasize that physical monstrosity does not necessarily correspond with inner evil. On the contrary, many of the human characters in these tales function as ‘moral monsters’ whose cruelty is a foil to the supernatural creatures’ goodness. The monsters, while initially physically shocking, prove heroic, and the tales ultimately promote acceptance of corporeal difference. Marie and Calvino’s tales contrast virtuous monsters with vile humans, questioning the ostensible correlation between beauty and goodness. In two Australian tales, “The Mogwoi’s Baby” and “Uzu, the White Dogai,” the humanity of the monsters is similarly revealed only when the cruelty and neglectfulness, respectively, of the human characters is emphasized. This indicates that stories of the acceptance of the monstrous, and the contrast of physically anomalous characters with morally monstrous humans, are not limited to Europe. In both Australian stories, the monstrous characters would not have the opportunity to exhibit kindness if not for human characters’ shortcomings. The audiences of these Australian folktales are prompted to empathize with the monsters with which they are confronted, once the capacity of ‘normal’ humans for evil is brought to light. In a folktale from Australia’s Torres Strait, “Uzu, the White Dogai,” the titular “witch-like” monster—“tall and skinny, with a face like a flying fox”— ultimately becomes an active participant in human culture (Ragan 299). Folklorist Kathleen Ragan writes, “Most dogai were [considered] evil and all were feared” (299). In this tale, however, Uzu the dogai saves an injured girl who has been 4 4 neglected by her human companions: “One poor girl…was stung by a stonefish. The pain was so bad that she could not walk. She had to sit down and watch her friends disappear from sight” (299). Intriguingly, the girl’s name is also Uzu. This shared name likens humanity, represented by the girl, to people’s own fears, which in this case take the form of the abhorred dogai. The girl’s human companions fail to notice her injury, emphasizing the extent of the care and kindness exhibited by the monster. After the dogai cares for the girl, the former becomes an accepted member of the human community and engages in trade with the villagers. The exchange of food among members of the same group is common in small foraging societies (Gurven 543; Jaeggi 193); in effect, the trading reveals that the dogai has joined the human community. This tale, recorded in 1966, presents what is often considered a recent development: the reimagining of a “villainous” figure and the promotion of acceptance (Ragan 300). “The Mogwoi’s Baby,” a tale from Arnhem Land, pits a supernatural protagonist against a troublesome group of humans. The mogwoi, a trickster figure of northeastern Arnhem Land lore, is believed to be one of the three shapes a human spirit assumes after death (Berndt and Berndt, The World 415-16). The humans of “The Mogwoi’s Baby” prove to be the truly deceitful characters of the tale, as they kidnap the mogwoi’s child and attempt to trick her into accepting a series of human babies instead of her own: “They picked up another baby, one of theirs. ‘This is your baby!’” (Ragan 305). The mogwoi is not fooled by their trickery, eventually finding her hidden child: “She picked [the baby] up, and ran off. Then they attacked her. They hit her. Many of them; they struck her with stone axes and fighting sticks; they threw spears at her” (306). With the help of her husband, the mogwoi escapes into the jungle (306). Thus, the story becomes a tale of the importance of family in facing adversity—but with the humans playing the 5 5 antagonists, rather than the heroes. Ronald M. and Catherine H. Berndt write: “[This tale] is not so much the old story of inherent enmity between mogwoi and human beings” (The Speaking Land 147); instead, the tale suggests that the humans—rather than the mogwoi—are the aggressors, and that the mogwoi’s anger is justified rather than inborn. “The Mogwoi’s Baby” appeals to listeners’ basest instincts to protect their offspring from a threat, forcing the audience to empathize with the mogwoi. The contrast with human evil reveals the humanity of the heroic monsters in “Uzu, the White Dogai” and “The Mogwoi’s Baby,” as it does in Marie and Calvino’s folktales. The human audiences of these tales are made to empathize with monstrosity, stepping away from their comfort zones of what is expected and what is acceptable. While Marie and Calvino’s tales share the conceit of contrasting evil humans with morally superior monsters, it is there that their similarities end. This conceit of contrast serves radically different purposes in the French and Italian collections. In Calvino’s Italian Folktales, morally monstrous humans are often redeemed, with some notable exceptions. These folktales present gender as a clear prerequisite for a morally monstrous human character’s redemption. It is far more common in these tales for a male character to be redeemed than for a female. These tales thus reflect Italy’s patriarchal social structure, and they consistently reinforce male dominance over women. In Marie’s Lais, the institution of marriage is examined through the lens of monstrosity. In both Bisclavret and Yönec, the main characters, Bisclavret and Muldumarec, are physically monstrous yet morally pure characters who function outside of socially acceptable marriages. In Bisclavret’s case, his wife is treacherous and nearly banishes him from human society. Muldumarec commits 6 6 adultery, but his relationship with the heroine is glorified rather than condemned. The exalted main characters’ physical monstrosity mirrors Marie’s then- blasphemous critique of the sacrament of marriage.

CHAPTER 2: THE LAIS OF MARIE DE FRANCE

Marie, who was not called “Marie de France” until long after her death, got her title from her probable country of origin (Gilbert xi). She likely wrote her three major works—the Lais, the Fables, and Saint Patrick’s Purgatory—during the late twelfth century, a time when individual possession of manuscripts was becoming increasingly common (Gilbert xi; Baswell and Schotter 10). R. Howard Bloch calls the twelfth century “a liminal moment in the history of the West” due to the increase in literacy and the prevalence of the written word (19). Marie is believed to have composed the Lais between 1155 and 1170 in England (Rikhardsdottir 146). One complete Anglo-Norman manuscript of the Lais—produced in the thirteenth-century1—survives, and four additional manuscripts contain one or more of the tales (“Detailed Record for Harley 978”; Rikhardsdottir 146). In the twelfth century, most aristocrats spoke and read her language, Norman French.2 According to Denis Piramus, Marie’s work was beloved by the nobility (Baswell and Schotter 13; Ferrante 52). An appreciation for monstrosity, or at least an interest in it, would likely have been part of the milieu of England during Marie’s time in the court of Henry II. London’s Bartholomew Fair,3 which Paul Semonin calls “a monumental assemblage of the strange and exotic,” began in 1133 and spanned several days every year until 1855 (Semonin 76; Cavendish 52). Bartholomew Fair was essentially a proto-circus, featuring fire eaters, puppet shows, and disabled

1 British Museum Harley MS 978 2 This was true of aristocrats both on the European continent and in England (Baswell and Schotter 13). 3 The tradition was inaugurated by a monk who served as Henry I’s court jester (Semonin 76). 8 8

“monstrosities” (Semonin 77). Entertainers appeared as wild men of the woods, hairy beasts, the Devil, and other demons (77). Rather than attempts to terrify the carnival-goers, many of the performances were comic and burlesque (77-78). The public’s appetite for monstrosity was voracious, and monsters—by virtue of their oddities—were sources of cruel amusement rather than fear. This thesis will primarily discuss Bisclavret and Yönec, lais in which the monstrosity of the main characters is a central focus. What emerges in both tales is an association of monstrosity with Marie’s harsh critique of marriage. The traditional, socially acceptable marriages in both Bisclavret and Yönec fail their participants; Bisclavret’s wife attempts to trap him as a werewolf forever and subsequently commits bigamy, while Yönec’s mother is stuck in a marriage with a tyrannical husband. In Marie’s feudal culture, noble families commonly arranged loveless marriages to preserve ancestral power. These betrothals were the norm, and the vilification of marriage and celebration of extramarital love would have been upsetting and fear-inspiring, just as Bisclavret and Muldumarec’s monstrous forms are. In medieval France, aristocratic women’s lives were greatly influenced by their families’ plans for their marriages (Stoertz 22). These arrangements affected how girls and young women were educated, where they lived, and how they were treated (22). Daughters remained under the control of their fathers until they married, or, in some cases, joined the Church (Hajdu 123). A woman could attain true emancipation only if she outlived her husband, although Graves notes that the relatives of a deceased husband frequently sought to reclaim his property (Hajdu 130; Graves 9). Widows sometimes received guardianship of their minor children, and were allowed control of the children’s future inheritance (Hajdu 130). However, since women were believed to be the weaker sex, a widow would be 9 9 assigned an advocatus, a “male protector … [who] could and did represent the widow in legal proceedings, provided her with advice on her affairs, and, one would assume, sometimes married her” (Hajdu 130). Women were considered more likely than men to sin, a belief that prompted male authors like Philip of Novare to discourage female literacy out of fear that it would lead to temptation (Stoertz 28). Aristocratic female literacy, however, was on the rise, with many Norman and Angevin women of the noble classes being taught to read French or English (Baswell and Schotter 18). The perception of women as the inferior sex extended to legal practices; Penny Schine Gold writes that French inheritance rules of the twelfth century “embodied a basic ambivalence toward women’s relationship to property: both male and female children [had] rights to inheritance, but usually with a definite preference toward male children” (123).

Marriage, Adultery, and Monstrosity in the Lais The marriages in several of Marie’s Lais, particularly those in Bisclavret, Yönec, and Guigemar, reflect the oppressive marital practices of the twelfth century. Bloch calls the Lais “as good a representation of the feudal, aristocratic model of marriage as can be found in Old French literature” (60). Noble parents arranged marriages for political gain, and daughters (as well as sons) often had no real say in the identities of their prospective mates (Hajdu 123-24). Age disparities between young brides and their husbands were also frequent. Charles Donahue writes: What we can say is that one of the Paris marriage patterns—one that seems to be evidenced among people of somewhat higher social status—was for a young woman to be espoused by her father and relatives to a man somewhat older than she. (Donahue 381) 10 10

According to Donahue, while the woman’s consent was often required for the marriage to take place, “the initial choice [of spouse] was not hers” (381). Often, the husband would be considerably older than the wife, as in Yönec and Guigemar; in both of these lais, the young heroines are married off to substantially older men who restrict their wives’ freedom out of fear of being cuckolded. In both cases, Marie validates this fear by introducing characters with whom the heroines fall in love of their own free will. Dolliann Margaret Hurtig writes that the secular model of medieval marriage was “most likely without love or the power of the couple to choose” (365). This model existed, Hurtig writes, because it allowed aristocratic families to arrange mutually beneficial marriages in order to maintain feudal power; in contrast, an ecclesiastical model of marriage advocated for affection between spouses (365). Once married, medieval wives were completely subordinate to their husbands, who could punish them as they saw fit (Hajdu 125). According to Joan Ferrante, Marie’s tenure in the court of Henry II may have influenced her writings on the subject of mistreated wives (51). Henry imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, for fifteen years, and this incident may have inspired Marie’s fascination with freedom from oppressive marriages (51). In Yönec and Guigemar, Marie represents the secular model of marriage, despite its widespread social acceptance in medieval France, as an oppressive institution when the participants’ choices were limited (as they often were). She also portrays an unideal marriage in Lanval, and this union is contrasted with a blissfully extramarital relationship in the same lai. While not all of Marie’s Lais empathize with the figure of the wife, she continues to challenge the institution of marriage in Bisclavret. In Yönec, Bisclavret, and Guigemar, Marie attacks not only the maltreatment of wives, but the impracticality of marital relationships in which the 11 11 participants cannot choose their spouses. The wives in Yönec and Guigemar are clearly mistreated by their much older husbands, and Bisclavret’s marriage nearly loses him his humanity. The fact that Bisclavret is a noble suggests that his marriage, too, is not a love match. K. Sarah-Jane Murray writes that the heroines of Yönec and Guigemar “suffer… from the consequences of a marriage devoid of love” (4). Since Bisclavret’s wife abandons him, this lai, too, depicts a marriage that lacks genuine love. The unions in all three of these lais likely follow the secular model of marriage, as they are arranged between members of the nobility in order to maintain feudal power. As Sharon Kinoshita notes, Yönec, Chevrefoil, and Guigemar “seem to glorify adulterous love” (51). While Bisclavret certainly doesn’t celebrate adultery, it presents it as a consequence of a marriage that is not based on love. The adultery in Guigemar, unlike that in Bisclavret, is not portrayed as a selfish choice made by the participants. It is the inevitable result of a series of supernatural events—the ship that ferries Guigemar to his paramour, and the doe’s curse—and mundane circumstances, such as the mismatched married couple. While the supernatural elements encourage adultery in Guigemar, they condemn it in Bisclavret through the werewolf’s mutilation of the unfaithful wife. This difference is due to the moral characters of the adulterers and the circumstances of the marriages in these lais; noble Bisclavret does not deserve to be cuckolded, unlike the domineering and much older husband of Guigemar’s lover. In the act of questioning the marital traditions of her time, Marie associates monstrosity with both difference and virtue. These lais are not the only instances of Marie’s critique of matrimony; Hurtig writes of Marie’s subversive portrayal of marriage in Le Fresne: “She breaks through women’s silent acceptance of the status quo by hinting at the way things ought to be, and thus, through her craft, 12 12 ingeniously subverts twelfth-century marriage tradition” (376). Marie’s glorification of romantic love over marital duty critiques marriage in Yönec in a similar fashion. Bisclavret is not a lai concerned with the consideration of the wife, but in it Marie challenges the virtue of marriage. The kind of love Marie represents in Yönec would have been considered both heretical and obscene in the eyes of the Church, as would a shapeshifter such as the lai’s hero. In Bisclavret, marriage—rather than being held up as a moral standard—is shown to lack the loyalty and love one would expect to find in one of the Church’s seven sacraments. In these lais, socially sanctioned marriage pales in comparison to the socially perceived ‘monstrosity’ of romances in which both parties are free to choose. The purpose of monstrosity in medieval European texts has been the subject of extensive scholarly debate. Samantha J. E. Riches characterizes medieval tales of human encounters with monsters as opportunities for confronting fears of the other, whether it be the wilderness or the Devil. Still others, such as Paul Semonin, see the popular appeal of monsters during the time as essentially comic in nature (77-78). Albrecht Classen reads beasts as representations of “the other” within characters’ selves, others which force the characters to reconcile all aspects of their personalities or establish new identities by killing their monsters [emphasis added] (523-24). Bisclavret is the former type, since he and the king are able to accept his monstrous side. Bisclavret’s wife ultimately proves unfit because she is unwilling to accept her husband’s monstrosity, and, in doing so, reveals her own. In any case, monstrosity is a source of spectacle that draws one’s attention, which is perhaps exactly why Marie associates it with her critique of the institution of marriage. It is likely that monstrosity in the Middle Ages encapsulated elements of both terror and entertainment, just as it does today. 13 13 Bisclavret In this lai, the eponymous hero regularly sheds his human form and becomes a werewolf. Although he attempts to keep his transformations a secret from his wife, she eventually convinces him to reveal the truth. With the help of her lover, she leaves Bisclavret trapped in lupine form. After being abandoned by his wife, Bisclavret finds acceptance in the court of a benevolent king. The tale concludes with Bisclavret exacting revenge on his duplicitous and polygamous wife by biting off her nose. Stories of werewolves and human-animal hybrids, or zooanthropes, have been found across cultures (Sidky 217). Depictions of lycanthropy appear in the writings of Ovid, St. Augustine, and Thomas Malory, and biblical descriptions of wolves recall characteristics often attributed to werewolves (Otten 253). Attitudes towards these supernatural creatures vary widely, although negative perceptions predominate in Europe. In the earliest known werewolf myth, Lycaon of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is transformed into a werewolf—a form reflecting his bestial nature—as punishment for attempting to feed human flesh to the king of the gods (Holten 195; Ovid, Met. lines 274-75, 315-27). The werewolf’s mundane cousin, the wolf, is frequently an ambivalent or negative figure in European4 myth and folklore.5 David Hunt writes: “The word ‘wolf’ is generally associated in Europe6 with ideas of wickedness, rapaciousness

4 Wolves are more often portrayed positively in Western Asian and Native American folklore (Hunt 321, 332). 5 Wolves and werewolves are so closely associated that regions of France and England with low wolf populations produced few reported werewolf sightings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Monter 163). Conversely, reports of werewolves abounded in mountainous, densely forested areas with presumably great numbers of wolves (163). 6 As Hunt shows in “The Face of the Wolf is Blessed, or is It?” not all cultures perceive wolves to be malicious beasts. Indigenous populations in Asia and North America often depict wolves as positive figures (319). 14 14 and danger—negative perceptions perhaps epitomised by the wolf in the folktale ‘Little Red Riding Hood’” (321). In old Norse tales, wolves are associated with criminals (Ellis Davidson 152); the medieval Icelandic word for “outlaw” literally means “a wolf in holy places” (Finch 1, Byock 35). According to R. G. Finch, this expression was normally applied to a man who killed someone “in a hallowed place or sanctuary” (1). This man would then be cast out and condemned to roam and to be hunted like a wolf (1). The terrible nature of lycanthropy is explored in the Norse epic The Saga of the Volsungs; the two protagonists become werewolves and wander through the woods killing men (Byock 44). The protagonist is nearly killed by his father before the pair burn their wolf skins and return to permanent human forms (45). It is only with the destruction of the wolf-like parts of themselves that the characters in this tale can regain their humanity. While there are positive associations with the wolf trope, in many depictions the werewolf combines negative associations with wolves with the horror of a wild animal’s fusion with a human. As in Bisclavret, not all depictions of werewolves and other monsters are negative. In De Spiritu et Anima, St. Augustine adopts a charitable attitude towards lycanthropes: By certain witches’ spells and the power of the Devil men may be changed into wolves…but they do not lose their human reason and understanding, nor are their minds made the intelligence of a mere beast. (qtd. in Otten 6) St. Augustine’s hypothesis that a monstrous form does not preclude the ability to reason is in keeping with the sympathetic portrayal of the werewolf in Marie de France’s Bisclavret. Since those who transform into monsters retain their souls, for 15 15

Augustine, they are capable of the same redemption that is possible for all humans: If [one] should at some point turn to God...through temporal tribulations, acknowledging and grieving over his sins and accusing himself, not some foreign nature which does not exist, he might merit pardon.... He will arrive at the tree of life and will live for eternity. (Augustine 138) According to Augustine, even supernatural monsters who have sinned can be redeemed by virtue of their human reason and souls. He makes no distinction between the physically monstrous and the typical human. Bisclavret certainly sins, but he ultimately finds acceptance in Marie’s tale. Although he hides his lycanthropy from his wife and attacks her at the end of the story, his goodness redeems him in the eyes of the narrative. Marie begins Bisclavret by introducing the attitude she will later subvert, emphasizing the importance of questioning commonly held assumptions. She writes: “A werewolf is a beste salvage;/in his blood-rage, he makes a feast/of men, devours them, [and] does great harms” (lines 9-11). Despite the supposed ferocity inherent to those afflicted with Bisclavret’s condition, Marie shows him to be a noble knight. Rice notes that Marie’s choice of descriptive adjectives—“franc e deboneire”—“[suggests] the animal’s noble and underlying human nature” (348). In Bisclavret’s lycanthropic form, his gracious nature endears him to a king, who proclaims the wolf to have “a man’s mind” (line 154). The king adopts the werewolf, who, like a loyal vassal, sleeps beside his lord: Among the knights, the bisclavret now lived, and slept close by the king; … 16 16

and where the king might walk or ride, there it must be, just at his side, wherever he might go or move; so well it showed its loyal love. (lines 176-84) Over the course of the narrative, Bisclavret attacks only those responsible for his own suffering, namely his polygamous wife and her second husband. Because Bisclavret has not attacked other humans, the king’s household knows “there must be a reason” for the wolf’s sudden aggression. Indeed, Bisclavret seeks revenge on the pair because of their conspiracy to leave him magically trapped as a werewolf by stealing his clothes. Even in his lupine state, Bisclavret is understood to be reasonable and capable of logos. These qualities establish his personhood, even as his appearance obscures it. Although the king and his court recognize Bisclavret’s humanity, his own wife fails to do so. As the werewolf is humanized and accepted, his wife is demonized and ultimately banished from human society. Paul Creamer calls the lai “a scalding indictment of women who do not respect their husbands” (260). Bisclavret’s wife is set up as the tale’s ultimate villain, “chased/out of the country, and disgraced” after having her nose bitten off (lines 305-06). Her female descendants are born without noses, preventing an end to her notoriety even after her death. L’énasement was a medieval “punishment for adultery” used by Frederick II, among other European rulers (Jorgensen 27; Sperati 45). Jean Jorgensen and Kathryn I. Holten argue that Bisclavret’s wife undergoes a symbolic transformation in this lai, morphing into a beast just as Bisclavret changes into a human (Jorgensen 27; Holten 198). The union between Bisclavret and his wife emphasizes Marie’s critique of marriage in the Lais. Bisclavret indicts marriage 17 17 itself by raising the question of how such a noble knight could be bound in matrimony to an evil wife. Considering Marie’s protofeminism in several of her lais, including Yönec, the misogyny in Bisclavret is puzzling, unless it is considered an indictment of marriage rather than women. Clearly, she does not consider the wife justified in forsaking Bisclavret simply because of his lycanthropy. The wife, unlike the heroine of Yönec, is not a mal mariée. Not only does Bisclavret’s wife abandon him, she also attempts to sever his access to human society. She does this because she is completely unwilling to empathize with the physically monstrous. Despite her marital bond to her husband, she forsakes him. She is repulsed by Bisclavret’s lycanthropy, regardless of the fact that he has been a good husband. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante call the removal of the wife’s nose “a gesture of justifiable revenge rather than of uncontrolled savagery” (101). Despite the obvious contemporary horror of this mutilation, Marie’s audience likely would have seen it as just comeuppance for the wife’s actions. In this lai, physical monstrosity is more acceptable than disloyalty. The first description of the wife (“most elegant and beautiful”) is not meant to reflect her moral character (22); it describes merely the physical, which is utterly divorced from inner goodness in Bisclavret and Yönec. The relationship between Bisclavret and the king exemplifies the devotion that Bisclavret’s marriage lacks on the part of the wife. Needless to say, the marriage in Bisclavret is disastrous. Rather than reinforcing Church values and serving as an indissoluble union, the marriage between Bisclavret and his wife collapses because of selfishness and betrayal. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in Marie’s Lais, as Yönec, Guigemar, and Lanval prominently feature cruel spouses and extramarital love. The idea that love shouldn’t be restricted by social and religious boundaries was anathema in Marie’s 18 18 time—an idea that was unusual and monstrous, but she nevertheless portrays it as a positive one. Just as she characterizes Bisclavret and Muldumarec as noble men despite their monstrosity, she attacks the commonly held belief that marriage is a sacred and enduring union.

Yönec In Yönec, a supernatural knight called Muldumarec is able to shift between hawk and human forms. The lai’s heroine overcomes her initial terror at the sight of Muldumarec, falling in love with him once he declares his faith in God (lines 137-38). The pair have a child, Yönec, who ultimately avenges his father’s death by killing his mother’s husband. Through the portrayal of the romance between the heroine and Muldumarec, Marie questions the validity of the arranged marriages endemic to her society. In order to receive communion, Muldumarec takes the form of the heroine, confirming his virtue even as he breaks the established laws of nature (187). Muldumarec defies categorization, as he cannot be confined to one shape, gender, or species. These categories are the building blocks for humanity’s perception of the world and are widely considered basic and unquestionable divisions. Even in contemporary American society, disbelief and outrage are frequent reactions when the male/female gender binary is challenged. The absolute divisions between man and woman, human and animal would have been even more important during Marie’s time; Marina Warner writes of the medieval perceptions of shapeshifting: In medieval eschatology, metamorphosis by almost any process belongs to the devil’s party; devils, and their servants, witches, are monstrously hybrid themselves in form, and control magic processes of mutation. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, metamorphosis 19 19

has marked out heterodoxy, instability, perversity, unseemliness, and monstrosity. (Warner 35-36) Muldumarec’s ambiguous gender and species liken him to perceptions of “freaks,” or individuals who cannot be easily categorized. On freaks, Nadja Durbach writes: “The freak was monstrous precisely because of the instability of its body: the freak could be both male and female, white and black, adult and child, and/or human and animal at the same time” (3). Durbach considers the habitation of more than two accepted categories to be the “hallmark” of many freak shows, because it questions supposedly rigid and unambiguous distinctions (3). It is for this reason that Muldumarec’s abilities could be used to mark him as a “freak,” a figure to be “othered” and feared, but Marie establishes his morality as his defining and humanizing feature. Muldumarec’s rationality, despite his supernatural abilities, recalls St. Augustine’s writing on the importance of interior rather than external spaces: True reason declares that whatever answers to the definition of a man, as a rational and mortal animal, whatever be its form, is to be considered a man. (qtd. in Cambrensis 60) Although his body is ambiguous, Muldumarec, like Bisclavret, possesses a virtuous morality that transcends his physical form. The heroine of Yönec considers Muldumarec virtuous because of his conformity to many human cultural practices and his civilized behavior; the cultural practices to which he conforms notably do not include marriage. According to Conor McCarthy, the affair with Muldumarec allows the heroine to “escape from the harsh realities of medieval marriage” (184). Muldumarec acts as a foil to the heroine’s much older husband, who jealously keeps her completely isolated from the outside world. Unlike the domineering husband, Muldumarec 20 20 arrives only when the heroine calls him: “But I could not come to you in love—/ out of my palace could not move—/ had you yourself not summoned me” (lines 131-33). In contrast to Muldumarec’s pious reception of communion, the heroine’s husband is said to have been baptized in a river of hellfire: “Quant il dut estre baptiziez, / Si fu el flum d’enfern plungiez” (87-88). Unlike Bisclavret’s wife, Yönec’s mother is not punished for her adultery because she is a victim of mistreatment by a cruel husband. In Yönec, Muldumarec’s virtue is recognized because it is contrasted with the moral monstrosity of the heroine’s husband. Muldumarec’s benevolence is further emphasized through the tale’s likening of him to a Christ-like figure. As a result of a trap set by the heroine’s husband, Muldumarec suffers a fatal chest wound (line 311). This injury recalls Christ’s side wound, which is occasionally depicted as an injury to his chest in medieval art (see figs. 1 and 2). Regardless of the wound’s exact placement, Jessica Barr emphasizes the association between the side and the heart by identifying Christ’s side wound as “the point of access” to his heart (35). In addition to the similarity of the wounds, Muldumarec’s description also recalls numerology associated with Christ. In the tale, Muldumarec is capable of assuming three shapes—hawk, knight, and woman; this number corresponds to the forms of God in the Christian Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While he is not physically resurrected, Muldumarec’s memory is revived in his tomb when his son avenges him by killing his murderer (line 544). Additionally, Muldumarec’s metaphorical resurrection is foretold like the resurrection of Christ (lines 424-32). By setting aside the importance of forgiveness in the story of Christ’s resurrection, Marie implies that the husband’s tyranny is unforgivable. Just as she revises the tale of resurrection, Marie challenges the supposedly monstrous nature of extramarital love. 21 21

Fig. 1. Detail of Christ displaying his wound to a nun, Egerton 945, f. 237v (illuminated manuscript, late thirteenth-century France), British Library. 22 22

Fig. 2. Image of Christ displaying his wounds, MS Additional 3704, f. 20r (c. 1460-1500, England), British Library. 23 23

According to Bloch, the ideal love depicted in Marie’s Lais is voluntary, between equals, and “may even involve marriage” (52). Bloch identifies in the Lais a “structural gap between marriage and love, between the inclination of lovers and the constraints of the community” (62-63). In contrast, Irina Metzler writes that both Bisclavret and Yönec focus on “the consequences of adulterous unions” (90): …In Bisclavret, the apparent offspring of the sinful wife and her knightly lover are born with deformed noses, but the child from the equally adulterous affair in Yonec between a young wife and a knight becomes the eponymous hero. One may conclude from this example that it did not necessarily follow that parental sin automatically impinged upon the children… [emphasis added] (Metzler, Disability 90) I contend that the affairs in Bisclavret and Yönec are not depicted as “equally adulterous.” In Yönec, the heroine’s affair is justified by her mistreatment at the hands of her husband, while Bisclavret’s wife is portrayed as an evil schemer who betrays her husband without much cause. As Bloch suggests, marital relationships are shown to be far from desirable in Bisclavret, Yönec, Guigemar, and Lanval,7 but the treatment of adultery differs in each lai. In Yönec and Guigemar, adultery produces happier and more equitable unions. In Bisclavret, the title character’s wife attempts to condemn him to permanent lycanthropy simply because of her own unjustified fears, and her adultery (and polygamy) is condemned by the narrative. Arthur and Guinevere’s marriage in Lanval is revealed to be a sham

7 Guigemar and Lanval are included for the purpose of comparison. 24 24 when the latter attempts to commit adultery with the title character; by contrast, Lanval’s non-marital relationship with Semiramis is portrayed idyllically. The suggestion that marriage was not ideal would have been quite radical, considering the fact that marriage was an official church sacrament by the twelfth century (Stoertz 29). Although there were two diverging models of marriage (secular and ecclesiastical) in the Middle Ages, both types ultimately resulted in the initiation of what was considered an enduring religious sacrament, instituted by God (McCarthy 16). According to St. Paul, once married, the bond between spouses should be indissoluble: “To the married I give this command—not I but the Lord—that the wife should not separate from her husband...and that the husband should not dismiss his wife” [emphasis added] (qtd. in McCarthy 27). To question marriage was a radical act, akin to questioning the will of the supreme being. Not only does Marie do this, but she associates a literally monstrous adulterer—Muldumarec—with depictions of Christ, suggesting that her radical interpretation of love is morally correct. Marie links monstrosity with her critique of marriage through her portrayal of disastrous unions in Bisclavret and Yönec. The relationships in Yönec and Guigemar run counter to Church doctrine, as exemplified by the instructions to wives in Ephesians: Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ: so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. (Bib., Eph. 5.22-24) Rather than submitting to their oppressive husbands and passively accepting their fates, the heroines of Yönec and Guigemar find happiness outside of marriage. 25 25

Hurtig writes: “While extramarital sex is rigorously condemned for a [medieval] woman, for a bachelor to enjoy sexual pleasure outside the marriage bond is an accepted social practice” (367). Marie challenges this double standard by choosing to portray virtuous heroines who commit justified adultery. Marie even calls into question the true validity of the secular marriages in these lais. The marriage in Yönec is certainly far from ideal, since the husband feels he must imprison his wife in a tower for seven years to keep her from cuckolding him. There was a precedent for questioning the validity of forced marriages in Marie’s time. Hurtig and Noonan write that canonist authorities such as Pope Gratian would not have recognized secular marriages in which both members of the couple did not freely consent on the basis of “marital affection” (Hurtig 371; Noonan 425). This affection is certainly present in the adulterous affairs in Yönec and Guigemar, and it is notably lacking in forced secular marriages. According to Emma Campbell, the lack of offspring from the marriage between Yönec’s mother and her first husband emphasizes the unnatural nature of the union (105). By extension, Muldumarec and the heroine’s child, Yönec, validates their relationship. Advocacy for marriage was not simply present in religious doctrine of Marie’s time; across cultures, folktales portray marriage as an ultimate goal. In a quantitative study, Jonathan Gottschall documented patterns of characterization in folktales from forty-eight cultures (93-95). Gottschall and his team coded data on samples of folktales by answering questions such as, “When the tale begins, is the character8 married? If not, does the character get married in the course of the tale?” (100). Multiple coders responded to a wide variety of questions per tale, and

8 Gottschall’s team used coding forms to respond to questions about the tales’ characters: “A maximum of one coding form was filled out for each main male and female protagonist and antagonist per story” (Gottschall 96). 26 26 a total of more than one thousand coding forms were filled out for 658 folktales (96). The results revealed marriage to be a common resolution for heroes’ and heroines’ journeys: While there was significant variability across subsamples, the majority of male and female protagonists were unmarried at the beginning of their tales (overall, 77 percent male, 78 percent female), and of these characters, most were married by the end (overall, 64 percent female, 64 percent male). (Gottschall 102) Additionally, Gottschall found that “a strikingly large proportion” of folklore revolves around the goal of obtaining mates for both men and women (102). Bisclavret and Yönec, rather than reflecting the marriage-as-goal trend of many folktales and medieval religious authorities, celebrate love without social contracts; furthermore, both tales condemn the cruelty of the protagonists’ spouses. Bisclavret’s wife and the husband of Yönec’s mother act as the morally monstrous humans with whom Bisclavret and Muldumarec are contrasted. This juxtaposition reveals the humanity of both tales’ monsters, while simultaneously serving Marie’s goal of exposing marriage as an unnecessary and potentially harmful ritual. By contrast, marriage concludes the narratives of most of the following Italian folktales, functioning as the protagonists’ reward for their virtue. The Italian tales, however, share the tendency to contrast morally bereft humans with monsters who possess merciful souls.

CHAPTER 3: CALVINO’S ITALIAN FOLKTALES

Italo Calvino began researching Italian folktales in the 1950s, rewriting aspects of two hundred fables and compiling them in Fiabe italiane (Ricci). He adapted the bulk of his tales from Giuseppe Pitrè’s 1875 anthology, Sicilian Fables, Stories and Popular Tales, Domenico Giuseppe Bernoni’s nineteenth- century Venetian booklets,1 and Gherardo Nerucci’s Sixty Popular Tales from Montale (Calvino, Italian Folktales xxii-xxvi). Nerucci began collecting tales, including “Buffalo Head,” in 1868, publishing his anthology twelve years later (xxiv). Many of Nerucci’s sixty tales were popular enough to be reproduced in other anthologies of the time (xxiv). As in Marie’s Lais, beneficent monsters are contrasted with human evil. In the following folktales, the morally monstrous humans with whom the virtuous monsters are contrasted can sometimes be redeemed. Ultimately however, in these tales, the treatment of moral monstrosity in human characters depends largely on gender.

The Role of Women While there is a possibility for a morally monstrous character’s redemption in these folktales, female characters are at a marked disadvantage. In “The Wildwood King,” despite the daughter’s willingness to forgive the father who ordered her execution, she accepts his complete transferal of guilt to her sisters. In lying to their father about the heroine, the sisters successfully manipulate his emotions and challenge his dominance as head of the family. The resolution of the tale reaffirms the father’s dominance by allocating all blame to the sisters. This

1 Bernoni’s collections were published in 1873, 1875, and 1893 (Calvino, IF xxiv). 28 28 reflects what Simonetta Ortaggi Cammarosano calls a “profound fear” in nineteenth-century Italy: that women would eventually challenge men’s control of the family (183). According to Ortaggi Cammarosano, this fear was evident in the denial of most political and marital rights to Italian women until well into the twentieth century (183). A reassertion of the father’s dominance similarly takes place at the conclusion of “Water in the Basket,” when the treacherous stepsister dies and the stepmother is brutally beaten by her husband, the heroine’s father. The villainous human characters contrasted with moral monsters in these tales are sometimes redeemed, but they are far more likely to be forgiven if they are male. The heroine of “The Siren Wife” marks a slight departure from this trend, as she is redeemed, but in the latter tale an entire community of female monsters must be killed in exchange for her salvation.

“The Wildwood King” A tale recorded in 1882 by Gennaro Finamore in Abruzzo features a puzzling figure of a hermit living in the middle of the woods, the wildwood king. In his notes, Calvino refers to the wildwood king as “half-ogre” and “a dethroned cannibal” (IF 739). By virtue of his title, beastly reputation, and location, the wildwood king shares similarities with the monstrous figures of the Wild Man and the Green Man. Medieval carvings of male foliate heads have been referred to as ‘Green Men’ since a 1939 Folklore article (“Julia Somerset, Lady Raglan”; Centerwall 25-26). According to Gary R. Varner, foliate heads became common in Italian, European, and British architecture circa 1500 (195). While the Green Man and the Wild Man have separate origins, the figures eventually became conflated (31); by the sixteenth century, the tropes had effectively fused into one figure, “the green Wild Man” (31). The details of these foliate-head carvings vary, but they 29 29 typically depict a man’s face entirely surrounded by leaves or other plant life (see fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Foliate head carving near Trieste, Italy (photo by John W. Schulze).

One such foliate head carved circa 1200 at the Abbey of Saint-Denis is identified in writing as ‘Silvan,’ emphasizing his woodland connection (26). According to Brandon S. Centerwall, the Wild Man, whose name was synonymous with “Savage,” was considered the image of “Man sans God and, therefore, sans civilisation” (28). God is equated to civilization, and the wildwood king’s exiled status in this tale makes him a source of fear for characters who live within the safety of society. The wildwood king is believed to possess the bestial traits—a tendency towards cannibalism and a lack of contact with humanity—of 30 30 the archetypal Wild Man (Miner 88). These supposed traits mark him both as a figure outside human society and one in direct conflict with people. In this tale, existing apart from humanity suggests an inherent conflict with mankind: characters are only left in the woods when they have been deemed unworthy of contact with others; the heroine, for instance, is taken to the forest to be killed when she is believed to have violated social customs by planning to run away with a man who is not her husband. Neither the wildwood king nor the Wild Man is believed capable of normal human interaction, and both are considered sources of fear and embodiments of the savagery of the natural world. In the tale, the wildwood king is shown to be kind-hearted despite the fearsome reputation created for him by the nearby human society. A young girl is left stranded in the woods after her father orders her death. The girl is “terrified at the thought of the wildwood king who…ate everyone who crossed his path” (IF 404). In truth, the lonely wildwood king is beneficent and takes the girl in, treating her “like a daughter” (404). This is especially poignant as the wildwood king is contrasted with the girl’s biological father, who orders her death at the urging of her sisters. Envious of the girl’s beauty, her sisters tell their father they believe she will run away with a commoner (403). This elopement would be seen as beneath the heroine’s class, and would consequently threaten her family’s reputation and social position. Her death sentence, then, is a preemptive attempt at an honor killing. Women’s limited options, and their potential suffering as a result of social backlash, are shown in this tale by the treatment of both the heroine and her sisters. In the Lais, Marie consciously critiques marriage, while the Italian tales seem unaware of the sexism they contain. While death was not a common fate for Italian women suspected of ‘dishonorable’ behavior at the time this tale was 31 31 recorded, women in nineteenth-century Italy fared far worse than men after failed romantic relationships.2 Women who separated from their husbands could never marry again, and their legal spouses still maintained full control of their finances (Seymour 2). Women who failed to conform to dominant social practices could be confined to psychiatric asylums, as in the case of a nineteenth-century Italian woman whose family had her diagnosed with monomania and committed because they disagreed with her choice of suitor (Reeder 197). The heroine’s death sentence reflects this social tendency to write off troublesome women, as well the elevation of the masculine above the feminine. In nineteenth-century Italy, femininity was considered synonymous with corruption, as well as moral and physical weakness (Riall 153-55; Patriarca 389). Reflecting the perception of women as corrupt, the heroine’s sisters receive all of the blame for her father’s decision to have her killed, while her father is forgiven. In the wildwood king’s forest, a parrot acts as the voice of the nearby community. It tells the girl: “In vain are you pretty and neat, / You will become the forest king’s meat” (404). The bird reiterates this mantra throughout the tale, suggesting that gossips, like parrots, can simply repeat. When the bothersome parrot’s words scare the girl, the wildwood king teaches her how to thwart society’s expectations, giving her an incantation that ultimately leads to her marriage to a human king. The girl’s human father, by contrast, condemns her to death because of his preoccupation with social perceptions. The wildwood king’s spell comes true, and a prince asks for the girl’s hand in marriage. The wildwood

2 The case of Giuseppe Garibaldi and his wife, Giuseppina Raimondi, exemplifies this inequality (Seymour 1). After receiving a letter informing him of his young bride’s affair with another man, Garibaldi attacked her on their wedding day and the pair never spoke again (1). Because divorce was unacceptable in Italy at the time, Garibaldi and Raimondi led “completely separate lives” despite their legal status as husband and wife (2). Raimondi’s life was far more negatively impacted by the marriage “because of the inequality of men and women before the law” (2). 32 32 king agrees, but the narrator notes that “it grieve[s] the old king to be separated from her” (IF 405). Although the wildwood king functions as a suitable father figure to the girl, he is ultimately “left there alone in the middle of the woods” (Fiabe 518). In both Bisclavret and “The Wildwood King,” a supernatural figure must be contrasted with a wicked human in order to sustain his or her positive portrayal and integration into culture. In “The Wildwood King,” the acceptance of a supernatural, ostracized figure is temporary, as he is ultimately not allowed back into human society. Bisclavret, however, is reintegrated. In the lai, Bisclavret is contrasted with his wife, just as the wildwood king is juxtaposed with the girl’s human father. At the end of “The Wildwood King,” the girl forgives her father, who blames “all the suffering he ha[s] caused…[on] the prompting of [her] wicked sisters” (IF 405). As in Bisclavret, where the wife’s new husband does not suffer the loss of his nose, women are the primary scapegoats for moral monstrosity. The wildwood king remains outside of human society because the girl allows her father back into her life. Unlike the girl’s father, her sisters are not redeemed because they are women who have challenged male authority by tricking their father. The narrative sees them as treacherous women who have usurped their father’s control over the household, and they are resultantly blamed for the heroine’s suffering. This is despite the fact that the father blindly believes them and orders his daughter’s death based on gossip. The female villain of “Water in the Basket” is also considered unredeemable because of her threat to masculine power. 33 33 “Water in the Basket” Calvino adapted “Water in the Basket” from Domenico Comparetti’s 1875 anthology of tales, which the latter collected in Pisa, Tuscany (IF 760, xvi). In “Water in the Basket,” one girl is rewarded for her considerate treatment of a witch, while her stepsister is punished for her cruelty. Calvino writes that this tale corresponds “to the most widespread Italian tradition of the folktale about two sisters or stepsisters—one who is kind, the other [disrespectful]—with supernatural beings burdened with human sufferings and squalor” (IF 736). In the tale, the considerate girl is asked to examine the witch’s back and she finds it crawling with fleas. She “kill[s] vermin by the hundreds,” but kindly tells the old woman all she sees are “pearls and diamonds” (353). This compassion is contrasted with the actions of the girl’s stepsister, who makes no attempt to spare the witch’s feelings and simply informs her of the infestation (354). Because the witch reinforces social propriety, she acts as the tale’s moral compass; she is juxtaposed with the tale’s cruel stepmother, who is ultimately not redeemed because of her role as a woman challenging male authority. The witch’s status as an older woman would normally relegate her to the role of antagonist in folkloric traditions across cultures. Gottschall’s study found that forty-two percent of female antagonists and thirty-four percent of male villains were characterized as aged forty or over (119). Female characters in their teens or twenties made up eighty percent of protagonists and thirty-eight percent of antagonists (101). By contrast, a mere eight percent of female protagonists were over forty (100). Male antagonists were also found to be “significantly older than [male] protagonists” (100); young, healthy, and reproductively viable men and women made up the vast majority of the tales’ heroic figures. The trope of the aging antagonist may be due to social stigmas attached to older people, especially 34 34 older women. According to Metzler, old women of the Middle Ages were thought to possess “a malignant and pathological physiology”: Post-menopausal women were believed to retain the noxious matter of their menses with polluting effects, eventually seeping out through other pores of the body, so that their ‘evil eye’ alone could kill children. (Metzler, A Social History 113) In central Italy, the evil eye (malocchio) was believed to result from a voluntary or involuntary glance (maldocchiato) (Pieroni and Giusti 201).3 In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, women accused of “‘menstrous’ pollution” were believed to command contaminating powers similar to those of witches, monsters, and dragons (Bildhauer 112). As casters of the evil eye, old women of lower socioeconomic status were considered a more serious threat than those in the upper classes (Bildhauer 112). Their supposedly “increased potency” was attributed to poor women’s consumption of “‘coarser’ food” (112). The witch of “Water in the Basket” is likely poor, or wants to appear so, as evidenced by the squalor in which she lives. The narrative voice describes her home as “a heap of rubbish” and she is first encountered as she is inspecting herself for fleas on a rock in the middle of a stream (Fiabe 451). Although the protagonist of “Water in the Basket” is arguably the young girl, the old woman is not represented as a villain; by contrast, she functions, much like Buffalo Head, as a moral authority in monstrous form. The tale’s true villains—the stepmother, whose age is not given, and the young stepsister—show

3 While, in some towns, old women were considered likely casters of the evil eye, they were not believed to be its sole possible source: “Theoretically, anyone is potentially a jettatore, a carrier of the evil eye, and the jettatore himself is often unaware of his own lethal power” (Appel 75). 35 35 no concern for the girl or the witch, respectively. The witch mirrors the girls’ words, granting each girl what she has seen in the witch. When the stepsister tells the witch she has “pulci e scabbia” (fleas and scabies), the witch responds by cursing her, “E pulci e scabbia avrai”: “And you will have fleas and scabies” (Fiabe 452). By contrast, when the kind girl says she sees “rubies and cherubs” in the witch’s unswept house, the witch assures her she will have these herself (IF 353). The character of the witch emphasizes humility and the importance of not asking for more than one needs. She offers each of the girls a choice between dresses and jewelry (with one of the options being made of common material, the other fashioned out of something precious). The kind girl opts for the modest choice each time, and each time the witch gives her the finery instead; the opposite situation takes place with the stepsister. In this tale, the witch, like Buffalo Head, reinforces cultural values of politeness, consideration, and humility. These traits are notably lacking in the tale’s main villain, the stepmother, and her daughter. The juxtaposition with these characters makes the witch’s wisdom and goodness apparent. As the witch is proven beneficent, the mundane stepmother is condemned. Her cruelty towards her stepdaughter, the kind girl, is contrasted with the witch’s kindness. Unlike some of the other human villains in the Italian tales, the stepmother is not redeemed because she is a woman who challenges male authority. At the start of the tale, we are told that the stepmother loves her own daughter, but not the daughter of her husband (IF 353). Without biological ties to the girl, the stepmother resents her as merely an impediment to her own child’s prosperity; she clearly fears that her husband’s daughter will take family resources away from her own child. While this would not be seen as positive today, it would 36 36 have been even more unacceptable when this tale was recorded, considering the emphasis on wives’ subservience to their husbands in nineteenth-century Italy. The stepmother even beats her husband’s daughter, challenging his authority as the head of the household. Indeed, the husband’s brutal beating of the stepmother at the tale’s conclusion functions as a reassertion of male dominance over the family. The father could be considered a cruel human who is redeemed at the tale’s end. While he is never explicitly said to be a bad father, it is implied that he does not attempt to stop his wife from beating and abusing his daughter. It is not until the tale’s end that his wife’s attempt to kill his daughter evokes his objection. While his treatment of his wife at the end of the story would be considered horrible today, during the time the tale was recorded it would likely have been seen as the proper thing for a husband to do.

“Buffalo Head” Like Marie’s Lais, Calvino’s tales are similarly populated with supernatural creatures who are portrayed positively when contrasted with human wickedness. “Testa di Bufala,” or “Buffalo Head,” is a Tuscan folktale adapted from Nerucci’s collection (Calvino, IF 729).4 In the story, the aptly named Buffalo Head—the disembodied head of a female buffalo5—is reviled by all who see her except the heroine, a kind young girl. Upon unearthing Buffalo Head, the girl’s father is horrified by “that ugly face,” and immediately wants to kill the creature (Calvino, Fiabe 307). Buffalo Head’s appearance is instantly seen as justification for her death, but the narrative emphasizes how wrong the father’s actions are. Rather

4 The tale was recounted to Nerucci by a widow, Luisa Ginanni, in Montale (729). 5 Water buffalo were introduced to Italy from Hungary during the sixth century (Long 460). 37 37 than attempting to understand something different from himself, the father sees violence as an acceptable course of action. It is his cruel decision with which Buffalo Head’s goodness is ultimately contrasted. Buffalo Head’s morality and capacity for human reason elevate her above her initially monstrous appearance. Like Bisclavret, who charms the king’s court in his werewolf form, Buffalo Head proves herself to be more than just a horrifying sight with her intelligence and morality. The father decides to spare Buffalo Head when she offers to bless one of his daughters if allowed to live. The eldest daughter rejects the “brutto mostro” and runs home, “screaming all the way” (Fiabe 307; IF 238). Buffalo Head’s “dreadful snout” also repulses the second daughter. However, the youngest girl—“the most intelligent and courageous”—sees past Buffalo Head’s bizarre features and interprets them favorably: “My, what a pretty little head! What fine horns! What fine whiskers! Papa, where did you find this wonderful buffalo head?” (Fiabe 307; IF 238-39). At first sight, the girl’s father and sisters judge Buffalo Head to be unfit to live and function in human society because of her physical monstrosity. It is only the heroine, whom the tale lauds as the most sensible, who is capable of kindness and acceptance. Buffalo Head goes on to serve as a mother figure to the girl, rewarding her for her kindness and courage in the face of the unknown. The child lives with Buffalo Head, who is said to be “even better to her than any real mother would have been” (IF 239). The inclusion of this detail privileges the monster by elevating her above humanity. She is better than a human mother, not simply an acceptable substitute. 38 38 The Positive Portrayal of Buffalo Head In “Buffalo Head,” the heroine is punished for thoughtlessness, emphasizing the importance of familial and social obligations. In this tale, the grotesque, visibly inhuman Buffalo Head functions as a representation of the family in a traditional society; this suggests that appearance is secondary to moral character. After falling in love with a prince, the girl asks her adoptive mother for permission to marry him. Buffalo Head grants it, but warns the girl, “Remember, however, not to be ungrateful. All that you have you owe to me.…When you are ready to leave this house, be sure not to forget anything. If you leave behind any of your possessions, you will be disgraced” (309). Distracted by her happiness, the girl forgets both her comb and her farewell to Buffalo Head. When she returns in a panic, she finds that her own head has been transformed into that of a buffalo: “La testa le s’era trasformata in una gran testa di bufala” (Fiabe 309). Ironically, as a consequence of disregarding Buffalo Head, the heroine takes on the latter’s physical monstrosity. “Buffalo Head” is one of many similar Italian tales in which a human protagonist is raised by a supernatural creature. Calvino notes: The plot is substantially the same, from Venice to Sardinia. The supernatural creature that rears the protagonist can be a lizard, snake, or dragon in the service of fairies, a monster, an ogre…a woman with a bull’s head, or someone invisible except for his hands.…The supernatural being always takes revenge by transforming the protagonist’s face into the head of some animal (buffalo, goat, cat, or donkey); or else a beard grows out of her face, or a sheep’s fleece on her neck; or she may simply be ugly, or even end up with no head at all. (Calvino, Italian Folktales 729) 39 39

In “Buffalo Head,” the heroine is punished for forgetting her roots by literally becoming the image of her adoptive mother. In her hurry to “marry up” to a prince, she neglects to pay her respects to Buffalo Head, effectively abandoning the mother who has done so much for her. With her transformation into the image of Buffalo Head, she is forced to acknowledge her familial obligations, since she cannot abandon her own physical appearance. The forgotten comb suggests that she is neglecting her social obligation to make herself presentable by combing her hair; as a consequence of failing to consider decorum, she takes on the features of an animal, like many of the girls in the tale’s variants. Buffalo Head, by contrast, is the picture of morality in the tale, teaching the girl how to behave considerately in society. Ironically, although Buffalo Head’s appearance keeps her outside of human social circles, she is the figure in the tale that most values propriety and human customs. This tale shows her beastly appearance to be just that, an appearance that does not reveal her true potential. The heroine must demonstrate reciprocity in return for Buffalo Head’s kindness; when she forgets Buffalo Head, her adoptive mother is deaf to her initial pleas for help. The tale concludes when the remorseful girl apologizes to Buffalo Head and asks for her forgiveness. “If you had that day to live over,” Buffalo Head asks, “What would you do?” The girl answers: “Vi saluterei e bacerei e abbraccerei, e non mi dimenticherei nulla”: “I would say goodbye to you, and kiss and hug you, and I wouldn’t forget anything” (Fiabe 312). As soon as she acknowledges her familial and social obligations, the girl finds her comb and becomes “twice as lovely…as before” (IF 242). The girl’s heartfelt apology to Buffalo Head echoes the concept of theological repentance for one’s sins. As Muldumarec is likened to Christ in Yönec, so here. Buffalo Head, despite her monstrous appearance, is elevated to godlike status by her power to forgive and grant miracles. Also like Muldumarec, 40 40 she is beyond human understanding, and only the most compassionate people, such as the girl and Yönec’s mother, are able to recognize this. Buffalo Head and Muldumarec’s physical monstrosity does not reflect their true selves, and they must be contrasted with human failings in order for their goodness to come to light. Buffalo Head’s wisdom and understanding become apparent when she instructs the girl in proper social customs, just as Muldumarec’s noble qualities are juxtaposed with the evil of his lover’s cruel husband. Buffalo Head’s appearance, although monstrous, contains clues to her beneficent nature. Horns have long been considered protective symbols against the evil eye in Italy. According to Richard Swiderski, “The mano cornuta, or horned hand…is made by extending the index and little fingers, bending in the two middle fingers and enclosing them with the thumb. The sign suggests the head of a horned creature” (34). The sign, worn as a talisman, was once fashioned out of wood, metal, and shell (34). Donning these talismans was believed to have “the effect of making the gesture continually and thus affords constant protection against the evil eye” (34). While Buffalo Head’s physicality initially makes her appear monstrous, and she is certainly perceived as such by the heroine’s family, her horns also symbolically associate her with protection from evil. Even as the story makes Buffalo Head a monster, it builds into her description the potential for goodness (for those, like the heroine, who are willing to look for it).

The Portrayal of Human Characters and the Possibility of Redemption Like the heroine’s father and sisters, her fiancé the prince, and his mother also wrongly judge a monstrous appearance to signify worthlessness and moral turpitude. When the heroine’s sudden transformation causes her to look like Buffalo Head, the prince considers having his bride burned at the stake. His 41 41 mother, confident that the heroine is no longer worthy of the prince, organizes a contest to find her son a new bride. The contest consists of a series of domestic tasks, such as spinning flax and sewing shirts. Ostensibly, the woman who successfully completes these tasks will be the most suitable bride. However, when the heroine, with Buffalo Head’s help, wins, a final criterion is measured: physical beauty. The most beautiful woman will marry the prince; this makes it clear that, even if a woman meets society’s domestic ideals for wifehood, she is not a true wife if she is not beautiful. “But would you marry a monster solely because of the wonder she’s worked with a pound of flax?” the prince’s mother demands (IF 241). The prince sees his bride only as a monster until she regains her physical beauty; it is then that he declares: “I’ve made my choice, I will marry this kind and beautiful maiden” (243). The heroine’s kindness, it seems, is only apparent to the prince when she is also attractive. The prince is ultimately redeemed at the tale’s end, when the heroine regains her human appearance and the couple live happily ever after. He is the last character to speak in the tale, while nothing is heard from his mother or the heroine’s father and sisters. The prince uses these final words to deride another potential bride’s lack of natural beauty (“This one is all ribbons and paint!”) and to declare the heroine his true wife because of her newly restored physical appearance (IF 243). Perhaps because of a combination of his gender and social status as the future ruler of the story’s kingdom, he is considered more important (and thus, redeemable) than his mother and the heroine’s family. It may also be for this reason that the prince’s words are used to critique female characters at the tale’s end. The superiority of the male-dominated family is reinforced at the tale’s conclusion, with the heroine’s happy ending being her marriage to a man who considered having her killed because of her appearance. In the next tale, the 4 2 42 heroine’s murderous father is redeemed; his daughters, like the queen in “Buffalo Head,” however, are passed over for redemption and even blamed for their father’s cruelty.

“The Siren Wife” Recorded by Giuseppe Gigli in 1893 in what is now Taranto, Apulia, “La Sposa Sirena,” or “The Siren Wife” is a tale of double redemption that inverts the typical story of a siren luring a sailor to his death. The titular siren begins the narrative as the human wife of a mariner. While her husband is away at sea, she commits adultery. Despite her subsequent repentance, the mariner throws her into the ocean in a sack (IF 455). The heroine is rescued by a group of sirens who allow her to survive by becoming one of them (Fiabe 585). Intriguingly, even after the husband’s actions and the wife’s metamorphosis into a siren, the tale chronicles the couple’s journey to reunite. The Italian term used in Gigli’s title—sirena—can mean both ‘mermaid’ and ‘siren’; the word arose from the late Latin sīrēna (“Siren,” def. 2). Its ultimate source is the Greek Σειρήν, which was first used in Homer’s Odyssey to describe the nautical temptresses whose songs lead men to their deaths (“Siren,” def. 2; Grimal 421). The figures of these sirens may have been inspired by tales disseminated by sailors (Aasved 383). Although the sirens Odysseus encounters do not possess avian features, later representations depict the creatures as “half woman and half bird” (Aasved 383; Grimal 421) (see fig. 4). Avian sirens and their piscine counterparts, mermaids, have been conflated since ancient times (Aasved 384); early Greek iconography depicts both fish-tailed and birdlike sirens (Aasved 384). Because of the term’s ambiguity, both connotations of “siren,” the avian and the piscine, are present in the tale. Whether 43 43 the creatures are depicted with fish-like tails or birds’ wings, they embody the monstrous process of metamorphosis by their inhabitation of forms that are only partially human.

Fig. 4. Greek terracotta vase (c. 550-500 B.C.) in the shape of an avian siren, The Met. 44 44

In this tale, the sirens do not live up to their fearsome reputation; instead, they save the heroine when she is abandoned by her husband. Sirens have long been associated with disaster, hostility, and the sinister. In ancient Greek art, they are often depicted with vulture-like claws (Pollard 141). The sirens’ beautiful music was said to cause men to sail fatally close to the rocks surrounding their island (Grimal 421). Exactly what sirens did with the bodies of their victims is debated, with some legends stating that sirens ate shipwrecked sailors (Aasved 384; Grimal 421). The heroine of “The Siren Wife” is rescued by the sirens after her human husband callously kills her. These sirens are not entirely beneficent, as indicated by their desire to kill a lost mariner who, unbeknownst to them, is the heroine’s husband. They are, however, the heroine’s saviors, and their kindness ultimately allows her to survive. The sirens may represent women who, having been victimized by men, yearn for vengeance. Their benevolence towards the heroine is contrasted with the husband’s initial cruelty; his murder of his wife allows the sirens’ humanity to become apparent when they rescue her. In “The Siren Wife,” the heroine’s adultery is initially compared to her own murder. Because she threatens her husband’s reputation and risks becoming pregnant with another man’s child, the tale’s audience would likely not have been shocked by her husband’s decision to murder her. While the husband’s actions are horrifying from a contemporary perspective, honor killings of adulterous women were likely not uncommon when the fable originated. Kesselring writes: “Works touching on Italian and French legal codes, commentators, and practice of the [early modern] era suggest a revival of late Roman treatment of a wife’s adultery as a justification or at least an extenuating circumstance in her slaying” (203). Italian cities enacted laws to punish adultery in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and while financial penalties applied to both genders, only women were 45 45 sometimes put to death (Dunn 177; Dean 138). An adulteress was believed not only to dishonor her husband, but to “[call] into question the paternity of her sons” (Cohen 116). For these reasons, the original audience of “The Siren Wife” likely would have viewed the husband and wife’s crimes as relatively equal in gravity; perhaps this is why the narrative allows the couple to reunite. Despite the heroine’s adultery and her transformation into a sea monster, she is ultimately redeemed and reintegrated into male-dominated human society. In order for this to be achieved in the tale, the husband’s cruelty must be acknowledged. In the scene leading up to the woman’s murder, the wife’s desperation (and her husband’s callous deafness to her pleas) is emphasized: “La donna strappandosi i capelli lo pregò, lo supplico, ma fu inutile”: “The woman, tearing her hair, begged him, beseeched him, but it was useless” (Fiabe 585). Encountering his wife at the bottom of the sea, the mariner is not disturbed by her transformation, instead “realizing deep down that he ha[s] already forgiven her and regret[s] drowning her” (IF 457). The fact that the mariner regrets his actions implies he has done something morally wrong. This heroine, whose human failings serve as part of the point of contrast for the sirens’ goodness, is redeemed unlike many of the other female humans in the Italian tales. Her salvation, however, comes at the cost of her fellow sirens’ lives. In order for her to return to her human form, she and her husband steal the sirens’ magical flower, the source of their lives and power. Once the flower is stolen, the heroine’s life among the female-dominated society of the sirens is replaced by her return to her husband’s home, and his control. The colony of sirens functions freely outside of male domination, and the colony’s destruction marks the heroine’s loss of her own freedom from marital subservience. Just as the father reasserts his dominance in “Water in the Basket” by beating the stepmother, the 46 46 husband of “The Siren Wife” can only reclaim control of his wife by cutting off her access to a world free from his influence. These tales, disturbingly, suggest that men whose dominance has been questioned can only regain control of their families through the abuse of the women who have dared to challenge them. Once the heroine has lost the possibility of returning to the sirens’ feminine utopia, she is granted redemption.

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION

The tales discussed in this thesis show that monstrosity is not used to indicate moral turpitude in all folklore. On the contrary, in these folktales, monstrosity serves as an indicator of benevolence when juxtaposed with human faults. These tales celebrate monstrosity while questioning the ostensible value of beauty in determining the quality of a person’s character. In Marie’s Lais, monstrosity is associated with a critique of the practice of secular, rather than ecclesiastical, marriage. The secular model of matrimony in medieval France gave the power to arrange marriages to a couple’s families, largely excluding the possibility of marriage based on love. Because of the prevalence of secular marriages among the aristocracy, Marie goes on to critique marriage itself, suggesting in her Lais that it is not a prerequisite for a wholesome sexual relationship. She associates this radical idea with her positive portrayal of monstrosity; the physically monstrous Bisclavret and Muldumarec are initially shocking, but they prove to be essentially good characters, while the human characters of Bisclavret’s wife and Yönec’s stepfather prove villainous. Similarly, the at-first heretical extramarital affairs in these lais prove to be more positive than the traditional marriages. Marriage in the Lais is shown to hinder a person’s ability to find true love, or even to live freely. Badly married characters have their freedom restricted, as in Yönec and Guigemar, or their humanity threatened, as in Bisclavret. By contrast, true love flourishes outside the bonds of matrimony for the heroines of Guigemar and Yönec. Marie uses the Lais to advocate for love regardless of social approval, a dream that many doubtless had but could not achieve in medieval France. 48 48

Although Marie critiques the institution of marriage, she does not portray the marriages in Bisclavret and Yönec equally. Marie suggests that, because of the lack of mutual consent and the husband’s tyranny, the marriage of Yönec’s mother is not valid. By contrast, Bisclavret is a devoted husband whose wife commits not only unjustified adultery, but bigamy. The fact that the failure of the marriages in these lais is not consistently blamed on either the husband or the wife implies that the entire system of marriage is flawed; imperfect marriages cannot simply be blamed on the failings of one sex. While “The Siren Wife,” Bisclavret, and Yönec share the conceit of contrasting human wickedness with monstrous goodness, the relationship between physical monstrosity and the moral monstrosity of adultery is portrayed quite differently in each of these tales. The titular siren wife is reintegrated into human society despite the adultery that initially excludes her. Bisclavret’s wife is utterly condemned, while Yönec’s mother is considered justified in the desire to escape her marriage. These details highlight a key difference between the French and Italian folktales. While Marie’s Lais attack the impracticality of marriage regardless of the gender of the wronged party, the Italian tales largely condemn attempts by female characters to usurp male power. “The Siren Wife” suggests that, for a wife to be redeemed after committing adultery, nothing short of supernatural intervention is required. The Italian tale, unlike Marie’s tales, does not challenge the institution of marriage. It instead portrays the wife’s indiscretion as a sin for which she is, eventually, capable of redemption and reintegration into human society. This is, however, only after she has been murdered by her husband and thrown into the sea. The return of her humanity ultimately comes at the price of the lives of her fellow sirens, suggesting that at least some women must suffer in retribution for the wife’s initial betrayal of 49 49 the husband (see table 1). “The Siren Wife,” like the majority of the Italian folktales, reflects the extreme disparity in perceptions of the sexes in eighteenth- century Italy; masculinity was considered far superior to femininity, which was associated with weakness and corruption (Riall 153-55).

Table 1. The Possibility of Redemption in the French and Italian Folktales Tale Monster Understanding Human(s) Are characters human contrasted with redeemed? monster

Bisclavret Bisclavret King Wife Wife: No

Yönec Muldumarec Heroine Husband Husband: No

“Buffalo Buffalo Heroine Heroine’s family Family: No

Head” Head Heroine Heroine: Yes

Prince Prince: Yes

Queen Queen: No

“The Wildwood Wildwood Heroine Father Father: Yes

King” king Sisters Sisters: No

“Water in Witch Heroine Father Father: Yes the Basket” Stepsister Stepsister: No

Stepmother Stepmother: No

“The Siren Siren Husband (at Husband (at tale’s Husband: Yes

Wife” tale’s end) start) Siren: Yes

Siren (as a human) Other sirens: No

The Lais, unlike the Italian tales, present the morally monstrous with no opportunities for redemption. Redemption in the Italian tales, however, is largely based on gender. Villainous women with whom the virtuous monstrous are 50 50 contrasted, such as the sisters in the “The Wildwood King” and the stepsister and stepmother in “Water in the Basket,” are far less likely to be forgiven for their evil than are cruel men (see table 1). The fathers in both “The Wildwood King” and “Water in the Basket,” as well as the prince in “Buffalo Head” and the husband in “The Siren Wife,” are absolved of their sins, in some cases at the expense of female characters’ lives. In each of the above folktales, physically monstrous figures are recognized for their human qualities only when the human characters in their narratives are shown to possess bestial traits. The moral fiber is what counts in these tales, as exemplified by a disembodied buffalo head’s successful education of a human girl. Not only are these monstrous creatures portrayed positively, but they are in some cases, such as Yönec and “Buffalo Head,” elevated to godlike status. In most of the above tales, the physically monstrous characters reinforce social values, such as humility in “Buffalo Head,” avoidance of gossip in “The Wildwood King,” politeness in “Water in the Basket,” love in Yönec, and understanding and loyalty in Bisclavret. Through the examination of these folktales, it becomes clear that the portrayal of morally beneficent monsters is not a recent development, but the monsters’ virtues are invisible without contrast. In terms of a monster’s integration into human society, the incorporation is permitted only through a sustained contrast of the supernatural with human wickedness. Since the heroine’s human father is forgiven at the end of “The Wildwood King,” the titular king cannot join human society because he no longer has a foil to make his goodness apparent. “The Siren Wife” illustrates also this; the redemption of the husband removes him as a point of contrast for his physically monstrous wife. Therefore, the siren wife must be transformed back into a woman before she can rejoin her husband. 51 51

Without a monstrous human with whom to be contrasted, supernatural creatures must lose their monstrosity or live outside of human society. I have demonstrated that monstrosity has been portrayed positively in folktales from Australia, France, and Italy. In the above tales, the juxtaposition of monstrous figures with morally bereft humans makes the goodness of the former characters apparent, despite their terrifying physicality. This trend indicates a sense of unease with common depictions of beautiful protagonists and hideous villains within the cultures from which these tales originated. Further research is needed to determine whether beneficent monstrosity, and its contrast with villainous humans, features in the folklore of other regions. Why do these tales emphasize the value of monstrosity by contrasting it with corrupt, yet physically normal, humanity? Perhaps juxtaposition makes our assumptions about monsters clearer, making it easier for us to identify and question these assumptions. Wickedness in humanity makes goodness in monstrosity more apparent, forcing readers of these tales to reevaluate simplistic perceptions of monsters as creatures meant only to be feared. Does folklore ever break from this pattern, imbuing monstrosity with moral value without vilifying some aspect of humanity? This question merits further study. Ultimately, these tales reflect the values of their cultures through their depictions of the physically and morally monstrous, but they also continue to shape culture through their repetition. The Italian tales display a clear preference for masculinity and male superiority in their treatment of human cruelty, while Marie’s Lais indicate a frustration with medieval France’s restrictive system of secular marriage. In valuing monstrosity, the Lais and the Italian folktales encourage readers to question both ideals of attractiveness and beauty's alleged correlation with morality.

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