The Framing of Female Power in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

Jade Tulk

Professor Helms

EN 3425: Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Literature

October 19, 2023

The Framing of Female Power in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

In the Medieval and Renaissance period, women in England were largely prohibited from accessing any of the positions of power available to men. Aside from being seen as inherently lesser as a result of their gender, most of the choices, rights, careers and opportunities that men enjoyed were inaccessible for women. The literature of the Medieval and Renaissance period (which, for the purposes of this essay I will define as roughly 800 to 1600 CE) presents female power as something that is alternately dangerous, monstrous, or impossible. Female power is only acceptable if extraordinary beautiful and virtuous women wield it, or if that power is granted by God or “blessed” by the approval of powerful men. Throughout this essay I will explore the varied and limited depictions of female power in Beowulf, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and in “Bisclavret” and “Lanval”, two lais of Marie de France. I have selected these three texts because of their differences. They are written in the 9th, 12th, and 16th centuries respectively, so provide a relatively well-spaced sample from which to discuss sexism across what is, I am aware, a great expanse of history. Secondly, I chose these three texts because each one features significant female characters. And thirdly, because the significant female characters in each text could not be more different from one another. From the depiction of Grendel’s mother, a “savage” and ferocious monster driven by her need to avenge her son’s death, to the fairy lady of “Lanval” whose power is totally reliant upon her unusual beauty and perfect character, the belief implied across all the works I will discuss is that women have no inherent right to positions of power and leadership unless they are entirely without fault, and that imperfect women who claim power without the permission of men are evil.

I will discuss these texts in the order in which they were written—beginning with Beowulf, written in approximately the 9th century by an anonymous author. The epic poem follows the various challenges and battles of Beowulf, a Geatish warrior who volunteers to save the Danes and King Hrothgar’s hall from Grendel, the monster who has attacked and killed King Hrothgar’s men for twelve years, and is, as yet, undefeated. Beowulf slays Grendel, is subsequently celebrated and made a son to Hrothgar, before venturing out to defeat Grendel’s mother who is seeking revenge for the murder of her son. The third and final section of the narrative concerns a much older Beowulf fighting his last battle against a dragon that has terrorized his people in response to a stolen cup. There are barely any women in Beowulf, save for Queen Wealhtheow, Hrothgar’s gentle wife, and an anonymous woman who mourns Beowulf’s death and the certain invasion and destruction of her country at the poem’s end. The most significant female characters, and those with the most power, are, interestingly, two of the story’s villains: Grendel’s mother and the dragon. The dragon, while not clearly defined as male or female in the original poem, is most definitely depicted as female in Headley’s translation, a choice that is interesting because it serves to underline and enhance the view of unrestrained and disruptive female power as inherently monstrous illustrated by the role Grendel’s mother plays in the story. But what is so admirable about Headley’s translation is her refusal to let Grendel’s mother, who is undoubtably, a monster, remain solely a monster. In her introduction, Grendel’s mother is described as a: “warrior-woman, outlaw, meditated on misery/carried on a wave of wrath, crazed with sorrow,/looking for someone to slay,/someone to pay in pain for her heart’s loss.” (Headley, 52). Immediately, we are presented with the idea that while Grendel’s mother is driven to commit monstrous acts, she is not intrinsically evil. And while Headley’s translation certainly brings the complex and contradictory nature of Grendel’s mother to the forefront, it is undoubtedly a part of the original text as well. In an essay published by Nottingham University, Ela Wydrzynska writes that: “Grendel’s Mother is therefore too monstrous to be female, and too female to be truly monstrous.” (Wydrzynska, 1). The suggestion is, then, that according to the “rules” of Beowulf, it is power that makes a woman monstrous—power that she has taken for herself, against the wishes and interests of men. Grendel’s mother is not granted power by a man, she claims it for herself. She is no more a monster than Beowulf himself—in fact, arguably less so, because she only attacks once to avenge her son. So perhaps it is her agency and defiance that make her power “monstrous”. The presentation of powerful and disobedient women as monstrous is a reoccurring theme in our patriarchal culture—the demonization of Bertha in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a perfect example of this. As a response to being kept prisoner by her husband, Bertha becomes insane and her act of revenge—burning Thornfield Hall towards the end of the novel—is, in my opinion, equivalent to Grendel’s mother’s avenging of her son’s death: a powerful woman retaliating against harm caused her. Violent and terrifying, certainly, but not a monster.

Marie de France’s lais are unique to the texts we have studied in this class and notable within the wider world of Medieval literature most significantly because they are written by a woman, and thus provide a female perspective of the patriarchal and classist society that was 12th century Europe. Both “Bisclavret” and “Lanval” feature strong, autonomous, and intelligent female characters in positions of privilege and power. For the purposes of this essay I will focus primarily on “Lanval” a lais that, in my opinion, most clearly illustrates this depiction of the powerful and virtuous woman whose power rests in her beauty. In “Lanval”, the title character falls in love and subsequently enters into a relationship with his “sweet friend” (Judy Shoaf’s translation, Page 4) under her condition that he not disclose her identity to anybody. However, he breaks this promise when fighting off the advances of the Queen Guinevere when he tells her that he is in love with a woman whose serving maids are: “one, even, the poorest in her train,/Is better than you are, Lady Queen:/In beauty of body and of face,/In goodness and in well-bred grace.” (Shoaf, 6). When Lanval is placed on trial for this insult, it is the fairy lady who rescues him—a bold and arguably feminist ending that on first glance reads as remarkably modern. But, upon closer inspection, it is undeniable that it is the lady’s beauty (and nothing else) that allows her to rescue her lover. Lanval is allowed to go free only because his fairy lady is, indeed, more beautiful than the queen. So what is, on the surface, a feminist plot twist of a woman coming to the aid of a knight, is, on another level, a beauty contest wherein a woman’s worth and virtue is deduced exclusively from her outward appearance. The fairy lady of “Lanval” is allowed to wield immense power, but it is conditional power, based not off her value as a person, but how beautiful she is deemed in the eyes of men. In that sense, her position of power in the narrative is dependent upon the male gaze in order to remain intact. However, in an Esquire interview with medieval scholar Dr Claire Waters, Waters discusses the proto-feminism of Marie de France’s lais, stating that Marie was a feminist: “insofar as pretty much any woman in the Middle Ages who was willing to compose and put her name to it is a proto-feminist figure. Such a woman is to some degree bucking a tradition that says the locus of authority is men, and women must defer to them.” (Westenfeld, Waters). Waters argues that it was a feminist act simply to dare to be an educated and creative woman in the 12th century, to write and publish (or otherwise distribute) one’s work as Marie de France did. And while Waters does not critique Marie de France for her equating of beauty with worth and morality, she does acknowledge these attitudes by not calling her work explicitly feminist. 

The third and final work I will discuss is Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. I will begin with a disclaimer that The Faerie Queene is an extraordinarily lengthy text, with multiple books and many cantos within each book. We have only read three separate cantos of Book 1, so those will be the sole source of my analysis of the view of women in power in The Faerie Queene. I am aware that other sections of the text have interesting and nuanced (though still, I believe, somewhat problematic) representations of female power, because Spenser was writing in order to gain the favor of Elizabeth I. And while characters in other sections of The Faerie Queene, (Britomart and Gloriana specifically) were created to glorify and honor the Queen, in the few sections that I am familiar with, female characters play a minor and somewhat peripheral role, and there remains a clear message communicated through the text that women are inherently undeserving of real power. In Book 1, Canto 11 (published in 1596), the Redcrosse Knight fights for three days with a fearsome dragon before finally defeating and slaying him. Una, his “faire ladie” (Spenser, 60) remains by his side throughout these battles and defeats, and when she finally intervenes it is not to save her knight but to pray for hims safety. “As weening that the sad end of the warre/And gan to highest God entirely pray.” (Spenser, 282-283). This prayer, which Una continues without sleeping, “ne once adowne would lay” (286), is arguably a powerful act. Una, if not directly saving the Redcrosse Knight, is certainly coming to his aid through the means of prayer. But is this a powerful act? I would argue that it is not, because while Una is striving to help her knight, what she is really doing is appealing to a (very male) God to save him. In Mary Villeponteaux’s fascinating 1995 article “Displacing Feminine Authority in The Faerie Queene”, Villeponteaux argues that Spenser’s depiction of powerful and virtuous women in The Faerie Queene (Una, as well as Britomart the female knight and Gloriana the Faerie Queene) is part of his appeal to the favor of Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful person in late 16th century England. But while Spenser aimed to glorify and humble himself before Elizabeth’s authority, he could not do so without some struggle to justify how a woman could have power at all, when at the time, “women’s rule violated and called into question the ideological system itself.” (Villeponteaux, 58). Throughout The Faerie Queene, we see evidence of this struggle to understand, justify, and control female power, and the way Una comes to the rescue of the Redcrosse Knight through the use of prayer alone is a perfect illustration of this. Una can have power, if it can even be called that, but only when that power is dependent on and subservient to a higher, male power—in this instance, God.

The portrayal of female power in Medieval and Renaissance literature was overwhelmingly negative, a consequence of a society that was deeply patriarchal and misogynistic. However, the depictions of powerful women found across the literature of this era are surprisingly varied, complicated, and nuanced. Beowulf, through the portrayal of Grendel’s mother as a monster, appears to condemn female strength that refuses to subject itself to the rule of men. While in Marie de France’s “Lanval” we see an example of a powerful lady, her power hinges solely on her exemplary beauty. And while Una of Spenser’s Faerie Queene is also powerful, her power is linked inextricably to prayer and it is therefore God’s power, that aides the Redcrosse Knight, not hers. In the Medieval and Renaissance eras, where women were barred from accessing any or all positions of power available to men, it is fascinating to study the ways in which powerful women appeared in literature of the time—how that literature at once condemns and holds these women to standards of perfection, but also is forced to acknowledge their power.

Works Cited

Headley, Maria Dahvana. Beowulf: A New Translation. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. 

Wydrzynska, Ela. “Monster versus Monstrous: A discussion of the characterization of Grendel’s Mother.” University of Nottingham. 2016.

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Penguin Classics, Reprint edition. August 15, 2006.

Shoaf, Judy. The Lais of Marie de France.The University of Florida, 1992.

Westenfeld, Adrienne, and Dr Waters, Claire. “Who Was Marie de France? A medieval literature  expert lays out how much we know—and how much we don’t—about the poet’s life and  work”. Esquire, 7 September 2021, https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a37397646/who-was-marie-de-france-matrix-lauren-groff/

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene: Book 1, Canto 11. Publication Start Year 1596. RPO poem Editors. 

Villeponteaux, Mary. “Displacing Feminine Authority in The Faerie Queene”. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Winter, 1995.