Superior Women in Renaissance Literature
We learn early on that we have more gender equality today than we have ever had before, it’s been proven through history and the evolution of literature. It’s safe to assume based on what we have read in class that most if not all literary works from that time period women are viewed as less than or not equal to men. Women were seen as lesser or other, not understood or understanding. Yet when reading renaissance works like Shakespeare there is a female character where she isn’t equal to the male characters yet to some aspect superior to them.
The first example of this is Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. As a woman she’s not as significant, she doesn’t even have a name outside her marriage, she is considered ‘mad’ by the other characters. Despite all that, there is a cruelty to her that is more prevalent to her husband’s. Macbeth was hesitant at first to kill king Duncan, seeing a difference between killing on a battlefield and murdering someone, however Lady Macbeth considered him a coward and explained in detail how she would have killed her newborn if she needed to, proving to him that she is ‘more man’ than him because he was to coward to kill the king in the beginning so therefore he was not a man in her eyes. This proves that she considered herself more than her husband and the fact that he listened to her proves that she has an authority over him despite the fact that she is a woman.. Lady Macbeth is cruel and colder than her husband, she is superior in her cruelty. She was clever and calculated, she knew that she would gain status along with Macbeth and after hearing the prophecy she decided to let go of the ‘feminine’ in her, all the things society looked down on about women so that she would be cruel and monstrous. She led her husband to committing crimes so that the prophecy would be fulfilled and she could gain the status that she wanted.
Lady Macbeth isn’t the only ‘woman’ in the play Macbeth that has a treat that is powerful compared to the male characters, there are the witches too. I use quotation marks because of how witches were not thought to be the same as a woman but despite that they are treated as such. The witches in Macbeth are also powerful feminine figures. The first example of this is the obvious fact that they are witches, they have magic even though magic isn’t the kind that shoots fire out of their hands. They can see the future, determine what’s going to happen and form prophecies. Within the very first scene of the Macbeth play its the three witches discussing how they will first meet Macbeth, in line 8 of that first page the second witch starts the sentence of “Upon the heath” and the third witch finishes with, “there to meet with Macbeth”. The three witches quite literally set Macbeth on the course of his life when they told him what was going to happen. They shared the prophecy and he started to follow the actions from it. Whether he would have still done so if they hadn’t told him isn’t the convocation because they did tell him and it literally set him on that course of his actions. The witches and Lady Macbeth set him on the course and keep him on it when he fumbles. he never even noticed either because he was arrogant to even think that he was being led to his actions by an outside force (these women) or because he wanted their guidance and needed someone to tell him what to do so he wouldn’t have to think about it himself. Either way he is put on the path of those actions because of these women who knew what they could gain from it. Despite the fact that the witches set the whole play in motion they were still minimized as characters. They, much like Lady Macbeth, don’t have names and are simply numbered witch one, two, and three, even though their familiars have names while they don’t and the familiars don’t even have as significant roles, or any dialogue at all.
In Canto one there is Una , a symbol of purity and holiness compared to the knight who is explained as a sinner. While there is a story in his redemption and becoming a hero, Una having this position of holiness that can be interpreted as something the knight can’t touch also says something. Her holiness is something more superior to the knight, she who has never befallen the temptation or greed of committing something of a sin like its said he has proves that she is above him. “A louely Ladie rode him faire beside, Vpon a lowly Asse more white then snow, Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide Vnder a vele, that wimpled was full low, And ouer all a blacke stole she did throw, As one that inly mournd: so was she sad, And heauie sat vpon her palfrey slow: Seemed in heart some hidden care she had, And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.” in stanza four of The Faerie Queen canto one, shows metaphorically how holy Una is compared to the other characters.
In yde et olive, yde is smarter than the men that surround her. She hides in plain sight, under a disguise as a man. She escapes her father without having to leave society. The way no one notices can interpret that they didn’t think about who yde is nor make any connections to the father and the daughter he once had. It also shows that she outsmarted a society of men that believed a woman’s only value is in marriage and childbirth.
“ According to Valerie Hotchkiss, “women often put on male clothing to circumvent impediment to social prestige or personal fulfillment,” and further, that “the empowering force of male disguise reveals the limitations in medieval inscriptions of female identity since success— which is often attributed to the ‘manly spirit’ of the heroine— is contingent upon the suppression of femaleness.””
Yde wasn’t just written as a purely fictional character, based on the quote above the author of Yde et Olive understood what women of his society lived through and wrote about their cleverness to combat the system they were struggling with. He wrote about how far women were willing to go to be their own people and have some sort of power in their own lives.
It’s not to say that women are better than men, or smarter, or have more meaning than men and as a person I truly don’t believe that. This evidence simply shows that despite how poorly society viewed women during the renaissance, authors we now know as classics wrote women that had something powerful about them. Sometimes that was their cleverness like Yde, others it was something divine to them like Una. Other times it’s something more human, something that almost puts them on the same level as of the men within their society like Lady Macbeth and the wife in Bisclavret Marie de France.
“The lady heard how he refused. She was not the least amused. She brought it up again, and often She would flatter him and cozen Him to tell her his adventure– Till, hiding nothing, he told her. “My lady, I turn bisclavret; I plunge into that great forest. In thick woods I like it best. I live on what prey I can get.”” (on page two of the PDF).
The wife forgo the norms of a wife’s position of quiet and obedient and decided to take action to answer the curiosities that she had. The wife received warnings of danger from her husband and decided to ignore them and uncovered the secrets that her husband was keeping and decided to take the power from him. Keeping him from his humanity and gaining protection from another man. Her actions proved that she knew how to use all her cards society gave to her and knew that she had more than just that so she used it as a shield for her advantages.
Each of these examples are things that the society of the time period didn’t think women were capable of. The authors wrote women to have these strengths and little spaces of power that gave an understanding that they knew that women had more to them than society’s expectations and showed that through their characters. Yet at the same time they minimized the female characters they wrote too. Lady Macbeth doesn’t have a real name, and she is doubted by most despite her husband following her authority the other men don’t. Yde wasn’t seen as a valuable person and was forced to deceive the world because her father wanted to use her for marriage. Una is seen as a women that needs to be sheltered and protected from the world as if she wouldn’t be strong enough to face it on her own, you can see it especially when she turns away from the dragon while it dies as if she isn’t strong enough to see the end of life occur before her time. Despite the fact that the authors didn’t write female characters to be strong and powerful in the way they wrote male characters they still gave the female characters a quality that the males they write don’t have or fall short too.
Sprockets and Springes 