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Fertility Myth and Female Sovereignty in "The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell" Author(s): John Bugge

Source: The Chaucer Review, Vol. 39, No. 2 (2004), pp. 198-218 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25094283 Accessed: 08/10/2010 15:57
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MYTH AND FEMALE FERTILITY SOVEREIGNTYIN THEWEDDYNGE DAMERAGNELL OF SIRGAWENAND


John Bugge by
Of
To

the moste
haue the is oure

manlyest
souereynte crafte and

is oure desyre,
of suche a syre, gynne.

Suche

(428-30)
The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell (hereafter Weddynge) is one of four main Middle English versions of the Loathly Lady story, the most is the Wife of Bath's Tale.1 Of the four it best reveals familiar of which its literal surface the mythic substratum on which all of them ulti beneath
mately rest. Beginning more than a century ago, critics working in the

as a fertility that foundation folklore identified tradition of comparative in origin, involving but doubtless Neolithic Celtic in provenance myth,
the union of sun-god and earth-goddess to insure the fruitfulness of the

land. Irish versions of the Loathly Lady story provide the earliest instan tiations of this myth in the British Isles, but there ismore to their mean as ing than just natural fecundity. In several tales the goddess is depicted a beautiful in the sexual embrace of an ugly hag transformed into lady the solemn to be king, their marital union enacting the hero destined of the "territorial goddess," who represents, on the political level, joining the Sovereignty of Ireland (the flaitheas na h-Eirenn) with the land's right is not part of sovereignty, however, ful ruler.2 Such a political definition of the English versions; rather, as R. S. Loomis has noted, the Irish con
cept of "?/?? Sovereignty," already several steps removed from the origi

fertility myth, nating into a concept attenuated


tive mastery or dominance

was

stories further Loathly in the literal sense of competi of sovereignty in these


one

Damsel

of

person

by

another.3

In

effect,

the

woman
English

who
stories

was "the Sovereignty"


seeks sovereignty

sought by Ireland's
from a male hero as a

rulers now
personal

in the
conces

THE

Copyright

CHAUCER REVIEW, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2004. State University, ? 2004 The Pennsylvania

University

Park, PA

JOHN BUGGE sion. The


nal battle

199
into a conflict in the eter

story is both
of the sexes.

inverted

and degraded

Most

sovereignty mind here,


however

critical treatments of Weddynge have taken this latter reading of as their starting point. Having a very different definition in I avoid direct engagement with much of this critical work,
useful it has been on such issues as the poem's possible and author

ship,4 its relationship


or its relevance to

to oral literature,5
fifteenth-century

its relationship
concerns

to its analogues,6
legal theory.7

social

While such efforts deserve credit for contextualizing the poem's concerns in a contemporary cultural setting (and admittedly what I plan here has a similar purpose), I would maintain that any reading that regards the case as now closed risks eliding an important dimension of mythological itsmeaning. The poem still proffers a fertility myth, but one in which fer tility is less a collective value from the standpoint of cultural anthropol as understood in contemporary ogy, than an issue in human physiology natural philosophy and medical theory. I suggest that the sovereignty that asks from Gawen, and which he freely grants her, is actually to Ragnell be understood in a sexual sense. Approaching Weddynge from this per the cultural work the myth performs for its contempo spective explains
rary audience and defines more exactly what Dame Ragnell means when

she says "Of the moste manlyest of suche a syre" (428-29).


One essay does focus on the

is oure desyre,
poem's mythic

/ To haue
background

the souereynte
in provoca

In "The Riddle of Sovereignty," Manuel Aguirre retraces the theme and agrees with Loomis that despite the Sovereignty-of-Ireland the English Loathly Lady stories display with the Irish ana continuity of the original myth. logues, the changes they make subvert the meaning While Aguirre finds the "territorial theme" is still residually present in "the figure of the woman is being taken out of the field of land Weddynge, to the (more and relegated literal) domestic symbolism sphere: over land is being displaced in favour of Sovereignty in love."8 Sovereignty This seems precisely right. But I part company with Aguirre in the infer ence he draws about this He argues that the English reinterpretation. writers would have been ignorant of the numinous value the Loathly Lady carried in the Irish tales: they would not have recognized her either as the flaitheas na h-Eirenn (the Sovereignty of Ireland), or as the Mother of
all life, the earth-goddess. For that reason, according to Aguirre, they

tive fashion.

could not fathom why a figure like Ragnell should demand sovereignty in love from the hero, for there was no way she could have been entitled
to and it. In view, therefore, Aguirre's audience alike, "downright her claim would and have seemed, to poet preposterous" "unreasonable."9

I disagree. Aguirre assumes the temper of the times in the fifteenth to the idea that women should century to have been utterly opposed

200
exercise in a sexual sovereignty sense, was in love.

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REVIEW

I suggest regarded

that

female

in fact

as a

necessary

sovereignty, condition

understood for con

ception,
Ragnell's cance

and
claim

that wide
far from

acceptance
transgressive.

of this principle
Let us turn,

would

have made
to examine

therefore,

the traditional

mythic

features
elements

of Weddynge
in a more

that still retain

latent signifi
fer

as constituent

up-to-date

fifteenth-century

tility myth. Briefly put, the poem gives us two formerly hieratic characters, the sun and his sis Somerjoure), god, lord of nature and fertility (Sir Gromer with a pretender the earth-goddess ter-consort, (Dame Ragnell), together to (or usurper of) the sun-god's position (Gawen). (Arthur is also pres to the mythic plot, the way the ent, of course, but he is rather peripheral to the plot of the Grail myth.) Gawen's achieve Fisher King is peripheral status of sun-god and his fruitful union with the ment of the notional on his own correct understanding of the will depend earth-goddess answer to the riddling question the object of female desire. concerning Under Ragnell's tutelage he comes to know the true relationship between fertility and female sovereignty. Sir Gromer and his We begin with Arthur's antagonist, Somerjoure,
peculiar name.10 Names are often among the most conservative elements

of medieval in the transmission story, and we have one here that likely the role in the fertility myth from which this character's adumbrates
Loathly Lady "^summer's summertime" gin as the story derives. Transliterated summer solstice), the name of as or "man of a summer's simply to to the day," or "summer-man," sun-god, the reduced day" "man (or of ori We

embodiment

points nature's

Somerjoure's power.

procreative

in the originat is brother to Ragnell; learn at line 475 that Somerjoure to the earth in he was doubtless her consort, the sun married ing myth a certain benignity, his name might union.11 While argue fructifying welle and is a strong and formidable presence?"Armyd Somerjoure he A knyghte f?lle strong and of greatt myghte" sure; / (51-52)?and the sta intimidates and overmatches Arthur; his behavior implies easily similar in Sir Gawain and the tus of a god in disguise. (We see something avatar of a vegetation the Green Knight?another Green Knight when of the is a denizen in Camelot.)12 Arthur Somerjoure god?confronts a dangerous, liminal space where humans would be uncivilized, forest,
most likely nature. to encounter the numinous. Arthur is viewed as an intruder

here,
lord

and perhaps
of

his killing

of the deer hints

at an offense

against

this

is angry about. Rather, the bone But the deer is not what Somerjoure he has to pick with Arthur has to do specifically with Gawen. He com landes in certayn, / Withe greatt plains to Arthur, "Thou hast gevyn my is the usurper of the sun-god's vnto Sir Gawen" (58-59). Gawen wrong

JOHN BUGGE

201

rightful territorial holdings, a threat to the elemental union between sun and land sanctified in myth. When Arthur asks his name, Somer Joure tells it, adding that he does so "withe ryghte" (63), a phrase that may be
more than a formulaic tag, implying Somer Joure feels his name prop

erly belongs
He has ample acknowledged

to him alone; he seems angry over a case of stolen


reason in myth for concern, avatar of of course, the as Gawain To has Loomis, as an sun-god.

identity.
been exam

long for

of Gawain with the Irish solar hero Cuchulinn is a ple, the equivalence of scholarship.13 Such a mythological of "commonplace" understanding his krasis, while now entirely out of fashion, needs to be borne in mind.
Specifically, we must consider Gawen's assumption of the sun-god's role

to be presumptive at this point. While a paragon and premature of is "gentylle Gawen knyghte" and "Gawen the good" (142) chivalry?he . . . the flowre" (373)?Gawen does not yet (192), and "Of alle knyghtes
deserve the status of sun-god. He is not yet a proper consort to the earth

goddess
poem's

because
resident

he has not yet been


nature-god Somer

initiated
is privy

into the knowledge


to, and which

the
is con

Joure

tained wemen answer

in the latter's riddling question posed to Arthur about "whate love best" (91). In the logic of this new fertility myth, the correct to the riddle insures fecundity; the wrong answer results in death (degree zero in the calculus of fertility). We need to see how. Somer Joure quite properly "owns" the riddle and understands why to women is so important (and to the race). But he is not sovereignty the only one who knows; Ragnell does too, as of course she would in
mythic role as the earth-goddess and sister-consort of the sun-god.

her

Their kinship and shared knowledge of the correct answer to the rid dle suggest we look closer at Ragnell and the implications she brings for the theme of fertility through sovereignty. As a descendant of the
earth goddess, she changes to beauteous young maiden as her proto

as Loomis writes, type does in Irish legend, which, "provides several stories of the transformation of a hideous hag which can be recognized as charming of the sere fields and forests bursting into allegories
beauty turning at the kiss spring.14 and warm In a embrace comparative of the young Loomis sun"?of goes on winter to asso into strain,

to by Strabo who were at Samothrace, one of whose Hecate, worshiped especially "peculiari ties" was "her power of taking on hideous forms." But she could also shift her shape in the opposite direction, taking on the form of referred
Demeter, "the fair goddess of fruits."15 While Ragnell's metamorpho

ciate Ragnell

even with

the goddesses

sis once must have had as a hag adds another, When we first encounter
a gross and fearsome

seasonal the description of her implications, different to her meaning. dimension quite she displays her, in lines 227 and following,

eroticism.

202

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REVIEW

about her is outsized: her First, she is hyperbolically large. Everything "mowithe wyde"; her "bleryd eyen gretter then a balle"; her fantastically long teeth (like tusks) that hang "ouere her lyppes"; her cheeks as wide
"as wemens hyppes"; her "nek long and therto greatt"; her "sholders . . .

a yard brode"; and her "Hangyng pappys to be an hors lode"?each large to service a platoon she is shaped "lyke a Further, (232-41). enough of children. This barelle" (242), of a size fit for the easy bearing seems almost a cruel parody of a Neolithic Venus Rabelaisian catalogue a figure mas a reductio ad absurdum of the earth Mother, of Willendorf, because of her sheer size and ugli sively parturitive. Yet, paradoxically, and even terrifying sexual partner, not ness, she would be a formidable In her present form, only not sexually attractive but positively repellent. coarse and animalistic side of female fertility. the that is, she represents
Note, however, that her repulsiveness does not consort either with the

"lute she bare vpon her bak" (237), or with the gay finery with which her horse is outfitted (246-51 ).16The lute connotes harmony, courtly refine
ment, the pleasures of young love, while the "gold" and "many a precious

a hint of the other, pre stone" that bedeck her palfrey also provide a similar opposition between "the raw bewitchment (Compare Ragnell. and the cooked" in the figure of the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.17) capacity, and important than her size, her childbearing Perhaps more
her ugliness, are the associations with gross animality, especially with pig

sexuality. She has teeth like the tusks gishness, that suggest an overheated to a sow (597), and she she is compared of a wild boar (235, 548-51), She is a woman eats like a pig?as much as six people (605; cf. 610-19). of gross and bestial appetite, not just gustatory but also (by implication) sexual, since there is ample evidence linking the boar or pig in the popu sexual appetite.18 with unbridled lar imagination especially appetite, connects boars and sows to the evidence More plentiful importantly, traces of which survived in Europe at ancient cult of the earth-goddess,
least until the seventeenth century.19

Ragnell that even when she as an owl, owls


the owl

also compares herself to an owl, first when she says to Arthur (310), and owls, noted for their ugliness, get to choose a mate a few lines later that even though men may refer to her adds a lady (316-17). The popular estimate of she is nevertheless The medieval is also interesting. bestiary reports that in Leviticus
is counted among "the unclean creatures": if others catch the owl

in flagrante
the notion carnal that

delicto they will treat him


deeds Ragnell of the sinner."20 is indeed sexually

roughly,
Other avid.

"because
our

the righteous
text

hate

of parts Arthur

assures

the support for exam her,

if she reveals what women most desire, ple, that Gawen will marry her that "your desyre nowe shalle ye haue, / Bo the in bowre and in adding

JOHN

BUGGE

203

bed" (400-1 ). The pleonastic "bedroom and bed" argues that Arthur real izes the sexual hunger that drives the hag to make this bargain. Later,
after shalle Ragnell's she haue, transformation, / Thereafter Gawen nede she assures neuere the more court craue that " "My loue (790-91).

She had indeed cravedhis love, but now Gawen declares satisfy her needs. All in all, it is hard to miss Ragnell's
erotic Her drive. similarity to an owl evokes another set of meanings

himself

ready to overwhelming
as well. In the

is also associated with bestiary the owl (the screech owl, to be precise) death, given its habit of "hovering around graves by day and night"; Ovid is invoked as well, for in the Metamorphoses (V 550) the owl is "a loath some bird, which heralds impending disaster, a harbinger of woe for mor
tals."21 For Chaucer she is "proph?te . . .of wo and of myschaunce" (LGW

True to her 2254), the bird "that of deth the bode bryngeth" (PF 343) ,22 seems alarming and animal typing, Ragnell in the extreme. threatening She is "fowlle and horyble" (547), has fingernails (talons?) three inches long (607), and inspires curses: "Alle men then that euere her sawe, / Bad the deville her bonys gnawe" (616-17). The morning after the mar before he knows of her transformation, Arthur expresses riage ceremony, a fear that "the fende" (i.e., Ragnell) might have slain Gawen in the mar riage bed (724-26). These and other details indicate that the hag presages
disaster and death.

If that were not enough, Ragnell is consistently associated with old age as well. Although she is not in fact advanced in years, her physical char
acteristics teeth are paint yellowed, a picture her of eyes an aged, decrepit are and bleary, crone: she is her long nose in runs, the her tooth

she has "grey herys" around her mouth (231-33, 235); moreover, (553)? the beginnings of a beard. She poignantly admits to Arthur that women want "To be holden nott old, butt fresshe and yong" (415), but gets no
such treatment from her brother, who calls her an "old scott [horse]"

looks over the hill, her best days behind her. (476). Ragnell definitely that it Now, a potential bridegroom's "problem" with elde is presumably
makes a woman less physically desirable, a deterrent to male desire. Such,

of the Loathly Lady?she indeed, interpretation from the perspective of a male suitor. But in the deep-lying
mythic register, the more fundamental reason why her age

is the usual

is loathsome and anterior


is a problem

is that itmakes her infertile. The descriptio of Ragnell signals a close asso ciation with postmenopausal which is to say with non-life?or infertility, with death. And not only is she a baleful, wintry figure to her brother's "summer's day," she does seem to threaten both Gawen and the king with aloud whether mortality. We have already noted how Arthur wonders Gawen has survived the first night of his honeymoon: "lett vs go and Yf Sir Gawen be on lyve" (722-23). Earlier Gawen himself had asaye, /

204

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REVIEW

put the idea into Arthur's head that Ragnell was fiendish: he protests he would wed her many times over for Arthur's sake, "Thowghe she were a she were as foulle as Belsabub" fend, / Thowghe (344-45). The appar ent prospect of death she portends matches her mythic role as fertility of young goddess manquee. As the loathly hag, she is the very opposite an uncanny death figure, Hecate-like, allied and fertile and desirable, with demonology. In the logic of this poem's new fertility myth, though, the ugly Ragnell's to the punishment to be status as a death figure is exactly proportionate on the king should he fail to answer Somerjoure's riddling imposed life hangs in the For the first 472 lines of the poem, Arthur's question. love best" (91). balance so long as he remains ignorant of "whate wemen The theme of the king's possible death (in its various iterations?saving his life, being killed, losing his life, etc.) comes up incessantly, 39 times lines. The concept of the dead king is, of course, rife with in as many of this poem as a disguised for the meaning fertility myth, implications to the land, when the king dies, the land dies for if the king ismarried
too, or grows sterile and infertile.23 Moreover, it is crucial to notice the

kind of death Arthur would suffer: he would be decapitated. Somerjoure tells Arthur, "Thyne hed thou shalt lose for thy travaylle" (98). His sister
consort Ragnell agrees. Arrange be remiss my marriage Freud's to Gawen, she says, "Or

elles thou shalt lose thy hed"


circumstances, it would

(269; she says it again


to ignore

in 289). Under
fundamental

these
insight

therefore also inmyth, decapi that in dream symbolism, and presumably tation symbolizes castration.24 Thus, following the logic of myth, ifArthur cas he will be symbolically fails to learn that women want sovereignty, and "f?lle tame" (477); he will lose his own virile made trated, impotent
and potency, to know Not impotent, cause a loss of terms in fertility mythic women want rendered is to be what to the land as well. infertile, powerless,

castrate.

In this, of course, as suggested above, we hear distinct echoes of the condition threatened Grail myth. Arthur's (as symbolized by decapita the Fisher that incapacitates the sexual wound resembles tion) closely lies beneath Both the Grail myth and the fertility myth which King.25 or saving the king, and thus the land, through Weddynge involve healing if the a speech act: in the Grail myth the maimed king can be healed threatened is asked of him; here the king is symbolically right question if he fails to respond correctiy to a question whose with sexual mutilation to female fertility. answer is intimately connected is not the only character who faces Somerjoure's But Arthur riddling
question of what women most desire. Gawen, too, encounters it implic

itly when

he faces Ragnell's

riddling

question,

JOHN BUGGE Wheder ye wolle haue me fayre on nyghtes, And as foulle on days to alle men sigh tes,
Or els to have me fayre on days,

205

And

on nyghtes

on the fowlyst wife.

(659-62)
Actually,
unreconstructed

the question
male

is both
From

a parody
Gawen's

of, and
still

thus a challenge
point

to,
of

desire.

unregenerate

fair and foul. "Fair" is short view, the simple binary choice is between hand for desirable sex object, passive recipient of male lust, conventional object of the appropriative male gaze, and cause of his "worship" in other
men's of an eyes. "Foul," on the other drive, hand, means to sexual the male But aggressor, ego, the and choice animal-like appearance libidinous is ruinous threat subject consort is not

whose

to a man's

reputation.

that simple: Ragnell says "fair by day, foul by night, or vice versa," a dou ble dichotomy. Fair by day, Ragnell would be the perfect trophy wife,
while fair by night she would serve as an ever-tantalizing morsel. But as

monstrous Gawen himself puts it, were she fair only at night?and while the sun shines?it would "gr?ve my hartt ryghte sore, / And my worshypp shold I lese" (671-72). By the same token, were she fair only during the at night, "Then on nyghtes I shold haue a symple day and repulsive
repayre" (674). Either choice involves an unacceptable negative outcome.

in the criticism it has never been noted And, although either choice would also be only about Gawen, reflecting
polarities But how of do the male ego's the masculinist construction terms of desire. quandary female of Gawen's

on Weddynge, only the stark


relate to fer

tility? In simple
"foul" symbolizes so

terms,

they constitute
and

an impediment and receptacle


these as

to it. So long as
lust," while "fair"

"dangerous continues

aggressive

stands for "appealingly


and long must as a false as Gawen

submissive

object
to see

of male

desire,"
and even

incompatible and "fair learn and to foul":

dichotomous,
Gawen foul"

there is no hope
transcend dichotomy. such He

of a resolution
either/or must thinking envision

to his predicament.
see

Rather,
"fair he must or

accept the "foul," the blatant, unruly fact of female desire, as coequal to the "fair" and acquiesce in the eternal ambivalence of the two in one. He to do this, of course, when he surrenders his right, but also manages to choose one of the options Ragnell had sheds his obligation, proposed: "Lose me when ye lyst, for I am bond; / I putt the choyse in you" His answer reveals a kind of existential of what (680-81). appreciation
Ragnell most wants, for as soon as the words are out of his mouth,

Ragnell responds with thanks and a blessing upon Gawen, am I worshyppyd" (687), for "thou . . . / Has gevyn me

declaring "now the soueryente

206
serteyn" (700-1). Note

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REVIEW

that

"worship"

(literally

"worth-ship,"

a sense

of

worth)

and "sovereignty" are causally linked in Ragnell's mind. Gawen's the choice to her in love-matters gives her worth, conceding standing, and validity as a desiring subject. to let her desire is initially transformed when Gawen decides Ragnell rule in the matter of the payment of the marriage debt?"I wolle do more in and turns to her?but / Then for to kysse," he blurts out (638-39), the last analysis
that causes

it is his free, calm, and judicious


permanent transformation

yielding
from a

of sovereignty
death-figure to

Ragnell's

a goddess of springtime fertility: and nyghte, / And euere whyle


Her transformation results not

"Thou shalle haue me fayre bothe day I lyve as fayre and bryghte" (688-89).
from necromancy or magic (no fairy

godmother
from an

figure
action by own

or dea ex machina
her male partner.

enters
The

to effect
modern

the change),
fertility narrative

but

implicit
on

here

thus seems
ability

to stipulate
to transform

that a positive
himself,

outcome
his

depends
instinc

the male's

to overcome

tive anxiety about the dark threat of female desire in which he can acknowledge level of consciousness
its necessity. so we And come in eros, to the true meaning as of

and to achieve a new both its validity and


in love: of the it means poem's

sovereignty women to be most

sexual

sovereignty,

sovereignty a close reading men partners,

central passage
good-looking, understand

verifies.

In the prelude
notes that diverse

to her disclosure
"Summe new

to Arthur
sayn" women

of what
want in bed,

desire,

Ragnell to have and

pleasure a-noder

and to be wedded
not

often
(413).

(408-12);
She adds

but men
that women

who believe
"desyre

these things do
maner

category of satisfaction entirely, "To be holden nott thing," a different In other words, women desire to old, butt fresshe and yong" (414-15). be regarded as young and in the bloom of life, the term fresshe signifying
youthful, unfortunately, energetic, a active line seems (and not faded, in the worn, text, or line exhausted). *415a, one Here, that missing

should have ended with a rhyme on crave in line 418. Lacking that short of six (414 ff.), we cannot know third line of this tail-rhyme grouping was placing on the idea that women want to what interpretation Ragnell
be regarded seems as "fresshe and yong," but the sentiment certainly men points can to

her longed-for
lines

transformation
however,

into a fertility figure. The next


and there Ragnell admits that

set of three
get

intact,

what

they want from women with various strategies of sexual playfulness: "Withe flatryng and glosyng and quaynt gyn / So ye men may vs wemen euere wyn, / Of whate ye wolle crave" (416-18). The next line says, how
ever, that these blandishments do not come close to a true statement of

what women want: Ye goo f?lle nyse, Iwolle nott lye" (419). Still, the saucy indecency for the sake of a laugh; pun on quaynt is not just an incidental

JOHN BUGGE it also

207

serves as a keynote to the sense of the following lines in which the most authentic answer to Somer Joure's rid Ragnell finally provides dling question: Butt there is one thyng is alle oure fantasye, And that nowe shalle ye knowe:
We To desyren haue the of men souereynte, aboue alle withoute maner thyng, lesyng,

Of alle, bothe
For where we

hyghe
haue

and lowe.
souereynte alle is ourys,

Thoughe
And euere

a knyghte
the mas

be neuere
try wynne;

so ferys,

Of
To

the moste
haue the is oure

manlyest
souereynte crafte and

is oure desyre,
of suche a syre, gynne.

Suche

(420-30)
There none of is no mention the entrepreneurial of goods, money, interest in or property here. control Ragnell over shows a hus

acquiring

band's wealth that we might tend to read into the concept in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. The sovereignty
describes, stood not women est rank? and in material line 425?"For are which or later economic where we she receives terms. haue intent sin here But from even Gawen, granting alle of men is not

of sovereignty here Ragnell


to be under does that the of high that much,

simply power-mad, not Does Ragnell

souereynte on control against battle

is

ourys"?say even of

medieval

notions

proper

hierarchy
been archal or to read,

in marriage?
as a zero-sum But them keep the so

This
game to read

is how
in the

the concept
of the that

of sovereignty
sexes, a threat want shall not women We

has often
to patri to be men that

control. supplant if we

is to assume and on prerogatives.

in power focus

make

mistake

sovereignty

in love.

The fertility theme in this poem poses the elemental question: in the marital will, male or female's, must dominate relationship of the species is to be maintained? The answer propagation
female's. Women want sovereignty of men who are ferys, "fierce,"

whose if the is, the


and who

moste It is just such men?"the try to win mastry over them (426-27). the most sexually assertive? (428; cp. 470), the most male, manlyest"
whom women want sovereignty from. Such puissant men are the most

capable
gain

of siringa
control

child:
from

to gain
such a man

"souereynte
(and not

o/suche
necessarily,

a syre," that is, to


or even appar

sexual

have probably been misreading this preposition all ently, italics (429-30; says, "Suche is oure crafte and gynne" along), Ragnell this last utterance added). Far from devious or malevolent, simply admits

over him?we

208
that women do want their

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will

to be

sovereign

in that most

intimate

physi

cal relationship
sexual orgasm male's

in which

the male
of the even

is doing

his utmost

to satisfy his own


want the the focus female of the (420),

in the view urges: to rival the male's, concern. This,

Ragnell

women author, poem's to and be predominate is every woman's admits,

"fantasye"

and a good case can be made that this is also the message of both Gower's Tale ofFlorent26 and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale.27 The proposition that a woman's sexual pleasure should occupy the pre eminent position in coitus is the true answer to the riddling question of what women most desire, for it is only when the female comes to orgasm
that pregnancy can result. This simple the cause-and-effect relationship

derives
in

from a physiological
medical

model
theory,

that enjoyed
so-called

widespread
"two-seed"

currency
theory of

fifteenth-century

conception.28

Throughout
conception, sperm."29 According and his medieval

the Middle
depending to scholastic the

Ages

there were
one

two opposed
the propounded the male

views on animal
of by "female Aristotle real

on whether "one-seed"

credited theory, only

existence

commentators,

produces a substance is

seed or sperma from his blood,


ception. formed passive. participate sovereignty The from She woman's menstrual is merely for sex a "seed" blood. receptacle

and only the male


is not properly for the man's She female seed Moreover,

seed is required
at all, but role and she no

for con

the woman's seed, exercises is only

entirely not need or to the

actively in the

conception act.30 In

to occur. this view, the

control

matter

male's
Aristotle's

form; her contribution


medieval commentators

therefore
do

cannot
not overtly

itself be formative. While


deny the existence of

in conception. female sperm, they downplay its importance Typical is in his De formatione corporis humani in utero, who says (in Giles of Rome what became a popular analogy) that male sperm behaves like rennet in of the Aristotelian milk. In his defense position, Giles "supplied argu ments in the woman's of clearing the male of all responsibility capable for pleasure," while suggesting that the female could "become preg quest nant without any pleasure?practically orgasm, without experiencing it."31 without knowing The older and far more widely accepted "two-seed" theory takes a very believed that the different view. A number of pre-Socratic philosophers who is but itwas Hippocrates female plays an active role in conception, seminal fluids credited with first asserting that both spouses contributed and that without doubt the embryo comes from the union of two seeds.32 in the second century C.E. by The theory was more fully elaborated to occur itwas necessary that who stipulated that for conception Galen,
the woman be "active" that and also terms, this meant the woman produce must her experience own "seed." what In practical the male expe

JOHN BUGGE riences


writes,

209

in the emission
Galen's

of his seed?that
of medical

is, orgasm.33 As Angus McLaren


theories was to dominate west

"compilation

ern thought for the next fifteen hundred years."34 His views were adopted in the twelfth century, for example, by Avicenna, who cites Galen in his of how the membrane that will surround the fetus is formed discussion "like a protective coating left behind by the sperm of the female when it
flows towards the place where the male's sperm also flows" and "mixes

with
Galenic

it during
views

Although of female
figure, fessor for

intercourse."35 they knew of the conflict


on conception, most Western

between
scholars

the Aristotelian
accepted the

and
notion

sperm

they had
at

taken from Arab medical


of Saliceto, Summa a whose

writers.36 One

such

example, of medicine

was William Bologna,

late-thirteenth-century conservationis

pro et curationis

the organs of the body, especially the genitals, and fea "On those things which aid conception," in the course of which there is an elaborate discussion of female orgasm and the means it. One of William's major sources was Avicenna's of achieving Canon of
Medicine, which discusses various means of increasing of the female's plea

(1285) deals with tures a disquisition

sure in coition,
. . . she will not

for if "the woman


bear a son."37 The

fails to enjoy herself


two-seed theory from the

and emit her seed,


conception of and the

ideas that surrounded


example, in France, the

it also found
Secreta

their way into popular


last quarter

literature.
the

For
thir

mulierum,

teenth century and probably composed by a student of Albertus Magnus, was known there more widely in translation as Secr?s des dames. Even while
taking a strong masculinist view of sexual relations, the treatise admits

that "it is the man who


riences cannot full take satisfaction place of without

is responsible
in heterosexual it."38 In

for ensuring
intercourse, too, England,

that the woman


since in John

expe

conception trans Trevisa's

lation of Bartholomaeus
has the status common

Anglicus's
knowledge:

encyclopedia,

the Galenic

thesis still

The mater of the childe ismater seminalis, that is ischad by worch and cometh of alle the parties of the fadir and ing of generacioun, modir. First this mater is isched in the place of conceyvynge abrood, that is by the drawinge of vertue of kynde igadred toge dres in celles of the modir, and ismedled togedre by worchinge of kinde hete. For but digest blood of the fadir and of the modir were imedled there mygte be no creacioun nothir togedre schapinge of childe.39 A fourteenth-century Middle treatise on "The Nature of English Women" describes the "stones" or female testicles "be J)e (ovaries) wheche ben put spermat ismynystered by. Pe stonys sothly of wommen on both partees of ?>ematryce and J)o be mor round and smaller J)an

210
menys function stones ben."

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As Monica respect in the

Green same

notes, way

these as men's,

"were that

understood is, to produce

to a

in every

seminal
as James

fluid

ejaculated
writes,

into the womb

during

orgasm."40 Furthermore,

Brundage

Female orgasm seemed critical not only to medical writers but also to theologians who relied on their expertise in such matters, since "emitted her seed" could that only when a woman believed they
occur. conception intercourse dered Failure of either nonprocreative partner and to achieve thus presented ren orgasm a moral

problem, yielding

if the woman particularly to sexual pleasure.41

deliberately

refrained

from

In summary, our close reading of Weddynge for its emphasis on female of medieval medical the sexual desire, combined with an appreciation on how conception it highly likely that female sover occurs, makes ory as sovereignty in love, and that eignty should be defined quite narrowly
furthermore cations of this love means conclusion 'sexual for love, a better eros, coition.' What of are this the poem understanding impli and

in the ideas of fifteenth-century England? First, alone among the four English versions of the Loathly Damsel story, Weddynge ends with a birth, the fruit of coition. Ifwe take Ragnell's its place
transformation to fair-and-beautiful as equivalent to a change from post

to youthful fecundity, her becoming pregnant and giving birth menopause to Gawen's son Gyngolyn (799) makes perfect sense. Her shapeshifting, a higher purpose than simply rewarding Gawen with in other words, has
superior out such sex for laudable faithfulness of the a transformation vows. to his marriage Gawen's which bride, Moreover, ceding of with sover

eignty brings
and equally infertile, as

about, his marriage


an inverted as fabliau

to Ragnell
plot,

would

have remained
May-December to in May

sterile
union

a reverse marriage

malapropos

Januarie's

Chaucer's

Merchant's Tale, where, as we know, the faulty puissance of the bridegroom and the rank overheated fertility of the bride figure importantiy through the natural impropri out. The fabliau tradition implicitly acknowledges it is no surprise that a romance based on a fertility of such unions; ety to establish the appositeness of a mar myth should be equally concerned two lovers in the bloom of youth.42 between riage blissful is shown to make marriage Second, female sexual sovereignty the proper choice, Ragnell for both partners. Once Gawen has made assures him that "Of alle erthly knyghtes blyssyd mott thou be," for "Thou shalle haue me fayre bothe day and nyghte, / And euere whyle I lyve as to (686, 688-89). Not only does a man have nothing fayre and bryghte" sexual control fear by giving a woman (701-2); doing so in fact insures in fact, his "joye oute of mynde" (706), as "Withe joye and myrthe,"

JOHN BUGGE Gawen


the

211
In this, the poet
of kynde" (707).

and Ragnell
acts

"wakyd tylle daye"


to "reason and

(715).
cours

declares,
For the

couple

according

male

to grant sexual for himself pleasure


Third, the male's

to the female and thereby gain untold sovereignty to nature's is thus to adhere rational plan for
grant of sexual sovereignty is an acknowledgment of

humankind.

to choose for him, after Gawen tells Ragnell female worth. Immediately she has been granted "worth she declares "now am Iworshyppyd" (687); the validity and even ship" in his eyes because of his having acknowledged of her desire. From having been rather narcissistically the preeminence if Ragnell were to be "fayre concerned about losing his own reputation on nyghtes and no more" when he (670), Gawen makes a breakthrough the status, at the least, of a coequal desiring grants Ragnell subject. Of
course, honor we female need to remember desire: given the why men might have been inclined so view to of widespread were acceptance of Galen's

the process
continuation sexual wants

of conception,
of in the the patriarchal bedroom.

a husband
line,

could
he

not hope
not

for an heir,
to his

the

to accede

wife's

Finally,
insures

and paradoxically,
harmony and

granting
mutual

sexual
respect.

sovereignty
Ragnell

to the female
Gawen

marital

promises

she will be "obaysaunt" to him "And neuere withe [him] to debate" (784, but an assurance that the two 786). This is not a pledge of subservience,
will live in concord. Given sexual sovereignty, Ragnell at once returns the

the spousal sovereignty due him according favor by giving her husband to the orthodox Pauline pronouncement that the husband shall be head of the wife. Still, it is clear enough from the text that the happy couple will have achieved something like parity between the sheets, which is pre what canon law from the twelfth century onward stipulated: men cisely and women have equal sexual rights in marriage, based in part on Paul, I Corinthinans 7.3, the marriage debt passage. As Brundage writes, "The marital debt, then, legitimized sexual rights within marriage and at the same time secured for married women a sharply limited area of equality with their husbands."43 In addition, "the principle of equal sexual rights tenet of matrimonial within marriage" was "a fundamental law"; its impor tance lay in that it "implicitly conceded not only that it was natural for women to have sexual desires, just as men did, but also that their right
to these satisfy faction of men's desires sexual within marriage was just as important as the satis urges."44

an heir, the essential has produced Ragnell mythic plot of is complete and comes to an end at line 804, while the text con Weddynge tinues on in fits and starts for fifty-one more lines, adding adventitious Once
themes, tiresome recapitulations, and attempts to tie up loose ends. For

theme of the hero unmanned example, we get the absurdly inconsistent love ("As a coward he lay by her bo the day and nyghte, / Neuere wold by

212
he haunt
patriarchal

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justyng
reaction

aryghte"
against

[808-9]),
giving

an oddly perfunctory
women sovereignty.

undertow
We hear

of
of

we learn request that Arthur pardon her brother Somerjoure; Ragnell's of her early death and of Gawen's undying grief despite his many subse from quent marriages; and we witness the poet's final plea for deliverance "be-sett withe gaylours many" But all this supererogatory (844). prison, matter should not distract us from the importance of the modern fertil within this rendition of the Loathly Lady story, for it con itymyth lodged
tains an idea of great consequence for our understanding of late

medieval English culture. As our final take stock of the cultural work the myth
to perform.

task, therefore, we should try to in this new guise seems intended the validity of female
Arthur understand, and Gawen, valorize,

Reduced
desire.45 test Its of whether

to its essence,
plot puts they two are

the poem

is about
men,

sexual
to the and

representative to able acknowledge,

Gawen's case?satisfy female desire within the confines of mar finally?in to a male audience, for it ismen who must riage. The poem is directed and learn what pass beyond the confines of their own limited experience the other half of the race presumably wants. Weddynge certainly exhibits
collective male anxiety about a hero's acquiescing to female desire, but

it also "proves" through


not only tinuance groundless of the race. but,

its storybook
more older

happy

ending
even narrowly

that such anxiety


to the con patriarchal context,

is

In an

important, and more

detrimental

to acknowledge female desire might have risked the charge of effemi but in the fifteenth nacy, century to risk not knowing what women want
is, in starkest terms, to go childless to It is a commonplace that medieval the grave. romance involves the construction

of male
involvement

identity by means
in an erotic

of the individuation
relationship?love

the hero achieves


as a path to inner

through
discovery.

in the troubadour Colin Morris sees this introspective process beginning the whole of the twelfth century's "persis and continuing through lyric tent attraction for the legend of Narcissus and the symbol of the mirror, 'the birth of self-consciousness which were used to describe through
love.'"46 In the thirteenth century, as well, a similar emphasis on "becom

ing male"
female love

continues
object first

in both
serves

parts of the Roman


only as as a mirror to

de la Rose, where
the hero's own narcis

the de
has

sistic preoccupation
Meun's continuation,

with

the self and


a means

its desires,
to what

and

then,

in Jean
Minnis

merely

Alastair

called the hero's "masculation." Minnis writes that the obscene ending of masculinity" of the poem focuses exclusively on "the performance by "The Amant, while the female figure remains "shadowy and unrealized": that of the rite de passage is not hers but her male lover's, and vicariously
text's male readers." As masculinity is seen to realize itself in coitus, "it is

male

strength which

is the chosen

subject of this ending."47

JOHN BUGGE

213

in the male appears attitude toward becoming A rather different romances of Chr?tien de Troyes, each a "fiction of individuation" wherein the knight-errant heroes have what Donald Maddox has called "specular
encounters," "always occur often at a the through intersection major agency of of a female with character, a crucial which new per selfhood

spective on its own identity" and "are thus instrumental


protagonist's self-perception."48

inmodifying

the

occurs in Weddynge is similar to the specular encounter Maddox a kind of awakening to the insuf describes, as the hero Gawen undergoes of his own view of the role of sexuality inmarried love. The result ficiency What
represents a much-advanced stage of maturation in the quest for male

identity. It is important
heroes of the Round

finally
Table,

to note
for

that heroes

of earlier
for the most

romance?the
part not mar

example?are The trend hero

ried men;
are those appraisal

their concerns
of on young the part of

(even those of Chretien's


toward might be the romance

Erec,
a more seen

an exception)
mature as reaching self a

adolescents.

is still concerned with male identity, but high point in Weddynge, which no longer in the same self-referential tradition it is way. In the English to acknowledge the huge difference between the Gawain of important Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?young, the fourteenth-century head
strong, impetuous, and a trifle conceited?and this later Gawen, who, as

a happily married man. the title of the poem reminds us, becomes an ear and husbands have different priorities. While Knight-bachelors to using eros as a reflector in which lier Gawain might have been devoted
to view confident tity his own now considerable of his and heir, own would worth, identity make the mature and concerned it his business Gawen to more of Weddynge, that iden reproduce an answer to pose to

in a son

Freud's decision

famous question, to offer Ragnell

and specifically the answer in love. sovereignty

implied

in his wise

Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia

(engjmb@emory. edu)

are Gower's two versions 1. The other I of the Confessio Tale of Florent from Book and a sixteenth-century ballad "The Marriage I use the text of of Sir Gawaine." in Sources and Analogues Weddynge printed of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine shares many 242-64. features with (New York, 1958), Dempster Weddynge and Gower's Chaucer's but almost none with the late, crude, and fragmentary romances, discussion of the differences ballad. For a detailed see the four versions, popular among and the Loathly and Irish," Leeds John K. Bollard, "Sovereignty Lady in English, Welsh, Studies inEnglish 17 (1986): 41-59. of similarities 2. In a discussion between Chaucer's tale and Middle-Irish narratives, Amantis Howard Maynadier {Academy 41 [1892]: cites 399, 425); the ground-breaking work see Howard Maynadier, of Whitley Stokes and Alfred Nutt The Wife of Bath's Tale: Its Sources and

214

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see Proinsias MacCana, (London, 1901), 25-42. On the "territorial Analogues goddess," of King and Goddess in Irish Literature," ?tudes Celtiques 7 (1955): "Aspects of the Theme 8 (1958): 59-65. In Irish versions the basal fertility myth of sun-god and earth-god 76-114, dess is already as in which the goddess is defined troped, superseded by political allegory the sovereignty. Associated first with the seasonal she fertility of the well-ruled kingdom, comes to stand, in her changeableness, for the king's experience of sovereignty, eventually sometimes sometimes abhorrent. pleasing, 3. R. S. Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (New York, 1927); see especially treatment For a comparative of the theme 296-301. 29, "The Hag Transformed," chapter see Ananda of the Loathly in Indian myth, K. Coomaraswamy, "On the Lady goddess (1945): 391-404. Loathly Bride," Speculum20 4. P. J. C. Field, "Malory and The Wedding of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell," Archiv f?r das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 219 (1982): 374-81. 5. Carl Lindahl, "The Oral Undertones of Late Medieval in Oral Tradition Romance," in the Middle Ages, ed. W. F. H. Nicolaisen N.Y., 1995), 59-75. (Binghamton, 6. Marc Glasser, "'He Nedes Moste Hire Wedde': The Forced Marriage in the Wife of Bath's Tale and Its Middle 85 (1984): English Analogues," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 239-41. 7. Lindahl, "Oral Undertones," "Aristocratic Veneer and the 59-75; Colleen Donnelly, in The Weddynge Substance of Verbal Bonds of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell and Gamely n," Studies in Philology 94 (1997): 321-43; "A and Sheryl L. Forste-Grupp, Woman Circumvents in The Weddynge the Laws of Primogeniture Studies in of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell" 105-22. Philology 99 (2002): 8. Manuel "The Riddle of Sovereignty," Modern Language Review 88 (1993): Aguirre, at 279 (italics added). 273-82, 9. Aguirre, Celtic Myth, 300. "Riddle," 280; cp. Loomis, 10. Field notes that the name is also found in Malory's Morte Darthur. In passing he cites names: the roughly from the Mabinogion? Welsh equivalent King of Annfawn Hafgan + can 'white', is probably "'summer' from a six 'bright'"?and Hafgan Golwg Hafddydd, treatment of the Tristan 'aspect of summer's teenth-century story?"literally day': golwg (375n7). 'aspect', haf+dydd" 'appearance'; 11. Loomis, also carry the sense Celtic Myth, 301; Aguirre, "Riddle," 279. Gromer might as the first to use the word in this sense, the OED cites Shakespeare of 'bridegroom,' though in Othello (1604). in another the Green Knight Somer Joure resembles 12. See Aguirre, "Riddle," 280-81. Arthur with death by decapitation. respect: he too challenges important as a solar hero, see 17, 47; on 13. Loomis, Celtic Myth, 15, and cp. 62-64; on Cuchulinn as a solar god, see 49-50; on Irish heliola Curoi of the Green Knight) (a Celtic prototype try, see 39-51. 14. Loomis, Celtic Myth, 296; cp. 296-301. 15. Loomis, Celtic Myth, 288, 296. l?teas 'a hump like the body of a lute' (meaning 16. The MED defines the noun lb), but its only citation is this line from Weddynge. and the Gold: The Major Theme "The Green 17. William Goldhurst, the Green Knight," College English 20 (1958): 61-65. Cp. W. Bryant Bachman, Texas Studies and the Gold Once More," and the Green Knight. The Green of Gawain and

Jr., "Sir Gawain in Literature and

(1981): 495-516. Language23 with "boundless the boar is associated lust" and with 18. See Beryl Rowland, where with and presages lust," as in TC V, 1240-41 misfortune, "usually associated "lechery" Faces: A Guide toAnimal Symbolism [Knoxville, Tenn., 1973], 38-43). (Animals with Human in 1162, one of the early signs in Southwark "When the stews were licensed Rowland notes, was a boar's head" of the pig" in which "social semiotics (38). For a Bakhtinian "aspects of "are coded and gross appetite like female the human world" through lechery, demonism, see Peter Stallybrass The and Allon White, with the pigs' world," homologies perceived with Pigs," Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), "Thinking especially 44-59. "rid statuette the Celtic goddess Danu cites a bronze 19. Joseph Campbell showing ... at an earlier became the a wild boar, the goddess of whom time itself a divinity ing

JOHN BUGGE

215

form" 1959], 432). [New York, {The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology anthropomorphic is the sow. Its fast writes: Goddess "The sacred animal of the Pregnant Marija Gimbutas of seed and field fertility, and its condi rounded allegorical body was probably growing, as the crops. The association of the tion must have been regarded influencing magically sow with the Goddess can be observed in figurines of the Pregnant Goddess marked with ... A black was offered to the Lithuanian and wearing suckling pig masks. pig lozenges as late as the 17th century A.D." Earth Mother {The Language of the Goddess Zemyna [London, 1989], 146-47). (day of spring sowing): Cp. Ovid on the Feria Sementiva "pla suis" centur / farre suo gravidae Ceresque, frugum matres, visceribusque Tellusque the mothers of the corn, with their own spelt and flesh of Earth and Ceres, ("Propitiate ed. T. E. Page, Loeb Classical 253 sow") {Fasti I 671-72, Library teeming [pregnant] [London, 1931], 50-51). 20. Richard trans., Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Barber, in Facsimile Oxford, M.S. Bodley 764 with All the Original Miniatures (Woodbridge, Reproduced Suff., 1993), 148-49. 21. Barber, trans., Bestiary, 148. 3rd edn. (Boston, 22. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 1987), 625, 390. Celtic Myth, 266, who cites and quotes R. A. S. Macalister, 23. Loomis, Proceedings of the acts sympa Irish Academy XXXIV C 325: "The exercise functions by the king of his marital thetically on the fertility of the land and of the cattle." in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and 24. "Medusa's Head," trans. James Strachey, "In phantasies and in 24 vols. (London, 18:273. Similarly, 1957), . . . numerous as a symbol the head of the male ("A appears symptoms genitals" a Symbol and a Symptom," Between See further references in the Connection 14:339-40). same edition: in Children," "Dreams of Castration and "The Taboo of Virginity," 5:366-67, 11:207. "there can be little doubt that the Irish would 25. See Loomis: regard the emascula to have the same dire effects as the wounding tion of their kings as certain of Joseph of or Pellam, or a young Arimathea and his healing replacement by king as equally certain to restore 'the Waste Land'" {Celtic Myth, 266). as Lindahl the Loathly "differs signifi 26. In Gower, notes, Lady's pronouncement to "not simply sovereignty, limited but specifically in love" cantly" in being sovereignty in love, Genius Amant ("Oral Undertones," 72). In warning says that "ofte against Pride in love availeth, al a mannes strengthe faileth" sithe in such a wise / Obedience / Wher (I from John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Russell A. Peck, italics added; quoted 1400-1402; to female desire often works when 2 vols. [Kalamazoo, Mich., 2000], 1:138-51); acceding name 'to bloom, blossom, (after floreo, flower') simple aggressive virility will not. Florent's recalls the sun-god of fertility myth, while the grandmother who first poses the riddling as 'consort,' is called "that olde Mone" (I 1634), a term Peck glosses question supplying as the etymon. seems overpolite OE gemana But "consort" 'intercourse' for 'sexual com or even the inference tests the hero on that the old woman who 'whore,' panion' being an adept in the mysteries what women most desire is herself of coition. As to the Loathly in Weddynge, Damsel she is, like Ragnell "Hire necke is schort, herself, sexually repulsive: a mannes hir schuldres courbe? lust destourbe" (I 1687-88; italics added). / That myhte seems to want to secure an ironic point about Gower the deflation of male desire while the hag herself is sexually voracious. She is described (I 1734) as "this foule suggesting as in Peck, from OF cuisse, literally grete coise" ('rump' following 'thigh,' but probably, a as in, for pudendum, modern aller aux French, euphemism along with similar phrases, cuisses, 'to have coition' [Joseph Marks, Harrap's French-English Dictionary of Slang and (London, 1970), 75]). The hag also takes the initiative on the wedding Colloquialisms night, to "pleie and rage" (I 1764) as she admits to Florent that her motives have been beginning sexual: "For I to that entente wedde, blisse" (11770-71). / That thou schalt be my worldes the attack, she kisses Florent "As sehe a lusti lady were" (I 1773), and once Pressing they are naked abed she embraces lies him, much against his will, as, like May inMerT, Florent to muster "stille as eny ston" (I 1794), unable even the faintest stirrings of libido. When he to turn toward her, she reminds still refuses him of his wedding and this invoca pledge, tion of his obligation to "pay the marriage debt" finally wins his assent (I 1795-99). to a lady "Of eyhtetiene Transformed wynter age" (I 1803), she poses the riddling question

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a pledge to her will (11828-31), of fair-by-day or fair-by-night. Florent makes of obedience not his own, and she thanks him for giving her sovereignty in love (I 1834), which is the a man to love / And "obedience / Mai wel fortune key to love and also to male pleasure: own name sette him in his lust above..." italics added). whose Genius, (I 1858-60; signals to Amant, "if thou do ryht, the cosmic purpose of ?ras, closes the tale with the injunction The sex schalt unto thi love obeie, / And folwe hir will be alle weie" / Thou (I 1862-64). in love in Gower's of sovereignty tale could hardly be clearer. ual understanding to the aggressive lust of modern 27. Alice begins with a sly reference friars, who are no match for the incubus-like elves of "th'olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour" nevertheless hints the friars' notable (III 857) whom inability to cause pregnancy they have supplanted; of Loathly Lady stories with association that Chaucer may have been aware of the general and reproduction. by friars yield to the rape of the "mayde" by a "lusty Rapes fertility to ismeant bacheler" sexual behavior court; all such aggressive (III 886, 883) of Arthur's of female desire and for that stand as the limit case of male sexual domination, oblivious reason punishable if the knight castration fails to learn by beheading (symbolic again) moost desiren" "What thyng is it that wommen (III 905). The answer, supplied by the to have is "Wommen desiren hag, avatar of the pre-Christian earth-goddess, shapeshifting in maistrie / As wel over hir housbond as hir love, / And for to been sovereynetee hym above" that sovereignty is not limited to marriage italics added). Note but includes (III 1038-40, to the female's and thus seems a more inclusive sexual rela concept adultery, pertaining are these the same and to be in mastery: desire to have sovereignty tions generally. Women not. In WBPro Alice had asserted from her that she got "the soveraynetee" thing? Perhaps as a means to that is, by using mastery fifth husband (III 818, italics added), "Bymaistrie" to the MED, that end. The word's fourth meaning, suggests Alice won out according . . method . one is skilled'; or technique'; 'a 'work in which through her: 'Special skill or or in other words, prevents deceit.' Nothing, skill or strength'; feat of physical 'cunning, a sexual sense to maistrie as well, especially when our attaching it is the means Alice uses to over her husband's part "tonge, and of his hond also" (III 815). Alice's gain sovereignty meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde" ing shot, the coda of her tale, prays for "Housboundes the wife where (III 1259). The line gets a useful gloss from a similar one in ShipT, VII177, two in husbands, desire of the merchant says to Daun John that of the six things women in bed. So there seems to are that they be "fressh" (lively, lusty) and "buxom" (obedient) as sexual. For almost the same view, in WBT about defining be little question sovereignty see Bernard S. Levy, "The Wife of Bath's but from a prim Robertsonian perspective, Queynte Fantasye," Chaucer Review 4 (1970): 106-22. Sex: Body and Gender from the 28. On the two-seed Laqueur, Making theory, see Thomas Greeks toFreud (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 38?43. See also Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sexual in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 90-97. Difference Middle in the and Claude Thomasset, 29. See Danielle Sexuality and Medicine Jacquart Adamson 1988), 61-70. (Princeton, Ages, trans. Matthew trans. A. L. Peck The Generation 30. Aristotle, Mass., 1963), I, (Cambridge, of Animals, that "all the [Aristotelian] who comment See also Jacquart and Thomasset, 88-111. xix-xx, of the product formed by the male" theories were so slanted as to prove the pre-eminence so far as to suggest went at 60). Notably, that "A Aristotle 52-60, (Sexuality and Medicine, the male emits, and that genera sign that the female does not emit the kind of seed that with of both as some hold, is that often the female conceives tion is not due to the mixing I and De animalium in intercourse" that occurs the pleasure out experiencing (Departibus I, trans. D. M. Balme [Oxford, 1972], 48; quoted by Angus McLaren, generatione animalium than into little more view goes a long way toward turning women that Aristotle's who notes in England from the Sixteenth incubators [Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility passive 1984), 16]). Century (London, Century to theNineteenth and Thomasset, 31. Jacquart 59, 67. Sexuality and Medicine, 61-62. and Thomasset, 32. Jacquart Sexuality and Medicine, her Rodnite 33. Helen view, the woman must ejaculate Lemay writes: "In the Galenic to take place" in order for conception seed at the same time as the man ("William of Saliceto on Human [1981]: 165-81, at 166). See also Laqueur, Making Sexuality," Viator\2 Sex, vii, 49-52. 17. 34. McLaren, Reproductive Rituals,

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35. Quoted from P. De Koning, trans., Trois trait?s d'anatomie arabe (Leiden, 1903), in 63. and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, Jacquart and Thomasset, "William of Saliceto," 36. Jacquart 62; Lemay, Sexuality and Medicine, 166-67. Arnold of Villanova, 165-71. Lemay also mentions "William of Saliceto," 37. Lemay, Anthonius and the fifteenth-century who Avicenna's translated Canon, physician to that the woman must come to orgasm both of whom Guainerius, agreed with Avicenna so (170-71). should not ejaculate until she has done emit her seed, and that her partner of female seed, and thus On the necessity of female pleasure {delectatio) to the production see also Cadden, Meanings, for conception, 93-97. in Monica H. Green, "'Traitti? tout de men?onges': The Secr?s des dames, 38. Quoted in Fourteenthand Early-Fifteenth toward Women's Medicine and Attitudes 'Trotula,' Desmond in Christine de Pizan and the Categories ofDifference, ed. Marilynn France," Century at 151. 1998), 146-78, (Minneapolis, 39. Michael gen. ed., On theProperties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation Seymour, of "DeProprietatibus Rerum": A Critical Text, 3 vols. (Oxford, Bartholomaeus 1975-88), Anglicus in Jacquart and Medicine, 63. lines 17-33, quoted and Thomasset, 1:294, Sexuality and Gynecological 40. Monica H. Green, "Obstetrical Texts in Middle English," Studies at 74. in the Age of Chaucer44 (1992): 53-88, 41. James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society inMedieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), 450-51 and nl74, Flandrin, who "reports that of the fifteen writers whose citing Jean-Louis woman he examined, that the sinned mortally by refraining opinions eight concluded four thought from orgasm, that she sinned venially, and three believed that she did not sin at all" ("La vie sexuelle des gens mari?s dans l'ancienne soci?t?: de la doctrine de l'?glise in Sexualit?s occidentals, ed. Philippe Ari?s and Andr? B?jin ? la realit? des comportements," similar of Conches, whose ideas were widely lines, William [Paris, 1982], 105). Along who have sexual relations known, held that prostitutes only for pay, and do not take plea sure in coition, have no emission of seed and for this reason do not conceive (Jacquart and The two-seed the Thomasset, 63-64). sway beyond Sexuality and Medicine, theory held Middle and well into the early modern cites a 1690 edition of Ages period. McLaren a. compendium of popular lore on sexuality, on the importance of cli Aristotle's Masterpiece, nor have toral stimulation: "for without desire mutual Embraces this, the fair sex neither in 'em, nor conceive 19). by 'em" {Reproductive Rituals, pleasure seem to take female in a sexual sense, why 42. If both Gower and Chaucer sovereignty to pregnancy does neither of their tales show it leading and childbirth? For one thing, to an anonymous Latin prose treatise On Human derived from Generation, according of Conches's William the pleasure of female orgasm and the consequent emis Dragmaticon, sion of seed is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for pregnancy (Cadden, reasons are literary: Florent is an exemplum in an alle 96). But the more obvious Meanings, to instruct an aging lover in the virtue of amatory humility, while gory of love designed woman who makes WBT is the thinly disguised clear in her apologia of a postmenopausal on her to procreate that the Church's has ironically never prologue injunction impinged ideal of marriage. 43. James Brundage, "Carnal Delight: of Sexuality," in Sex, Law Canonistic Theories and Marriage in the Middle Ages (Aldershot, Eng., 1993), sect. I, 380-381. 44. James Brundage, "Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law," in Sex, Law and in the Middle Ages, sect. VI, 70-71. Marriage 45. The varieties of female desire in the romance have received brilliant commentary from Geraldine "A Woman Wants: The Lady, Gawain, and the Forms of Seduction," Heng, Yale Journal Criticism 5 (1992): and Roberta L. Krueger, and 101-34; "Desire, Meaning, of The Problem in Chretien's the Female Reader: and Guinevere: A Charette," in Lancelot Casebook, ed. LoriJ. Walters (New York, 1996), 229-45. 46. Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual 1050-1200 (New York, 1972), 118, cit The Mirror in the Courtly Love Lyric (Ithaca, N.Y., 1967), Goldin, ing Frederick ofNarcissus See also John Stevens, Medieval Romance: Themes and Approaches 21-22. (London, 1973), The Romance of the Self') ;and Robert W. Hanning, 72-95 (chap. 4, "Man and Superman: The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance (New Haven, 1978).

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Amoris: The Roman de la Rose and Vernacular Hermeneutics 47. A. J. Minnis, Magister 2001), 201. (Oxford, France 48. Donald Fictions of Identity inMedieval Maddox, (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), Le Conte du graal, where Perceval's is Chretien's 3, 91. A pertinent 83-84, "specu example a "vituperative female in a crisis of self-knowledge takes place lar encounter" featuring informant"?"the (91). loathly damsel"

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