Marie De France’s 12th Century story, Bisclavret, is one of the first werewolf stories in literature (Mark). It examines themes of loyalty, betrayal, and truth through the main character of Bisclavret, and notably, the assumed “failures” of his wife. While the wife character is commonly read and seen as monstrous and evil, this paper aims to examine her actions through a feminist lens to see them as critique of patriarchal systems and gender expectations of the time.
Bisclavret tells the tale of a lord, described as a “good knight, handsome, known to be all that makes for nobility” (“Norton” 497). He is praised and respected by his king and loves and is loved by his wife, who is “elegant and beautiful” (“Norton” 498). Despite his perceived perfection, he harbors a deep secret. Three times a week he disappears and transforms into a werewolf, or a Bisclavret (which he will be referred to from now in this paper on despite his form). His wife, curious and suspicious of his whereabouts, begs him to tell her where he goes. He is eventually persuaded and reveals his transformations and the mechanisms behind it, telling her that he transforms by taking off his clothes and he can only turn back into human once he puts his clothes back on. His wife is horrified by this, and plots to steal his clothes so he remains in his Bisclavret form. She enlists the help of a chevalier who has been in love with her for years and after Bisclavret is trapped in his wolf form she reluctantly marries the chevalier (“Norton”).
A year passes and the king finds Bisclavret in the woods one day. Bisclavret kisses his feet and the king, surprised by the act of respect, takes him back to the castle. One day, the Chevalier comes to court and Bisclavret, acting out of retaliation, attacks him. This clues the king into Bisclavret’s possible identity. Eventually they run into the wife. She offers the king gifts, but Bisclavret attacks her and rips off her nose, permanently disfiguring her and her future offspring. Bisclavret turns back human and the wife and chevalier are exiled forever (“Norton”). Scholars have called this story a “scalding indictment of women who do not respect their husbands” where the wife is set up to be a villain, but there is more to the story than that (Baldrica-Guy and Natalia16).
Bisclavret was one of twelve of Marie De France’s lais and is notable in its lack of strong feminist themes on the surface level (Mark). The wife character is punished and humiliated, as well as mutilated, and the audience is led to believe that she deserves it for the actions she takes against her husband. However, Marie’s work tended to subvert tropes, something she does in Bisclavret that reveal her true thoughts of “marriage as a prison and adulterous love affairs [as] freedom” (Mark). The basis for a feminist reading of Bisclavret is there: as a critique of marriage and the systems that lead women into imprisoning ones. By looking at Marie’s other works, Bisclavret can be read as a story about a married couple where, “the male [has] the upper hand and the woman [has] to rely on her own strength and abilities to escape from an intolerable situation” (Mark).
I will argue this a step further, that Bisclavret is more than just a critique on marriage, but on male aggression and patriarchy as a whole. Several of Marie’s lais take ironic perspectives on social issues which make “effective and ultimately damning commentary on the oppressiveness of the patriarchal social order” (Banisalamah 55) One example of this is in the way Marie subverts tropes, like the idea of the woman needing saving. In Bisclavret, it is the Lord who is lost and needs rescuing from a powerful man and the wife who acts as the active agent. However the most apparent example of Marie’s criticisms on patriarchal power is the werewolf transformation itself. This can be read as social commentary on male aggression and the acceptance of it in relation to the woman’s pain and humiliation through her acts of self-preservation. The secretive transformations Bisclavret hides from his wife represents the hidden dark side of male aggression and the cultural fears women have towards intimate partner violence. To understand the context of these issues, we must first look at the roles of women and patriarchy in medieval society.
Patriarchy is defined as “a system of social organization that institutionalizes male power over woman and puts male interests and values at the center of social life…Patriarchy is made up of a number of interrelated institutions and ideologies that have a pervasive effect at multiple levels of social organization” (Dragiewicz). The medieval period was a highly hierarchal society, with males in power in all social categories (Bennett). In Bisclavret the ultimate symbol for the patriarchy is the king. But even on a smaller scale, Bisclavret in his human form has a title that still places him above other men and his gender puts him above his wife in marriage.
In the medieval period “women were understood as less than men, female attributes as less good than male ones, and gender relations as properly characterized by womanly submission and manly governance” (Bennett 6). Even in marriage, women in the medieval period were extremely socially vulnerable. Wives lost many of their former rights to property, “goods and chattels immediately passed permanently into the hands of [their] husband[s], while both real property (land) and chattels real (leases) passed into his control for the duration of their marriage” (Butler 30). Additionally, wives were not allowed to accept things like gifts or inheritances from anyone, including their husbands and they could not make wills that were defendable at common law (Butler). So even in a good marriage, women were still in a lesser position of power and seen as below their husband in status and personhood (Butler).
Women in bad marriages, including abusive ones, had worse fates. Even in places and situations where there were divorce options or support systems, other powerful systems in charge like the courts or the church, which were male dominated, made it incredibly hard for women to actually obtain these opportunities and easier for them to stay in abusive situations (Butler). “The disadvantages women suffered because of the rules of coverture are immediately apparent. A victim of abuse might not desert or abandon her husband easily because she lacked access to support” (Butler 30).
In the tale of Bisclavret, this begs the question of what the wife character is supposed to do when she finds out about her husband’s secret aggressive side. At the time of this story, werewolves were seen as “transformed [men], consumed by rage, driven to devour men, do great evil, and run wild in the forest” (Pyle 11). This is the cultural context the wife has of her husband, and she is put in an impossible situation now knowing her husband has the potential to completely overtake her in aggression and she would have no way to truly escape the situation. So in this way, her initial fears and terror about hearing of her husband’s true nature are completely valid and the actions she takes to rid herself of him can be seen as actions of self-preservation, not of malicious spite. Additionally, her marriage and affair with the Chevalier is not a situation that arises out of love, but out of necessity. Single women in the medieval period could not afford to provide for themselves, so while she is able to escape a potentially abusive relationship, she does knowingly sacrifice the love in her marriage for safety and security with the Chevalier (Butler). She does not trick her husband simply because she is tired of him and found another partner, but because she is afraid and needs to find a way to support herself.
Even before learning of her husband’s lycanthropy, the wife character fears her husband’s anger. When asking him about his whereabouts she says, “I’m so full of fear of your great anger, husband dear” (“Norton” 498). So while the reader is told the relationship is a loving one, this exposes some of the wife’s true feelings towards her husband. These fears are valid of the time, as domestic violence was more or less considered an acceptable way for husbands to control their wives (Butler). Thirteenth Century archbishop Jecopa de Vaeazze advised husbands use violence, even as a last resort, to correct their wives. “If she cannot learn to blush with fear of God, let her grow red with the switch” (Butler 24). He also emphasized the husband’s role in marriage as superior to the wife’s, stating that wives who act outside of their husband’s desire deserve similar punishment to that of a servant (Butler). The wife in Bisclavret already is afraid of her husband’s anger, and this fear is only made greater after he admits his double life as a monster capable of violence and aggression.
When the wife learns of her husband’s secret life, her immediate reaction is terror, but eventually she has the realization that she can no longer be intimate with him, or at least that she feels she would not want to be. This might seem like a selfish or random detail for her to think of, however sex for wives in the medieval period was complicated and more of a job than a desire. It is believed by many gender scholars that patriarchal power structures lead to sexual aggression and justification for sexual violence (Bouffard). This leads to the idea that male’s needs, especially sexual ones, take precedence over women’s needs (Bouffard). Historically, marital rape was not considered a crime. Even in modern times it took until the 1970s for the US to begin to outlaw it (Butler). During the medieval period, wives were expected to have sex with their husbands under the idea of “marriage debt.” (Butler) If the wife of Bisclavret did not want to have sex with her husband, chances are he would be legally and morally able to rape her and face no consequences. This creates a very grim choice for the wife, who loves her husband but must escape the marriage in some way or face a life of marital rape and aggression. It paints her in a more sympathetic light, where her fears are understood to be indicative of larger social problems regarding sexuality and consent.
The instances when Bisclavret shows aggression are also telling of societal norms and the acceptability of male aggression in the medieval period. He is able to be docile to the king, who is a man ranked above him, going as far as kissing his feet in a gesture of submission. However, Bisclavret acts out of retaliatory aggression twice. Once against the chevalier and once against his wife. In these instances, violence is shown to be not what makes Bisclavret a monster, but what makes him inherently human. And, more importantly, inherently male. The king is able to deduct Bisclavret’s humanity and identity from his violent attack. “There must be some reason, the household said, for him to seize on the knight, who must have done him wrong” (“Norton” 501). The king, the figurehead of medieval patriarchal society, actively approves and excuses Bisclavret’s violence, and the readers of the story are led to believe that violence and aggression is what saves Bisclavret, including the violence he commits towards his wife. The king completely justifies this violence, stating that Bisclavret’s violence is to blame on the actions of his wife, “she may state something, this dame, to indicate why the beast feels for her such hate” (“Norton” 502). While he does allow the wife to explain herself, the King already believes that Bisclavret is in the right in his hatred of her. Additionally, he is looking for an explanation from the wife as to why she deserves Bisclavret’s hate, not an explanation of the entire situation. In this vein, the story illustrates how patriarchal power structures normalize and approve of violence, especially violence towards women and how power structures that place male interests above female ones strategically silence women’s voices and stories in favor of male ones (Bouffard).
Out of all the characters, the wife seems to get the worse and most visceral punishment. She is permanently disfigured in an act of intimate partner violence, something that feels deeply emblematic of domestic abuse victims and the psychological damage sexual violence leaves women with. The double standards of how the woman in this story is treated versus the majority of male characters reveals many gender biases. “When women react against their own victimization, this may be viewed as a threat to masculine and patriarchal control, and violence may be viewed as a legitimate response to that threat” (Bouffard 871). The wife outsmarting her husband represents her reactions against patriarchal marriage norms (Bouffard). In addition, she is also acting outside of her prescribed feminine role as submissive. Medieval gender troubles prominently surrounded the idea of “women who act like men” and “men who act like women” (Bennett7). The wife is punished for her actions, because they are dominating, and that trait belongs to men. The wife character is not the only character who lies, Bisclavret himself lies by omission to his wife about his whereabouts, despite knowing she is concerned he is being unfaithful to her. “The husband simply disappears three days per week without his wife knowing…and then he returns as if nothing had happened…Bisclavret is obviously fully aware of the transgressive nature of his adventures, and tries his best to keep it a secret” (Classen 533). However, Bisclavret is not punished by anyone except his wife for this deceit, and she is the one ultimately punished for it.
Quite the opposite of his wife, Bisclavret is rewarded for his violence by regaining his humanity. The wife character on the other hand, is denied her humanity and home through her attempts at self-preservation. The wife’s fears about her husband’s potential aggression end up being correct, but the story refuses to prove her right. Instead she is forever marked by her husband’s abuse, and it follows her and her future offspring forever. “Quite a few children had this dame, who in their own way achieved some fame for looks…numbers of women of her race…were born without a nose” (“Norton” 503). It is notable that it is only her female offspring that are marked in the same way she is. The impact of male abuse is passed through the women of the family, who continue to suffer the consequences of Bisclavret’s violence, whereas the men in her family are cleared of their sins because of the patriarchy that protects them. This makes it clear that the sin she is being punished for is not her actions against her husband, but her gender.
A common reading of Bisclavret is that the wife, unable to accept the monstrous side of her husband, becomes a monster herself. But a feminist reading of the story proves that the true monster Marie De France is describing in her story is a system that protects male aggressors while punishing, humiliating, and abusing female victims. Since the wife does not acts according to the “good wife” standard of the time, she is branded as evil and must be punished for her slight against societal norms. However, had she existed in a culture where male aggression was not seen as a good thing and women had more rights and access to support, she wouldn’t have had to trick her husband at all. Looking at the wife as a victim of her social and cultural circumstance shows the reader a different side of her. One that is not a malicious, cruel monster, but one of a terrified woman who must act to avoid a potentially harmful fate, and one of a woman who is ultimately punished for acting out against her aggressive husband and marked for life because of it.
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Rachel Loring 