Women in Old and Middle English Texts: Marginalized or Not?

Women have struggled between being treated unfairly by some and equally by others for as long as anyone remembers. Even back in the times when women were largely believed to be entirely unequal the conflict over how women are portrayed and treated can still be seen throughout various Old and Middle English texts. The beliefs and ideals that held priority differed over time and in different societies and thus the Old and Middle English texts produced all centered on varied versions of what the most important beliefs and ideals were. Three texts that exemplify three very different portrayals of women during this time because of the ideals and beliefs that held priority in these times differed are Beowulf by an unknown author, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the Pearl Poet, and Lanval by Marie de France. Beowulf perhaps follows the most expected portrayal for women of this time; they are almost completely marginalized characters barely even given a name. Beowulf takes place in an Anglo-Saxon world, which features an agrarian society that revolves around the lord-retainer relationship and not around the relationships between men and women. The lord-retainer relationship was of utmost priority and relationships with women were nothing important. Women themselves weren’t very important either, they were simply wives or mothers defined only by these kinds of labels. Thus, the only truly notable female character in Beowulf is Queen Wealhtheow. Queens are supposed to be important women with lots of power, yet despite Wealhtheow being the Queen, she contributes almost nothing to the epic poem and we find out little about her besides her name. This is because women of this time and society are of little importance, instead what is important is the lord-retainer relationship. The epic poem of Beowulf is, as would be expected, centered around Beowulf himself, but even so there is plenty of focus on other characters like King Hrothgar. Noticeably, all of the other characters who get focus are male; no female character gets primary focus or any real focus at all in Beowulf. It could of course be argued that Grendel’s mother is also a female character in this poem, but even she is little more than a plot device there simply to forward Beowulf’s story along. She is never even given a name beyond being labeled “Grendel’s mother,” she is simply classified and branded by the fact that she is Grendel’s mother and deemed a “...swamp thing from hell…” (Beowulf, page 94, line 118). In her journal article “Re-Reading Grendel's Mother: Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Metrical Charms,” Sara Frances Burdorff, a teacher in the English department at UCLA, discusses Grendel’s mother and how she is overlooked and cast aside by nearly everyone who analyzes Beowulf along with why she believes there is much more to Grendel’s mother than what most people see. Burdorff comments that, “...critical assessments of Grendel’s mother tend to be overly reductive, focusing primarily, if not exclusively, on her gender and her relationship with her son—when she is even considered independently at all” (page 91). Her point here was that Grendel’s mother is rarely looked at is anything important, and even when she is, she is only analyzed by her gender and her relation to Grendel, who is a more prominent and important male character. This is significant because it emphasizes how Grendel’s mother is so insignificant to the story of Beowulf that even most people who analyze it struggle to find any significance to her at all. Of course, this is because the focus of the society of this time period was on the lord-retainer relationship, the relationship between one man and another, and the sharing of treasures with retainers, and thus Beowulf centers around these bonds and the loyalty that comes with it, as a piece of this time would. Consequently, despite there being one, possibly two, female characters present in Beowulf, neither are of much significance to the story and both are severely marginalized.

Things somewhat improve in the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which features a female character who is extremely important to the story, but even so, still manages to never actually get a name and is only ever referred to as Bertilak’s wife. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight portrays the conflict between the lord-retainer relationship and courtly love that came to play in many pieces around this time. The problem was that men were expected to be loyal to their lords but to also be courteous and obey ladies; this is an expectation that can clearly contradict itself and put men in quite a predicament. Bertilak’s wife repeatedly tempts Sir Gawain because Bertilak has instructed her to do so so that he may see if Gawain will be completely honest him or not. Gawain does end up lying to Bertilak and then, after being caught, says, “But no wonder if a fool finds his way into folly and be wiped of his wits by womanly guile--it’s the way of the world” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, page 235, lines 2414-2416). Somehow, despite the fact that Gawain himself was the one who lied, he still manages to blame his mistakes on women. Gawain himself was faced with the struggle of being loyal and honest to his lord and maintaining his lord-retainer relationship with Bertilak whilst also trying to maintain courtly love and please a lady in need, Bertilak's wife. This clearly created a complicated conundrum for him but Gawain himself was still ultimately at fault for choosing to lie. In his article “Unstable Kinship: Trojanness, Treason, and Community in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Randy P. Schiff, Associate Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo and author of Revivalist Fantasy: Alliterative Verse and Nationalist Literary History, discusses many aspects of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, especially the conflict Gawain goes through in regards to kinship, meaning the lord-retainer relationship, and love, specifically courtly love. Schiff notes how, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you see Gawain struggling with “competing individual desires” and how the Pearl Poet “[transforms] heroic warriors into scheming lover-courtiers” (page 90). Gawain, of course, wants to be loyal to Bertilak, but it is hard for him to do so when a lady is also requesting him, and thus, a struggle is born between the two desires within Gawain. Bertilak’s wife played a pivotal role in this tale, and yet she is still to blame when Gawain himself was in the wrong. The pentangle, a five sided star shape that represents five core Middle English values, which are generosity, friendship, purity, courtesy, and pity, also comes into play in this story, further illustrating how conflicting the values were and why there was such conflict between the lord-retainer relationship and courtly love. These values clearly contradict each other, thus illustrating what a huge part of the problem was and why there was such a different characterization of women in this story. In this instance, Gawain put Bertilak’s wife on a pedestal, but she’s ultimately still marginalized because she’s not given a name and she’s also blamed by Gawain for mistakes that were truly his own.

Lanval is the polar opposite of the other two pieces as it portrays a female character revered and on a pedestal alongside far less prominent and powerful male characters. In writings of this time, there was a de-emphasis on the lord-retainer relationship and more of a focus on weaker male characters who were dependent on women and love. Furthermore, this piece was written by Marie de France, unlike the other two, which were written by men, and thus this may also be why it goes against the stereotypical portrayals of women seen in other pieces. Lanval falls in love with a fairy woman whom then gives him anything and everything he could ever want with the sole condition being that he cannot speak to anyone about her. At the end of Lanval, the fairy woman is leaving in the quote, “The King could not detain her, though there were enough people to serve her… when the girl came through the gate Lanval leapt, in one bound, onto the palfrey behind her…” (Lanval, page 166, lines 631-640). The fairy woman is never given a name but she is very clearly revered by all and put on a pedestal by Lanval. In this specific quote it is made clear that she holds the power because she is riding off, not even the King can stop her from doing so, and Lanval jumps on last minute, meaning she wasn’t going to wait for him and he just barely makes it in time to go with her. This is completely different from the other two pieces because this fairy woman holds all of the power and even the fate of a man in her hands. Rather than simply being a plot device or a powerless queen, the fairy woman is truly at the center of all that occurs and truly has the ability to control her own life. Lanval’s sole concern is his courtly love with the fairy woman, she is his everything and is all he cares about, his entire world centers around her and he sees no point to life without her unlike the women of other stories who barely even get mentioned let alone get a man centering his entire world around them. Another instance of a powerful female in Lanval is Queen Guinevere. Despite never being explicitly named, it is clear that she too holds power when she convinces Arthur that Lanval, “dishonored her; he had asked for her love and because she refused him he insulted and offended her…” (Lanval, page 160, lines 316-319). Lanval is thus accused because of her and sentenced to death unless her can prove he has the love he boasted of. Once again, the fairy woman holds the power because without her Lanval would’ve been killed. It is likely that Lanval features more powerful, prominent female characters because it was written by Marie de France, a female author, while the other two were not as well as the writings of the same time as Lanval centering around the de-emphasis of the lord-retainer relationship and the shift in focus to revolve more around men putting a women, typically a powerful one, on a pedestal.

Because of the varying beliefs and ideals that held predominance in these different societies and different time periods as well as the varying authors, the portrayal of women in this time really ranged all over the place from featuring females with no names or power to powerful fairies who held the fate of men in their hands. All of these pieces are fairly dated now, but even to this day marginalization of women can still be seen in many instances. Things are much better now than they used to be, but there’s still a long way to go before women can truly be considered completely equal.

Works Cited

Burdorff, Sara Frances. "Re-Reading Grendel's Mother: Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Metrical Charms." Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval & Renaissance Studies, vol. 45, Sept. 2014, pp. 91-103. EBSCOhost

Schiff, Randy P. "Unstable Kinship: Trojanness, Treason, and Community in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.." College Literature, vol. 40, no. 2, Spring 2013, pp. 81-102. EBSCOhost Simpson, James, Alfred David, and Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ninth ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print