The Knight And The She's Daughter Analysis

There is a strange connection between the supernatural, nature, and women present in medieval ballads and Breton lais. These features can be found to cause a different look at women and the power that they harness. The women of “The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter,” “James Harris, (The Daemon Lover),” and “Sir Orfeo” all exist within two separate worlds which allows them to hold more power than they would in just one. All of them possess a quality that enabled them to cross from one world to the next in order to make men give them what they deserve. Through further exploration of the supernatural and natural influence these women posses, we can identify the way that they hold a unique power over men. “The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter”
fools both the reader and the knight into believing that the maiden is nothing but a simple peasant until the grand revelation of her true wealth at the end. This kind of trick allows her to live in a world of nobility and a world of poverty in order to experience a unique way of living. She can be close to the land and closer to the crown depending on her mood and this allows her to test people like the knight. The tribute she demands as a higher being is not monetary but flesh. She refuses the knights bribe and instead claims she “must have your own body; / so the king hath granted me” (“Shepherd’s Daughter” 20.3-4). The exchange between her and the knight must be a bodily one in order to procure her transformation. She has no access to her power (as a duke’s daughter) unless she finds a man to marry her. The Knight and the Shepherd’s daughter also highlight the way women have a connection to the land in an ingrained way. The portrayal of her association with land and nature serves to bind her character with the land. The shepherd’s daughter has a special connection with nature because all of her actions and consequences revolve around the idea of land. When dressed as a shepherd’s daughter, her connection with nature is established as she is probably close to the land. Her connection with nature becomes emphasized further when the knight “laid her down on the plain,” (“Shepherd’s Daughter” 4.2) instead of in a more courtly manner. She was a woman of the land and thus did not deserve anything but to have relations with the knight just out of sight on the ground itself. Nature finds itself engulfing her and using her body as a vessel for her gain when she “came to the broad water, / She set her breast and swam” (“Shepherd’s Daughter” 8.). After her immersion in nature, she gives birth to the idea of telling the king about her stolen virtue. Her connection with nature and connection to it is a necessary way of making her intangible inheritance tangible. The closer she is to the land (and the knight) the more of a chance she has of acquiring the other side of her. The ballad forces us to look at the way that the shepherd’s daughter will remain nothing but a peasant until her marriage vows have taken place and she can transform to her true identity. A single woman has no real connection to land so she must disguise herself as someone that would in the hopes of acquiring it. Her character defies social conventions by forming a connection to the land she has no right to without a husband. Dame Heurodis begins the text as a traditional courtly lady but the supernatural element found in her emerges just as soon as her introduction is over.
The emphasis on her beauty is an essential part of her power because it is what enables her to become a superior being in both her world and the fairy world. She begins this transformation by gathering up her army of maidens and exploring the orchard. When encased within a man-made version of nature, she quickly fell asleep under a “fair ympe-tre” (“Sir Orfeo” 70). This tree is essential to her transformation and abduction because it, like the orchard they are in, is man’s way of intervening with nature. The process of combining man and nature has caused a rift where Heurodis’s beauty is recognized and taken. She has the same amount of power in her own world as she does in the fairy world. Tara Williams suggests, “Heurodis’s primary value is aesthetic in both worlds and that her defining characteristic may be the status of her body as a signifying spectacle” (556). Her power as an aesthetic figure is still extremely powerful because as a silent figure, she is able to force the will of the men who surround her. Both men compete with each other to keep their prized beauty as more of a symbol of their status than anything else. They are only content when they have taken her and proven their worth to everyone else more than to her. This depiction of a supernatural entity differs from the others because she holds no real power of
control, only beauty. The power that she holds is intangible and exists in a world of suspended animation and chaos. Her supernatural powers come from her treatment as a work of art in the text. She is beautiful and sends a message to others about the lengths they will go to in order to preserve it. However, Heurodis holds another type of power – her connection with the nature.
The playful time she spends in the orchard further explores the idea of her existence being an aesthetic one, but it also makes the reader pay attention to the way a woman’s connection to the land makes her a powerful person. Heurodis already has a connection to the nature as she spends time in the orchard thus making her transition to the fairy world difficult but much more rapid than Sir Orfeo’s. As a typical courtly woman, it is difficult for her to strip herself of her behavior and resort to a more primal state. The initial abduction in her dream, however, wishes to disconnect her from typical social conventions as awoke and immediately, “crached her visiage – it bled wete - / Hir riche robe hye al to-rett” (“Sir Orfeo” 80-81). The urgency to disfigure herself can be attributed to her fear of the fairy king, but it can also come from a desire to peel away all that she once stood for as she transitions to the fairy world. She recognizes her transition as inevitable despite her fear because she knows there is no escaping the bond she has forged with the earth. Orfeo’s transition to the fairy world took much more time because he does not have that bond with the land that women do. He had to shed all traces of civilization and focus on the wilderness in order to get a glimpse of her. She, in a way, embodies the land and a man’s connection to his kingdom. Without a connection to the land, he is unable to be an effective ruler. Heurodis, then, represents the land and the connection a king must make to it. It is only through losing her and becoming one with the land itself that he is able to learn enough about his kingdom to bring her back and rule better than ever.
The Shepherd’s Daughter, Jane Reynolds, and Heurodis possess a supernatural quality enabling them to cross from one world to the next in order to lure men and achieve great power and maintain that power through their connection to land that most men do not have without them.
They prove themselves to be capable of feats that no ordinary woman could and through that veil of suspended belief exists a commentary on the way that women work to achieve power. These women are all transgressive in nature but they fail to evolve any further at the end of the story. The shepherd’s daughter wins a man and inherits her land but gives up all her authority in doing so. Jane Reynolds gets to live two great lives but upon leaving one, she creates chaos and misery in the other. Heurodis displays her power in a passive way as she is the drive behind a good ruler but all is forgotten when he returns to the court and trades her importance in to preserve the homosocial bond. These endings, however, are the ways that society keeps women in check. They caution men about the tremendous power that women have over them but then reassure them that all will be well as long as they are secure. Women rule in these tales but men cannot let that be the end of
it.