Women In Medieval Literature

Women as Threats in Medieval Literature Throughout the texts we have read in class, including in the ones examined closely in this paper (namely Lanval, The Wife’s Lament, and Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale) women consistently appear as powerful beings. This introduces a certain amount of threat simply because the woman’s position in medieval society was largely guided by the principles in the Bible – and thus, women were treated as “lesser” according to writings that stated that they weren’t allowed to teach, were to submit to the men in their life, and were to avoid “playing the whore” (Leviticus 21:9). The texts, then, will often attempt to rid those women of their powerful status or explain why they do not deserve it. At the very least,
Women were also writing this material (and sometimes, as Marie de France demonstrates, they were attempting to deliver a message through the literature), and thus while we think of the medieval populace as completely in agreement with traditional textually and religiously determined “womanhood” (that is, in opposition to women in positions of power, learning, or having authority) the fact that there were popular women writers producing literature that people enjoyed reading shows that this couldn’t have been completely the case. The situation in the medieval ages probably did not “feel” the way that it is portrayed by “the authority” (the Bible, the law, etc.). While it was stated in many places that women were expected and required to be obedient and subservient, that they were the property of their husbands or male relatives, and many other ideas that we would scoff at today, it might not just be us scoffing – just because they were portrayed a certain way in the texts that have survived, doesn’t mean that their reality was really that unfair (though it undoubtedly was, to an extent). It is not clear whether the author of The Wife’s Lament is female, but the narrator obviously is. That, in itself, is a feminist move, and it puts the woman in the position of power; the narrator is in control of the story, and the reader sees the world through her eyes. The wife’s proclamation that those who feel, “harsh pain at heart,” should, “put on/a happy appearance while enduring/endless sorrows” (The Wife’s Lament, 43-45) can be read in two ways; on one hand, it could be a critique of a society that expects women to mindlessly follow their husbands, disregarding their own sorrow and instead pretending to be happy in order to make the ordeal better for the man – however, it can also be read as a celebration of brave women, who despite their circumstances “put on a happy