Women In Early British Poetry

It is often said that a good story is timeless, but the best literature can also provide an insight into the time and place in which it was created, specifically its values and attitudes. The period spanning the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and Early Modern Period, in which some of the most important works of British Literature were written, has often been characterized in later periods as misogynistic, with women being seen as irrelevant or looked upon with loathing. But a closer examination of works from the first thousand years of British Literature shows that the position of women in the past was more complex than that. Seemingly insignificant characters, such as Queen Wealhtheow in Beowulf, can tell us a lot about the important role royal women played in Anglo-Saxon society, and mother monsters can tear that society apart. Depictions of sexualized women in High Medieval poetry can challenge the Madonna-Whore dichotomy and complicated female figures can be forces of creation or destructions in the works of some of England's greatest poets, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton.

The Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, focuses on the divide between civilization and savagery, like much of the literature which survives from that period. Beowulf’s human female characters, such as Queen Wealhtheow, are associated with civilization. Wealhtheow, as a queen, is at the center of her society, and her position is vital to that society’s survival. She is often referred to as a “peace-pledge between nations,” implying that she was married off to cement an alliance between two countries or tribes. As King Hrothgar’s wife, Wealhtheow’s job is to give birth to his heirs and to be a gracious hostess at his court. Having a secure line of succession and binding the warriors in loyalty to the king and one another provides stability in a kingdom. A queen is meant to be a figure of peace in Anglo-Saxon society: “A queen should weave peace, not punish the innocent with loss of life for imagined insults” (Beowulf 1942-3).

The polar opposite of civilization, as represented by Queen Wealhtheow, is savagery. Heorot, King Hrothgar’s safe and comfortable mead hall is surrounded by a stormy and monster filled wilderness. Among these monsters are Grendel and his mother, who represent wild and destructive outside forces of nature which threaten the safe little world of the mead hall. After Beowulf kills Grendel, Grendel’s mother creeps out of her swamp to create havoc at Heorot.

“Grendel’s mother, monstrous hell-bride, brooded on her wrongs...but now his mother had sallied forth on savage journey, grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge” (1258-1278).

Grendel’s mother is a perversion of the maternal instinct. Her motherly bond with her son, Grendel, causes her to go on a destructive rampage when he is murdered, much like a female animal who becomes vicious when her young is threatened. She and Queen Wealhtheow do not appear to be that different when one looks at Wealhtheow’s speech at the banquet following Grendel’s death, where she sings Beowulf’s praises, presents him with gifts, and asks him to look after her and Hrothgar’s two young sons.

“... Be acclaimed for strength, for kindly guidance to these two boys, and your bounty will be sure...Treat my sons with tender care, be strong and kind...” (1216-29).

A possible interpretation of Wealhtheow’s references to her sons is as a passive-aggressive acknowledgement of the fact that the favor shown by Hrothgar to Beowulf may be a threat to the princes. A theme in Beowulf is that the rules and niceties of civilization keep people from turning to savagery, but those savage instincts are still there. Whether she be a civilized court lady or a ferocious she-monster, a mother’s instinct is to protect her children.

The patriarchal society of the Middle Ages was held up by male domination of women, specifically, husbands being in control of their wives. A husband whose wife cheated on him was a figure of mockery, while women were seen as sexually voracious and needing to be controlled. The medieval and early modern view of women was dominated by two biblical figures, Eve, the sexualized cause of man’s downfall, and Mary, the virginal mother of God. This idea that good women are chaste and nonthreatening while bad women are sexy and dangerous is today known as the Madonna/Whore Complex. But some of the female characters in medieval poetry are surprisingly complex; the heroines of Chaucer and of knightly romances are neither Madonnas or whores but rather a little of both.

When Chaucer’s drunken and lecherous Miller states his intention to “telle a legende and a lif, both of a carpenter and of his wif”(The Miller’s Tale 33-34), his fellow pilgrims may have expected to hear a religious tale but instead they get a bawdy fabliau about Nicholas, a mischievous college student, and Alison, the sexy young wife of a carpenter, who conspire to play a trick on her dim witted husband. Although Alison initially resists Nicholas’s advances, she quickly agrees to sleep with him and they plan an elaborate scheme to distract her jealous husband, John, so they can hop into bed together. Chaos and hilarity ensue. The relationship between Alison and Nicholas is a parody of the courtly romances of Chaucer’s time which often involved an ambitious young man and the wife of his superior, for example Sir Lancelot’s gallantry towards Guinevere, the wife of his liege-lord, King Arthur or to a lesser extent Queen Wealhtheow giving gifts and praise to her husband’s warriors. Alison and Nicholas’s first encounter involves him grabbing her by the crotch, a far cry from the respectful advances of a gallant knight, and spouts romantic cliches such as that he will die unless she returns his love “'Y-wis, but if I have my will, dernè love of thee, lemman, I spille' and held her hardè by the haunchè bones and saidè: 'Lemman, love me all at once sweetheart Or I will die, all so God me save'” (The Miller’s Tale 168-173).

What is interesting about the character of Alison is that though she is an adulteress, she is never judged harshly for her actions or is punished. While Nicholas and John are both bodily harmed and publicly humiliated, Alison gets off relatively scott-free.

“Thus swived was the carpenter’s wif, for all his keeping and his jalousye, and Absolon hath kist hir nether yë, and Nicholas is scalded in the toute: this tale is doon, and God save al the route.” (742-46)

Compared to Absolon, the prissy village clerk who also pursued Alison and was tricked into kissing her anus, Nicholas, who was burned in the backside by a red hot poker, and John, who fell from the rafter, broke both legs, and was made to look like a madman, Alison makes out the best of the lot.

The Arthurian epic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, has a similarly saucy heroine, Lady Bertilak, the beautiful and seductive wife of the lord of the castle where Sir Gawain finds refuge. Lady Bertilak sets out to seduce the gullible hero, using all of charms and a series of spicy come ons.

“And here you lie. And we are left alone, with my husband and his huntsmen away in the hills and the servants snoring and my maids asleep and the door to this bedroom barred with a bolt. I have in my house an honored guest, so I’ll make the most of my time and stay talking a while. You’re free to have my all, do with me what you will. I’ll come just as you call and swear to serve you well”

(Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 1230-40)

The steamy bedroom scenes between Sir Gawain and Lady Bertilak are intercut with visceral hunting scenes. Earlier in the poem, Gawain and Lord Bertilak struck a deal that Bertilak will give Gawain whatever he kills during his hunt while Gawain will give whatever he gets while staying in the castle. Bertilak gives his guest delicious game dinners and Gawain gives his host kisses from his wife. During their final encounter, Lady Bertilak gives Gawain a magical green girdle which will protect him during his showdown, with the Green Knight, which he decides to keep and not give to Bertilak. The Green Knight is revealed to be Bertilak himself, who sent his wife to seduce Gawain as part of an elaborate prank designed to humble to young knight.

“Because the belt you are bound with belongs to me; it was woven by my wife so I know it well. And I know of your courtesies, and conduct, and kisses, and the wooing of my wife—for it was all my work! I sent her to test you” (2358-62).

Like Alison in The Miller’s Tale, Lady Bertilak is never vilified for her duplicitousness. She is described in the conventional terms for a courtly heroine, “fair,” “graceful,” “sweet,” and “noble” and is presented as a woman who is worthy of love and admiration. The relationship between Lady Bertilak and and Sir Gawain with its flirtation, kisses, and exchanging of gifts (known as favors) is a textbook example of courtly love as described in medieval romances. Like Alison in The Miller’s Tale, Lady Bertilak is not pigeon-holed as either a Madonna or whore, which shows the sophisticated attitudes of the high Middle Ages.

The first great poet of what is known as the English Renaissance was Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, courtier and diplomat in the court of King Henry VIII, who is credited with bringing the sonnet, an Italian form of poetry, to England. Henry VIII would execute Wyatt for supposedly having an affair with Anne Boleyn, his second wife. Many of Wyatt’s most famous sonnets are believed to be about Anne Boleyn; his verses speak of unrequited love and frustrated desire, the ladies they address are sophisticated, feisty, unobtainable, and bare no small resemblance to Queen Anne. The best known of Wyatt’s poems, "Whoso List to Hunt," is traditionally believed to be about his thwarted pursual of Anne Boleyn.

“Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, but as for me, alas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind.”

(Whoso List to Hunt 1-4)

The unsuccessful hunt of a deer is a metaphor for sexual frustration. Hunting imagery used to describe romantic conquests is a common motif in Wyatt’s poems, for example, his other best-known piece, "They Flee From Me."

“They flee from me, that sometime did me seek with naked foot stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek that now are wild and do not remember that sometime they put themself in danger to take bread at my hand; and now they range, busily seeking with a continual change.”

(They Flee From Me 1-7)

The ladies who were once easy prey to Wyatt now run away from him like animals from a hunter, much like the hind in "Whoso List to Hunt." The final lines of the former give insight as to why the object of Wyatt’s desire is unattainable.

“...and graven with diamonds in letters plain there is written, her fair neck round about, “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am, and wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”

(Whoso List to Hunt 11-14)

This verse is believed to reference Anne Boleyn, the mistress and future wife of Henry VIII. The line “Noli me tangere [do not touch me], for Caesar’s I am” refers to the fact that Wyatt can never have Anne, because she has been singled out as the king’s property. Anne Boleyn was later executed by Henry VIII for her supposed infidelities with several court gentlemen, Wyatt among them. The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn provides an insight into the balancing act that was being a Renaissance courtly lady. What had made her so attractive to her king and her poet, her flirtatiousness and ability to play the game of courtly love with aplomb, ironically caused her downfall. Sexiness and the ability the attract men are the source of a woman’s value but can also make her look guilty when she is perhaps innocent.

The English brand of poetry introduced by Chaucer and Wyatt was later perfected by Shakespeare under the reign of Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. Among Shakespeare’s later plays is King Lear, which is considered by many to be his masterpiece. The play centers around an elderly king who plans to divide his kingdom between his three daughters. He disinherits his beloved daughter Cordelia when she refuses to excessively flatter him like her two scheming sisters, Goneril and Regan. Instead of making things easier for the aging Lear, dividing up the kingdom causes conflict between warring factions who are plotting to overthrow him.

Like in Beowulf, the women in King Lear serve as figures of both stability and chaos. The greedy and duplicitous Goneril and Regan (chaos) serve as foils to the loyal and selfless Cordelia (stability). Goneril and Regan repay their father’s generosity by literally leaving him out in the cold. Lear is increasingly stripped of his dignity and sanity and curses his daughters for their ungratefulness. He calls upon the forces of nature to prevent the Lady Macbeth-esque Goneril from fulfilling her function as a woman, to bare children, and, failing that, to have her children grow up to treat her as badly as she has treated him.

“Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend

To make this creature fruitful.

Into her womb convey sterility.

Dry up in her the organs of increase,

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honor her! If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother's pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!—Away, away!”

(King Lear 1.4 289-303)

Like Lady Macbeth, Goneril is a domineering wife to a henpecked husband. She rebukes her less forceful husband, the Duke of Albany, for being merciful towards Lear by calling him weak and feminine.

“No, no, my Lord. This milky gentleness and course of yours, Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,

You are much more at task for want of wisdom

Than praised for harmful mildness.”

(1.4.362-367)

Goneril even uses the same imagery to insult her husband’s manhood. The term “milky” refers to nurturing, therefore feminine, tenderness which is seen as undesirable in a man and in an ambitious woman such as Goneril. Even today, there is an assumption that for a woman to achieve power and influence, she must “unsex” herself of her “weak” feminine attributes: dressing in a more masculine way, forgoing marriage and motherhood, behaving in an aggressive manner.

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are considered the golden age of English poetry. One of the leading lights of this period was John Donne. Among Donne’s vast oeuvre is a rather sweet love poem called "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," which is believed to have been inspired by his beloved wife, Anne. In this poem, Donne characterizes Anne as a steady and constant figure and the bond between them as strong, almost magnetic.

“Our two souls therefore, which are one, though I go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion, like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two; thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show to move, but doth, if th’other do.

And though it in the center sit, yet when the other far doth roam, it leans and hearkens after it, and grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, like th’other foot, obliquely run; thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun”

(A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 21-36)

Donne describes his relationship with his wife as being like a compass used for drawing a circle. Anne, as one part of the compass, is at the center of her husband’s life and keeps him grounded. Donne, as the other part of the compass, may get separated from his better half but is always drawn back to her. A good wife is supposed to be a loyal and comforting figure for her husband to come home to at the end of the day. The happily married Donne playfully mocked the misogyny which still colored the attitudes about women of his time period in another one of his poems,

“If thou beest born to strange sights, things invisible to see, ride ten thousand days and nights, till age snow white hairs on thee, thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me all strange wonders that befell thee, and swear no where lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know, such a pilgrimage were sweet; yet do not, I would not go, through she were true when you met her, and last till you write your letter, yet she will be false, ere I come, to two, or three”

(Song 10-27)

Donne’s poem draws upon the assumption that women are inherently dishonest and that it is nearly impossible to find a truly good woman. A man could spend his entire life searching and never find one. The misogyny which Donne mocks and the tension which exists between the sexes can be traced back to the very beginning of time.

According to the Bible, Eve, the first woman, was created to be a companion to Adam, the first man. Eve was tricked into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and for this disobedience, God expelled them from the paradise of the Garden of Eden. The story of the love affair between Adam and Eve and their downfall is told in one of the jewels in the crown of English literature, John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost are innocent and blissfully happy. Eve’s innocence and angelic beauty even effects the villainous Satan: “And should I at your harmless innocence, melt as I do” (Paradise Lost 4. 388-9). But Eve also shows a curiosity, independence, and rebelliousness which Satan uses to bring her and Adam down. He takes advantage of her gullibility and curiosity and tricks her into eating from the tree of knowledge: “Greedily she engorged without restraint, and knew not eating death. Satiate at length and heightened as with wine” (9. 791-4). The proverbial “forbidden fruit” is always so attractive because it is forbidden and the momentary pleasure Eve feels at satisfying her desires quickly turns to guilt and shame when she realises what she has done. She has broken the one rule given to her and Adam by God and because of this, they will be kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The love between Adam and Eve is so strong that Adam believes that he cannot live without her. He decides to eat the fruit as well, so that he can follow her into exile:

“Certain my resolution is to die; How can I live without thee, how forego thy sweet converse and love so dearly joyn’d, to live again in these wilde woods forlorn? Should God create another Eve, and I another rib afford, yet loss of thee would never from my heart; no no, I feel the link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe” (9. 907-16)

The misogynists of the medieval and early modern periods argued that it was because of Eve’s moral frailty that she disobeyed God and that she tricked or seduced Adam into sinning as well but in Milton’s interpretation of their story, Eve is a curious and gullible innocent and Adam makes the conscious choice to eat the forbidden fruit out of love for her. The phrase “bliss or woe” is reminiscent of the wedding vow “for better for worse” and shows that the bond between Adam and Eve is strong enough to survive the hardships they will face. Something always brings them together, much like Donne’s compass. Paradise Lost leaves the reader with the impression that Adam and Eve, and by extension mankind, will eventually regain paradise thanks to the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Beowulf and the poetry of Chaucer, Wyatt, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton show the dichotomy which exists in the female psyche, between mother and monster, madonna and whore, and saint and sinner. Their works are immortal because of the complexity of the characters, specifically their female characters. Characters such as Lady Bertilak, the tricksy seductress, Alison, the bawdy adulteress, and Eve, the rebellious ingenue, fascinate readers because they are not categorized as one specific thing, as either good or bad, chaste or licentious, as depictions of women often were in the past. In contrast, figures such as Goneril, the destructive nag, and Anne Donne, the constant, comforting wife, show the two extremes by which women were viewed, as either angels or demons. The truth is usually somewhere in between.