The Pedestal Woman: The Man of Law's Custance and Nakaba Suzuki's Elizabeth

The two generalized bounds that women have been frequently categorized into within the context of medieval literature -- especially in the 20th century before the upsurge of women's medieval studies of the 1970s and 1980s -- are the "Pedestal" woman of purity and beauty but frequent passivity, and the "Stake" woman associated with wickedness and magic who are frequently active players. Chaucer and his Man of Law tell the tale of Lady Custance, which almost immediately reminded me of heroine Elizabeth Liones from Nakaba Suzuki's "The Seven Deadly Sins". Initially I felt it had to be some shallow level with which I associated them, maybe in their appearance, as they are both said to be pale. Upon further inspection, I found that both fell heavily into the Pedestal half of the dichotomy of women's depictions in story.

Custance

In Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", the Man of Law recounts the tale of Custance, the epitome of Christian purity and female submission. She is a woman of high rank -- the daughter of the emperor -- but without any true power of her own. She is rarely described physically, but when she is, it emphasizes her paleness and light coloring; most of her descriptions focus on her humility, generosity, and other "Christianly traits". Her tale's focus in terms of her experience as a narrative demonstrates a great deal of personal suffering and traveling the path alone. And while the tale is focused on Custance, she is a passive character; when she is at sea, she is simply existing, and when on land events happen to or around her rather than occurring because of her own direct actions -- whether she is being accused of killing a woman, nearly being sexually assaulted in front of her child, or exiled from the homelands of either of her husbands, only God takes action. And men, but who really cares about them? 

Elizabeth

In Nakaba Suzuki's The Seven Deadly Sins, a neo-medieval story written by a Japanese mangaka, the female character of Elizabeth holds many of the same traits that Custance does. Like Custance, she is the daughter of a royal leader but has no direct influence in politics. She is also very pale, with white hair and skin, and blue eyes -- and while her appearance is much clearer due to the media in which she appears, within both the manga and the show her primary characteristics are emphasized to be her kindness, her honesty, and her selflessness. And within the story itself, Elizabeth is introduced as having traveled alone from the capital whilst being pursued by kidnappers and assailants on her family, much as Custance's harrowing sea travels and trials with being assaulted. Despite this very active role pre-story, Elizabeth takes very little action through the rest of the series: other characters (including a few women) take on the tasks of fighting battles, working jobs, and developing their personalities, while Elizabeth is portrayed as a pure-hearted and beautiful young woman, but is time and again unable to take on an active role within the cast.

While a little surprising -- primarily because The Seven Deadly Sins has some major female characters who aren't bound by the dichotomy like Elizabeth is -- in the end I found that it made a lot of sense for Elizabeth and Custance both to be a part of this Pedestal Woman portrayal because over time, the Pedestal Woman has become an archetype. Characters like the damsel in distress and the pure-hearted heroine have become such a prevalent feature of women's representation in storytelling that even now we tend to fall back on it. By no means do I find this satisfying -- I personally detested much of Elizabeth's characterization solely because of her lack of action -- but now that I understand why Elizabeth- and Custance-type exist, I find it makes them more bearable.