So far, the readings we have encountered make it apparent that women during the Middle Ages are viewed as inferior to men. Along with other negative connotations and stereotypical roles, women are associated with beauty or physical attractiveness and highly regarded for their traditional family roles as well as religious devotion and virtue.
I’d like to focus on one video game in particular since it does hold some relevant themes of the Middle Ages; Dante’s Inferno. In summary, Dante is a crusader during the Third Crusade under King Richard I. During an attack, Dante is stabbed and defeats Death. As he returns home to Florence, he finds his lover Beatrice Portinari and father brutally murdered. Beatrice's soul appears before Dante and she is then taken by Lucifer. His mission is to save her by enduring eight trials in Hell.
I would like to compare Custance’s character from The Man of Law’s Tale and the character Beatrice in Dante’s Inferno. They share similar qualities- mostly in the way they are portrayed. Both of these characters are revered for their Christian purity and seen as prizes to be pursued by male suitors. In The Man of Law’s Tale, Custance is dramatically idealized:
“There was never such another as is she,
I pray to God to sustain her in honor.
In her is great beauty, without pride/
In all her deeds virtue is her guide;
Humility has slain in her all tyranny/
Her heart is a true chamber of holiness” (162-167).
This passage makes it obvious of “woman’s difference from man, her otherness” and passiveness through religious undertones (Schinamoff 63).
In Dante’s Inferno, Beatrice is also put on a pedestal and represents Bennett’s and Karra’s definition of woman as “capable of extraordinary good, -the Virgin Mary’” (1). Compared to her lover Dante who has sinned countless times, Beatrice is proclaimed as beautiful, pure, kind and blessed; even her name implies beatific love: the ultimate direct self-communication of God to the individual person (Webster).
The way these women are portrayed is with the most favorable qualities; humility, beauty, youth, virtue, passivity, and “pale” skinned. This showcases that they are ideal women to be had. “Gender rules were similarly God- given, and the submission of women to men paralleled the submission of all humanity to God” (Bennett 5). In addition, this also meant submission was an automatic feature that came along with women’s wholesome qualities, and in these two cases these women are also being hyper idolized making them more dissimilar. Custance and Beatrice’s descriptions seem to elevate them and simultaneously degrade them. It may be flattering in a way, but the idealization of their passiveness and beauty can also be disempowering.
I really like what you have to say here, especially in the section where you quoted, "Gender rules were similarly God- given, and the submission of women to men paralleled the submission of all humanity to God". I think this ties into the video game version of Dante's Inferno very smoothly because of her back story. Like you said, she is consistently displayed as the epitome of female virtue, which is exemplified when she bets her soul for her beloved's safe return from the crusades. This woman who is idealized above all others sacrifices her purity, virtue, and life when she loses the bet because Dante sleeps with another woman. In this way, she proves to be a slave to Dante's whims, a sacrificial cow that absolves him of the many, many crimes he commits. She submits to him, like Bennett says, paying dearly for his crimes. Beatrice is displayed as a lesser being to the corrupt and misguided Dante despite her feminine perfection, all because she is a woman.
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