The Judges of Women: Margery Kempe and the Fallen Woman

Margery Kempe was an outcast for her eccentric faith and dramatic personality. When reading Margery’s life, I saw many similarities between the way she was treated and the popular character trope of 19^th-centruy literature of the fallen woman. The fallen woman was any woman who had “fallen” from society, implying a loss of innocence normally associated with loss of virginity before marriage. The characteristics of a fallen woman were always tied to her sexuality and often served as an example or warning to young women reading these stories to be cautious of the evils of the world. The fallen women emerged from the oppressive Victorian societal standards, placed specifically on women.

The popular use of this trope shows that the obsession with the sexual activity of women continues to be a main theme throughout literature. One of the first things Margery does is vow chastity, even though she is married. Then she starts to dress in all white. Interestingly, fallen woman are criticized for their lack of sexual purity while Margery is hated for her attempt to regain sexual purity. 

The people claim she is a hypocrite and Lollard and she becomes an outcast by most of society for her outrageous behavior. Margery spends most of her time crying and she is constantly on the brink of distress for Christ’s suffering. She is very aggressive in her faith.  Similarly, the fallen woman is often portrayed as mentally or emotionally unstable as her outcast from society quickly makes her go insane. The story for the fallen woman often ends with her death, as there is no redemption for her actions.    

The view of Margery Kempe is mixed between followers who have seen miracles worked around her and people who call her a heretic and shun her. With the fallen woman trope, there are always sets of people that want to support her but society at large is completely against her. Margery also deals with the officials of society and the majority of the population constantly mocking her.

The difference with Margery Kempe though is that she does not care about what society thinks of her. The entire character of the fallen woman is based on how society is seeing her and it is arguably society rather than the woman that cause her downfall.  Margery on the other hand is completely immune to society’s opinion of her, in so far as it does not discourage her away from Christ.

Out for Blood: Reactions to Women Bleeding

In the show and books, Game of Thrones treats blood as a symbol of a women’s ability to have children, and therefore ability to be married. In the show, Sansa Stark is horrified to wake up to find that she has started her period. She wakes from a nightmare where she is being harassed to find blood all over her sheets. In this scene the focus is on her blood that has stained her sheets instead of the blood on her. She rushes to get a knife to cut out the stain and Shae walks in and immediately starts helping her hide the blood, which they are eventually unsuccessful in doing. Sansa’s blood was the focus of this scene. After, Sansa confesses to Cersei that she did not expect it so messy and Cersei tells her that childbirth is worse. The obsession with Sansa’s “flowering” is connected to her ability now to have children, specifically Joffery’s children, so they can now marry. In this example, a medieval woman bleeds to show her ability to have children. She is scared of her own blood while everyone else was anticipating it. As Sansa is now scared of the king, the thought of having his children is something is desperately avoiding. The same acceptance and usefulness of women’s blood is seen with Dany as she prepares to marry Khal Drogo. She is described as being ready for marriage because “she has had her blood” (34). Again women’s blood is connected to their ability to have children and therefore, in this scenario, their individual worth.

Another example of blood from the show is in the scene between Ygritte and Jon Snow in which Ygritte assures Jon that “girls see more blood than boys.” Here is another reverse to women’s menstruation and childbirth but this time it is in a superior tone. Ygritte portrays women’s almost indifference to blood as a strength they have over men.

From the book A Feast for Crows, Cersei does not talk of blood in menstruation; instead it is something that is showing her weakness. Curse has a dream that she is sitting on the Iron Throne but it is almost attacking her as the sharp edges cut into her skin. The description of the dream is vivid: “blood ran red down her legs, as still teeth gnawed at her buttocks…The more she struggled the more the throne engulfed her, tearing chunks of flesh from her breasts and belly, slicing at her arms and legs until they were slick and red, glistening” (Martin 65-66). Here blood seems to be Cersei’s punishment for wanting to hold a man’s position and gain power. Cersei imitating a man has caused her to bleed and her blood is not praised for what it brings or a sign of strength but rather a sign of her weakness and shortcoming.

For these female characters, the presence of blood takes on several different meanings and can either be an unwelcome sentence or a symbol of their power.

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. 

Marital Rape in Medieval Times

An element of medieval queens that struck me as intriguing was how the topic of sex was handled with Custance in “The Man of Law’s Tale.” The contemporary English lines read as follows, depicting Custance’s sexual relations with her husband, Alla:

                    708   They go to bed, as it was reasonable and right;

                    709   For though wives are full holy things,

                    710  They must take in patience at night

                    711  Such sorts of necessary acts as are pleasing

                    712  To folk that have wedded them with rings,

                    713  And (they must) lay their holiness aside a little while,

                    714  As for the time being -- it can be no better.

To me, these lines read as a polite attempt to explain why Custance—who is depicted throughout the story as being the image of unadulterated Christian holiness, humility, and virtue—needs to engage in the unholy act of sex. Lines 709 and 713 in particular seem to state that Custance had to engage in sex in order to satisfy her husband, and bear him an heir. The careful wording of the sexual relations between Custance and Alla makes me perceive that sex—even within the realms of marriage—was regarded for women as merely a necessary duty rather than a pleasurable, or even consensual, act. Line 710 was particularly unsettling, for it appears as though women were expected to essentially endure sex with their husbands in order to provide heirs. The Susan Schibanoff reading quotes Elaine Tuttle Hansen, stating how Custance is the "archetypally passive" woman who "put(s) the love of a man above all other responsibilities, even above life itself" (62-3).

This passage and quote reminded me of how marital sex between royal characters in Game of Thrones is portrayed, foremost the relationship between Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo. In the novel, Daenerys, a thirteen-year-old, is married off to Khal Drogo, a fierce and brutal warrior king, in order to aid in her brother’s quest for power. The initial sex scene between the characters is unsettling. Daenerys—made queen of Drogo’s people by marriage—was a scared child who was sold by her brother and forced to have sex with a savage grown man. Though terrified, she trains in the art of love making with her hand maidens in order to please her husband sexually. The relationship is then depicted as loving and consensual, and Daenerys eventually falls pregnant with an heir. It disturbs me that the rape of a young girl by a grown man was glossed over and spun into a love story. It is depicted as merely the duty of Daenerys and Custance to put aside their personal feelings in order to sexually please their husbands.

This also parallels the relations between Queen Cersai and King Robert. Robert was depicted as a drunk and negligent husband, and he never loved nor wanted to marry Cersai. Cersai—despite her later qualms with Robert—stated that she initially tried to please him as wife, but he was preoccupied with the death of his fiancé. Robert never took the time to appreciate Cersai, and the few times that they did engage in intercourse was when Robert was drunk and would come to the bedroom and force himself on Cersai when he wasn’t busy with one of his whores. Bearing children was viewed as Cersai’s queenly duty, and sex with Robert was written as an act of drunken aggression, not mutual adoration.

Additionally, the marriage of Sansa Stark into the royal family deserves examination. Sansa is a young teen who is terrified of losing her virginity to Tyrion Lannister, yet the entire castle expects her to have sex with him after they are forced to marry. Tyrion’s father orders him to impregnate her with an heir, and it is tradition for the members of the wedding party to undress the newlyweds and watch them consummate their marriage. However, Tyrion creates a deviation from this practice, for he refuses to bed Sansa before she consensually agrees to sleep with him.

Lastly, it is worth noting the sexual relationship between King Renly (who is a homosexual) and his wife Margaery Tyrell. In this relationship, traditional gender roles are switched, and Margaery is depicted as the sexually aggressive partner, as she persistently tries to initiate sex with Renly in order to impregnate herself with his child and secure her position as queen.

These examples align with Schibanoff’s quote from Genesis 1:28, which "defines the purpose of woman's creation as generative" (67). Overall, it seems that queens in medieval times were largely regarded as mere pawns for extending the royal family, and it was their job to endure unwanted sex in order to please their husbands and procure heirs.