Howes, 'Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500', Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 9510
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmmr/bmmr-9510-howes-women
@@@@96.1.4, Meale, ed., Women and Literature in Britain
Carol M. Meale, ed. Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-
1500. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 17.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Reviewed by Laura L. Howes -- University of Tennessee
A book of nine essays, which take as their common ground medieval
"women's access to a written culture" in Britain (1), this volume
far exceeded my expectations: because of its surprising
coherence and the high quality of all essays included, it reads
well sequentially--unlike many other essay collections--and in
several instances authors refer directly or indirectly to other
essays in the volume. Indeed, reading the essays together
conveys a clear sense of the great variety of ways medieval women
participated in written culture, so that in this case the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts. Further, as Carol
Meale observes in a brief introduction, the central issue of the
collection is whether, and how, women were able "to use [written]
culture for their own ends, independent of the male authority by
which it was sanctioned" (1). This is a welcome approach. For
while many earlier studies examine the very real cultural and
ideological constraints imposed on medieval women, and while
others focus on a handful of exceptional women, such as Marie de
France and Christine de Pizan, this book derives much of its
strength from its broad-based analyses of "sub-cultures" of
religious and secular literate women. But before proceeding
further, I must pause over two assumptions encoded in the
preceding statement. First, "literacy" cannot mean for medieval
women what it means for modern men and women. While some women
did in fact know how to read and write, especially in the
vernacular, others who could not read at all nevertheless owned
books. As Meale points out in her essay: "In an age when
'reading' could be a communal activity, . . . the term 'reader'
may need radical redefinition if we are to understand women's use
of books" (133). And second, the division of medieval society
into "religious and secular" components does not accurately
represent the lived experience of many medieval women who,
Felicity Riddy argues, "may well have formed reading communities"
that crossed the religious-secular divide (109). On this issue,
Riddy concludes: "From the pattern of book-giving I have
described it seems clear that the literary culture of nuns in the
late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and that of a devout
gentlewoman not only overlapped but were more or less
indistinguishable" (110), a point made about the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne as well. As these
brief quotations suggest, these essays significantly advance the
study of medieval women because they do not simply re-examine old
categories of thought on the topic; they formulate new ones.
The volume opens with three essays on romance. Judith Weiss's
"The Power and Weakness of Women in Anglo-Norman Romance"
acknowledges that most female romance characters serve as "pawns
in the games of others" (11); still, Weiss explores the
depiction of strong-willed female characters, favorably
presented. Argentille, in Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis,
and Iseut, in Folies Tristan, both display their ingenuity
at key points in the narratives and are thus among those twelfth-
century romance heroines who "impress us by their initiative and
resourcefulness" (13). Seeking the reason behind these and other
positive portrayals, Weiss posits a connection to the patrons of
Anglo-Norman romances. One female patron, Constance, wife of
Ralf Fitzgilbert, is mentioned by Gaimar in his Estoire des
Engleis, according to which "she borrowed a copy of Geoffrey
of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae from her husband
and gave it to Gaimar to work on for the Estoire" (19).
Such speculation is intriguing; it begs further attention.
Flora Alexander's essay, "Women as Lovers in Early English
Romance," examines the variety of ways female love is portrayed
in early romances. She begins by demonstrating that La3amon
makes Igerne "a loving wife to Gorlois" (26), when she is
deceived by King Uther in her own bedroom, and so La3amon
"deal[s] perceptively and sympathetically with the sexual life of
a woman when it suits his purpose" (26). In other instances, the
love and desire of romance heroines actually drive the plot:
"The most obvious connection between the woman's love and the
plot is created when the heroine is assertive in her sexual
conduct" (31). Examples of such assertiveness include Rymenhild
of King Horn, Belisaunt in Amis and Amiloun, and
the English Ysoude who "is a lively and responsive partner to
Tristem" (33). Of course not all female love is viewed
positively in English romance, but Alexander argues convincingly
that love forces English romance heroines to behave in unexpected
ways: "They challenge barriers of rank, and defy social
prohibitions, for the sake of their love" (37). Like Weiss,
Alexander also suggests a historical connection between strong-
willed heroines and an original female audience. She surmises
"that the story-tellers were responding to a desire felt by women
in their audience . . . to imagine an autonomy and freedom of
action denied them by their actual position in family and
society" (38). The third essay on romance, "Mothers in
Middle English Romance" by Jennifer Fellows, opens with a brief
discussion of motherhood and maternal imagery in spiritual works
of the period before surveying romance mothers who, on the whole,
tend not to fare as well as romance lovers: "Broadly speaking,
the more active the mother's part, . . . the more likely she is
to be in some degree the villain of / the piece and eventually to
meet with some sort of judgement or retribution" (43-44),
although Fellows also discerns a "degree of sympathy" for mothers
in difficult situations, such as that of unmarried mothers. The
bulk of Fellows's essay, however, comprises a kind of catalogue
of mothers, good and bad, so that analysis of her findings is
here somewhat limited.
The next three essays, concerning religious writing, evince no
such limitations. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's contribution, "'Clerc u
lai, muone u dame': Women and Anglo-Norman Hagiography in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," emphasizes the degree to which
nunneries and noble households shared an interest in religious
writing. Not only was the "medieval noble household . . . itself
a kind of religious community, maintaining its own chapels and
chaplains, festivals and commemorations" (62), but "[e]ven the
greatest nunneries fulfilled the function of upper-class
gynacea, providing places for widows and other women
unaccommodated within their parental or marital households'
dynastic arrangements" (63). Wogan-Browne focusses her
examination of hagiography on three works: Marie (of Chatteris's)
Vie seinte Audree, Clemence of Barking's Life of St.
Catherine, and Vie d'Edouard le confesseur, by another
nun of Barking Abbey. All three deserve study not as mere
translations from their Latin sources, according to Wogan-Browne,
but as full reworkings with a female readership in mind.
Clemence of Barking's Life of St. Catherine should indeed be
"seen alongside such contemporary and comparable works as the
Lais of Marie de France," because of its "courtly and
doctrinal sophistication" (68). Wogan-Browne's note number 4
provides the reader with an invaluable list of Anglo-Norman
hagiographical works, alphabetical by saint.
Similarly, Bella Millet's "English Recluses and the Development
of Vernacular Literature" argues for a re-evaluation of the role
of female recluses in the rise of religious works written in
French during the Anglo-Norman period and in English beginning in
the thirteenth century. Their position in the "newly emerging,
ill-defined borderland" (90) between Latin literacy and non-
literacy provided a significant catalyst for the use of
vernacular languages, she asserts. Millet's discussions of the
St. Albans Psalter, prepared in the early twelfth century for
Christina of Markyate, and of Ancrenne Wisse and related
texts, illustrate a "hierarchy of literacy" (95), the "mid-point"
of which "is occupied by the primary audience, a group of readers
more at home with the vernacular than with Latin" (95).
Felicity Riddy's essay, "'Women Talking about the Things of God':
A Late Medieval Sub-Culture," uses Chaucer's Prioress as a
"metonym" for "the existence of a certain kind of female
readership" in late medieval England (106), one which may have
circulated devout manuscripts, such as the Vernon manuscript
(Oxford, Bodleian Library Eng. poet. MS a.I), and formed reading
and teaching communities. Riddy examines in detail several
instances of book-giving and discerns a "late medieval sub-
culture" of devout women, lay and religious. She then turns to
Julian of Norwich's work to examine such a sub-culture "from
within. . . and a subjectivity shaped by [the sub-culture]"
(111). In fact, Riddy argues, it is this feminine sub-culture
that appears to have given support to Julian's "confidence in her
own gender" (116), despite her internalization of "the clerical
definition of the unlettered [i.e., illiterate in Latin] woman as
weak and marginal" (116).
The last three essays cover a broad range of related topics.
Carol M. Meale's
". . . alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and
frensch': Laywomen and Their Books in Late Medieval England"
examines historical records for several late medieval women,
including Alice Chaucer, Cecily Neville, and Anne Neville,
Duchess of Buckingham, for evidence of book ownership and
patronage. She further identifies as women "[m]any of Lydgate's
patrons for his minor religious works" (137). And for women's
ownership of romances, "the second largest generic grouping
amongst women's books in the Middle Ages as a whole" (139), after
religious works, Meale finds plenty of evidence to suggest a wide
female readership for French romances, Arthurian and non-
Arthurian alike, as well as for some English romances, the work
of Christine de Pizan, and other assorted texts.
Julia Boffey's search for "role models for women writing" (159)
in the late medieval period, in "Women Authors and Women's
Literacy in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century England," discusses
Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Beatrice of Kent, and
Christine de Pizan as possible role models. Further,
"[t]ranslations of continental devotional texts must also have
reminded English audiences of the existence of female authors"
(161). Boffey also analyzes evidence for female authorship of
some anonymous works, and ends up debunking assumptions by
earlier scholars that unsigned works often indicate female
authorship. Of four lyrics in the Findern Manuscript (Cambridge
University Library Ff.1.6), for example, Boffey concludes that
"[t]he nature of the manuscript's contents, and the number of
female names it contains, must suggest that women read it with
interest (perhaps even that they organised [sic] its production),
but the status of its lyrics as the compositions or the copy of
'writing women' must await further proof" (171). Boffey's
feminist analyses of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe as
"authors" would have benefitted from the work of two frequently
cited American literary scholars--Karma Lochrie and Lynn Staley
Johnson. It is regrettable that she seems not to have known
their work.
The only thematic inconsistency in this volume comes at the
opening of the last essay, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan's "Women and
Their Poetry in Medieval Wales." Following Julian Boffey's
critique of scholars who find women's words hiding in anonymous
works written from a female point of view, Lloyd-Morgan begins by
doing just that when she argues that "a few examples" of women's
poems may have been included in the Oxford Book of Welsh
Verse inadvertently, since many traditional folk songs
"reflect experiences so gender-specific that we may conclude that
they were composed by women" (183). Still, Lloyd-Morgan does go
on to discuss what can be known about two named women poets in
medieval Wales: the late twelfth-century Gwennllian ferch Rhirid
Flaidd and Gwerful Mechain, active from about 1462 to 1500. The
establishment of each woman's poetic corpus is complicated by the
"long time lapse between the supposed date of composition and the
date of the earliest manuscript" (185) and by an assumed
tradition of oral transmission, but Lloyd-Morgan's discussion is
marked by judicious analysis of the available evidence and a
strong desire to sort fact from fiction. Her essay closes with
translations and readings of two englynion by Gwerful
Mechain, one of them religious and the other openly lustful. We
can but wait for the full edition of Gwerful's poems presently
occupying Lloyd-Morgan and Dr. Marget Haycock.
In short, the nine essays in Women and Literature in Britain,
1150-1500 cover an impressive array of historical situations
in which medieval women read books or heard them read, wrote
works or dictated them to an amanuensis, owned books, passed them
on to daughters or to other like-minded women, and acted as
literary patrons. The volume does indeed establish, in my mind,
the existence of reading and talking communities, or intellectual
"sub-cultures," among women in medieval Britain. Thus, for the
lack of a clear diachronic tradition of female authors during
this time period, we can substitute synchronic networks
connecting women locally. Redefining the way in which we view
women's intellectual involvement during the medieval period is
one of the strengths of this volume. It should find a place in
every college library and in the bibliographies of all new
projects which deal with medieval women.
Works Cited
Johnson, Lynn Staley. "The Trope of the Scribe and the Question
of Literary Authority in the Works of Julian of Norwich and
Margery Kempe." Speculum 66 (1991): 820-38.
Lochrie, Karma. Margery Kempe and Translations of the
Flesh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1991.
Parry, Thomas, ed. The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.