Woman-Hating in Marie de France’s Bisclavret

Love is never easy for Marie de France's protagonists. All twelve of her lays feature a man and a woman in troubled love, and these amorous pairs are strained or destroyed by one or more of the following intrusive elements: a lie, a deception, or an omission (2); physical separation, either geographic or architectural (3); or the neglect of a magical substance. (4) In each text, the suffering of the couple yields reflection on how males and females comport themselves when entranced by love and faced with its obstacles. Bisclavret is unique among Marie's lays because it is the only one of the twelve that concerns itself with a couple falling out of love (Menard 101, Bruckner 258). Scholarship on this text has traditionally focused on one of four areas: the etymology of the term bisclavret; Marie's appropriation of the werewolf topos; the human/werewolf duality of the baron; or the slow shift of the mantle of villainy away from the werewolf and onto the baron's wife. (5) Missing, however, from previous research has been a comprehensive analysis of the insidious woman-hating universe Marie creates in the text. The purpose of the present study is to demonstrate how the poet, in progressive and incremental ways, builds the wife into a contemptible traitor, a loathsome violator of the institution of marriage who is deserving of her punishment. This rereading suggests that the lycanthropic theme of the lay is merely a catalyst for launching a scalding indictment of women who do not respect their husbands. This study begins by comparing how Marie constructs and then modifies her representations of the werewolf, the baron, and his wife; moves to an examination of how the interplay between these characters tilts the lay's shifting table of alliances; and concludes by assessing the text's misogynistic denouement. For the purpose of clarity, the main character will be referred to as the werewolf when in a lupine state in the lay and as the baron when in human form. Initial Portraits of the Werewolf, the Male, and the Female Bisclavret runs a total of 318 verses, but Marie furnishes a capsule description of the three types of beings the lay examines--werewolf, man, and woman--in the text's first 22 lines. These portraits are rendered in the following order: that of the werewolf, a creature presented initially as a generalized type, in a ten-verse description; that of the male, represented by the baron, in six verses; and that of the female, represented by his wife, in just two verses. These verbal sketches, paraded in front of the reader (6) before the action of the text begins, provide Marie with three pliable forms that she will subsequently remold as the lay progresses. The text begins with the narrator's announcement of the importance of preserving the story: "Quant des lais faire m'entremet/ne vueil ublier Bisclavret" (1-2: When I take on the task of writing lais, I don't want to forget Bisclavret), (7) and proceeds immediately to a sober, encyclopedia-entry-like presentation of the werewolf: Bisclavret a nun en Bretan, Garulf l'apelent li Norman. Jadis le poeit hum oir e sovent suleit avenir, hume plusur garulf devindrent e es boscages maisun tindrent. Garulf, ceo est beste salvage; tant cum il est en cele rage, humes devure, grant mal fait, es granz forez converse e vait. (3-12) (In Breton the name is bisclavret, while the Normans say garulf. In earlier times it was often said, and it often transpired, that many men became werewolves and lived in the woods. A werewolf is a savage beast" so long as it is in this rage, it devours humans and does great evil, dwelling in and moving about deep forests.) This is a zoological portrait whose elements can be ticked off like a checklist.' it specifies the name of the animal in two languages (3-4); the frequency (6) and extent (7) of its presence; and the locus of its activity (8, 12). …