When the Fair Sex Goes Bad

As one of the feminine persuasion, I find it quite obvious that the The Faerie Queene was written by a man. It is the first work we have read this semester that allows women a leading role in its narrative, and oh, what a curious role they play. Sometimes Spenser's ladies seem almost as "other" as the fairies themselves.

I first started mulling over these ideas with the discussion of Errour earlier this week. That the monster should be female is unextraordinary; that her "other halfe did womans shape retain" (Canto 1, line 124) is worth considering. The untried knight's first adversary is not only feminine, but shaped in part as a human female. This put me immediately in mind of Milton's Sin. We were not assigned to read Book 2 of Paradise Lost, but I mistook it for Book 1 and winded up swallowing a good deal of extra text one day several weeks ago, where I came across this tantalizing character. "Sin" happens to be an attractive woman from the waist up and a vile, scaly beast from the waist down. Sound familiar? Errour is another bizarre hybrid of woman's body and tangled tail. A footnote to line 126 informs us that the description draws from both classical and biblical monsters. Apparently this is a fairly popular image. But why a woman?*

I notice nobody mentioned the fact that Errour lives in a cave. At the risk of sounding Freudian, I must point out that caves tend to be associated with female sexuality. It is an interesting set-up for RedCrosse's first battle, considering what is to beset him later. Dreams of Una's infidelity chase him from her, and the bulk of Book 1 deals with the results of their separation. Shortly thereafter, the false Fidessa/Duessa lures him with her lustful passions, so that he eventually finds himself rotting in a giant's dungeon for her sake.

However, we cannot neglect another invaluable female figure, Una herself. Una represents truth, purity, and innocence. "Her angels face" (3, 33) glows like the sun itself, and "Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace" (3, 36). The implications seem to be that Una is barely mortal herself. Certainly she seems to ride above mortal passions. While RedCrosse leaves her over a dream, she runs to his rescue apparently untouched by anything but forgiveness for his fling with Duessa. She is near superhuman in her goodness.

It is interesting that while duality is a woman (Duessa), so is unity (Una). While Lucifera, Queen of the House of Pride, is a woman, so is Gloriana, the Fairy Queen herself. In The Faerie Queene, it often seems that if Everyman is a man, Everyother is a woman. Women represent extremes both good and evil. They are the angels and the demons of this story.

Come now, are we really so intimidating as all that?

* To be fair, there are only two gender options, unless we really want to get creative, available to monsters as well as people. While it is not necessarily unreasonable to make much of portrayals of femininity in literature, one must take into account that sometimes a woman is just a woman.