Normal Women, page 12
Elizabeth Etchingham (?–1452) and Agnes Oxenbridge (?–1480) were buried together at the Church of St Nicholas and St Mary at Etchingham, East Sussex, and memorialised in this brass plate
[And Cover] Brass of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge at the Church of St Nicholas and St Mary, Etchingham, East Sussex (Julian P. Guffogg)
The Nature of Women
In 1348, Henry Knighton, an Augustinian canon in Leicester who wrote a chronicle called Knighton’s Leicester Chronicle, recorded that beautiful ladies from wealthy families and noble lineage would regularly take part in jousting competitions:
In these days a rumour and a great complaint arose among the people that when tournaments were held, in every place a company of ladies appeared . . . in the diverse and marvellous dress of a man, to the number sometime forty, sometimes fifty . . . in divided tunics, that is, one part of the one kind and the other of another kind, with small hoods and liripipes flying about the head . . . even having across their stomachs, below the middle, knives which they vulgarly called daggers placed in pouches from above. Thus they came, on excellent chargers or other horses splendidly adorned, to the place of the tournament. And in such manner they spent and wasted their riches and injured their bodies with abuses and ludicrous wantonness that the common voice of the people exclaimed.103
When Agnes Hotot (b. 1378) put on full jousting armour and entered the lists as her father’s champion in a battle of arms, after he had fallen sick before a fight with another lord in a duel, she fought a ‘stubborn encounter’ and won – unhorsing her father’s enemy. Only then, as he lay on the ground, did she remove her helmet, let down her hair and take off her breastplate to show her breasts and prove that he had been defeated by a woman. When she married into the Dudley family, they celebrated her victory with a crest showing a woman wearing a military helmet with loosened hair and her breasts exposed, commemorating their female champion.104
Some people born as men lived as women and undertook women’s work. A woman calling herself Eleanor was arrested in 1395 and accused of ‘detestable unmentionable and ignominious vice’ with a man. The mayor of London interrogated her and her answers were translated into Latin by his clerk, who recorded that Eleanor may have been born John Rykenor and was introduced into prostitution as a child by a woman named ‘Anna’. Eleanor and Anna apprenticed themselves to Elizabeth Brouderer – probably Elizabeth Moring, who was accused in the 1380s of running a brothel and recruiting girls as apprentice embroiderers, to use them as prostitutes. Eleanor worked as a seamstress and a prostitute in Oxford and Beaconsfield in 1394 and admitted having sexual intercourse with many partners: three scholars of Oxford, two Franciscan monks, six foreign men, a woman called Joan in Beaconsfield and – when dressed as a man – with ‘many nuns’. The crime that brought Eleanor to court was that of having sex with a man, a Yorkshireman – John Birtby. They were caught together breaking curfew after 8 p.m.105
Agnes Hotot in the Dudley family crest created to celebrate her victory when she took her father’s place in the joust
[And Cover] The Crest of Dudley of Northamptonshire from Mark Antony Lower, The Curiosities of Heraldry, J.R. Smith, 1845, p. 172 (Public domain)
Birtby told the mayor’s inquiry that he thought he was hiring a female prostitute – which would mean he was guilty of nothing but breaking curfew. If Eleanor was a woman prostitute, she was guilty of breaking curfew and of infringing the ban the city had imposed on prostitutes in a campaign of moral purity after the plague years. If she were a man, they were both guilty of sodomy – a sin and a crime. The clerk did not report the decision and sentence of the court, and Eleanor disappears from the record.
John Tirell was arrested in London in June 1425 for ‘walking around’ – meaning soliciting as a prostitute in women’s clothing. Tirell took an oath for future good behaviour and was released.106
In The Canterbury Tales (published in 1392 but possibly written before then), Geoffrey Chaucer struggled to define the sex of one character: ‘I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare.’107 A ‘gelding’ is a castrated male horse, a ‘mare’ is a female horse. The Pardoner wears his blond hair long, spread over his shoulders, his big eyes ‘like a hare’, a spray of Veronica, the flower of love and fidelity, in his cap. He has a voice as light as a goat, and he is beardless and smooth-faced:
A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot.
No berd hadde he, ne nevere sholde have;
As smothe it was as it were late shave.
I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare.108
Discussion continued about the definition of women, the many sorts of women, the fluidity of sex and about women’s nature. As the stories of ‘courtly love’ were retold and developed, spreading across Europe, the description of the heroines changed. The women of the epic poems had been active, powerful women in the world, sometimes fighting their own battles, like the women of Leicester who fought in jousts, those who went on missions and crusades, and those who were said to sit in judgement in ‘Courts of Love’, ruling on chivalry and the etiquette of fin’amor – fine love.109
Chaucer offered another active version of womanhood in ‘The Wife of Bath’, where the heroine describes using her ‘instrument’ – her genitals – freely, night and morning. She has rights over her husband’s body and he has to pay the debt of marital intercourse:
In swich estaat as God hath cleped us
In such estate as God has called us
I wol persevere; I nam nat precius.
I will persevere; I am not fussy.
In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument
In wifehood I will use my instrument
As frely as my Makere hath it sent.
As freely as my Maker has it sent.
If I be daungerous, God yeve me sorwe!
If I be niggardly, God give me sorrow!
Myn housbonde shal it have bothe eve and morwe,
My husband shall have it both evenings and mornings,
Whan that hym list come forth and paye his dette.
When it pleases him to come forth and pay his debt.
An housbonde I wol have – I wol nat lette –
A husband I will have – I will not desist –
Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral,
Who shall be both my debtor and my slave,
And have his tribulacion withal
And have his suffering also
Upon his flessh, whil that I am his wyf.
Upon his flesh, while I am his wife.
I have the power durynge al my lyf
I have the power during all my life
Upon his propre body, and noght he.
Over his own body, and not he.
Right thus the Apostel tolde it unto me,
Right thus the Apostle told it unto me,
And bad oure housbondes for to love us weel.
And commanded our husbands to love us well.
Al this sentence me liketh every deel” –
All this sentence pleases me every bit”–110
The Wife of Bath is not an exceptional character in medieval stories. Cautionary tales, comedy stories, bawdy poems, plays, ballads and court cases showed medieval women as sexually active and indeed enthusiastic. The Wife of Bath promises exclusive fidelity to her husband, warning him that she could prostitute herself and ‘walk as fresh as is a rose’, but if he will love her ‘pretty thing’ – her genitals – she will reserve herself for his exclusive pleasure.
What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone?
What ails you to grouch thus and groan?
Is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone?
Is it because you want to have my pudendum all to yourself?
Wy, taak it al! Lo, have it every deel!
Why, take it all! Lo, have it every bit!
Peter! I shrewe yow, but ye love it weel;
By Saint Peter! I would curse you, if you did not love it well;
For if I wolde selle my bele chose,
For if I would sell my ‘pretty thing,’
I koude walke as fressh as is a rose;
I could walk as fresh (newly clothed) as is a rose;
But I wol kepe it for youre owene tooth.
But I will keep it for your own pleasure.
Ye be to blame, by God! I sey yow sooth.’
You are to blame, by God! I tell you the truth.’111
Women in real life were similarly sexually assertive and enthusiastic. The mystic preacher Margery Kempe (1373– after 1438), who sold her brewery and milling business in Lynn to go on a pilgrimage, spoke of her adulterous desire for another man as well as her enjoyment of sex with her husband when she dictated her spiritual autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe. Her description of her imaginary marriage with Jesus was consciously passionate and sexual. She persuaded her husband to accept a sexual ban so that she might concentrate on her spiritual mission, but she made it clear that giving up sex was hard for her.112 Clearly, this was a woman (a mother of 14 children) who understood female sexuality and chose her own sexual expression.
Chaucer also describes a completely different sort of woman – the woman that was emerging in the courtly love stories – no longer sexually assertive, no longer militant. In ‘The Knight’s Tale’, he writes of Emelye – the sister of the queen of the Amazons, who returns with Theseus to Athens after he has defeated her country and married her sister. The lady is seen by two imprisoned knights, Arcite and Palamon, on May Day morning – the morning celebrated for love and witchcraft.
That Emelye, that fairer was to sene
That Emelye, who was fairer to be seen
Than is the lylie upon his stalke grene,
Than is the lily upon its green stalk,
And fressher than the May with floures newe –
And fresher than the May with new flowers –
For with the rose colour stroof hire hewe,
For her hue vied with color of the rose,
I noot which was the fyner of hem two –
I do not know which was the finer of them two –113
The two knights are instantly in love, ready to die of love:
And but I have hir mercy and hir grace,
And unless I have her mercy and her grace,
That I may seen hire atte leeste weye,
So that I can at least see her,
I nam but deed; ther nis namoore to seye.”
I am as good as dead; there is no more to say.”114
After years of suffering by the two rival knights, of which Emelye is completely unaware, a joust is arranged between them to decide who will marry her. Emelye decides she will marry neither and prays to the goddess Diana:
Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I
Chaste goddess, well knowest thou that I
Desire to ben a mayden al my lyf,
Desire to be a maiden all my life,
Ne nevere wol I be no love ne wyf.
Nor never will I be no lover nor wife.115
The joust is won by Arcite, and Emelye, abandoning her oath of chastity at speed, signifies her consent by smiling on him, but he is injured in a fall and dies, with her name on his lips, after recommending his cousin Palamon as her husband. Emelye collapses in near-fatal grief and performs the rituals of a widow. But in the last seven lines of the poem she cheers up and marries Palamon, at the command of Theseus. The happiness is described as his:
For now is Palamon in alle wele,
For now is Palamon in complete happiness,
Lyvynge in blisse, in richesse, and in heele,
Living in bliss, in riches, and in health,
And Emelye hym loveth so tendrely,
And Emelye loves him so tenderly,
And he hire serveth so gentilly,
And he serves her so gently,
That nevere was ther no word hem bitwene
That never was there any word between them
Of jalousie or any oother teene.
Of jealousy or any other vexation.
Inside the one collection of tales, Chaucer describes both the idealised ‘lady’, seen from a distance, apparently unobtainable who hopes to remain chaste but then agrees to marry, and an accessible bawdy woman who loves sex and demands pleasure from her husband and – if he refuses her – says she would not be ashamed to sell sex on the street. The women are opposites, both in nature and in class position. The bawdy sexually available woman is a labouring woman; she makes her own demands, bluntly, in cheerful ordinary language. Her story is set in everyday England, among ordinary people.
Emelye, the lady in ‘The Knight’s Tale’, is a subject of the story, not a narrator. She does not even speak till 2,000 lines in, and then it is a prayer to keep her maidenhood. She is far from England, set in a legendary past, sister to a queen, guest of a classical hero – Theseus. She is incomprehensible because she is unexplained – a foreign princess from a strange land, turning up to spectate at the heroes’ adventures, with no report of her life before or after her scene with them. She changes her mind from a commitment to lifelong chastity to consent to marry a victorious knight, experiencing near-fatal grief at his death, and then marriage to another, with no process of decision-making or even sustained thought. She is an object, seen and desired and given as a reward. She is not an agent – making her own story; she is a lady doing nothing.
Courtly Rape
Over time, the courtly love stories became more sexually explicit, more realistic and more violent, and the heroines became less active – even failing in self-defence. The metaphor of a noble youth finding his way into a castle and picking the rose in the walled garden changed to become a realistic fiction about a siege of a castle, a breaking down of doors and entering without consent. The heroine was no longer icily commanding his service; the hero was no longer pleading for a glance, satisfied with a lifetime of service. Now he was a bold housebreaker. He no longer found a rose in a walled garden, he found a vulnerable woman in her bedroom and he had sex with her – despite her protestations. What had begun as an elite art form playing with the idea of worshipping an unobtainable, idealised woman developed into stories of violent entry.
The ‘nature of women’ in the courtly love tales took a dark turn. Women still demanded to rule but they could be thrown down. They said ‘no’ to men who were deaf to their commands. They claimed their castles were invulnerable, but a man could break in; they claimed to be above and beyond sexual desire, but they could be persuaded or forced. Apparently, the nature of women was self-contradictory – saying one thing but doing another. Women were unpredictable – they might take any action in any way. Women were irrational – maddened by their own contradictions. The unpredictability of women, the irrationality of women, the inscrutability of women, the unreliability of women was proclaimed and glamourised in the stories; their attack was glamourised too.116
The fictional assault of the lover on his lady offered a new vocabulary and a way of thinking about real-life rape. The crime had been defined as the theft or kidnap of a woman in order to win her fortune. The Latin word rapere was used in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century courts for the crimes of both abduction and forced heterosexual intercourse.117 Neither were crimes against a person – they were theft of, or damage to, another man’s property. But in the courtly love stories, the metaphor of plucking the rose represented both stealing a guarded treasure and sexual satisfaction for the man. In the Romance of the Rose, the pilgrim has to break down the defensive fence before he can put his staff in the hole and win the rosebud. ‘I had to assail it vigorously, throw myself against it often.’118
Earlier lovers had threatened to die of love; now they demanded pleasure. His lady was no more the commander of his fate, she was an involuntary assistant to his satisfaction. The will of the lady – her refusal – was broken in the act of rape. No longer was the lady an agent of her own story with intention and action that steers the narrative. Now the story was about seduction or rape – the story became the lover’s adventure. The lady is diminished to an object on which the act of sex is done.
This introduction of male sexual desire as the prime motive for the crime of rape has enormous consequences. It suggests that rape sits at the far end of a scale of male sexual activity that extends from permitted intimacy . . . through refusal . . . to beyond. Rape becomes seen as the act that takes place when seduction has failed. Rape becomes an act of sex with a person, not an act of theft or damage to a property, but an act of sex driven by desire, now categorised as uncontrollable. This belief seeps into society’s consciousness and even appears in law courts, even modern law courts where men explain that they ‘could not stop’, as if the scale of male sexual intimacy is not a scale after all, but a helter-skelter slide that once launched cannot be halted.
Once rape is seen as an involuntary physical response, it can be excused. It is hardly a crime at all. The man can claim he is not a criminal who decided to commit a crime – he is just a body experiencing an involuntary reaction, which he ‘couldn’t stop’. Once rape is seen as a point on the scale of male sexuality, it is easy to suggest that it is also on a scale of female sexual activity, just beyond ‘no’. For her too, sex can follow refusal. A million jokes, not one of them funny, were inspired by the idea that a woman’s ‘no’ does not mean ‘no’. If rape is a possibility, only one step beyond female refusal, then refusal does not indicate ‘stop’. The end of the male sexual helter-skelter is his satisfaction – whatever she may have said during the slide. The act can only be defined as a rape by the woman before it is completed, and the definition is only meaningful if she repeats the ‘no’ after the act, and takes it onwards, and says it again, to others, over and over, and convinces them that she said it at the time, loud enough for him to hear, and that she says it still. The victim of the crime becomes the one who names it as a crime, and she has to name it as a crime before he does it – so that it is knowingly done. If she does not name it as a crime – before it is done – there is no crime. So the victim is the one who is interrogated, who has to prove – not that sex happened (which is agreed) – but what she said before it happened, and after it happened.
