When reading the Faerie Queene for the first time; you begin to realize something. Many of the female characters are just as tough as the male characters. Seeing this in Renaissance/Tudor poetry is quite shocking. From past experience, I have always had the impression that Renaissance men saw women as demonic. Well, maybe not demonic, but temptresses leading you down the path straight to hell. Men saw themselves as superior to women, and blamed the cause of all their problems on women. I have always seen this as cowardly and wrong. I have a lot of respect for women and what they can do for their families. They deserve a lot more respect than they were getting, because even at “the beginning of the seventeenth century authors debated whether women were in league with the devil and whether they could beat their wives, and produced tracts on a range of sexually provocative topics.” (pg. 12, Wilcox) This quote just about says it all – women were treated as property! This was a very bad situation for women, but luckily for them, people like Juan Luis Vives, Roger Ascham, Thomas Elyot, John Aylmer, Henricus Cornelius, Thomas More, and Edmund Spenser started writing their own opinions down. These authors were all influential in changing the contemporary Renaissance beliefs and opinions about women. Of course the largest influence on woman-kind in Tudor England was Queen Elizabeth, to whom the Faerie Queene is dedicated. Elizabeth is probably one of the main reasons Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene in the first place. It is a refreshing breath of air to see a story that has as many, or more female heroines as male heroes. How does Spenser treat the women in the Faerie Queene; does he still hold the old prejudices, is he a feminist, how does he really see women? Elizabeth probably changed a lot of people’s opinions about women at that time – Spenser included. How drastically did his view change? Let us find out.

Queen Elizabeth is the warrior queen we all know from the Spanish Armada. She, dressed in full armor, rallied the troops, and valiantly pushed back the Spanish against all odds. On a side note, Spenser’s life was completely dominated by Elizabeth’s. The first Elizabeth he encounters is his mother, Elizabeth Spenser, “with whom in the beautiful Prothalamion he perhaps identifies London as his ‘Lifes first native sourse’ (129), associating the place of his origin with the person who originated him.” (pg. 37, Davies). He had a sister named Elizabeth, and then later in life his wife, Elizabeth Boyle. She was the inspiration for Epithalamion which we read early in the semester. The main Elizabeth, to whom the Faerie Queene is dedicated is Queen Elizabeth I. She dominated all of English lifestyle when she was in power. She changed the way the English thought about women; changed the way the monarchy worked. She manipulated the system through her whole life – and was a successful leader.

Elizabeth put the female warrior into fashion – Spenser made it pop culture. There are so many warrior women in the Faerie Queene that it is hard to keep count. Even though the female knights are heroines – good characters, Spenser still seems to hold some longstanding prejudices against them. All through the poem Spenser seems to hint at several generalizations about women. In book III the “female vice tends to be casually represented as generic to the sex”. (pg. 135, Hackett). Some of the examples Hackett gives includes the false Florimell rolling her eyes “like a womans” (III.viii.7), Hellenore practicing “womans subtiltyes” (III.ix.7), and even Glauce, a good character, “dissembled womanish guyle” (III.iii.17). These remarks are very informal – almost instinctive. “Womanish fine forgery”(II.xii.28) is a concern that runs throughout the poem. They seem to be very innocent, but reveal the prejudices inside the author.

In this era, women were all thought of as temptresses – there was no such thing as rape. If a woman was raped, it was usually her fault. Women were forced to be chaste and desirable at the same time. A beautiful virtuous woman posed quite a problem for men who desired her – they loved her for her virtue, yet to have her, they would have to stain that virtue. Perfect virtue is created by Spenser through many female and male characters in the Faerie Queene. The female characters all (in a small way) represent a portion of Queen Elizabeth. Una, Britomart, Belpheobe, Amoret, and Florimell, all play the virtue “game” perfectly. The Red Crosse Knight, Guyon and Arthur are all deceived by evil women who are trying to tempt them down the path of sin, and therefore hell. The temptations these men experience are the commonly generalized beliefs about women at that time. There is no such thing as rape, and these women, (i.e. Duessa, the women of the Bowre of Bliss) are the personification of women who get raped. That is, the personification of rape victims, according to the men who pass judgement on them. Men at this time thought that women really acted like this, and in so doing, tempted men into raping them. So in the evil women of the story, Spenser still includes the stereotypes of the “evil” type of woman – the one who tempts men down the path of sin. To counter these women, Spenser has included good women also.

The two main good women are Una and Britomart. Una is good because she is the perfect picture of chastity. She wears modest clothes, is amazingly beautiful, and acts perfectly ladylike. Another common renaissance belief was that a person’s outer beauty reflected their inner beauty. The more beautiful a person you were, the more beautiful a soul you had. It seems that Spenser values chaste love/desire the most. Una is in love with the Red Crosse Knight, and will let nothing deflect her from her goal. She is completely dedicated to Red Crosse Knight and loves him with all her heart. She will never give up searching for him, and through all her adventures, defends her chastity with all her might so that she might still be worthy for Red Crosse Knight when she finally finds him. Britomart is the same – she dreams of the man she will fall in love with. She finds out that she is destined to fall in love with a knight named Arthegall. She does not know anything about him, but as she hears more about him, she really does fall in love with him. Her ultimate goal in life is finding him and committing herself to him. She will not stray from that goal, and does all she can to reach it.

Did I mention that she is a female knight? Her armour represents her virtue – it represents her virtue because her virtue is her chastity. The armour represents the defences she puts up to protect her chastity – if that armour were ever broken, she would lose her honour. A female knight would probably seem quite strange to Renaissance readers of the time, but “Britomart has taken arms in the cause of love, continuing the romance tradition of the martial maiden whose potential freakishness is excused by her pursuit of a destiny of wifehood and marriage.” (p.134, Hackett). Spenser raises Britomart as a role-model for all women – he is not saying that they arm themselves and go to battle – he is saying that they must arm themselves to defend their chastity. Not literally arm themselves, but defend their chastity as if they were armed.
A female’s honour is displayed by her appearance on the outside. Una is beautiful, and has modest clothing. Britomart is beautiful and is fully armoured. Florimell is the most beautiful woman in the story.

She is strictly pure of heart, and in love with Marinell. She defends her chastity to the death. Even when she is about to die, all she thinks about is defending her chastity and staying worthy for Marinell. She even resists becoming a Goddess, offered to her through the wooing of the Sea God Proteus. All the beautiful women are 100% virtuous. There are some beautiful women who do not belong though. Take for example Duessa. Duessa is the personification of duplicity. She deceives poor Red Crosse Knight, and he struggles through nothing but hardship. He is very easily fooled by her because she is so beautiful – and as mentioned above – if you are beautiful, then you must be good right? Wrong – poor Red Crosse Knight thinks he is rescuing Duessa, but really she is capturing him. Appearances mean a lot in this poem, especially the appearance of the female genetalia. It seems that Spenser puts extra emphasis on the female genetalia when describing Duessa after she is disrobed. Duessa being bald, covered in scabby disease, and having rotten gums and “sowre breath” is bad enough; but Spenser save the best for last. I think he stresses the “dried dugs, like bladders lacking wind, / hong downe, and filthy matter from them weld” (I.viii.47) to multiply the horror of the picture. This is the most disgusting woman to ever walk the earth – and usually when you describe disgusting, you do not describe the breasts. The breasts are the most worshipped (by men) part of the woman’s body – showing them like this creates a horrible picture in one’s mind.

It is not only Duessa that is described like this, but also Errour. Now, Errour is pretty straightforward, half serpent, half woman – she is obviously evil. Yet there is still an aspect of duplicity there – in that Errour has the face of a woman. When we first see Errour she is feeding her young with her poisonous breasts. Errour might be half serpent, but the other half, is still woman. It is as if the woman part is in front – she has a woman’s face – to hide the serpent part. Of course Red Crosse Knight easily vanquishes her and he and Una can move on.

Other feminine crimes include sexual crimes. These women are not deceitful – they just take what they want and use it. There is the Giantess Argante who is having an incestuous relationship with her brother. She searches for young males which she can capture and force sex upon. This is not the worst a woman can do because in Renaissance times, it was common knowledge that there were women like this. (Yeah right). It was women like this who were the rape victims. There is also the story of Paridell and Hellenore. Hellenore is flirtatious, and tests her husband by making him choose between his riches and his wife – he of course chooses riches (because women are all spawn of the devil) and his wife runs off with some of his riches and a man named Paridell. Malbecco loses his castle to a fire purposely started by Hellenore (as part of the test). While Malbecco is saving his treasures, Paridell steals the riches from Hellenore, and runs off, leaving her in the wilderness. Hellenore is picked up by a community of Satyres and used as their communal sex partner. Malbecco uses what remains of his treasure to hire two mercenaries to go find Hellenore, and they run off with his money. Malbecco, left with nothing, finally finds his wife, but cannot get her to leave the village of Satyres. Left with nothing, he tries to kill himself, failing at even that, he resigns himself to living as a hermit.

This story seems a bit on the comical side, if it were not for the nasty part about Hellenore becoming the Satyr’s communal wife. It warns against several things – like choosing the right wife. Or choosing your wife over your riches. It was not Malbecco’s fault that Hellenore was so flirtatious. Malbecco was a victim here to a woman’s deceit. Spenser may be trying to show us how the deceitfulness of a woman can be the downfall of an entire lifetime. Not only does she push Malbecco to suicide, she is punished herself. Malbecco suffers the loss of everything because of his wife’s lack of virtue. She also loses everything because of her lack of virtue – the moral here is – stay virtuous!! Some may say that Malbecco was greedy and should not have tried to save his possessions, so it was partially his fault as well. I disagree, because if Malbecco had not saved his wealth, he would not have been able to hire those two mercenaries. If he had not hired them, and just ran after Hellenore right away, he would have probably been killed by Paridell. As it was, he made the right decision, but still lost everything.

Even though Spenser shows many examples of bad women, he does not think that all women are bad. Many men in that time were of the opinion that all women were demons, or should I say demonesses. Spenser does have an automatic, kind of, reflex, that spouts generalizations about women every once in a while. (As I have explained earlier.) But overall, he does not think that they are all bad, as “in exposing the promiscuous Malecasta he denies any intention to ‘blot the bounty of all womankind’ she is merely ‘one wanton dame’ ‘amongst thousands’ (III.i.40)(p.135, Hackett). He defends himself against any criticism that would accuse him of trying to give women a bad name. Why would he want to do that? In the Tudor era it was natural for men to generalize and stereotype on the female race as a whole. If a man made a stereotypical statement about womankind, people just laughed at it – took it as truth. Here Spenser shows a woman who fits the stereotype, but does his best to explain that this is not representative of all women. His feelings towards women seem to be sympathetic – he understands how badly they are discriminated against, and is set to do something about it.

The women in the Faerie Queene are good wives, yes – but they are not the common type of good wives. They are chasing their husbands; usually it is the other way around, as in Spenser’s case – the man chases the woman. (As we read in Epithalamion). These women are chasing their true loves – trying to find them, and be good wives for them. They are not being forced into marriage, so when entering the marriage they do not become ownership of the husband. They are a partnership – a new kind of marriage.

The Faerie Queene speaks against the ethos of love-conquest in which woman is taken as a possession. It should not be attempted and it cannot be done. In Book V, at Isis Church, Britomart’s dream in which she stands on the symbol of Osirian patriarchal law (the crocodile) signifies the transcendence of male by female law. (vii.3-24).
Pg. 43, Davies.

As Davies illustrates here – there is a lot more female equality in Spenser’s world.

I think Spenser is of the opinion that if there is more female influence on the world, it would be a better place. Davies also points out that “there is no suffering creature in the Faerie Queene for which Spenser fails to show pity.” (pg. 63, Davies). Spenser always shows compassion to any suffering happening in his story – even if the sufferer deserves every bit of what is happening to them. “This is the feminine ethos.” (pg. 63, Davies). Spenser believes in the feminine ethos, and implements it into his fairy tail to show how much better it is than the male ethos. In many parts of the Faerie Queene “Man the rapist is placed as an emblem of fallen humanity against the woman victim whose nature images the divine.” (pg. 72, Davies). The woman saves the day with her wit and beauty! The man must resort to brute force. Spenser has many ingrained prejudices against women, and is fighting against them as hard as he can. Sometimes he will let some generalizations slip, but he is trying his hardest to show the world what women are “really” made of. Many humanists at this time started to realize that “women had the ability to learn; it was simply a question of what they would do with such learning and whether it might interfere with their more important responsibilities as wives and mothers.”(pg. 11, Wilcox). People started to share the opinion of Spenser that women were much smarter than given credit for.

Spenser took this a step further in the Faerie Queen, at the beginning of Book III. Here Spenser accuses the men who write history of defacing women’s bravery. That men have been suppressing women’s achievements, and women are superior to men in deeds of bravery. He goes on to claim that because men found that women were braver than men, they devised narrow laws, fearing that their authority was at stake, to curb women’s liberty. In stanza 5 of Book iii, canto ii, Spenser continues his tirade against men saying that, since women were deprived of their weapons for battle, they turned to statecraft – politics. In this they excelled men also. All through history it has been men trying to suppress female supremacy. (Lecture, Dr. Bose). Was Spenser an early feminist? Maybe not right away, but slowly he was turned towards feminism.

What turned him towards seeing women in this light? Personally, I think it is Queen Elizabeth. She had a profound effect on everyone in England at the time of her reign. She turned the norms upside down and completely went against all precedent. She had a great propaganda campaign that let everybody to believe that she was the “virgin queen”. She wrapped the whole of England around her little finger – Spenser included. Why else would he dedicate this entire poem to her? She was the militant queen, the virgin queen, the virtuous queen and the political queen. She did everything right – and was rewarded with many long years of power.

The Faerie Queene is a tribute to Queen Elizabeth’s power and intelligence. Spenser obviously admired her and gained a lot of respect for the entire female race through reverence to his queen. Any person in power as long as Elizabeth was could have a huge effect on people. Spenser may have been raised in a male dominated world, but he lived under a female ruler. His opinions and thoughts were shaped by the woman he respected the most. If Elizabeth had this much effect on one man – imagine the effect upon all the women!? Many men and women were probably transformed (over the course of Elizabeth’s reign) to feminists. Elizabeth shaped more than England’s political history – she shaped people’s minds.

Bibliography

Davies, Stevie. The Idea of Woman in Renaissance Literature: The Feminine Reclaimed. Great Britain, The Harvester Press Ltd. ©1986 Stevie Davies.

Hackett, Helen. Women and Romance fiction in the English Renaissance. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press. ©2000 Helen Hackett

Editor: Wilcox, Helen. Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700.Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press. ©1996 Cambridge University Press.

Hello. This is my first essay post on this blog. This blog is strictly for my essays and commentary about them. If you like it and want to use it; ask for my permission. Enjoy the essay I just finished for English 377: Sonnets, taught by Carl Lynden Peters at Simon Fraser University. I hope you enjoy my take on modern art, as I see it.

This is not an essay. The de-definition of art seems to be the only way to create new art. The more an artist re-defines and de-defines art, the fresher the piece is. This paper will be a culmination of what I have learned through this semester in English 377; Sonnets. This semester, I have not done as much learning as I have done experiencing. English 377 is unlike any class I have ever taken, and the experience was very interesting. What I have realized near the end of the class is that this English course was more a review of all modern art, than just focusing on Barrigan or Shakespeare. For two short months I had the opportunity to look into the world of modern art, through the eyes of someone who really appreciates it. It was great to finally get an inkling of what modern art is really about. I do not know if I have the right idea or not, but if I have listened correctly through the semester, I can assume that having the “right” idea is not always what we should aim for. I am hoping that this essay will express what I feel modern art is “about”. I will admit, that I am very skeptical about many of the things we went over in class, but at the same time I am very interested in them. With my limited study in the area of modern art, I have come to one major conclusion. For art to be art, it constantly must change. Traditional art was considered art, because it was ground-breaking, and so it must be with all art. How can art be ground-breaking if it has all been done before? This is why art must be constantly re-defined and de-defined. Art used to be something specific, now it can be anything. This is not an essay. This is a sonnet.

I constantly find myself asking – “What is art?” I realize that this is a reflex I have to try and define art. To try and fit art into a box and observe it from a distance. Defining art is giving it borders, confining it into a definition. If something does not fit the definition then, should it still be considered an “it”? I have slowly come to realize that when one defines something, one is assuming that something is a thing. Why must art be a thing? We speak of art as if it is something that we can touch, see, break, or create. Must art be something? Cannot art be the absence of something, as with Duchamp’s “Erased Dekooning”? This, I have learned, is the de-definition of art. If we de-define art, take away from the definition, we take away its confines. By de-defining art, we are making art more. “Sometimes more is less”. What modern artists are trying to do is different than what traditionals did. Traditionals saw art as something you could package up into a little box and know every detail about. The more confined a work of art was, the better it was. The more boundaries it had, the easier to interpret and so on. Traditional art, though, is still art.

What I found the most distasteful was the extremely non-chalant way traditional art was dismissed as almost non-art. While I am not one hundred percent sure, I think I saw some disrespect in the way the class treated traditional art. Maybe I am wrong, but I sensed a sharp dislike for, or at least lack of appreciation, traditional forms of art. On a personal note, I will never get over how you compared Pieta to a man sitting in an art gallery with a dead hare and his face painted in gold leaf. How the two can be similar is beyond me, and I will always consider Pieta to be one of the greatest works of art of all time. Not something to compare a man with a dead hare to. (I am sorry.) This sort of gave me the impression that you cannot enjoy modern art, unless you dislike traditional art. I know this cannot be true, because I enjoy both very much! There seems to be a war going on between the traditionals and the modernists. The traditionals call modern art “garbage” and the modernists call traditional art “limited”, or a string of other comments that imply a smaller scope. I am tempted to say something predictable like “why can’t we all just get along”, but I think I will try to explain it like this. When we are growing up, most of us have parents who do not appreciate modern art at all. They call it “crap”, and “garbage” etc, etc. When we develop a liking to the art that was called “crap” and “garbage” all through our early lives, it creates a negative struggle within ourselves. Almost like an inferiority complex, where we have to constantly defend ourselves so that we can legitimize our love for modern art. One of the ways modern art (seems to) defend itself is by re-defining traditional art. Ted Barrigan’s The Sonnets is a good example of this. They obviously do not follow the sonnet form, but with the de/re-definition of art, they can be accepted as sonnets. Artists like Monet and Picasso redefined the way people look at painting. The only way modern art can survive is if it keeps trying to out-scope traditional art. Modern art is art without a center, art without boundaries. The more de-centralized, the grander the scope, the bigger the art. Some artists take this a bit out of hand, and it is up to the critics to decide which ones do, and which ones are on to something.

Artists and writers are constantly pushing the boundaries of what people consider art. Modern art is constantly being re/de-defined. It is changing, and every artist dreams of changing art forever. It is the artist that changes the nature of art, but the critic is the one who legitimizes it. Critics re/de-define art in a much more literal sense than artists do. Artists just create, let their minds go free; be geniuses. The critics are the thinkers; the ones who find meaning in the piece. It is the critics who declare a work a masterpiece or garbage. If a critic declares a kind of sculpture, of which we have never seen before, a masterpiece, a “revolutionary” piece in the art of sculpture; well then that makes it revolutionary does it not? It is not the artist who created this, thinking it will be revolutionary, it is the critic who declared it revolutionary. It takes more than one critic to change the nature of art, but it is the critics who do it.

What an artist thinks is actually very important when considering a piece. What the mind behind the work thinks about the work, and even about the world, can really affect how the art is perceived. The art has become an extension of the artist. The artist’s job has always been representing the world through a different perspective. The way they see that different perspective in the first place, is the artist’s genius. It is the critic’s job to interpret that perspective, and open it up for the public. The artist’s genius is not genius until someone realizes it. For the artist to create something of genius proportions, it must be something never seen before. Or something seen before but done in a completely different way. Modern art critics must sometimes be just as creative as the artists when writing their reviews. That is not to say that the artist has nothing to do with weather his art becomes famous or not. Artists can declare themselves genius’ and most of them do.

Artists that declare themselves genius’ are usually overlooked, or very good. Barrigan, for instance, did not declare himself a genius, yet his work is extremely respected. Shakespeare never declared himself a genius either, and yet his writings have survived an amazing amount of time. The focus of this course was Barrigan and Shakespeare, yet we did not read too much of either. We were shown how the ends of Shakespeare’s lines were (sort of) predictable, and how Barrigan’s poetry was “outside the box”. Barrigan used Shakespeare’s style of writing consecutive sonnets, and did it himself. Except he did everything different than Shakespeare, (otherwise it would not be art, no?). He did not follow rules of poetic devices, his sonnets were all over the place. His sonnets were not coherent, they were more for him than the reader. Yet reading Barrigan’s sonnets gives you a view into the author’s mind unlike any you would ever get from reading Shakespeare’s sonnets. Shakespeare’s genius was in form and word crafting, Barrigan’s genius is being able to express the inside of his head on paper. Reading Barrigan we are given a tour of his thoughts; he includes us in his community of life. He mixes his idols, mentors and everyday friends all together.

In a way, Barrigan’s modern art is his everyday life. He shows us what it is like to be human, except we read it on the page. Maybe not what it is like to be human, but what it is like to be a human, and an artist at the same time. He is not greater than life – he is not some super-human genius – he is just like us, and his art shows us that. His poetry is an extension of himself. Back in the beginning of the semester, I remember you, Carl, telling us how easy it was to think of things to say. You would plan them all out in your head, and they would be clear and orderly. I find it is the same with me, and I am sure with everyone. We all can create in our minds beautifully, but as soon as we want to express our creation, something goes wrong. Chaos takes over when we try to express what we are thinking on the page, canvas or in sound. Things just do not go right, and everything comes out in a mixed up jumble, nothing like it seemed in your head. This is something Barrigan does very well. Not letting it out in a jumble, but letting it out in orderly chaos; if that is possible (and it is if you take a close look at The Sonnets). Barrigan clearly creates in his head, he thinks about everything that is happening, thinks about his life, dinner that night, and the poem he is planning on writing. He thinks about grand things like the universe and quantum physics, and about where the beans in the coffee he is drinking are from. Every detail he takes into his mind, and lets it all out onto the paper. Except, it is not a mixed-up chaotic jumble on the paper, it is an orderly, clearly stated poem. Chaos exists, but not in the same way chaos exists when we try to express ourselves. His chaos is orderly, his chaos is the same chaos inside his head. The chaos we experience is of a different kind, it is created by the transition from thought to paper. Barrigan can make this transition perfectly, so his mind is set on the paper clearly, for everyone to see. If everyone could express themselves that way, there would be no need for Jerry Springer (heh).

Barrigan’s though process is laid out on the page for us; writing like you think – done. What is next? Shakespeare proved to us that even within strict rules/boundaries you can still create beautiful sentences and words. That even with a multitude of rules and restrictions, you can still let your imagination wander freely. Shakespeare did it, now there is no need to do it again. Just like Galileo proved that the earth moves around the sun, there is no need to re-iterate it – it is fact. Barrigan has come and shown us that, yes, stream of consciousness can make sense. Yes, we can lay our thoughts on paper for all to see without chaos ruining them in the transition from mind to pen. Yes – it is possible, and has been done. What is next? What will artists strive to prove to us next? Maybe I am a bit of an aspiring artist myself. As I said earlier; this is not an essay, this is a sonnet.