WOMAN-HATING IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S BISCLAVRET1

There are two subtle details woven into this interrogation scene that are of critical importance to our overall understanding of the plot. The first is the fact that the narrator twice informs the reader that the baron, having an-nounced his lycanthropy to his wife, has thereby revealed all there is to say on the subject.12 In verse 62, the narrator indicates that "nule chose ne Ii cela" (he hid nothing from her), and again, in verse 67, announces that "il Ii aveit tut cunte;" (he had told her everything). These two verses are another hint of the narrator abandoning objectivity by choosing the husband over the wife. But the lady is still not yet satisfied. seeking precise details about his lupine state, she demands still more information. She asks him whether, when in were-wolf form, he goes about dressed or nude (69). This simple question, though brief, reveals on the part of the female character a mastery of lycanthropic praxis, foreshadowing her skullduggery. This single question constitutes her first betrayal of him.13

Medieval folkloric tradition is rich with human characters whose posses-sion of specific clothing or jewelry regulates their conversion between human and lupine form. In the Bulgarian werewolf tradition, perhaps the oldest in Europe, it is a belt worn around the waist that serves as the trigger, while Old Norse makes use of a type of slip-on wolf tunic, and the Old French Lai de Melion features a ring embedded with two stones, each a different color.14 By means of the wife's query about the location of the abandoned clothing (71), Marie signals the woman's second betrayal: we readers are to understand that her husband's revelation of his humiliating secret (63-6) should have been suf-ficient. From the wife's fierce flurry of inquisition-studded with her assur-ance that she loves her husband more than anything on earth (80), that he need not doubt her for any reason (82), and that his silence makes it seem as though he does not love her (83)-she extracts the critical information she re-quires as to where he hides his clothing (89-96). She is now empowered with the data needed to seal his doom. Her barrage of interrogative badgering, fired steadily and stealthily and without heeding the multiple and explicit warnings of her husband (53-6, 72-8), riddles, in both senses of the word, the marriage contract that binds them together.

The second remarkable detail revealed by a close reading of the interroga-tion scene is that the husband does not pose a threat to his wife while in his lupine state. There is a specific and critical announcement issued by the baron: he explains that when in lyncanthropic form, he "'[e]n cele grant forest me met/ai plus espes de la gualdine,/s'i vif de preie e de ravine"' (64-6: 'I go into this broad forest, into the deepest part of the woods, and there I live off prey and booty'). A review of preie and ravine in both the Godefroy (6 428; 6 628-9) and Tobler-Lommatzsch (7 1959-62; 8 346-50) Old French diction-aries strongly suggests that neither term could have referred to human flesh. Preie in this context would have meant animals that humans habitually hunted during the Middle Ages, such as game birds and deer, or else kept penned up as livestock, such as lambs or cows, and ravine would have meant stolen or plundered material property, particularly pirated foodstuffs. This detail em-phasizes that this particular werewolf is not a man-eater and so is not a dan-ger to the wife, especially when coupled with the baron's claim that the crea-ture does not venture out from the depths of the forest (65).