WOMAN-HATING IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S BISCLAVRET1

In Marie's oft-cited General Prologue to the Lais, she informs her readers that she will follow Priscian's lead by asking her readers to "gloser la letre" (15: gloss the letter) and to "de lur sen Ie surplus metre" (16: add enrichment drawn from their own wisdom [to the text]). We must now consult our own wisdom in order to extrapolate meaning from this fascinating yet complex work. I disagree with critics who suggest that the central issue in Bisclavret involves lycanthropy, or the man/beast duality of the baron. As does Sienaert (91), I believe that Marie exploits the werewolf topos as a catalyst to instruct her readers about tolerance and obedience in marriage.

We may begin our effort of interpretation by asking the primordial question present in all of Marie's lays: how do males and females comport themselves when in love? We begin with the male, the baron: disregarding danger, he answers all of the questions his wife asks him. He chooses love over safety, and we are to admire him for his choice. The female, his wife, finds his Iycanthropic condition repulsive, and therefore designs and executes what is essentially a homicide (Holten 199), as it deprives her husband of his human life. Her love for him is dubious from its initial appearance in the text (23-4), and thereafter splinters progressively.

It is striking to reflect upon how overwhelmingly male the cast is: every character in the text, excluding the husband in his lupine form and the wife, is a man. In no other of Marie's lays is the roster of personages so heavily weighted toward a single gender. And it is the king and his men who are able to gloss the letter in regards to the shaggy beast who appears in their midst.18 Their patience and desire to understand allow them not only to realize that the alleged monster is intelligent ("EIe a sen d'ume"/154: it has the mind of a human), but also capable of great affection ("Bien s'aparceit que il l'amout"/184: he [the king] understood clearly that it loved him). We readers witness during the run of the lay the steady incorporation of the werewolf into the all-male royal household, a process by which feudal and fraternal bonds are progressively strengthened. The men, open-minded and prudent, regain a brother (Sienaert 92).19

Three of the four men to whom Marie gives specific identities (the baron, the king, and the wise man) operate with wisdom, caution, and discernment. The fourth named male, the knight from the country, is indeed a part of the wife's evil plot. But even he can be seen as an innocent soul entrapped by a malicious woman.20 Squeezed out by this masculine coalition-building is the text's sole female character, the wife, who by lay's end has been exposed, disfigured, tortured, and banished. And, if we follow Marie's logic, she deserved it. This text instructs its audience that those who respect their marriage contract will be rewarded, while those who are derelict will be punished. In sum, this lay presents a gender-weighted landscape populated by three groups: the good men tout court (the king, his men, and the wise man); the good men who are harmed by the baron's wife (the baron and the knight from the country); and, on the female side of the equation, the contemptible woman. Marie offers her readers no other female character to counterbalance the villainy of the wife.