For my very first graduate class, I wrote a paper about the trickery of women in the Arthurian legend. The tales from this week's assignment reminded me of this and also made me continue to struggle with a question I have been asking since then: is this innate, stereotypical feminine guile more connotatively positive or negative?
Perhaps Karen Rowe can help with the answer in this explanation of Philomena: “She who spins is the model of the good woman and wife and, presumably, in many cultures of the subservient woman who knows her duty—that is, to remain silent and betray no secrets...Ironically, Philomela, the innocent woman who spins, becomes the avenging woman who breaks her enforced silence by simply speaking in another mode—through a craft presumed to be harmlessly domestic, as fairy tales would also be regarded in later centuries” (397). Here Philomena takes one stereotype and turns it into another—the dutiful woman turned chicanerous. A woman's tongue is often a symbol of trickery; Philomena pushes past the destruction of hers and gets the revenge she so desires. Philomena is arguably a heroine, but the problem I am having with these kinds of stories is that the stereotypical male hero often possesses brute strength and charm and control; a female of the same lot always seems conniving, which often brings pain.
Though some have happy endings, inevitable pain befalls those associated with the initial joy brought on by the women of these readings. Keats relates that his female protagonist turned antagonist brings his main character to misery after he wakes “...on the cold hill's side.-/...alone and palely loitering,/Though the sedge has wither'd from the lake,/and no birds sing” (4). Her trickery is synonymous with her departure. Yeat's poor lad also is forced to wander aimlessly, looking for his “...glimmering girl/With apple blossom in her hair/Who called me by my name and ran/and faded through the brightening air” (1). “Ran” and “faded” dominate this stanza; again, the conniving woman runs off, leaving a man ruined. “Ardour” is interesting in that she is, in the midst of the most perfect symbolism of all things cold and dead, tricked by the men of the village. Even so, she gets the last laugh and the last great departure by tricking the son of the king with her womanly wiles, “...struggling with her lover, the boy who had fallen for her...” (12).
As for the last two stories, they both have one very important thread in common—good ole Queen Guinevere. We all know she is no joke. She is tricky because she wants what she wants when she wants it. In “Lanval,” she creates conflict when she can not get this and is not seen as the greatest in Lanval's eyes. She causes him great misery; he is in the end saved by his fairy lover, even though she causes him great pain when she vanishes from his life for telling their secret. In “The Wife of Bath's Tale,” she is purveyor of truth as she send the rapist to find the secret to a happy woman—this story is more the thesis of all of these tales: women want control. What's being suggested at in a less literal fashion is that women often use trickery to get it.
So are we supposed to see the woman who tricks a man to get what she wants as a heroine? As criminal? The debate continues. It's great that these women get what they want, but the methods used are questionable to me in that they create a stereotype of the feminine that is, I would argue, more negative than positive, as many of the men left in their wake are left devastated for a while or forever.