莊士弘 Stephen Shih-hong Chuang

陳福仁教授

Jan. 2011

Beyond Suffering and Social Status of Griselda:

Chaucer, Nietzsche, and Lacan

Abstract

From a Nietzschean reading on Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, we can have a different

reading on Griselda story. The paper attempts to sketch out three points: 1) the noble

morality and slave morality transcend the real social hierarchy, which empowers

Griselda with her active power. 2) The rationale of noble and slave moralities does not

entail the social construction, but the attitude of one’s praxis or behaviour. This

depicts the personality of oneself who is nobler, which transcends the a priori social

determination, especially in the mediaeval world, where the social heritage forcibly

reigned. 3) Griselda’s body serves as a field of theoretical and political protest and

resistance against Walter. Griselda chooses the smocks as her ‘gift’ to return home and,

I have to note, the material of the smocks, sometimes white and even transparent,

renders her body exposed to the public. The original Griselda’s shame of wearing the

smocks would, at the critical moment, become an obvious protest against Walter’s

cruelty and tyranny.

From the Lacanian reading the present paper attempts to unearth the ‘latent

content’ of the medieval saint women’s suffering, in which they actually enjoy during

her process of sufferance or sacrifice by employing Lacan’s concept of jouissance.

This reading allows us not to regard or read the medieval women’s predicament from

a negative angle; instead, in a Nietzschian way, we have to pay a positive and

affirmative regard to their sacrifice.

Introduction

The Clerk’s tale begins with a peasant girl named Griselda, who is one day picked up

by the marquis, Walter, yet with a condition of Griselda’s obedience to him. However,

this is not the beginning of Griselda’s happiness, but the beginning of her suffering:

the sceptic marquis asks the sergeants to ostensibly remove and kill Griselda’s child,

who was just born, in order to test whether Griselda is really obedient to him. The test

is cruel and inhumane, and it was conducted twice. But the series of cruel tests were

not enough for Walter, who, again, concocted another trick to test Griselda: Walter

wanted to abandon her and marry the other noble girl. She is then asked to leave the

court without taking anything from the court, and she obeys, yet with a small request

for a smock, the inner layer of clothes most close to her body. After a few years,

Walter summons Griselda back to prepare the house for his new bride’s wedding.

Again, she obeys. Finally, Walter revealed to Griselda that the new bride is actually

her daughter and the page her son. Then the family reunites together (Rudd 126-27).

The Tale vividly delineates how a suffering girl such as Griselda is tormented by

Walter’s unnecessary trials. What she is able to do seems merely to obey—obey

Walter in particular and the patriarchal social structure in general. From the Clerk’s

description, we may imagine how hard a medieval woman’s life could be, how harsh

the patriarchal social structure could be to impose on a woman’s thoughts and deeds,

discursively ‘training’ her to become a docile and obedient girl. With her pathos of

suffering, she, docile and obedient, doesn’t seem to show much of her activity, not to

mention her resistance. The patriarchal social structure rigidly imposed on medieval

women’s predicament and suffering suggests an undeniable fact that seems to explain

and even justify all women’s predicament and suffering throughout history. However,

as the present paper attempts to suggest, this is not enough. This is not enough in that

we should posit Griselda’s as well as the medieval women’s suffering in a more

positive and affirmative manner, despite the dominant and discursive patriarchal

structure imposed on the women, instead of the negative critique on the social system,

which fails to perceive Griselda’s potential activeness and joy in her suffering.

The paper attempts to bring Griselda from the passive position to the active

position by Nietzsche’s concept of ‘noble morality’ and moreover, to reveal the

possible joy in Griselda’s suffering by discussing Lacan’s concept of ‘jouissance’.

Griselda’s story, under the Nietzschean discourse, evokes her noble and active state,

and it surely invigorates her with new power. Moreover, the paper attempts to reveal

and unearth the ‘latent content’ that medieval women who suffered actually enjoyed

to some extent, due to her sacrifice—theologically speaking—underlying a

metaphysical God, either Christian or pagan. Some critics may posit that Griselda,

under Walter’s capricious reign and inhumane domination, is rendered as a ‘suffering’

woman with patience. 1 This reading only suggests the ‘manifest content’ of

Griselda’s physical suffering; it fails to consider the other side of her suffering within

the medieval social and psychic structure: the jouissance of her ‘sacrifice’ to God. The

medieval women’s social and psychic structure is the ‘latent content’ of Griselda’s

suffering that most critics fail to note. I want to argue that the ‘latent content’ of

Griselda’s suffering is sometimes ambiguously intertwined and crisscrossed with the

other side of her suffering: joy or jouissance. The joy of the suffering may at first 1 To read Griselda’s life as ‘suffering’ is common among the Chaucerian critics. For example, J.A. Burrow argues that ‘The heroine, suffering a series of terrible wrongs inflicted on her by her husband Walter, exemplifies wifely patience in the highest possible degree” (120); Jill Mann argues that ‘some of its finest moments reside in the vivid immediacy of speech and thought which realises Griselda's sufferings as lived experience’ (151); Andrew Malcolm argues for ‘the pathos of Griselda’s suffering’ (71); Lesley Johnson argues that ‘she has been “povre fostred”, and that, as she herself emphasises, makes a difference to her ability to “suffer”’ (208); and both Stephen Knight and Yvernault argue for ‘vertuous suffraunce’ (Knight 111; Yvernault 150).

glance seem paradoxical, but if we imaginatively bring it back to the original

medieval social and psychic structure, a time when women were ‘interpolated’ to

perform and practice virtue (‘vertu’), we can have a better understanding of how the

medieval women enjoyed (jouir) from the suffering—and even the sacrifice—of her

body to God. This reading shall not be misunderstood as a reading that to some extent

aims at romanticizing the medieval women and then, reducing or gentrifying the real

sufferance that they were oppressed and tormented with, psychically, socially, and

economically. Instead, the paper attempts to address the theological suffering that

most critics fail to attend to and then, reaffirm their suffering from a negative position

to a positive one.

In this paper, I attempt to give a re-reading of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale by

Nietzsche’s concept of ‘noble morality’ and Lacan’s theory of ‘jouissance’. By so

doing, I hope that we can read the Griselda story in a way to affirm and empower her

in place of the negative and passive reading that deems Griselda as a passive figure.

The latter reading may, I want to note, imprison her in the simple dichotomy of

male/active and female/passive. This notion of dichotomy has already insured the

essential and unchangeable male centred social structure. Her possible active and even

resistant activity will, as the present research attempts to demonstrate, be negatively

and feebly rendered as a passive position, being gazed. I attempt to demonstrate a

Nietzschean reading, which, hopefully, enables us to regard Griselda as one who

practices Nietzschean nobility morality—who actively sacrifices her husband, and

who actively chooses smocks. By so doing, Griselda is invigorated by an active and

noble position.

The second argument of the paper attempts to argue that the medieval women

actually ‘enjoy’, at least in a theological sense, despite the physical pain they suffered.

The definite demarcation of the pain or suffering from the Lacanian reading seems

blurring and, the suffering no longer suggests any negative emotive affect which the

women passively accept, or even swallow. Griselda’s suffering is now allowed to have

a twist: her suffering is no longer negative, but positive and joyous in that she actually

has her own jouissance while she sacrifices her life, psychic or physical.

Slave Morality and Noble Morality in the Clerk’s Tale

How, then, does the concept of ‘noble morality’ help invigorate Griselda with a

positive and active power in Nietzsche’s sense? And to what extent does this concept,

which is nonetheless an issue that remained untouched, provide Griselda an active and

noble position which allows her to breathe the new and fresh air? Nietzsche’s writing

sometimes appeared fragmentary and his concept of ‘noble morality’ dissipates in his

diverse oeuvres. In order to give a more general and coherent idea of his concept,

allow me to use an important French Nietzschean thinker Gilles Deleuze.

Deleuze argues that Nietzsche’s noble morality is the active rationale to

him/herself. This sort of active rationale is the noble/master affirms himself by saying

‘I am good’. Then Deleuze argues that

The one who says: ‘I am good’, does not wait to be called good. He refers

to himself in this way, he names himself and describes himself thus to the

extent that he acts, affirms and enjoys. ‘Good’ qualifies activity, affirmation

and the enjoyment which is experienced in their exercise: a certain quality

of the soul, ‘some fundamental certainty which a noble soul possesses in

regard to itself, something which may not be sought or found and perhaps

may not be lost either’. (Deleuze 119-20)

Between the noble/master and the slave, the noble/master affirms his own activeness,

and his identity as himself does not have to appeal to the acknowledgement of the

slave. Actively, he affirms himself; gaily, his behaviour affirms anything that

confronts him. The Nietzschean activeness does not concern the symbolic definition

of gender; it goes beyond the medieval dichotomy of man/activeness and woman/

passiveness. If we go back to Griselda’s story, we can say that Griselda is, in

Nietzsche’s sense, noble and active in that she affirms her sense of value by

sacrificing herself for her husband. Her sacrifice for her husband does not derive from

the Walter’s physical or political enforcement, but out of herself: ‘Right gladly wolde

I dyen yow to plese’ (IV665). This suggests her willingness and even activeness to

sacrifice for Walter, instead of her passive and forced status.

Moreover, as David Aers comments, “I can find no theological, let alone

Christocentric, focus in these utterances” and “All her desire, she says, is for this man;

her sole fear is to lose him (IV.498–511), not , we should note, to cut herself off from

God.2 (qtd. in Shutters 73). This comment is valid in that the object to whom Griselda

sacrifices is nothing other than a tyrannical despot, who inhumanely concocts a series

of inhumane trials to test her. It helps bridge the conceptual gap of explaining why

Griselda sacrifices so much to such a cruel tyrant as Walter is. By sacrificing her

mortal body for a transcendental God, she sacrifices herself, actively and

automatically. This argument is further solidified by Knapp, who advocates,

Griselda does not, in medieval terms, simply represent passive suffering but

is rather a model of active co-operation with God’s will, proving her faith

by her works, like Abraham and Job, as we are urged to do in the epistle of

St James which the Clerk recommends as the end of his tale. (Rigby 162)

Griselda uses her body to fulfil God’s will. However, her fulfilment of God’s will is

never a passive act, but an active one. Rigby’s argument helps invigorate Griselda

with a new life and bestows her new position of being activeness. Also, it will

simplify Griselda’s suffering to sacrifice her children and Walter’s humiliation if we 2 David Aers, “Faith, Ethics, and Community,” 361, 360.

truly deem her suffering as a negative and painful act. Moreover, Rigby draws our

attention to Griselda’s sacrifice for the will of God. Griselda’s suffering for Walter is

not only in the empirical world, but in the transcendental world. In other words,

Walter’s position is rendered from the empirically mortal sphere to God’s

transcendental sphere, which may better explain Griselda’s unimaginably enormous

endurance and patience to Walter’s trials of tests. I would posit a ‘latent content’ that

sustains and supports Griselda’s suffering: jouissance in Lacan’s term. The Lacanian

discourse reveals a new understanding between pain and pleasure: ‘[i]n masochism,

pain is a means to pleasure; pleasure is taken in the very fact of suffering itself, so that

it becomes difficult to distinguish pleasure from pain (Evans, Key Concepts of

Lacanian Psychoanalysis 6). This notion depicts the fact that the clear-cut distinction

to determine Griselda’s suffering as passive and painful is too simple and superficial.

This would fail to consider the inverse side of Griselda, who as a masochist (the word

‘masochist’ doesn’t convey any negative connotation of mental disorder here, as

contemporary medical discourse suggests) actively suffers and pleasurably enjoys. At

the moment, ‘pleasure becomes pain, and this “painful pleasure” is what Lacan calls

jouissance; “Jouissance is suffering”’ (Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian

Psychoanalysis 92).3 From Lacan’s fulcrum of jouissance, pain seems to be brought

from a negative position to a positive and affirmative position, in which he reveals the

ambivalence of ‘pain and pleasure’ and the joy underlying the ‘manifest’ pain. In this

sense, Lacan’s idea of jouissance seems positive to one’s affective effect of pain.

Morality can be one’s attitude of being positive. As the aforementioned features

demonstrate, the noble morality is active, full of happiness and power within and it

doesn’t make oneself lack anything. Under such a condition, one’s own attitude to

3 The ambivalence between pain and pleasure, or good and evil, will be further examined in the last two sections, which begin from page 15 onwards.

himself and the external world would be positive to anything around him/herself.

Contrary to the noble morality, the slave morality remains negative to anything

around oneself. Everything within or around him is negative. Deleuze argues that ‘[i]n

the master everything positive is in the premises. He must have premises of action and

affirmation, and the enjoyment of these premises in order to conclude with something

negative which is not the main point and has scarcely any importance’ (Deleuze 120).

To conclude, we can epitomize a general view about the noble morality in

Nietzschean sense: one is willing and active to bestow gifts because he does not lack

anything within himself; one bears a happy, affirmative, and positive outlook to

anything within and around himself. Thus, one’s own values come within and his own

sense of value needs not the recognition and affirmation from others. The contrast is

clear in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: Griselda’s sense of value comes within herself, whilst

Walter’s sense of value mainly comes from others and he, negatively, needs the trials

of tests to ensure and corroborate his own sense of value.

Contrary to the mindset of noble morality, slave morality bears a different

attitude to the world around him: his rationale depends primarily upon the negative,

passive, and unhappy mindset to the external world of himself. Deleuze quotes

Nietzsche’s famous remark on slave morality: ‘You are evil therefore I am good’

(121). The rationale of the remark differs from that of noble morality: the former one

begins by negating others in order to affirm himself; the latter both begins and ends

with the gay, positive, and active sense of self-affirmation. Deleuze argues that ‘the

negative passes into the premises, the positive is conceived as a conclusion, a

conclusion from negative premises. The negative contains the essential and the

positive only exists through negation. The negative becomes ‘the original idea, the

beginning, the act par excellence’ (Deleuze 121). Slavish morality’s sense of ‘I am

good’ depends not on the affirmative rationale, but on the negation of the others. This

suggests that ‘any assessment of the self by the slave, first, must be “sought” or

“found” via an examination of what is external to the self and second, is never

“certain” for it always depends on what the external stimuli happen to be’ (Leiter 213).

From Lieter’s interpretation, slave morality’s value is sought and found, suggesting

that their values are not the overflow of puissance within, but the ‘external stimuli’

imposed upon the sense of value. This corresponds to Walter’s attitude towards

Griselda as well as his decision of marriage, conceptually and behaviourally.

At the outset of his narration the Clerk describes how the people around him

persuade Walter to get a spouse to have an heir:

Oonly that point his peple bar so soore,

That flokmeele on a day they to hym wente,

And oon of hem, that wisest was of loore -

Or elles that the lord best wolde assente,

That he sholde telle hym what his peple mente,

Or elles koude he shewe wel swich mateere -

He to the markys seyde as ye shul heere:

(85-91)

As the Clerk’s narration depicts, Walter’s decision to get married does not derive from

his willingness to make the decision, but from the clever and eloquent people’s

persuasion. This suggests 1) that Walter’s will of marriage is rather passive than active

and also 2) that his will stems from the values of the external world. The values of the

external world connote the imperative that the nobleman should have his own heir to

inherit his belongings and possession.

Meanwhile, marquis Walter’s disbelief of Griselda evokes his values of slave

morality, which judges others in a negative, contemptuous, and evil notion. His twice

ejaculations of ‘ynogh’ (‘enough’) depict not only his cruel rationale of negating

others, even his dear wife, but also his evil purpose of insatiable appetite to control

and impose his values upon others.

This markys in his herte longeth so

To tempte his wyf, hir sadnesse for to knowe,

That he ne myghte out of his herte throwe

This merveillous desir his wyf t'assaye.

(III 451-454)

If Walter bears the noble morality he would completely affirm his wife without the

unnecessary trials of tests. However, his attitude is the practice of absolute slavery

morality: he negates his wife again and again, even though in the end he grants her the

original nobility Griselda deserves.

Sacrifice and Jouissance: the Ambivalence of Virtue and Evil

As I noted earlier, Lacan’s idea of Jouissance seems to positively affirm pain, which

is an affective effect negatively regarded, as commonly existing in one’s suffering.

This is especially true if the phenomenon is addressed under the medieval milieu,

which is theologically registered and determined. In his ‘A Martyr to Love: Sacrificial

Desire in the Poetry of Bernart de Ventadorn’ Simon Gaunt argues that ‘Sacrifice is at

the heart of the Christian religious experience’ (488). The statement is problematic

primarily in that the sublime or the sublimated religious life in the Christian doctrine,

especially in the medieval context, underlies an obscene side of the ‘inhumane’

sacrifice. Gaunt invites us to contemplate the ambivalent side between the good and

the evil inherent in the exempla of the (female) saints’ lives. For example, if we

contemplate the virtues of Griselda’s obedience and suffering of losing her two

children, and if we contemplate her compliment to Walter’s new bride in the wedding

banquet, we find that her absolute obedience is to some extent inhuman and unethical.

Her reaction, which is extremely inhuman and unethical, causes the Clerk to conclude

the tale by commenting that

This storie is seyd, nat for that wyves sholde

Folwen Grisilde as in humylitee,

For it were inportable, though they wolde,

But for that every wight in his degree

Sholde be constant in adversitee

As was Grisilde.

(V 1142-1147; emphasis mine)

Griselda’s wifely deed of humility, as Clerk describes, is so ‘inportable’ (‘unbearable’),

suggesting that the ‘virtuous’ deeds she performs are too extreme and unbearable.

That is, there is an impossibility underlying the virtuous deeds. In a sardonic or

serious tone the Clerk warns the audience in public that

For which I crie in open audience

No wedded man so hardy be t’assaille

His wyves pacience, in hope to fynde

Grisildis, for in certain he shal faille.

(V 1179-1182)

The Clerk sardonically suggests that in vain can we find any women such as Griselda,

who is so unbearably obedient and even inhuman. More interestingly, J.A. Burrow

explicates the word ‘inportable’ from two angles. First, he argues ‘that modern wives

could not bear what Griselda did, or else that it would be unbearable for the rest of us

if they could’. Second, he argues that “the comment registers once again Chaucer’s

ironic sense of the gap between exempla and actual human behaviour’ (121). The

Clerk portrays the other side in which the deeds in the exemplum are too ‘good’ for

the actual humans to really perform or behave. This leads to a paradoxical twist: that

the other side of the virtuous and the good exemplum is the unbearable task that the

actual humans can hardly accomplish. The good, if pushed to the ultimate limit, will

paradoxically become the unbearable and the inhuman.

Moreover, if the inhuman yet virtuous deed is brought to its ultimate limit, a

horrible and terrifying scene will result: the medieval woman’s virtues are derived

mostly from her sacrifices in life, or allowing her dearest father to kill her. The virtue

is no doubt moral in the symbolic order; it becomes so hair-raisingly problematic and

even unethical. In The Physician’s Tale, the female protagonist Virginia is raped by

the manipulative and lecherous judge, Apius; her father, to the contemporary reader’s

amazement, does not try to console his daughter or use other legal means to restore

his daughter’s chastity, but kills her daughter instead. The Physician narrates that

Ther been two weyes, outher deeth or shame,

That thou most suffer; allas, that I was bore!

For nevere thou deservedes wherefore

To dyen with a swerd or with a knyf,

Which I have fostred up with swich plesaunce

That thou were nevere out of my remembraunce!

O doghter, which that art my laste woe,

And in my lyf my laste joye also,

O gemme of chastitee, in patience

Take thou thy deeth, for this is my sentence.

For love, and nat for hate, thou most be deed;

My pitous hand moot smyten of thyn heed.

(The Physician’s Tale, 214-226)

The Tale vividly demonstrates the paradox of the inhuman and perverse side when

good virtues (such as a girl’s ‘chastitee’ and ‘patience’) are brought to its ultimate.

Thus, the Tale challenges the moral line between the good (i.e., an exemplum of a

saint girl to keep her chastity and virtue) and the evil (i.e., her father has to behead her

daughter in order to redeem her chastity and virtue); it unearths the paradox of the

absolute good and evil, which, in its essence, does not have its clear-cut boundaries

between good and evil.

In Lacan’s Medievalism (2006), Erin Felicia Labbie employs the Lacanian

thought to give a good exposé on the medieval arts, including Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale.

She argues that

The acts that cause Job to suffer are attributed to God, as the figure of

Fortune, the hand of good and evil that Lady Philosophy explicates to

Boethius. Indeed, Boethius’s account of God is in accord with the Judaic

understanding of God’s potential for good and evil. (Labbie 58)

Then, she further gives a good argument from a Lacanian/Chaucerian critique of Ann

W. Astell’s comment, which argues that

In her [Astell’s] reading, Walter is simultaneously the benevolent God from

Boethius and Satan who torments Job; Griselda is also fragmented in her

representation in which she is a combination of the figures of Lady Philo-

sophy and Job. The Christian conception of the Job story pits Satan against

God, showing how Job overcomes his lack of faith to find unity and solace

in proper faith such that God and good triumph over Satan and evil. The

Judaic interpretation of the tale perceives God as a singularity that is both

malevolent and munificent, good and evil on one. (Labbie 58; emphasis

mine)

From Astell’s and Labbie’s explication on The Clerk’s Tale, the thought underlying

the Tale is diverse and different: it is rooted in the Christian theology, Judaic theology

and Boethius’ thought. In particular, the God in the Judaic doctrine is perceived as a

singularity, intermingling the malevolent and munificent, good and evil in ONE. God

in the doctrine is no longer a benevolent and munificent figure who proffers absolute

abundance of love; instead, it/He also posses the evil side in the Judaic doctrine. This

is what Žižek paradoxically says about the spear having either the good or evil side of

contents: ‘This is how "only the spear that smote you can heal the wound": the wound

is healed when the place of Evil is filled out by a "good" content’ (Žižek, Tarrying

with the Negative 97).

Again, the paradoxical side of the interplay between good and evil is manifest in

the Tale. The paradoxical side will unearth more significance latently lurking in the

Tale through the Lacanian concept of jouissance. In Chaucer: An Oxford Guide

(2005), Patricia Clare Ingham in her ‘Psychoanalytic Criticism’ emphasizes the

significance of psychoanalysis in the Chaucer studies. She argues that

Most recently, Chaucerians have joined with colleagues in French medieval

studies to engage “lack” from another angle, emphasizing the fascinations

that nonetheless circulate even through pain and sacrifice. [. . .] These

treatments [Psychoanalytic treatments of fantasy] take seriously the

satisfaction of desire itself, offering rich analyses of the pleasurable

difficulties, the unpleasant pleasures, of jouissance [. . .] as “pleasure in

unpleasure” in medieval texts and traditions. Readings of investments in

impossible situations, repeated trauma, loss, and pain, have offered detailed

accounts of courtly love, chivalric brotherhood, hagiography, tragedy, or

history. (Ingham 470-71)

Her emphasis on the ‘“pleasure in unpleasure” in medieval texts and traditions’ is

indeed worth our deeper investment and investigation. By so doing, I assume that the

‘latent content’ deeply repressed in the genres—such as tragedy, hagiography,4 and

courtly love (and the ‘courtly love’ is particularly devoted to careful discussion by

Lacan, Žižek, and the Lacanian theorists)—can be unearthed.

Thus, we can say that jouissance can be conceptualized as ‘pleasure in

unpleasure’, in which pain and pleasure crisscross together. I would further elaborate

this concept by arguing that the woman in sacrifice indeed has her jouissance, the

pleasure in the pain, in which she sacrifices herself in order to satisfy the demand of

God or the Other. She sacrifices and in the process, enjoys herself.5 This is especially

true in the medieval context, in which the (saint) woman has her joy despite the woes

and sorrows that she suffers. I would employ saint women’s writing to substantiate

the argument. First, in Lady Elena de Quenci, she narrates:

It is those who suffer martyrdom and shed their blood without anger, those

who suffer violence and do not worry about bodily harm: those religious

who have left everything for Jesus; those people in poverty, indeed, to

whom riches are a torment; those who languish with desire in good hope of

God’s love. All who are badly treated, when they suffer gladly for God and

for no other reason, present to God a beautiful rose, and they will have the

fruit of their faith with Christ who suffered wholly for our sake. (qtd. in

Wogan-Browne 123; Évangile des domnées for Lady Elena de Quenci,

4 Ingham gives a good observation of the psychoanalytic criticism on the hagiographical works. She argues that ‘If in earlier decades psychoanalytic approaches to Chaucer focused primarily upon the poet’s courtly texts, this turn to sacrifice has resulted in some direct attention towards religious and hagiographical works, where critics continue to explore the interplay between the devotional and the profane’ (Ingham 471). 5 Žižek in his On Belief gives a daily example that explains the concept of jouissance:

At a different level, does the same not hold for the so-called “woman’s sacrifice,” for the woman adopting the role of remaining in shadow and sacrificing herself for her husband or family? Is this sacrifice not also false in the sense of serving to dupe the Other, of convincing it that, through the sacrifice, the woman is effectively desperately craving something that she lacks? In this precise sense, sacrifice and castration are to be opposed: far from involving the voluntary acceptance of castration, sacrifice is the most refined way of disavowing it, i.e. of acting as if one effectively possessed the hidden treasure that made me an object worthy of love …(28)

mid-13th century; emphasis mine)6

Second, I would demonstrate the point with Marie of Chatteris’s La vie sainte Andrée

(St Andrée’s Life) in early-mid 13 century. She narrates

Although she was never put to death, she bore in her flesh the cross where

Jesus Christ suffered death, when Longinus struck him. In fasting, vigils,

and weeping, she tormented her body night and day . . . There was as much

virtue in this lady as if in the time of Diocletian and Nero when they carried

out the slaughter of Christians in their cruel rage, she did not fear

martyrdom; she was joyful and glad in the torments she had. She was a

martyr without bloodshed, she was a martyr in vigils, in weeping, in her

desire, in hunger, in thirst and in nakedness. (qtd. in Wogan-Browne 123;

emphasis mine)

Third, I would like to give a writing—‘Vie anglo-normande’—by an anonymous saint

woman. She writes:

When the blessed Caprais, who saw [vit] all the secrets of heaven, looked at

[esguarda] the maiden and saw [vit] her whole and beautiful, and not at all

harmed by the torment she had endure—she shone in this torment like a

star in the firmament, made very beautiful and certainly very joyful by the

crown which Jesus Christ sent her through his angel . . . he no longer

wished to hide himself, but wanted to share the pains which Saint Faith,

God’s beloved, suffered for the son of Mary. (qtd. in Wogan-Browne 71;

emphasis mine)7

6 Ço sunt cil que soffrent martire│ E lur sac fundent sanz ire ; │Ço sunt cil que soffrent tolag│E ne curent charnel damage ; │Ço sunt cil de religïun│Que tut unt lessé pur Jesum ; │Ço sunt, en veir, la pure gent│A quie les rich sunt turment ; │Ço sunt qui soffrent langur│En bon espeir pur Deu amur. │Trestuz qui sunt malmenez, │Quant il le soffrent de lur grez│Pur Deue pur nul altre chose, │A deu presentent beele rose│E lur frut averunt de fi│Od Crist qui tut pur nos suffri. (Évangile des domnées, ed. Panunzio, 116/270-117/295). 7 Vestue la veit a cele ure│D’une tres blanche vestëure, │De noeve vestëure clere [MS noeve vesteure

The three writings all attribute saint women’s ‘joy’ to God despite her physical or

psychical torments. In particular, Lady Elena de Quenci’s writing demonstrates the

oxymoron by using the two words ‘suffer’ and ‘gladly’ (or ‘soffrent and ‘grez’ in

Middle French together in her description of Jesus’ sufferance for the poor and

suffered. Thus, it is never a difficult task to comprehend that Griselda, after being

banished from her cruel husband, is now summoned back to attend Walter’s wedding

banquet. She attends and even gladly greets her ex-husband:

And she with humble herte and glad visage,

Nat with no swollen thoght in hire corage

Cam at his heste, and on hir knees hire sette,

And reverently and wysely she hym grette.

(VI 949-952)

Her humble heart and glad visage reveal both 1) her joy resulting from her

unconditional love to Walter in the empirical sense and 2) her jouissance due to the

devotion to God in the transcendental sense. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, after

demonstrating the saint women’s writing, gives an apt recap about the virtuous deeds:

These lives include particularly graphic version of the misogyny and

misogamy topics common in vitae partum lives (in the Life of Paul, for

instance, being tied to a silken bed and tempted with a maiden is a torture

equivalent to being whipped raw, smothered in honey, and exposed to

desert flies, and is endured at the cost of biting out one’s own tongue rather

blanche e clere] │E bien lusant de grant manere ; │Dunt il vit bien e entendi│Ke Jhesus Crist par sa merci│Li aveit ja doné victoire│En sue parurable gloire, │Ke ses peines furent passées│E ses granz joies comencées. │Le blanc columb ke descendi│Del cel cum vus avez oy, │Entur la seinte martir volat│[E] de son duz voil li confortat ; │De ses [deus] eles la blandi│Et de la flamme defendi ; │ (E) par la seinte grace Jhesus│Esteint la force e la vertu│De la flamme e del grëil │E si del fu e del peril│Cume ceo fust d’une rosée ; │Dunt seinte Fey la benurée│Ne senti peine ne dolur ; │Loé [en] seit nostre e bele, │E ke de rien n’esteit blecé│Dele turment k’ele out endureé ; │Ausi lueit en cel turment│Cum fet esteile en firmanent ; De la corone ke Jhesu Crist│Par son angele li tramist│Esteit tree bele e certtes lée . . .Ne se voleit plus long tapir, │Mes as peines voleit partir│Ke seitnte Fey la Deu aimi│Soffri [la] pur le fiz Marie. “Vie anglo-normande,” ed. Baker, vv. 523-96.

than yielding.) [. . . ] Such stories underline the significance of penitence,

humility, and penance, and although confession and internalized penance

are very much an official church programme (especially after Lateran IV),

these stories also offer important mediations for women of the

impossibilism of the virgin role-mode. (Wogan-Browne 136-37; emphasis

mine)

In parallel with the Clerk’s envoy that suggests Griselda’s virtuous deed is indeed

‘inportable’, Wogan-Browne suggests that there is an ‘impossibilism’ in the virgin’s

role model. It is the inhuman and perverse side of the virtuous deed that renders the

real practice unbearable and even impossible, in which the sublimated side of the

virtue essentially relies on the obscenity and even cruelty.

Interplay of Forces of Gaze

Griselda, from the outset of the Tale, is rendered as a passive object, or an objet petit a,

“which stands simultaneously for the imaginary phantasmatic lure/screen and for that

which this lure is obfuscating: for the Void behind the lure’ (Žižek, Iraq 142). She is

gazed by Marquis, despite her low and humble social status. In particular, it is her

beauty that attracts Marquis’s gaze upon her, and triggers his fantasy upon her.

Upon Grisilde, this povre creature,

Ful ofte sithe this markys caste his ye,

As he on huntyng rood paraventure.

And whan it fil that he myghte hire espye,

He noght with wantowne lookyng of folye

His eyen caste on hir, but in sad wyse,

Upon hir chiere he wolde hym ofte avyse,

(I 232-238)

From the Clerk’s descriptions of the Marquis’ hunter-like gaze upon Grieselda—such

as ‘caste his ye’, or ‘His eyen caste on hir’—we are allowed to know that the

Marquis’ gaze upon Griselda is ‘noght with wantowne looking of folye’, but with his

determined intention of choosing her to ‘Wedde hir’ (I 245).

However, we have to critically ponder how the Marquis, merely out of his first

glance at Griselda, is able to know or believe that she is the one who will keep her

promise of being absolutely obedient and virtuous. Or, we have to ask, whether it is

just out of his fantasy of women (probably only in the medieval time) that they would

absolutely yield their sovereignty to his husband, the phallic signifier. Just as Clerk’s

description portrays,

But for to speke of vertuous beautee,

Thanne was she oon the faireste under sonne,

For povreliche yfostred up was she,

No likerous lust was thurgh hir herte yronne.

Wel ofter of the welle than of the tonne

She drank, and for she wolde vertu plese

She knew wel labour but noon ydel ese.

(II 210-217)

Her ‘vertuous beautee’ seems so apparent that Marquis is ‘omnipotent’ enough to

know that ‘she wolde vertu plese’. Of course, a mortal marquis, such as Walter, is not

omnipotent enough as to know her virtue and beauty; it is his fantasy of Griselda that

renders him to know, or believe that she possesses virtue; it is his fantasy of Griselda

that determines his intention to wed her. The fantasy of Griselda’s beauty transcends

what the object is, goes farther than the object as such, and makes Marquis believe

that she possesses the virtue.

The male discourse was completely inscribed in the social discourse or in the

symbolic order of the medieval time. The male discourse was to some extent

guaranteed by the social milieu, and thus the daily practice or guide that demands that

the woman shall obey her husband and practice the virtuous deeds was so common

that most women, if without any critical training or autonomous self-reflection, would

simply practice how most women act and say in the symbolic order. Women, in this

milieu so harsh to them, are hardly able to find what her desire is and what her

sovereignty is. Given this harsh medieval milieu for the women, I would argue that

whoever the Marquis chooses doesn’t make any difference since the women were

made or symbolized out of and for the male discourse. That is, the exemplary of the

virtuous action doesn’t have to engage Griselda to perform and then complete the

virtuous repertoire that defines and confines what virtuous women should act like or

behave like. Most medieval women are able to actualize what the virtual virtuous

repertoire requires, and Griselda is just one of the saint women’s examples told and

retold and revised by the writers to come.

However, the force of gaze is not that negative if it is then properly used and

reused. This is especially true when Griselda chooses the smock as her true choice or

gift from her husband and this especial choice or gift achieves an event, a miracle that

causes most people to pay special attention to the gift from her husband Marquis. This

gift becomes an irony when it is given by a marquis who accumulates the

national-wide resources. The value of the smock as a gift does not, however, fit the

balance of the symbolic exchange with the Marquis’ social status: what he bestows his

beloved is a smock, which can hardly cover her body from being seen by others. This

gift is at this moment a symbolic irony in two senses: (1) the Marquis’s smock

suggests that he no longer offers any protection to her and (2) the Marquis’s cruel test

of divorcing Griselda is further intensified by the smock that renders her body so bare.

In the first sense, Griselda was once Walter’s spouse, who was beautifully

dressed in the most refined clothes and jewelry. Now she is divorced and banished

from Walter’s palace. She, almost nude with a smock, wanders and walks on her way

home, returning to her original poor and humble family. Along her way home, her

almost nudity attracts most people’s gaze: how can one bear to see a woman, who

was once a wife of a marquis, now become an abject creatures with her old father?

Her symbolic social status is no more, suggesting marquis’ protection is likewise no

more.

In the second sense, which is my main argument in the section, her almost

nudity arouses and attracts more gaze from most people. As I earlier pointed out, the

Christian world was a theology of clothing, which condemns nudity as a sinful deed.

The smock is not only a symbolic downfall of her life; it becomes an ethico-political

deed that attracts more people’s gaze and triggers and then intensifies Walter’s

notoriety of monstrous and sadist deed. Griselda’s choice of smock now becomes a

political repost against her husband’s cruel trials; her predicament of being banished

from Walter’s palace now becomes a piece of news circulated and talked by the

people in Walter’s reign. Thus, this reveals that the passive gaze upon the woman is

now an active tool that brings Griselda’s predicament to the fore, and now it becomes

a force so beneficent to her downfall.

Between Nietzsche and Lacan, I think both critical thinkers think beyond the

present social symbolic order so as to unearth and disclose the ‘truth’ hidden or

repressed underlying the social symbolization. Žižek’s discussion on Nietzsche proves

even more apt when he argues that ‘when Nietzsche scornfully dismisses ‘slave

morality’, he is not attacking the lower classes as such but, rather, the new masters

who are no longer ready to assume the title of Master—slave is Nietzsche’s term for a

fake of master’ (Žižek, Iraq 132). Žižek argues beyond Nietzsche’s literal meaning

that many critiques misunderstand. The traditional reading of the medieval (saint)

women’s predicament is mostly devoted to their patience, suffering, and sacrifice

theologically or socially required in the decorum of virtue or exempla. Yes, their

predicament is harsh and their social status is inferior to an extent that what we

contemporary readers can hardly imagine. And then, most criticism is, probably out of

the historical determination of women’s resentment, devoted to the critique of the

patriarchal discourse and norm. So and then? Will the ‘cause’ of the patriarchal

discourse be the once-and-for-all placebo—or even ‘scapegoat’—to explain and then

console all the medieval women’s predicament in the existing literary, historical or

theological texts? If this is, will it suggest the end or the aporia of medieval women’s

discussion on their predicament? Thus, the present paper departs from the ‘sad’ or

‘melancholy’ reading on the medieval women’s predicament and embarks on a new

project of the medieval women’s predicament. Both Lacan and Nietzsche raise issues

beyond what the problem is and more importantly, they problematize what the things

are. By so doing, the paper wishes to demonstrate a new reading on Chaucer’s The

Clerk’s Tale in particular and the medieval women’s predicament in general.

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