- 1 The dramatic tradition of Medea that has survived into the modern period has been in rude health t (...)
- 2 The myth of Medea is as follows: she is the princess of Colchis, daughter of King Aeetes. When Jas (...)
1The narrative of the mythic sorceress, Medea, is one that is still infamous, having survived through eponymous tragedies by Euripides (c. 431BCE) and Seneca (c. 50CE) and in assorted tellings of the exploits of the classical hero, Jason.1 In the modern day, Medea’s name remains shorthand for motherhood gone wrong on account of her murder of the sons she shared with Jason, and for all that is unwomanly following her vicious revenge when Jason ends the relationship.2 However, in his long, late fourteenth century poem the Confessio Amantis (c. 1386-90), the version of Medea presented by John Gower is widely regarded as an unusually sympathetic portrayal of a character otherwise known as the ultimate example of murderous maternal malice. Gower, writes Katherine Heavey, “attempts to render Medea a sympathetic character” in a way that does not sacrifice her magical abilities (Heavey, 2015: 35), while Ellen Bakalian observes that Gower “transforms her into an unselfish, kind, and confident wife who loves deeply,” concluding that “Gower’s sympathies clearly lie with Medea” (Bakalian, 2004: 86, 95). In this article, I suggest that Gower’s sympathetic portrayal of Medea is facilitated by invoking the conventions of late Middle English popular romance to reframe the character as the heroine of her own romance. More specifically, I argue that in the Confessio Amantis Medea is cast as a particular type of romance heroine: namely, the fairy mistress or enchantress. This positioning in the fairy mistress mould is especially evident when Gower’s Medea is situated alongside the late fifteenth century Middle English romance of Melusine, and comparison of the two female characters reveals the slippage in taxonomical borders between the “witch” Medea and “fairy” Melusine.
- 3 “It is a wondrous thing to hear.” All footnote translations from Middle English into modern Englis (...)
- 4 Medea is not referenced again in the Laud Troy Book, meaning her later crimes also go unmentioned— (...)
2Comprising 982 lines (V.3247-4229), the tale of Medea and Jason is one of the longest tales in the Confessio Amantis, as well as the most substantial of the three late fourteenth-century Middle English Medeas. A considerable part of this expansion is dedicated to the exploration of Medea’s magical craft, and the sorcery sequence is the first time we as readers get to see a Middle English incarnation of Medea embracing supernatural power in a text that does not immediately condemn her for it. Rather than shying away from describing her assorted skills, Gower’s narrating Confessor willingly describes Medea’s craft. The Confessor tells his audience, “It is a wonder thing to hiere” (CA: V.3954)3 and in the 200-plus lines devoted to showing off Medea’s skillset, Gower appears to textually luxuriate in describing her powers. By contrast, Geoffrey Chaucer’s brief inclusion of Medea in The Legend of Good Women (c. 1387) covers only 99 lines and is the shortest tale Chaucer includes in his own story collection of historical and mythological women. The anonymous Laud Troy Book (c. 1400), meanwhile, uses just over 600 lines (509-1128) to tell how Medea fell in love with Jason and assisted him in claiming the Golden Fleece, before switching to an account of the first fall of Troy immediately after the pair leave Colchis in triumph.4 Both the Laud Troy Book and Chaucer’s Legend choose to censor Medea’s infamous violence and infanticide, rather than grapple with the long-contentious issues of how to portray a character whose reputation is one described by Katherine Heavey as “utterly resistant to male strictures of control, and to the obedience traditionally demanded of women in patriarchal societies, whether they are classical, medieval or early modern” (Heavey, 2015: 4).
3Gower’s decision to expand the tale and offer an in-depth retelling makes his version of Medea in the Confessio an unusual one in a late medieval context, setting him apart from his peers. The romance of Melusine, meanwhile, has its origins in French tales of the half serpent woman and her human husband that can be traced back to the 1100s (Prud’Homme, 2017: 52). In its best-known version, Melusine is a fourteenth-century origin story for the house of Lusignan, and Jean d’Arras’s French prose Mélusine ou la noble histoire de Lusignan (c. 1387-93) was translated into Middle English in the late fifteenth century. Although Jean d’Arras’s Melusine was composed at around the time Gower was working on the Confessio, there is no evidence that Gower was familiar with Jean d’Arras’s work. However, the Middle English Melusine still offers an important comparison for Gower’s Medea as a quintessential example of a type of fairy mistress familiar to late fourteenth-century readers of romance, and it is into this fairy mistress type that I argue Gower’s Medea neatly fits.
- 5 For the sake of brevity, I focus on only one example of Gower using Medea’s body language in the C (...)
4By the end of the fourteenth century and the point at which Gower was writing the Confessio Amantis, the romance heroine was (and remains) one of the most recognisable conventions of the genre. Indeed, such a figure is described by Helen Cooper as “generically central to the romance” (Cooper, 2004: 218). Cooper identifies “the meme of the desiring woman” wherein a helpful heroine (often conveniently rich and the daughter of a king) aids the struggling knight at his time of need. The heroine loves the hero loyally against all odds, he repays her usually life-saving aid by marrying her, and the couple eventually live happily ever after (Cooper, 2004: 220). The presence of such a female character will usually guarantee a happy ending, and the focus of this heroine’s newly awakened sexual desire on the hero is crucial if he is going to successfully found a new dynasty and continue his family line. Moreover, Cooper continues, female sexuality and desire in romance is “at its most powerful” when it is “spontaneous and active,” and is not performed under direction from a father or father-like figure (Cooper, 2004: 220). In leaving her father’s home for hope of a life with a man she chose, the Medea of the Confessio neatly fits Cooper’s definition of the desiring heroine, and Gower uses descriptions of gestures to display her agency in choosing her own partner.5 For instance, upon Jason’s arrival in Colchis, the Confessor informs his audience,
- 6 “And Jason, who paid good attention, / When he saw her, he went to her; / And she, who was not loa (...)
And Jason, which goode hiede nam,
Whan he hire sih, agein hire goth;
And sche, which was him nothing loth,
Welcomede him into that lond,
And softe tok him be the hond,
And doun thei seten bothe same. (CA: V.3370-75)6
- 7 “made her keep Jason company / As was appropriate, and to sit by him in the hall.”
- 8 “He commanded her to go and sit that time / Beside his foreign guest, Jason.”
- 9 For an examination of gesture in Middle English romance and how it is used to communicate recognis (...)
5The detail that Medea “softe tok [Jason] be the hond” is original to Gower’s version of the myth. In using the small adjective “softe” to describe the action, Gower reveals Medea’s affection towards Jason, setting up the relationship between the couple as a loving one. Moreover, in his examination of gesture and “patterns of body language” in Middle English romances, Barry Windeatt identifies references to hands in romance narratives as representing agency and acts of bestowal (Windeatt, 2018: 139-140). In taking Jason’s hand, Medea can be read as bestowing him upon herself (or claiming him for herself) and exercising the agency to choose her own husband—one towards whom she feels tenderly. In doing so, Medea evades the patriarchal convention of daughters being bestowed by their fathers upon a husband of their fathers’ choosing. This small moment can be interpreted as the beginning of Medea’s choice to dispossess herself of one family line in favour of another, and it stands in sharp contrast to depictions of the correlating moment in contemporary analogues. For example, in Chaucer’s Legend, the reader is told that Medea’s father “made hir don to Jason companye / At mete, and sitte by hym in the halle” (TLGW: 1601-02).7 Similarly, in the Laud Troy Book, Medea is again told by her father to sit beside Jason: “He bede here go and sitte that tyde / His vncouthe gest Iason be-syde” (LTB: 601-02).8 Neither text permits Medea the autonomy to choose, which is strongly emphasised by the language of “made hir” and “bede here” present in both versions, restricting her to filial obedience and demonstrating that it is the will of the king rather than Medea herself. By expanding the scene of Medea’s first meeting with Jason to include moments such as Medea taking Jason’s hand and regarding him with affection, Gower is able to invoke a gestural lexicon of stylised body language that communicated recognisable emotions as a convention within Middle English romance, and therefore to emphasise Medea’s agency and choice.9 In doing so, Gower permits his version of the character to demonstrate the “spontaneous and active” side of female desire that was de rigueur for the leading ladies of romance in the late fourteenth century.
- 10 Vines identifies types of influential behaviours wherein female characters can diegetically exert (...)
6Furthermore, in the specialised knowledge (both practical and magical) she bestows upon her chosen husband, Medea is also what Amy Vines describes as an “arbiter of the chivalric ideal”: a female character who, through the “significant acts of social and cultural influence” that she performs within the narrative, is functionally necessary to the success of a romance hero’s quest (Vines, 2011: 2).10 Vines describes the role of the romance heroine in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English romances as a “site of female agency” (Vines, 2011: 2), because the male hero of romance will not succeed (or even survive) without specific assistance from a knowledgeable female character. In situating Medea in the Confessio in a romance role, Gower frames her first as a desiring heroine in control of her choice of partner, and second as an enabler of chivalric success, crucial to Jason’s success and survival. As such, before even reaching the sequence exploring Medea’s magical ability, the Gowerian Medea is located firmly within two of the positions of power and agency available to female characters within the conventions of romance.
7In refashioning Medea as a romance heroine, Gower creates space within the narrative to probe the supernatural abilities of the classical witch, without the condemnation that displays of her abilities invite in other late Middle English versions of the tale. Moreover, when read through the lens of romance, Medea invokes the expectations associated with the fairy mistress, a generic figure that James Wade writes was “remarkably persistent” in medieval romance from twelfth-century Breton lais to Spenser’s Faerie Queen and beyond (Wade, 2011: 109). A subgenre of the romance heroine type, the fairy mistress is defined by Cooper as “the ultimate woman of romance” (Cooper, 2004: 173). Cooper goes on to characterise the fairy mistress or enchantress as a figure who is defined by her power and is accessible only “at her own will, not anyone else’s” (Cooper, 2004: 178), criteria that Gower ensures his Medea meets. Like Dame Tryamour in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal (c. 1381), Medea as she is portrayed in the Confessio holds all the power because without her knowledge and assets (in this case, a magic ring, magic ointment and magic words), Jason has no chance at success in his quest to claim the Golden Fleece.
- 11 The tale of Melusine is that of the half fairy woman, cursed by her own (full-fae) mother to take (...)
8The fairy mistress credentials of Gower’s Medea are especially evident when she is set alongside the romance of Melusine, and in comparing the narrative arcs of the pair, the two women are revealed to occupy a similar taxonomical space.11 Cooper identifies the Melusine character as one of the four types of Fairy Mistress (Cooper, 2004: 175), and there are many observable similarities between Melusine and Gower’s Medea. As Misty Urban usefully summarises:
Both are mothers who kill their children; both are depicted in visual media with serpent imagery, Melusine with her long tail […] and Medea with a chariot drawn by dragons […] Both characters belong to French romances translated around the turn of the sixteenth century into Middle English prose. And in each story the eruption, or unveiling, of feminine monstrosity takes place in connection to the betrayal of an oath made by the husband. (Urban, 2010: 140)
Medea and Melusine are both boundary-crossing women who commit filicide, and who are wrapped in a shared imagery of dragons, serpents, water, and flight. The two women seep into one another, problematising efforts to contain them within singular taxonomic groups. The borders between the two characters, in other words, are porous. Corinne Saunders begins to suggest the overlap between faery and witch when she writes,
The faery lady provides a powerful romance type, her magic usually concerned with the feminine domain of love and desire, both fearful and fascinating, and often presented in ambiguous terms. The enchantress may be the faery mistress, but she may also be the witch, wielding the powers of “nigromancy.” (Saunders, 2010: 185)
9Saunders views the Medea character as paradigmatic for the sorceress or witch, and she writes that Gower’s version of Medea is an exemplar of the powerful female practitioner of nigromancy (Saunders, 2010: 166). However, although Saunders writes about the shape-shifting transformations often included within nigromancy and discusses the potentially violent transformative power of the fairy mistress type in romance, she does not comment on the ways in which, as a magic-wielder, Medea overlaps with the type of the fairy mistress.
10Unlike the fairy Melusine, who is comfortably classed as a romance heroine (albeit a tragic one who eventually transforms into a giant flying snake), Medea as a character has been often precluded from similar classification, despite the features in common, due to her enduring reputation as poster girl for sinister witch / enchantress. As a result, while Gower’s use of romance conventions to rework his version of Medea have been critically observed, critics have been inclined to see the transformation as a reduction of the classical character’s agency. Ruth Morse views Gower’s Medea as disempowered by “the clichés of romance” (Morse, 1996: 223), which, Morse argues, work to remove any sense Medea is in control of her own magic and to mask the eventual trauma of Jason’s betrayal. Similarly, Siobhan McElduff sees Gower’s Medea as “even more submissive to her father” than the character is in Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Le Roman de Troie, with McElduff explaining that Benoît’s Medea “is sent for and arrives within the space of one line (3370), as an obedient daughter should” (McElduff, 2014: 196). Such a reading elides the nuance of the gestural lexicon formed by body language in Middle English romances. Urban, meanwhile, argues that the rehabilitation of Medea in Middle English romance and the reception of Melusine in England when it was translated “serves as a critique of the romance ethos itself,” and that, when taken together, Medea and Melusine show English audiences were “inhospitable” to the monstrous, boundary-crossing woman (Urban, 2010: 190). In contrast to these prior critical analyses, I would argue that, when read through the lens of romance and through considering the specific romance expectations invoked by Medea’s role in the narrative, Gower’s Medea is not disempowered or rendered more submissive by the motifs of romance. Instead, the character is granted greater personal agency and bodily autonomy by the genre than other Middle English versions of the narrative permit.
- 12 “must inevitably die.”
- 13 “As Medea had bade him”; “which Medea took him to”; “Jason did not forget/overlook Medea."
11Throughout Gower’s version of the Medea narrative, Medea’s specialised knowledge, both chivalrically instructive and magical, is shown to be crucial to Jason’s advancement. In the first half of the tale, the Confessor guides the reader through each step of Medea imparting detailed knowledge to Jason about the challenges ahead and how to survive, without which it is certain that Jason “ne moste algates deie” (3540).12 Jason is then shown actively using the knowledge and putting Medea’s teachings into practice, firmly establishing her role as a chivalric arbiter. As Jason advances through the trials to obtain the Golden Fleece, the Confessor frequently interjects with reminders to the reader that Jason is performing actions “As Medea him hadde bede” (3695) and that “Which Medea tok him tofore” (3715), or that “Jason Medea noght forgat” (3728).13 Jason’s reliance upon her is further highlighted by the public recognition within the narrative that:
- 14 “And well-nigh everyone said this, / That Jason was a fae knight / Because it was not within the m (...)
And wel nyh alle seiden this,
That Jason was a faie kniht
For it was nevere of mannes miht
The flees of gold so for to winne. (CA: V.3768-71)14
The presumption that Jason must have been “a faie kniht,” possessing otherworldly abilities, to have succeeded demonstrates that there is an overlap between women’s knowledge and women’s magical power, as Jason himself is not under enchantment, only under verbal instruction and in possession of enchanted objects. Vines writes that “words and magic” (Vines, 2011: 5) were the most common way for female characters in romance to express their knowledge and skill—and skilful words and magic are two things that Medea is shown to possess in abundance.
12Significantly, “faie” is used only once more in Gower’s Medea narrative, as part of the extended sequence that focuses specifically on Medea’s sorcery. The reader is told,
- 15 “In sundry ways, her form changed, / She seemed fae and like no woman; / For with the crafts that (...)
In sondri wise hir forme changeth,
Sche semeth faie and no woman;
For with the craftes that sche can
Sche was, as who seith, a goddesse. (CA: V. 4104-05)15
13The detail that Medea “semeth faie” adds to the earlier descriptor of Jason as a “faie kniht” and they form a matched pair of epithets that is suggestive to readers. “Look,” Gower seems to gently nudge his readers, “see how alike this classical couple are to the paradigm of knight and fairy mistress that you already recognise from other romances.” The knowledge Medea demonstrates through the performance of her “craftes” therefore shows her excelling in the role of chivalric arbiter. Simultaneously, Gower crafts a cognitive space that invites readers of the Confessio to recognise Medea as a fairy mistress rather than as the witch that readers already familiar with the Medea narrative might be predisposed to expect. In addition, the designation of “faie” carries with it the associations of the faery otherworld and its supernatural inhabitants that Aisling Byrne notes are “usually female” and more invested in the interests of the mundane world than their own (Byrne, 2016: 110-11). Explaining the preponderance of the broken promise or taboo throughout medieval tales of otherworldly courtships, Byrne observes that the “perfect bliss” a fairy mistress introduces into the life of her chosen mortal lover by way of material wealth and luxury creates a narrative hindrance to the progression of the romance hero’s development (Byrne, 2016: 45). However, supernatural fairy aid is also capable of elevating an otherwise ordinary mortal hero to heights he would have been incapable of achieving on his own. The earlier presumption that Jason could only have achieved success in claiming the Golden Fleece with fairy assistance is borne out not only because it fits within the expectation of romance, but because Medea’s assistance is crucial in elevating and transforming Jason’s life.
14The transformation that Medea brings to Jason’s life by way of the knowledge she provides is typical of the helpful heroine of romance, but it also foregrounds the transformative role played by the fairy mistress. James Wade writes that fairy mistresses were widely known in romance for using their powers to “fulfil the desires of their chosen knights” across the social, economic and political spectrums, and he notes in particular that, far from being limited to simply fulfilling erotic desires, the favours gifted by fairy mistresses were calculated to help their mortal favourites to rise in the chivalric and feudal worlds (Wade, 2011: 109-10). Corinne Saunders summarises this vast remit of influence as “the positive, transformative power of the faery” (Saunders, 2010: 187), a phrase that eloquently sums up the vital component that fairy mistresses or enchantresses bring to medieval romance: they transform the lives of the ordinary humans with whom they involve themselves for the better, and in ways that are immediately felt when that transformation is reversed. Saunders suggests that the romance of Melusine is the best example of the fairy mistress who is a positive transformative force in the life of her chosen husband, right up until that relationship collapses (Saunders, 2010: 188). However, Saunders also writes, “there is always the possibility that the beautiful enchantress will reveal her other, monstrous face” (Saunders, 2010: 188). When the transformations associated with the Otherworld and the fairy mistress turn “imprisoning, violent and destructive” (Saunders, 2010: 188), these effects are often impressed as much onto the supernatural women’s bodies and identities as onto the lives of the men connected to them. It is in the collapse of Melusine’s relationship with her husband, as much as in the positive transformative influence that she delivers, that comparison of the Melusine romance with the Gowerian Medea narrative reveals the similarities between the two powerful female figures—as well as (or alternatively) exposing the fault lines in the taxonomies that separate them.
15Melusine transforms the life of her chosen husband, Raymondyn: not only does she instruct him on how to avoid blame for accidentally murdering his uncle, she also brings him wealth and facilitates the construction of great fortresses for him, fulfilling the expectation in Middle English romance that a fairy mistress be able to bestow material and territorial power. She also bears him sons, thus satisfying the dynastic requirement to provide heirs (Cooper, 2004: 222-223). However, when Raymondyn betrays Melusine, he does so by infringing on the private space he had promised her upon their marriage. Allowing himself to be convinced by his brother that it is unnatural for a woman to want a whole day to herself each week and that Melusine can only be up to no good in her private time, Raymondyn pierces the door to her bathroom with his sword. On piercing the door and breaking his vow to his wife, we are told that Raymondyn:
- 16 “[Raymondyn] saw Melusine in the bath and from her navel, she was in the form of a woman combing h (...)
[S]awe melusyne within the bathe vnto her nauell, in fourme of a woman kymbyng her heere, and fro the nauel dounward in lyknes of a grete serpent, the tayll as grete & thykk as a barell, and so long it was that she made it to touche oftymes. (Melusine: 297, 1-6)16
- 17 The obvious death is that of Horryble, their three-eyed son. After the revelation of Raymondyn’s b (...)
Raymondyn’s intrusion into Melusine’s bathroom is, on paper, a lesser betrayal than Jason’s of Medea: Raymondyn, after all, is not attempting to leave Melusine for another woman, nor is he trying to exile the mother of his children so he can remarry. However, it is still a betrayal that causes Melusine and Raymondyn’s marriage to fail, and contributes to the deaths of two of their children—a factor that is directly comparable with Medea’s still-notorious murder of her own two sons.17 Raymondyn’s betrayal creates negative consequences that are not limited in their impact to just the central couple, and these ripple outward. As well as affecting the husband with imposed bachelorhood, the consequences of Raymondyn’s actions are discernible in the downturn of the family’s fortune, and they are also made physically manifest in the transformation of Melusine’s body and erasure of her human identity as wife and mother.
- 18 “In sundry ways, her form changed.”
16In the Confessio, Gower indulges in showing how Medea transforms Jason’s life for the better in a manner evidently typical of a fairy mistress, but in the “sondri wise hir forme changeth,”18 Gower also gestures towards the potential for physical transformations of Medea’s own self that reflect the dangerous side of the fairy lover in medieval romance. Such transformative potential is particularly notable during the sequence in which Gower explores Medea’s knowledge of “craftes” and “art magique” (CA: V.3947), which creates the impression that Medea’s form as a woman is destabilised while she performs her witchcraft. Gower’s narrating Confessor describes to the listening Amans how Medea, cackling, runs and jumps around the burning altars she lit, and the reader is told:
- 19 “There was no beast outside / More wild than she seemed there. / About her shoulders hung her hair (...)
Ther was no beste which goth oute
More wylde than sche semeth ther.
About hir schuldres hyng hir her
As thogh sche were oute of hir mynde
And torned in another kynde. (CA: V.4080-84)19
17The magic Medea displays in the Confessio hints that she is constantly on the verge of bursting out of her own body and transforming into something “wylde” and more than human. Use of “sche semeth” and “as thogh” qualify these transformations as metaphoric, but the small phrases are barely enough to contain her within her mortal form. The transformative potential Medea displays is shared with Melusine—except that for Melusine, the transformation into “another kynde” is literal, and her existence within her own mortal woman’s body is in constant flux.
18In both narratives, water acts as a transformative boundary through which the women pass to become their more supernatural selves. Gower begins the sequence describing Medea’s magic with a description of her submerging herself three times in the ocean:
- 20 “The world was still on every side; / With her head and feet bare, / And her hair spread out, she (...)
The world was stille on every side;
With open hed and fot al bare,
Hir her tosprad sche gan to fare,
Al specheles and on the gras
Sche glod forth as an addre doth.
Non otherwise sche ne goth,
Til sche cam to the freisshe flod,
And there a while sche withstod.
Thries sche torned hire aboute,
And thries ek sche gan doun loute
And in the flod sche wette hir her,
And thries on the water ther
Sche gaspeth with a drecchinge onde,
And tho sche tok hir speche on honde. (CA: V.3962-76)20
19Byrne writes that the boundary between ordinary world and the Otherworld “frequently takes the form of a water barrier” (Byrne, 2016: 2); furthermore, she identifies the presence of distinctive geographic boundaries between worlds, such as bodies of water, as “some of the clearest signposts of the presence of an otherworld realm” (Byrne, 2016: 76). Writing about the magical potential of fountains in Middle English romance, Urban similarly identifies bodies of water functioning as “an intersection, a space mediating this world and the Otherworld” in the Breton lais that influenced Middle English romances (Urban, 2009: 430). Urban draws a direct connection between such watery boundaries as they appear in Breton lais and Celtic myths, and the “thematic movement” in Middle English romances such as Floris and Blancheflour and Ywain and Gawain, where the hero meets his next adventure beside a river, lake, fountain or well (Urban, 2009: 431). As such, Gower’s reference to the ocean invokes a form of boundary that would have been recognisable to a Middle English readership for separating the mundane from the magical. In describing Medea’s submersion of herself, the ocean, therefore, becomes a boundary that divides Medea the wife from Medea the practitioner of “art magique” (CA: V.3947). In addition, she steps into the ocean easily, suggesting that the distinction between the two might not actually be that distinct after all. Through the description that “with open hed and fot al bare” Medea “glod forth as an adder doth” as she approaches the sea, it is a short imaginary leap for readers to visualise Gower’s Medea shedding her human skin in a serpentine fashion. Barefoot and with her hair loose and wet, Gower suggests a version of Medea who is very like the adder she is compared to, casting off the acceptable outer garments of Jason’s wife as a snake does its skin, in a metaphoric transformation facilitated by and through water. Similarly, for Melusine the private space of her bathroom is a space where she can submerge herself within a body of water and move between her respectable human role as wife and dynastic foremother, and her supernatural fairy-serpent hybrid body. Furthermore, the repeated detail of Medea’s wet hair—“tosprad,” or unbound and dishevelled, and later hanging “about hir schuldres”—is visually analogous with the scene of Melusine “kymbyng her heere” in the bath when Raymondyn (and the reader) intrude upon her bathtime. Both are highly evocative visual tableaus for the reader to imagine—voyeuristic, even—and serve to reinforce the water imagery that is another shared narrative feature between the two women.
20Listing the many appeals of water in medieval narratives as an adaptable metaphoric tool, Anne Scott suggests that water imagery was capable of conveying “deeper truths” about characters through:
[I]ts ability to be both clear or opaque, clean or foul; its ability to both flow freely or be contained; its cleansing and soothing properties; its essential shapelessness and qualities of shifting and changing; and its dual qualities of healing and nurturing, harming and destroying. (Scott, 2009: 425)
21In the case of Medea and Melusine, the “deeper truths” intimated by the watery imagery recall Saunders’s observation that “imprisoning, violent and destructive” transformations are the dangerous flipside to the fairy mistress role. Slippery and fluid, water is the basis of and necessary for life, and indeed, both Jason and Raymondyn owe their lives as well as their livelihoods to the formidable women who swept them away. However, water also has the capacity to devastate the same lives it sustains, whether through scarcity, overabundance, or simple carelessness in its treatment; Jason and Raymondyn find to their detriment the consequences of treating their powerful wives with carelessness. Like water, which is impossible to neatly pin down and requires careful containment to prevent spills or leaks, Melusine and Medea’s monstrous characters seep out of singular taxonomic groups, posing a challenge to both authors and critics who might wish to contain them. And yet, when permitted, Medea and Melusine pour easily into the shape the other left, demonstrating the permeability between the character types of witch and the tragic fairy mistress of romance.
- 21 For example, see lines V.3983-89 for Medea’s plea to Hecate for assistance, and the dragon-drawn c (...)
- 22 “fair and well / Medea drove the chariot and wheel, / Above the air and in the skies.”
- 23 In the Metamorphoses and elsewhere, the dragon-drawn chariot that Medea escapes on after ravaging (...)
- 24 “about her shoulders”; “all that womanhood demanded.”
22While transformative allusions play a significant role in Gower’s sequence exploring Medea’s supernatural side and the magical knowledge she possesses, Gower also shows that Medea’s knowledge is no mere theory: the Medea of the Confessio is powerful in practice too. Medea’s power is demonstrated through the strength of her skill and her control over the magic she displays. The detail that Medea summons “fyr doun fro the sky” to light her “fyri aulters” demonstrates the strength of magical ability she commands, and attributes that power to Medea and her spells alone, rather than any external assistance from the pagan goddesses, Hecate and Juventas, who are invoked elsewhere in the sorcery sequence.21 Moreover, when Hecate sends a dragon-drawn chariot to aid Medea, Gower tells the reader, “faire and wel / [Medea] drof forth bothe char and whel / Above in th’air among the skyes” (CA: V.3991-3),22 which hints towards Medea possessing physical strength as well, since it can be presumed it is no easy task to maintain control of a flying chariot pulled by dragons while it hurtles through the sky above the Aegean Sea.23 Meanwhile, the description of Medea with her hair still hanging “about hir schuldres” and running and dancing between the flames has a dynamic energy to it and is a long way from the paragon of “al that fell to wommanhiede” (CA: V.3387)24 who is first introduced to Jason at the beginning of the narrative. Overall, the image Gower presents of Medea during the sorcery sequence is one of crackling power and capability. As a result, the highly competent portrayal of Medea’s power facilitates the sense of dangerous transformative possibility that Saunders identifies as intrinsic to the construction of the fairy mistress in Middle English romance.
- 25 “It is the truth that no one knew where these workmen came from.”
- 26 “so great, so strong, so fair.”
- 27 If, as readers, we are to understand that Melusine summoned whole castles and towns into existence (...)
23The Melusine comparison remains useful in demonstrating that displays of strength and control as signposts of power do not preclude Gower’s Medea from inhabiting the fairy mistress type, because Melusine similarly demonstrates her own power through displays of strength and control. Less overtly supernatural than Gower’s Medea, Melusine’s independent command is shown primarily through the castles she builds. In the first instance, she summons mysterious workmen over whom she has total control, who raise the fortress of Lusignan swiftly and competently before vanishing. Jean d’Arras inserts the narratorial observation that “trouth it is that no body knew from whens these workmen were” (Melusine: 62, 34).25 Melusine has total control over her workmen, and the castles she orders to be built are praised for their thick walls and sturdy foundations: “so grete, so stronge, so fayre” (Melusine: 63, 6-7).26 Later in the tale, the workmen do not reappear, and the castles Melusine begins to raise immediately after giving birth are built without any mention of workmen facilitating the work, as though she has summoned the buildings into existence from nothing.27 The absent workmen are a subtle hint of supernatural command being exercised, suggestive of workers summoned from the Otherworld to serve their mistress. Both acts, that of summoning men and that of summoning castles, indicate the great strength of Melusine’s ability as a fairy mistress. Even while the power at Melusine’s disposal is less overtly magical than that displayed by Gower’s Medea, it is still a potent (and repeated) show of Melusine’s influence over the world that she inhabits. Furthermore, the power Melusine wields proves that the magical displays put on by Medea in the Confessio are not an impediment to Medea being recognisable as a fairy mistress type.
24In this article, I have focused on the ways in which Gower utilised conventions of romance, specifically of the fairy mistress type, which would have been recognisable to a romance-reading audience in the late fourteenth century in order to expand and reposition the classical Medea in the Confessio Amantis. While there are those who have previously regarded the Middle English romance as a poor fit for a character as infamously murderous as Medea, by using recognisable aspects of the genre Gower is able to develop the Medea narrative with greater attention than either the Laud Troy Book or Chaucer’s Legend. In writing a version of Medea that positions the character as a powerful fairy mistress within the conventions of romance, Gower invites his readers to judge her accordingly. The generic hybridity that results from drawing romance convention into the story of this classical woman creates space within the narrative for Medea, as she is presented in the Confessio, to display almost unfettered power and magical ability and be celebrated for it. As such, Gower is able to probe Medea’s supernatural ability and knowledge without stringing her up for condemnation.
25Gower’s version of Medea can be read as a precursor to the late fifteenth-century Middle English romance, Melusine—another powerful romance heroine in the mould of fairy mistress whose family unit also collapses in consequence of her husband breaking his marital vow. Raymondyn’s betrayal of Melusine, infringing upon the private space he had promised her upon their marriage, can be read as milder than Jason’s betrayal of Medea, but it still results in the disintegration of their union and indirectly contributes to the deaths of two of their children. If Cooper’s assessment is that “the ultimate woman of romance is a fairy mistress, or a fairy queen” (Cooper, 2004: 173), then more than other late fourteenth century Middle English Medeas, Gower’s version can be interpreted as the kind of fairy lover most heroes of romance would be lucky to meet.