Since the entire premise of "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and the Dame Ragnelle" is based on the question "Whate wemen desyren moste" (51), I thought I might try to answer that, at least in the case of Ragnelle.
Freud famously stated his disquiet with this particular question in his letter to Marie Bonaparte, saying "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'" This perplexes me because the answer is, obviously, given within the text.
The answer Dame Ragnelle gives, ""We desyren of men above alle maner thyng/to have the sovereynte, withoute lesyng,/ of all, both hyghe and lowe" (58) may be textually satisfying, but, for me and for Freud, theoretically lacking. What exactly does it mean to have sovereignty? How does one go about getting that? If a man grants a woman control, that's not really freedom, is it?
To move further, I'm turning towards Shoshana Felman's What Does a Woman Want: Reading and Sexual Difference (are we seeing a pattern here?). She says that the most transgressive act a woman can take in literature is to "resist male recognition...refusing to ground specularity in meaning, to serve as a narcissistic mirror for her lover and thereby to reflect back simply and unproblematically man's value." (Felman 4) The short version? We can stop showing men what they want to see, resist being read, and then we will be in control of our own destinies.
Going by that, it seems to me like Dame Ragnelle is already sovereign. Aside from the description of her ugliness coupled with her princess steed, Arthur simply doesn't know how to read her. Even in speaking to her "'Now farewelle," sayd the Kyng, 'Lady.''" (55) The pause in that line functions almost like an ellipsis to the reader. The words are split up, it's almost like The Kyng has to think about whether or not to refer to her as a Lady. Ragnelle has resisted reading. She doesn't really need Gawain to give her the choice because she's already stopped functioning as a mirror for men.
Given that, she must be the only woman who could possibly answer the question. She is the only woman who is already resisting, yet she is still offering herself to the men, which might be the source of Freud's disquiet.
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2 comments:
I think I'm in Freud's camp about this being disquieting. It seems to me that a woman who distinctly tries to resist men by "resisting being read" and at the same time offering herself is simply not going to be able to function is society. It seems like such a woman would tear herself apart with her own ideals as they head in opposite directions and in then end we end up leading one way or another.
It seems confusing to me as you may have guess from the above statement. In fact, I think that Freud's disquiet is reasonable with regard to that question. Dame Ragnelle says she wants sovereignty and I say she gets it. Even if she becomes beautiful and "reflects" what a man desires, its simply another way for her to control a man. It seems to me that her beauty is both a reward to Gawain and a curse as it captures him even more.
More to the point I may be out of my league in this one as I am a male and every supposition in my mind seems as if it could be construed as offensive to womankind. I think Freud was more than just disquieted and again I feel his pain sorely.
Side notes.
The metaphorical uses of power, however, are pretty limited.
As for beauty being used to control men - maybe, maybe not. I find a better case for that not to be true made by Naomi Woolf in The Beauty Myth. Beauty is currency and the terms of her deal are relative entirely to him.
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