What I find interesting about Plaint of Nature has to be the fact that in a world of ambiguity regarding the Self and the Other, Allan of Lille lays it all on the line. In no uncertain terms, he gives us the Other. Up until now, it’s been easy to pluck a female character or a Saracen character out of the text and make an argument for her Otherness. However, with Plaint of Nature, since Allan of Lille’s main concern is the unnaturalness of male homosexuality, the femaleness of a female is not the source of Otherness.
Of course, with Allan of Lille’s anthropomorphized Nature being female, the prose navigates rather interesting terrain. For one thing, Nature, in addition to creating the world for God, also rules man. Here, the feminine is subject rather than predicate. In the chain of command, God’s still at the top, but now we have a woman commanding all men, directly rather than indirectly as the maidens of Parzival command. Maybe I’m reading into Nature being a woman a little too much, but Allan of Lille views women as weak, most likely subscribes to the belief that God also thinks women are morally weaker, and yet, in view of all that, Nature, as a woman, has dominion over men? I suppose the idea of a woman ruling the workings of the earth is akin to the idea of a woman ruling a household’s domestic interworkings. While God ultimately rules in the political arena, the woman has authority when it comes to ruling the household.
Ascribing deities with such humble, earthly qualities is suspect. Although, to me, Nature’s humanity is debatable. Her fantastical appearance and her descent from the heavens both seem to indicate her otherworldliness. Allan of Lille does not consider her human, but he does emphasize the fact that she is a maiden. He takes pains to describe features. “Her neck, quite normal in length and moderately slender, prevented its nape from being close-wed to the shoulders… The gentle curve of her flanks, impressed with the stamp of due moderation, brought the beauty of her whole body to perfection.” (Allan of Lille 75) She is a semi-divine being of nature, but Nature here is inviting and alluring.
Which makes me wonder, why does Allan of Lille make her so alluring? Although Nature creates everything around her and has the appearance of a human, I don’t get the impression that she is human. Any temptation caused by her beauty would be a crime against nature, since, as a non-human, she can’t have procreative sex with the writer, a human. A sexual at initiated on Nature, in this sense, would be an act against Nature.
More than the physical act against nature, Allan of Lille seems most alarmed by the notion of the “unman[ned] man,” the superior sex, the man, taking on the appearance and the traits of the weaker sex, the woman, but Allan of Lille seems to have a relatively hard time keeping it together. Nature even has to revive him after his swoon. The writer, in this case, is acted upon by Nature, who assumes a more aggressive role in the interaction. In this telling scene, the writer is unmanned by the appearance of a woman. Even taking into consideration the cultural difference, that men can swoon without automatically assuming a feminized role, Nature still takes away his subject position and assumes it for herself. Perhaps Allan of Lille becomes, at least to a small degree, the Other he rants against.
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""I suppose the idea of a woman ruling the workings of the earth is akin to the idea of a woman ruling a household’s domestic interworkings. While God ultimately rules in the political arena, the woman has authority when it comes to ruling the household." I just really love the way you said this. I think it's the perfect explanation, phrased beautifully. Nature is perhaps more often portrayed as a "mother figure," mostly to clean up our dirty socks, and what I found interesting here was that the poet did not choose to go that way. This was partly for religious reasons I am sure, and to further his "usefulness of women" diatribe. Instead, we see what a woman is really worth, including a detailed description.
Yes, Nature, as a woman, appears to have dominion over men, but she is still under the rulership of God; this makes her role as a ‘subject’ a little problematic for me. I did like your analysis on Nature adhering to a kind of ‘domesticity’ assigned to the female gender role, but even then, she’s still under God’s rulership. Ultimately, her authority can never be seen as absolute because of her relationship to God, and the position of power he/it has given her.
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