"A kysse onely": The Problem of Female Socialization in William Caxton's Blanchardyn and Eglantine

Abstract

"A kysse onely":The Problem of Female Socialization in William Caxton's Blanchardyn and Eglantine Jennifer Alberghini In 2018, Babe magazine's article "I Went on a Date with Aziz Ansari. It Turned into the Worst Night of My Life" told the story of a woman known only as "Grace" and her experience with the actor/comedian/self-proclaimed feminist. After rushing through dinner, Ansari brought Grace back to his home and made sexual advances. She resisted, both through body language and speech. The actor initially complied with her request, but he soon resumed his attempts until Grace went home. The experience highly unsettled her, though at first she did not understand why. It took discussions with other women for Grace to understand her feelings of violation fully. When she did, she communicated them to the actor; however, he felt that he had done nothing wrong. Later, he wore a #TimesUp pin at the 2018 Golden Globes to show support for the #MeToo movement. Horrified to see him on TV claiming to be a champion of women, knowing what had happened between them, Grace decided to go public with her story.1 The article provoked outrage: against Grace rather than Ansari. One critic called it "3,000 words of revenge porn."2 A New York Times opinion piece lamented society's failure to educate women how to exit difficult situations, pressing "for women to be more verbal" despite acknowledging that "women are socialized to be docile and accommodating and to put [End Page 347] men's desires before their own."3 The paradox is clear: if society teaches women to say "Yes," how can they be "more verbal" in saying "No?" Exploring the negative responses to the story by female writers, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan and Naomi Snider show how cultural standards make women, in Snider's words, "perpetuat[e] the very systems of oppression that cause the harm."4 Looking to the medieval past, we can see that this phenomenon is part of a long-standing pattern. In particular, medieval literary texts, such as William Caxton's 1489 English translation of the French romance Blanchardyn and Eglantine, were used as a vehicle for women to teach other women submission to men's desires.5 In this essay I will consider this version of the romance, for which the critical focus has thus far been limited to its patronage by Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother. Scholars have suggested that she originally purchased the French book for the king's 1486 marriage to Elizabeth of York; however, they are limited in the reasons for why this particular romance.6 After a brief overview of what we know of the book's historical circumstances from its paratexts, in which Caxton emphasizes that the romance has a pedagogical function, I will examine the text's plot with a focus on two key scenes of sexual violence. The first, the hero Blanchardyn's forcible kissing of the heroine Eglantine, is most notable for a conversation between her and her nurse in its aftermath. I suggest that the latter character, who serves as a kind of counselor figure, may have resonated with Beaufort based on her own experiences. The second scene is the kidnapping of Beatrice, daughter of the romance's non-Christian villain Alymodes.7 Looking at both of these incidents perpetrated by the Christian nobleman Blanchardyn [End Page 348] compared to the modern act of sexual misconduct by Aziz Ansari and the backlash Grace received for publicizing it, I argue that the text's lessons about consent depend on the social position of the man who commits the act of aggression. Like the popular responses to Grace's account, the romance shows how women encourage other women to downplay a bodily violation by an important man and not only to forgive but to love him for it. Before exploring the examples of female-centered pedagogy within both the plot of the story and the better-known context of the book's patronage, some background on both the plot and the patron will be useful. The patroness, Margaret Beaufort, descended from John of Gaunt and his mistress-turned-third-wife, Katherine Swynford. This...