Gender and Identity in the Popular Romance

Abstract

Like folktales, myths, and legends, many Middle English romances focus on constructions of identity, heroic behaviour, and an individual's defiance of or conformity to familial, social, cultural and political forces. In many of these texts, the desires of individuals are pitted against societal or familial forces lined up to thwart them: kings, treacherous lords or stewards, problematic fathers, or evil mothers-in-law. These are not always or merely archetypal or generic opponents, as the romances invest folkloric motifs with political and social resonances particular to England in post-Conquest times. Unlike folkloric stories in which monsters (such as giants and dwarfs) are powerful impediments to the success of the hero, and unlike the French or Anglo-Norman romances that emphasize sophistication and court culture, these romances are often grounded in the reality of medieval English life that includes religious elements such as pilgrimages or confessions as well as political or social dangers to the heroes, often from within the domestic sphere. The life of the hero in these romances becomes a positive or negative exemplum, and a bewildering number of rulers come to represent good and bad models of kingship, just or unjust rule. Within these didactic frames of reference and social concerns, Middle English romances deliberately turn away from the adulterous love of their French courtly romance predecessors and focus instead on righting wrongs and re-establishing proper social order with families intact. Beginning with loss or disorder and ending with heavily imposed closure, these texts often eschew the tragic implications of other genres and resolve tensions with a final reiteration of cultural norms. Popular Middle English romance locates itself precisely at the junction between ‘the kind of narrative order that finds resolution in the inviolable happy endings and the chaos that is threatened by the giants and rapists, incubi, cannibals and necrophiliacs, to say nothing of the abusive parents and their wild offspring’. It is certainly true that these stories demonstrate the importance of and insecurities concerning gender, and the notorious reputation of Middle English romance for blurring generic distinctions allows for a range of unrestrained responses to social conditions. Gender construction is a contested ground for both male and female heroes – protagonists who do not fit easily into definable categories and who move effortlessly within or even transgress the boundaries of genre.