Silence, Agency, and a Woman’s Need to Speak her Mind: Female Voices in Different Versions of theGregoriusNarrative

Abstract

This essay explores the question of how different versions of the medieval Gregorius narrative explore corresponding episodes in which the central female character keeps silent instead of speaking her mind. Hartmann von Aue, in the Middle High German reworking of his Old French source, demonstrates different ways in which a noblewoman uses what little agency she has whenever she can. In contrast, a later Latin adaptation of Hartmann’s text presents its audience with a heroine who is kept powerless and speechless at the outset but who ultimately gains the ability to raise her voice. Thomas Mann, in turn, in his twentieth-century interpretation and adaptation of Hartmann’s text, transforms an originally medieval female character who is treated problematically by others and who herself behaves problematically into a character who is an essentially problematic person on account of her deep-rooted willingness to conform to the gendered role assigned to her.