The Virgin Knight: Spenser's Embodiment of Duality in Elizabethan England

Abstract

Edmund Spenser’s poetry notoriously battles itself, contorting the surface of his poetical works into an ambiguous representation of how he perceived Elizabethan England in terms of theology, sexuality, nobility, and ideology. Written as what he termed “an historicall fiction,” Spenser allowed his imagination to capture and epitomize the perspectives of Elizabethan society—but in a twisted fashion. The primary focus of appearance versus reality consumed him and became an encompassing factor of his work. In fact, he allowed one of his protagonists to become the embodiment of his struggle: Britmart, the virgin knight, assumes a life of chastity and tribadism; ferocity and delicacy; the penetrator and the penetrated. Her conflicting roles as a chaste woman who exceeds the boundaries of what was expected for her gender encompasses her identity as an androgynous woman who refuses to abide by her expected gender performativity. When she confronts Malecasta at the House of Ioue, she becomes exposed to her conflicting, tense nature that fuels her essence as a penetrating virgin, allowing Spenser to indirectly expose Elizabethan England to restrictions on gender roles and sexuality due to his wordplays with language, means of representation, and repeated notions of dualism. Britomart, the virgin knight, embraces her character while serving as a canvas for Spenser to echo or defy common ideologies in Elizabethan England in terms of sexuality, chivalry, and identity.