Triangles of the Sacred Sisterhood

Abstract

In an article entitled “The Structuring of Feminine Empowerment: Gender and Triangular Relationships,” Nora Cottille-Foley discusses how Marie de France sometimes subverts the eternal triangle of husband, wife, and lover and reforms it in order to further the agency and power of the female protagonist. In both the courtly romance and comic fabliau, as Cottille-Foley notes, the adulterous triangle of husband, wife, and lover is a prominent theme. The perspectives, of course, are quite different: in courtly works, the main interest focuses on the illicit love relationship of wife and lover, whereas in the fabliau the focus is on the conflict of the married couple, their relationship being a source of comedy, derived often from the pairing of a lustful, deceitful wife anda rather dim-witted but domineering husband. In both courtly and comic genres, the triangle is a site of conflict. In courtly works, the resolution is generally in favour of the status quo as a courtly adulterous affair rarely works out, while in the fabliau the marriage is generally left intact, although a deceitful wife may be given carte blanche to philander. Cottille-Foley suggests that Marie rewrites these fixed and predictable triangles through a series of Derridean slippages to produce new triangles whose composition enhances women’s agency and leads to a new resolution of peace and harmony for the women involved: “the third character acts as an empowering double to the main protagonists. The figure of the patriarch remains only as an archaic trace in the text and is written over by the figure of the female poet, the providential aunt, or the fellow woman.”.