Madeline H Caviness
Reframing Medieval Art:
Difference, Margins, Boundaries
Table of Contents:
Abstract
Dedication
Note to the Reader
Introduction: Soundings/Sightings
Chapter 1: Writing Women: Problematics of History and Language
Chapter 2: Norman Knights, Anglo-Saxon Women, and the "Third Sex:" The Masculinization of England After the Conquest
Chapter 3: Hedging in Men and Women: The Margins as Agents of Gender Construction
Chapter 4: Edging Out Difference: Revisiting the Margins as a Postmodern Project
Afterword: Social Control through Multivalent Images
Reader Comments
Chapter 2:
Norman Knights, Anglo-Saxon Women, and the "Third Sex": The Masculinization of England After the Conquest
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1017. In this year king Cnut succeeded to the whole realm of England ... In this year was ealdorman Eadric slain, and Northman, son of ealdorman Leofwine, and Aethelwaerd, son of Aethelmaer the Stout, and Beorhtric, son of Aelfgeat of Devon. ... Then before 1 August the king commanded the widow of the late king Aethelred, Richard's daughter, to be brought to him so that she might become his queen. 1
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , 155
voice without body, body without voice, silent anguish choking on the rhythms of words, the tones of sounds, the colors of images, but without words, without sounds, without images; outside time, outside knowledge, cut off forever from the rhythmic, colorful violent changes that streak sleep, skin, viscera.
Julia Kristeva, About Chinese Women 2
Representations of the [Vietnam] war have been used as a vehicle for the expansion and specification of altered gender relations in which ... a redefined masculinity .. presents itself as separate from and independent of an opposed feminine. ... The groundwork for regenerating masculinity is the mythos of masculine bonding. The masculine here represents itself as a "separate world," one that poses survival...as depending on the exclusion of women and the feminine.
Susan Jeffords , 1989, 168.
The Bayeux Embroidery
Exclusion or Nonpresence cf. Silencing
Years ago, I heard of a Koän (an impenetrable riddle posed to Buddhist novices to focus their meditation) that asked: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" In Japan also, I learned to listen to the silence in a water garden that is contained between the sharp blows of an overflowing bamboo spout tipping onto a rock. In the one, the hand needs another to be heard, and it is on this missing hand that the imagination first concentrates before turning to the impact of its being-missing on the one hand we have; in the other, silence becomes presence through the myriad chance sounds that might not otherwise be listened to. Imagining absent women and being alert to unexpected signals are both part of reading nonpresence, and they transform our readings of presence.
This case study ponders the exclusion of women from a famous pictorial chronicle of the late eleventh century. In chapter one, I briefly examined the silencing of women as a formative condition of modern academic discourses, perpetuating the construction of womanless histories. The distinction I use between the two terms is historiographical. When contemporary documents indicate women's active participation in an event yet this has been systematically overlooked by later historians who privileged or enhanced the roles played by men, I refer to silencing. When women's evident presence or participation was never acknowledged in the contemporary accounts, I call it exclusion, admittedly a more accusatory term than absence. 3As a model to scrutinize the consequences of exclusion I invoke the famous Bayeux " Tapestry ," which not only celebrates a military victory but also may be taken as a metonymy for the impact of the invading Normans on Anglo-Saxon women's culture at the end of the eleventh century. 4The main case-study for silencing was taken from twelfth-century Capetian France, when it was still possible for a woman not only to inherit her father's title and lands, but to maintain control over them after her marriage; scrutiny there fell on the changed conditions of women in eighteenth and nineteenth-century France, when revisionists claimed a great patron's works for her husband. Here I am concerned with attitudes toward the "feminine" and "masculine" in the late eleventh century that can be elucidated in terms of recent theories and a variety of case studies. I will draw especially on cross-cultural and theoretical studies of sex/gender arrangements associated with situations involving male combat.
The Bayeux " Tapestry " has also, however, undergone dislocations (dis loqut ions) in its very naming that magnify its original exclusions. In fact it was executed in wool embroidery on linen, combining the crafts of spinning, weaving and stitching that are associated strongly with women in the European cultural tradition. Women were frequently represented spinning in Greek pottery paintings. 5Although these are unlikely to have been known in northern Europe, at least one Norman churchman knew Greek mythology: When Baudri de Bourgeuil addressed a poem in 1102 to Duke William's daughter Adèle, Countess of Blois, in which a sumptuous version of the Bayeux hanging is described, he acknowledged the mythological legacy of Pallas and Arachne ( Brown , 167-168). In several medieval images the distaff is given to Eve after the fall, and may be found in the hand of the Virgin at the Annunciation. 6In the thirteenth-century north portal of Chartres Cathedral, women textile workers represent the (virtuous) active life. 7Above all, as we will see, associations between women and textile arts were deeply imbedded in Anglo-Saxon language and funerary practices.
Yet in modern times, this piece of eleventh-century women's work has been wrongly called a " tapestry ," a term that is readily associated with the large male-dominated workshops of northern Europe in the late middle ages that produced images woven into the fabric. 8The correct term "Bayeux Embroidery" evokes the manual work of women, probably the very reason that previous attempts to call this famous work a Broderie have not prevailed. 9Building on the ideas of Olive Schreiner and her analysis of Isak Dinesen's story "The Blank Page", Gubar has declared: "The art of producing essentials -- children, food, cloth -- is women's ultimate creativity. If it is taken as absence in the context of patriarchal culture, it is celebrated within the female community by the matrilineal traditions of oral storytelling." She describes this community as a "society of convent spin-sters," noting that: "For the nuns who have raised the production of flax into art, then, the blank page is a tribute to what has been devalued as mere craft or service" ( Gubar , 306-307). In 1979, Chicago used embroidery to reverse this process of devaluation in her famous Dinner Party installation; embroidered runners were a component of the place settings for each individual woman commemorated. She reinforced their historicity by using the style and technique of their time, as if closely linked to their identity -- among them is Boadaceia with a Celtic motif ( Parker , 209-210). It is urgent to begin, therefore, by renaming the Bayeux Embroidery. 10 This will keep the viewer mindful of the women's stories, told only among themselves, that are displaced by the authoritative Latinate men's stories rendered visible and memorable by these women's stitches.
On the other hand, there is no evidence to support the romantic attribution to William the Conqueror's queen, Matilda, though it persisted throughout the nineteenth-century and is still repeated in the popular title Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde ." 11 In the eighteenth century, it had been referred to as la Toilette du duc Guillaume , but Antoine Lancelot introduced the romantic idea that William's wife sweetened the bitter years of separation when he was campaigning and governing in England by creating this pictorial account of his exploits ( Bertrand , 22)! He even suggested that an important lacuna at the end -- now thought to result from wear and tear or possibly theft -- was to be blamed on Matilda's death ( Bertrand , 7, 47, 166; Le Thieullier , 332-335). 12 An engraved frontispiece to the Antiquités Anglo-Normandes de Ducarel published in 1823 depicted the crowned queen observing while a young man supervises the work in a hall that resembles the Cathedral. 13 This association with a great named lady, however imagined initially, provided a meager way to counteract the absence of recognizable female historical characters in the work. In Morazzoni 's novel about the making of the embroidery, her construction of needle women's subjectivity masks the lack of women as subjects in the embroidery itself; she invents a woman from Picardy who answers the call to work for Queen Matilda, travelling to Caen on foot to participate in the immense project, stitching next to the queen. 14
Figure 2.5b
The attribution to women of the victor's household has displaced another marginal group -- the defeated Anglo-Saxon women who plausibly stitched this huge piece of cloth for (or for presentation to) Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was Duke William's half-brother. 15 Textile arts were inseparably associated with women in their mother tongue. For instance, in his will the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred respected his grandfather's wishes to bequeath his land "to the spear-side, not to the spindle-side" ( Doris Stenton , 24). It is even likely that the commonly paired terms for man and woman, wæpman and wifman (for boy and girl: wæpnedbearn, wifchild ) opposed weapons and weaving as signs of gender; and in Old English, a spinster was a woman who spun yarn ( Fell, Clark & Williams , 39-41). Spindle-whorls were common grave furnishings for Anglo-Saxon women, and one is held by Eve in the eleventh-century "Caedmon" manuscript. 16 Aelfgiva-Emma was credited by Eadmer with gifts of much-admired vestments to the Abbey of Benevento in southern Italy ( Zarnecki , 20). The Norman chronicler William of Poitiers eulogized the sumptuous gifts duke William made to the churches of Caen and others on his return, and credits Anglo-Saxon women with great prowess in embroidering and weaving ( William of Poitiers , 156-59); whether booty or workers were brought to the continent is not clear. 17 About the modes of existence of such workers we are still not in a position to say much, but at least one Anglo-Saxon woman's will has revealed that enslaved women, a weaver and a seamstress, were bequeathed to a female successor, thus no doubt accounting for the bedclothing and tapestries also enumerated in the will ( Dietrich , 40). Women of all classes , however, seem to have participated in the textile arts (Parker , 42-44). 18 As with the Bayeux Embroidery, it has been proposed and doubted that a hanging given to Ely Cathedral by Lady Aelfflaed, Byrhtnoth's widow, after his death at the Battle of Maldon (991) was stitched by her own hand; it recounted her husband's deeds, which may have contributed to the idea that Matilda and her ladies made the Bayeux Embroidery. 19 Regardless of the seamstresses' status in society, every stitch of the Bayeux Embroidery is a more authentic witness to women's agency than are the actions of the heroes whose images they delineate. Their collective work should not be overlooked, even if we have to suppose that they followed a design laid down by (perhaps) a male draftsman and approved by a male patron; the Embroidery is truly "the fruit of Anglo-Norman collaboration ( Zarnecki , 25). This collaboration is muted by the creation of a "Bayeux Tapestry Master," or any other single author, as Cholakian has remarked ( McNulty 1989; Cholakian , 43-45). 20 And if, as this study will confirm, the embroidery's account of events is predominently pro-William if not pro-Norman, the claim made by some scholars that the stitchers (and/or designers) introduced subversive elements has to be evaluated. According to one scholar, "the few women who do appear, provide a woman's reading of a man's warring world" ( Cholakian , 44).
Figure 2.2a
The imag(in)ed characters who participate in the series of diplomatic and military expeditions that culminated in the Norman conquest of England in 1066 include only three women, all of them associated with the Anglo-Saxons who are about to be defeated (figs. 2, 5, 7). Only one is named, but not fully enough for identification. Another three are represented nude in the margins that form upper and lower frames to the narrative (figs. 11, 17).
Figure 2.7
It will not be necessary to discuss theories for decoding margins here, since my reading is based on the assumption that they are no more (nor less) available to deconstructive reading than the central field. Indeed, the margins of the Bayeux Embroidery are best read with, rather than against, the main narrative, as McNulty demonstrated ( 1980 1989 ). 21
Figure 2.11a
Thus taken together, these six images of women are a tiny minority of the dense population of 626 human figures represented in the embroidery, inevitably bringing the viewer's attention back to the actions and appearance of the male majority.
Figure 2.11b
Figure 2.17a
It might come as no surprise that women are as much excluded from the version of the Norman invasion of England that is recounted in the Bayeux Embroidery as from any of the chronicles.
Figure 2.17b
Named women tend to slip out of sight and mind in times of war; as we have seen, in the quotation from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at the chapter heading, Aelfgyva Emma's menfolk are commemorated as heroes while her nebulous existence depends on her relationships as daughter, wife and widow. 22 That seems quite natural. Yet I shall argue that our culture, or rather its "patriarchal militarism" ( Kaplan 's term), has naturalized these womanless historical accounts as a strategy of its own survival. As Jeffords noted, the exclusion of women, and the appropriation of their roles by men in the representations of the Vietnam War, can be read as empowering male bonding and aggression. This chapter will elucidate how it is that women's nonpresence reconfigures masculinities. 23
The Bayeux Embroidery: The Story-line:
Figure 2.1a
Figure 2.1b
Figure 2.2a
Figure 2.2b
Figure 2.3a
Figure 2.3b
Figure 2.5a
Figure 2.5b
Figure 2.7
Figure 2.8a
Figure 2.8b
The immense linen hanging, only twenty inches high (51cm), but stretching 231 feet (70m) horizontally, belongs to the municipality of Bayeux and is now displayed in a special museum set up in the old Bishops' Palace adjacent to the Cathedral. It has been inexpensively published in its entirety several times, no doubt because of its appeal as "a historical document" ( Bernstein ,Bertrand ,Grape ,McNulty 1989 ,Frank Stenton ,Ville de Bayeux ). 24 The reader is referred to any of these publications to give credence to the bare facts cited here, especially to free themselves from the distortion that is immediately implied by illustrating those rare instances when women are depicted (figs. 2, 5, 7). Those without access to a complete reproduction might bear in mind that roughly half the length of the embroidery is given to encounters between armed horsemen (as figs. 8, 9, 11, 15, 19), an eighth to military crossings of the Channel,
Figure 2.9a
Figure 2.9b
and the remaining three-eighths to male-to-male transactions concerning the assertion of power or delegation of authority (figs. 1, 3, 5, 7, 13, 14, 20).
Figure 2.11a
Figure 2.11b
Name labels and short declarative Latin tituli are placed toward the upper edge of the pictorial field, embroidered in display capitals as large as the heads of the principle figures. 25
Figure 2.13a
Figure 2.13b
Action is introduced by hic (literally "here"), usually for a new cycle of events, or by ubi (literally "where");
Figure 2.14a
Figure 2.14b
these connectors refer strictly to place only in relation to the pictorial representation ("here you see" or "in which you see"), but might loosely be read in the temporal sense of "next," or "when." 26
Figure 2.15a
Figure 2.15b
The borders are also a significant component, occupying a full third of the vertical height of the hanging; in them various motifs, for the most part bestial, are separated by slanting frames that provide a staccato rhythm to the virtually uninterrupted action in the central field.
Figure 2.19a
Figure 2.19b
Important dramatic elements, such as the boats crossing the Channel, the palaces of kings and dukes, or the military engagement at Hastings, extend upwards or spill over into these margins (figs. 3, 8, 19). Some marginal episodes may constitute something like similes or moral commentaries on the main-frame events, constituting "a gloss, in the strict dictionary sense" ( McNulty 1989, vii, 38, 39, 41).
Figure 2.20a
Figure 2.20b
The events depicted in the embroidery do not coincide with any single extant textual account; the pictorial cycle constructs its own authoritative "history" of nearly three years (1064-1066), concentrating on the struggle for the English throne between Edward "the Confessor's" brother-in-law, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, and Edward's second cousin on his mother's side, Duke William of Normandy, "the Conqueror." 27 The embroidery begins with the bearded Anglo-Saxon king, "Edward Rex," seated on his throne in a fortified palace, conferring with two laymen (fig. 1). An ornamental border at the left confirms that this is the beginning of the cycle. The first event, introduced by the connector ubi, is Duke Harold setting out to the right for Bosham with his knights. He and his men wear short tunics, moustaches, and bobbed hair that covers their necks. Harold, riding with his hawk on his wrist, may even be parodied in the lower margin by "a winged centaur: at once man, horse, and bird" ( McNulty , 1989, 39). Despite the resonance of their label ( milites ), the expedition is clearly designated as peaceful and even frivolous --- these members of the knightly class have hounds and falcons instead of arms; at Bosham they dismount to pray in a church and to feast in an upper chamber before embarking to cross the Channel. 28
Figure 2.17a
Figure 2.17b
Harold's adventures, from his embarkation to his return from the continent and eventual coronation as king of England, -- events that one author has characterized as the "legal pre-history of the conquest" ( Werckmeister , 557)-- occupy nearly half the embroidery (figs. 2, 3, 5, 9, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20).
Figure 2.20a
Figure 2.20b
Throughout this section, and in the campaigns that follow, unless they are in full armor the Normans are recognizable by their short-cropped hair (the nape of the neck actually appears shorn), smooth-shaven faces, and below-the knee surcoats (in contrast to the wide-skirted tunics of the Anglo-Saxons that scarcely reach the knee; e.g., figs. 14, 15). Military mobilization, invasion, rampage, and battle occupy all of the second half of the embroidery (figs. 7, 8, 11, 12, 13)