The medieval period is often seen as an extremely patriarchal time where women did not have much power in society, and even the most powerful women in the land often were placed socially lower than their male counterparts. The twelfth-century story of “Lanval” demonstrates that not even legendary queens, like Guinevere, were exempt from this treatment.
Stefan Jurasinski, in the article, “Treason and the Charge of Sodomy in the Lai de Lanval,” provides an interesting examination of the differing levels of treason associated with that infamous exchange between Guinevere and Lanval. Jurasinski explains the first layer of treason as a betrayal of Arthur by Guinevere to which “Lanval’s response, invoking his loyalty to the king while conceding the potency of Guinevere’s temptation, is perhaps meant to remind her of the serious legal implications of her proposal” (Jurasinski 296). This demonstrates that not even the queen, the most powerful woman in all the realm, was above Lanval, a man below her in station, because his word was worth more than hers so much so that she could have possibly been killed on it. It was seen that because she was a woman, her story was inherently weaker than Lanval’s in the contest of justice, law, and treason as those belong in the more masculine sphere of public and social life, where men have the power.
However, while being a woman may have crippled Guinevere in direct confrontation with the public or legal sphere, she gained power in the more feminine domestic sphere. She may not have been able to refute Lanval directly because of their imbalance in power, but she was able to shift the focus of the argument into an area where she did have more sway, hence the accusation of homosexuality. Jurasinski in his critique of his predecessors notes that “[f]ew...disagree with Ewert’s claim that, in much Old French literature, charges like those made by Guinevere were ‘commonly leveled at men who repulse the advances of women,’” (Jurasinski 291). Later in the article, he discusses how it was thought that prostitutes were often the ones who made these allegations and that “fear of falling under suspicion grew so great that some men kept mistresses openly as a means of preempting such accusations” (Jurasinski 292). In the society that Guinevere inhabited, she had little to no power in the public domain of her life despite her title as queen, yet her status and role as a woman was what had saved her, because she, and all the women around her, while relegated to the domestic sphere, were the uncontested rulers of that world.
Works Cited:
Jurasinski, Stefan. "Treason and the Charge of Sodomy in the Lai De Lanval." Romance Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 4, 2007, pp. 290-302. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.queens.edu:2048/login?url=https://ezproxy.queens.edu:3146/docview/208433578?accountid=38688.