Gender Norms In Bisclavret By Marie De France

A werewolf is someone who changes form into a wolf for a period of time, typically around the full moon. It is unknown when and where the first werewolf myths came to be, but one of the earliest recordings is Bisclavret by Marie de France. In her story, the protagonist is a baron from Brittany, who has to leave his otherwise normal life for three days each week and roam the woods as a werewolf. He has conformed to and personified masculine gender norms of the middle ages, while stepping outside of them once he has transformed into Bisclavret. To be masculine during any age, is to be in possession of the traits or qualities associated with men. The gender norms represented in Bisclavret by Marie de France are so critical to the atmosphere of

The baron loved his wife and his wife loved him; however, she used his love for her to manipulate him into doing what she wanted. The wife said to the baron to convince him to tell her where he hid his clothes: “I love you more than all the world: / you must hide nothing from me / nor mistrust me in any way” (France 182). Faced with that, he felt it was his marital duty to inform her and he trusted her because she was his wife. She manipulated him with the intention to get rid of him and marry another suiter that had no abnormalities. She was repulsed by him and afraid of him once she was faced with the truth of what he was. He had to come to terms with the fact that his wife wanted someone else because she didn’t believe he was “man” enough for her. Their love meant to her after discovering his secrets, so it couldn’t have been true love at all. She practically jumped at the chance to see the beast in him rather than the man. But, when it really mattered, his king saw the man in a beast. Whereas at first, they sought to hunt him down, when Bisclavret was surrounded and he begged for mercy by kissing the king’s leg and foot, the king spared the beast its’ life. Bisclavret had retained his “intelligence and understanding” (France184) even if he didn’t have his masculinity or identity. The king ordered Bisclavret to be cared

The baron’s identity was tied up in how he perceived himself as masculine, both those things were then given a physical symbol in the clothing – strip those from the baron and he is emasculated. By rejecting the baron and turning to another, the wife took away his pride as a man and emasculated him by her dissatisfaction with his performance, her revulsion of his dual nature, and with how readily she felt capable of breaking his trust. The king emasculated the baron because he made him docile and submissive, but at the same time he empowered Bisclavret and healed him of the wounds made by the wife. The standard for how a man was supposed to act and what was considered masculine was inescapably tied up in the idyllic codes of chivalry; by manipulating the chivalric code of honor and honesty, the wife emasculated the baron by trapping him as Bisclavret and taking everything that made him