Who Is The Lady-Errant In Sir Gawain Et Nicolette

“The Lady-errant in Aucassin et Nicolette: the subversiveness of the female knight”

The aim of this essay is to illustrate how Nicolette, one of the two protagonists of the anonymous French chantefable Aucassin et Nicolette, subverts the accepted gender roles of the Middle Ages. By adopting an active, almost masculine role in the story, she challenges the medieval stereotype of the “damsel in distress” who awaits to be saved by her valiant knight. Instead, she becomes herself a proper courtly knight, after the fashion of Gawain, the perfect knight of the round table, in order to save her beloved Aucassin, her lover, but also her liege lord. Even in the context of the satirical, humorous chantefable, where her androgynous character can be considered mostly a caricature of femininity, she portrays a different, unheard of possibility for women, allowing them to consider themselves as heroines of their stories, and not only as passive, secondary

figures.
The inversion of gender roles and the construction of Nicolette as a knight is the most subversive characteristic of the only surviving chantefable, Aucassin et Nicolette. The story begins quite conventionally, presenting the situation of two young people that fall in love, but cannot be together because of the objections of their parents. The disparity between their social statuses — Aucassin being the only son and heir of the Count of Biaucaire and Nicolette only a slave girl of Saracen origin and adopted daughter of the Captain of the city—prevents them from getting married. To place even more obstacles in the couple’s path and to emphasize the great distance that separates them, Nicolette’s adoptive father locks her in the chamber of a tall palace. The very first words that she utters while locked in her prison differentiate her from the typical romance heroine;
“’Tis for thee that I must dwell
In the vaulted chamber cell,
Hard beset and all alone!
By our Lady Mary’s Son
Here no longer will I wonn,
If I may flee!”
The fairy-tale prison, the phallic-shaped palace she is incarcerated in, has connotations of the restraints imposed upon her by the medieval patriarchal and highly class-oriented society. With her words, she defies these restraints and the patriarchal ideal of passive femininity, as she does not wait for Aucassin to save her, but decides to escape on her own.
From this point forward, Nicolette displays more and more characteristics of the courtly knight. Sidney Painter in his book French Chivalry describes the qualities that a perfect knight should possess and distinguishes the three different knightly types: the feudal knight, the religious knight and the courtly knight, each with his own characteristics and values. According to Painter, the chivalric values of a feudal knight are his prowess, his loyalty and adherence to his duty, his generosity, his courtesy and the fact that he fights at the early Middle Ages for money, but later on to gain honour and prestige, for salvation and religious reasons (in the case of the church’s knightly ideal), or for love (in the case of the courtly knight) . He goes on to explain that for knights in fin’amor poetry, love and courtliness play a principal role. Love in particular is considered a strengthening and improving power that can change and ameliorate the knight. Strong emphasis is put on appearance, dress and manner of speaking. Sir Gawain is the personification of courtly valour, as is indicated by the pentangle which he bores on his shield;
“Now the fifth five that this knight excelled in were frankness and fellowship above all others, his cleanness and courtesy never were crooked, and compassion, that surpasseth all else. […] Therefore the knot was shaped on his strong shield, all with red gold upon red gules, called the pure pentangle among the people of love.”
Besides, a lot of space is devoted to describe his dress and the courtly manner with which he deals with his host’s wife and relatively less to his courage and fighting prowess, marking the passage from the earlier fighter-knight ideal to a more esoteric and thoughtful individual, who could engage in courtly politics, as well as war.
Nicolette, appearing earlier as a character than Gawain— Aucassin et Nicolette is a work of the 12th or 13th century, whereas Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a romance of the late 14th century— demonstrates qualities valued both in the feudal and the courtly knight.

She is inventive, when she tries to find a way out of her prison; hardy, when she endures cuts, bruises and several wounds as she tries to pass from the moat; and courageous, when she overcomes her fear for wild animals and decides to go in the dark forest. She speaks in a polite and courteous manner, even to people beneath her social status (the shepherds) and is generous in rewarding them, giving them all the money she has in her purse; “And lo! I have five sols in my purse, take them and tell him” . She is as beautiful as any high-born lady and her speech is frank, but she can also hide her true meaning behind equivocal sentences, when she parallels herself to a beast, in order to hide the fact that she resides in the forest, until Aucassin finds

her.
The most important quality for a knight is his loyalty to his liege lord. Both Gawain and Nicolette start their journeys and quests, the former to protect and the latter to pledge allegiance to their lord. The relationship of the knight and the lord to whom he is pledged is very similar to the marital knot; it requires loyalty, devotion and a formal tie. Richard Barber describes in The Knight and Chivalry the ceremony of homage as follows;
“Commendation, as a solemn contract in an age when the legal niceties were rarely observed, symbolized in the ceremony of homage, an outward and visible sign of the relationship of the two parties. […] the basic relationship of lord and vassal remained almost unchanged from the seventh century to the fourteenth; it coloured men’s unconscious thought, and was reflected in other liaisons: lovers swore fealty to their beloved, their more serious companions did spiritual homage to Our Lady”.
His loyalty to Arthur is what sets Gawain above the other Knights of the Round Table. In the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, he is the only one among his fellows to volunteer, so that Arthur will not need to accept a very dangerous challenge. Additionally, unlike Lancelot, Tristan, and Erec, he is never divided between his chivalric duty and his love for a lady, a common topos for many of the Arthurian romances. In that, Nicolette, the female knight, has an advantage over every other courtly knight. As a Saracen princess, her marriage, or her pledging to Aucassin operates on three distinct levels. First, on a literal level she is pledged as his wife, validating their love affair, and, according to Christian doctrines, promising to honour, respect and obey him, as her husband. The marriage bond is reciprocal. Aucassin too promises to protect and support her, just as the lord promises to protect his vassal; “The suppliant placed his hands between those of his lord, in token of his obedience and the lord’s protection” . The similarities between the ceremony of marriage and the commendation ceremony mentioned above makes possible a reading of their wedding on a second level as a “dubbing”; the making in other words of Nicolette into a knight of Aucassin’s court. Thirdly, the fact that she is a princess from Spain brings forth another dimension of their wedding; the sealing of a contract between a French count and a powerful Spanish King. Through this feudal contract, the lord and the knight, or in this case the bride, form an alliance involving their people and their lands.
Nicolette’s lack of knowledge about her true identity in the beginning of the chant fable hints towards her construction as a knightly figure. Sir Gawain also grew up away from his family and oblivious to his origin. Alan Lupack in the Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend briefly describes the hero’s childhood;
“According to the romance, Gawain is born to Anna and Loth, a hostage at Uther’s court, before their marriage. To hide the birth, Anna entrusts the child to a group of merchants. But a fisherman named Viamundus steals Gawain and the rich possessions Anna has provided for him, and takes him to Rome” .
Hidden, unknown or unclear identity is a usual motif in romances, and particularly in the Arthurian literature. Gawain’s son, Gyngolyn or Guinglain, appears to court as a stranger and is, thus, called The Fair Unknown. Before finding out and revealing his identity, he must first pass tests that prove his valour . Similarly, Nicolette comes from a faraway land as a slave, with no way of knowing or proving her true origin; “a slave girl she is, out of a strange land, and the captain of this town bought her of the Saracens, and carried her hither, and reared her and let christen the maid, and took her for his daughter in God” . Even though Aucassin loves her, her true value to society cannot be proven, until she surpasses all the obstacles put in her way. The community, whose objections are voiced by Aucassin’s father, will not accept her as a member of a higher social class, unless she shows her loyalty and worth.
After the 11th century, feudal societies went through various changes which influenced greatly, among other things, the power and wealth of the feudal aristocracy. According to Painter, the lands of a feud were not always enough to provide for all the children of a noble lord. As a result, younger or bastard sons had to search for their fortune away from their home, either becoming crusaders or expanding in foreign lands; “instead of attempting to oust his elder brother or plunder a neighbour the cadet of a noble house could seek his fortune in England or Palestine” . The attempts of younger sons to make a living by journeying and questing abroad are reflected in literature, creating the term knight-errant. Barber in the Knight and Chivalry describes what a knight-errant must do; “For it is essential to the style of the romances that the knight should wander fourth in search of adventures; the duels and marvels that befall him are rarely hindrances to his journey, but are usually its very purpose” .
The idea of the knight-errant and the journeying of the younger sons of aristocratic origin resonate with Nicolette’s story. Being a daughter, she would not inherit or rule the kingdom of her father, but at best, she could hope for a favourable marriage. She, however, decides to resist the expectations of society— and by extension, the audience. Instead, she chooses to fashion herself in the manner of a knight-errant, pass through adventures and travelling to attain her goal, that is to get married and live with Aucassin.
Apart from journeying, another common motif of medieval literature, which the unknown author employs in his construction of Nicolette, is the motif of disguise. After a tempest separates the two lovers, Nicolette is found in her hometown where her identity is revealed, but she still pines for Aucassin and decides to try and find him. In this instance, she adopts the appearance of the gender that she performs, by disguising herself as a bard; “Then took she a certain herb, and therewith smeared her head and her face, till she was all brown and stained. And she let make coat, and mantle, and smock, and hose, and attired herself as if she had been a harper” . In the romantic poem Floire et Blanchefleur, a love story very similar to that of Aucassin et Nicolette, it is Floire, the male protagonist, who renounces his past life in order to marry Blanchefleur, the French Christian girl whom he loves. When Blanchefleur is captive in a harem, Floire disguises himself as a merchant so that he could find her and help her escape. Nicolette, with her disguise, her trevels through the seas, and her acceptance adventure into the unknown, is closer to Floire than Blanchefleur, her female counterpart.
Her actions and behaviour define Nicolette as an almost protofeminist heroine who challenges the patriarchy by refusing to lead a passive life or to conform to social expectations. On the contrary, she appropriates a masculine identity, that of the knight-errant, saving herself and following her own ambitions. To a contemporary reader, Nicolette can be a revolutionary figure who confronts the customs and social laws of the Middle Ages and shows an alternative model of active femininity. Still, it is important to keep in mind that Aucassin et Nicolette is a work that can be read both as a romance and as a satire of many of the popular medieval literary genres (epic, fin’amor poetry, hagiography, folk tale etc.). As Andrew Lang states: “What the nameless author does care for, is his telling of the love-story, the passion of Aucassin and Nicolette. His originality lies in his charming medley of sentiment and humour, of a smiling compassion and sympathy with a touch of mocking mirth”.
In fact, throughout the Song-Story, as Andrew Lang calls the chantefable, there is more than just a touch of humour, as it is replete with elements of inversion and the carnivalesque. The humorous and satirical dimension of Aucassin et Nicolette can equally empower and undermine the power of Nicolette’s rebellion, which to a great extend depends on the way the audience perceives her, as well as on the way she is constructed and presented.
Considering Aristotle’s theories about the formation of society and the state, the fact that Nicolette and Aucassin exchange places in the chantefable does not simply cause laughter through a comical gender inversion, but also threatens the social hierarchy of the Middle Ages. In Politics, Aristotle explains how a state, a society formed to ensure self-sufficiency and quality of life, can be broken down to its components: the village, “a number of houses for the satisfaction of something more than daily needs”; the household, where daily needs can be satisfied; and finally, the couple, which is formed for reproduction. Each one of these units has a specific hierarchy. In the couple, the male is the ruler and the female is the ruled (the same applies in the case of a master-slave pair, formed in the interest of preservation). In the household, the parents and owners are in charge of the children and the slaves respectively, while in the village and the state, the seniors and rulers are presiding over the rest of the people .
This strict model of hierarchy is reflected in the structure of medieval societies. The position of every person in society is dictated by the Great Chain of Being, while social mobility is very difficult to achieve, if possible at all. Granted that, in such tightly knit societies, even a small change might have a great effect on the whole structure, the inversion of roles between Aucassin and Nicolette— her being independent and active, him passive and indecisive— is potentially destructive for the whole feudal system. Nicolette, the wife, the vassal knight, the foreigner formerly of a different religion, becomes more powerful and assertive than Aucassin, the husband, the lord, the French aristocrat, a fact which makes rebellion from her part possible and very likely to succeed. The chantefable, naturally, never goes to this extreme, but keeps the story conventional with a happy ending that restores everyone to his/her own proper place. Nicolette dresses again as a lady should, stays in her chamber and waits for Aucassin to come to her, so that they can get married;
“Then, she clothed herself in rich robes of silk whereof the lady had great store, and then sat herself in the chamber on a silken coverlet, and called the lady and bade her go and bring Aucassin her love, and she did even so” .
The audience, however, of the performance had already experienced the potential change of the accepted hierarchy and maybe even considered the true extend of their power and the possibility of changing the current regime.
Inversion of roles and the collapse of rules in the Middle Ages were sometimes not only allowed, but even encouraged during specific periods and holidays, such as the Carnival before the solemnity and strict fasting of Lent. For Henri Bergson, the rituals of inversion and humiliation that took place on the Carnival, Holy Innocents’ Day and the Feast of the Ass functioned mainly as mechanisms for social criticism, the correction in other words of inappropriate behavior, and tension relief, when people could take a break of their serious and hard everyday lives .
Mikhail Bakhtin, on the contrary, views the carnival with all its revolutionary and subversive possibilities. In his introduction of Rabelais and his World, he states;
“Rank was especially evident during official feasts; everyone was expected to appear in the full regalia of his calling, rank, and merits and to take the place corresponding to his position. [..] On the contrary, all were considered equal during carnival” .
He goes on to explain the importance of experiencing change and renewal; people, free from conventions, laws and expectations were able to form purely human relationships based on frank and honest communication, past “etiquette and decency imposed at other times” .
The inversion of roles between Aucassin and Nicolette, the carnivalesque element of the chantefable, seems to aim primarily to create laughter and parody. Bathos is achieved when Aucassin, a respected, aristocratic figure, a knight, son to a powerful Count is brought low, through ridicule. He is portrayed as effeminate, extensively occupied with his looks, sensitive, a poet more than a warrior. The epic hero becomes, thus, mundane, just an everyday man whose main concern (for peasants survival, but for him his love for Nicolette) occupies his every faculty;
“Now believe ye not that his mind was on kine, nor cattle of the booty, nor thought he how he might strike a knight, nor be stricken again: nor no such thing. Nay, no memory had Aucassin of aught of these; rather he so dreamed of Nicolette, his sweet lady, that he dropped his reins, forgetting all there was to do, and his horse that had felt the spur, bore him into the press and hurried among the foe, and they laid hands on him all about, and took him all about, and took him captive…” .
Nicolette, on the other hand, takes his place as the responsible, serious, rational and courageous member of the pair. The woman takes charge of the relationship and guides her lover in his actions, or rather acts herself. Compared to Aucassin, Nicolette’s description is quite conventional and respectful. At no point does her appearance or actions invoke laughter, but rather she inspires admiration and respect in the audience. Hence, she is presented as by far the more capable of the two to lead and decide for the pair, first, as the lover, then for the household, as the wife, and finally, for Aucassin’s land and people, as the new Countess of Biaucaire. In that way, not only is the high brought low and made tangible, but also the low is elevated and allowed to take a leading role. Just as Arthur Lindley suggests, speaking about Bakhtin’s theory on the carnivalesque, the satirical chantefable creates a space where “vital, proletarian energy expresses itself at the expense of dead, hierarchic form” .