Medieval women and disability: Reading Margery's and May's extramarital affair in Dame Sirith and the Merchant's Tale

Being read as fabliaux that bring laughter, the stories of extramarital affair in Dame Sirith and the Merchant's Tale are viewed as amusing stories but the disabled situation of women is ignored. Medieval women were view as the disabled Other, and were therefore belittled as untrustworthy people. Since Aristotle, European medical and cultural narratives attempted to emphasize that physiologically women were lesser than men. Medieval gynaecology, the notion of the "wandering womb," and the book De secretis mulierum, all reveal how women were viewed as the Other, and were therefore eccentric, inferior, and hence disabled. Grounded on these prejudiced male-centered medical narratives, medieval culture divided women into two types, the harmful woman and the helpful woman. The medieval prototypes of these two types of women were based on the image of Eve and Virgin Mary. In literature, the harmful woman is portrayed as the virago, represented by characters such as the Lady of Sir Bercilek's Castle. Explicitly, Dame Sirith and the Merchant's Tale belong to this cultural stream which made women disabled and overemphasized their moral flaw. However, if one rereads Dame Sirith and the Merchant's Tale carefully, one can find that Margery and May are kind and strong, and May even controls the epistemological knowledge of the father of the child she is carrying. The disability of Margery and May is portrayed as reinforcement, rather than belittlement. Last but not least, I will employ Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of carnival to explore the significance of the extramarital affairs of Margery and May.

關鍵字

Dame Sirith ； the Merchant's Tale ； medieval women ； disability ； carnival

並列摘要

《西里斯夫人》和《商人的故事》做為中世紀寓言詩（fabliau）描寫女性婚外出軌的故事，向來被強調其詼諧幽默的一面，然其中中世紀女性的真正處境郤未被重視。若仔細研究中世紀一些醫學及文化論述，讀者可發現女性在中世紀被男性視為失能的他者，因此女性身體受到扭曲，導致此類貶低女性行為價值的作品出現。從亞里斯多德開始便指出女性是失能的，而中世紀的婦科由男性醫生所主導，另外更有『遊蕩的子宮』的偏見、和《女人的秘密》（"De secretis mulierum"）等著作，皆強調女性在生理上次等於男性，甚至對男性生命構成危害。基於此種醫學偏見，中世紀的文化論述將女性兩極化為對男性有幫助的和有害的，並以聖母瑪利亞和夏娃做為代表。有害的女人在文學作品中往往化身為以《高文爵士與綠衣騎士》中堡主夫人為代表的悍婦。在這樣的背景之下，讀者不難理解為何《西里斯夫人》和《商人的故事》中行為大膽的女性受到醜化，因為女性乃作為失能者被看待，而非與男性平等健全的人。然而，仔細拆解這兩個故事，仍可見瑪格麗和梅具有勇敢助人的特性，其中梅掌握了懷中小孩的生父資訊，更成為掌握和建立知識的女性。瑪格麗和梅的失能讓她們更具有能力更堅強，應被視為增能（empowerment）。最後，本文將以巴赫汀的『嘉年華』概念來讀出瑪格麗和梅婚外情的意義。

並列關鍵字

《西里斯夫人》；《商人的故事》；中世紀女性；失能；嘉年華

主題瀏覽