Close Reading

Montague Summers writes that there exists "from very ancient times a certain connection between the wolf and outlawry," and that the Normans, the people who occupied the north of France, had a law that described certain crimes as "wargus esto," which roughly meant “to become a wolf." ( Summers, 187). To be a wolf was to be an outsider, a criminal, unwanted. In the opening lines of Bisclavret, Marie wastes no time in reminding her readers of that history, stating that bisclavret, werewolf, was called "Garwuf in the Norman tongue." (Gilbert 299).Yet Bisclavret, this exhibit argues, is far from being a stereotypical monster. Bisclavret may be a werewolf, but it is his wife who is to be feared.

Marie introduces her readers to Bisclavret by immediately diverting expectations, and asking them to leave behind their preconceived notions of werewolves as bloodthirsty beasts that devour men and live in the forest. Although Bisclavret spends his transformations in the forest, he eats animals. He notably tracks the animals he eats - in other words, he consciously hunts. Hunting was an incredibly popular activity and valued skill among the nobility in the Middle Ages, which Marie emphasizes by having the King and his men go hunting too ("Medieval & Renaissance Hunting.”). Additionally, Marie describes him as being wonderous, good-looking, and extremely well-liked (Gilbert 299). Despite Bisclavret's influential position as a lord and knight, it is he who is vulnerable to his wife. She, too, is described as beautiful, and Bisclavret tells her multiple times that it is he who would be lost if he did not have her love.

Around line 53, Marie begins to let her readers in on the fact that Bisclavret's wife may not be all that she seems. During her quest to extract information from him, Bisclavret implores his wife to have mercy.She employs two main tactics during her attempts to manipulate Bisclavret. To get him to reveal why it is that he leaves for days at a time, she accuses him of cheating.She tells him that he has wronged her if he has found a lover. Marie writes that the wife uses all her "skill, coaxing, and flattering until at last, he told her," which alludes to the lack of sincerity in her words. The fact that she later takes a lover herself, someone she does not even care for but knows she can take advantage of, adds to the insincerity and cunning. To get Bisclavret to reveal where he keeps his clothing, his wife twists his own words and weaknesses against him. Knowing that Bisclavret believes he will be lost without her love, she tells him that mistrusting his “own dear wife” and not revealing the location of his clothes is a sign that he must not really love her (300). Once the wife enlists the help of the knight, Marie says Bisclavret is "trapped for life, ruined, betrayed, by his own wife." (301). It is his wife's actions, not Bisclavret, that destroys lives and sets the plot in motion.