Analysis

            As seen in the artifacts of this exhibit, looks can be deceiving. As such, the criteria for monstrosity should not be physical appearance, but the dehumanization of others. This can be also seen in Bisclavret, as the wife who dehumanizes her husband and, as a result, is banished and disfigured, becoming more monstrous. As mentioned in the artifacts section, she is made to resemble the noseless creature in the Nuremberg Chronicle. Further, as discussed in the close reading, her banishment gives her a metaphorical “wolf head” [2, p.328], which mirrors the cynocephalus on the same folio of the Nuremberg Chronicle.

            In the close reading section of the exhibit, this pattern of the dehumanizer being dehumanized is also shown to appear in the third old man’s tale in The Thousand and One Nights. In both stories, the wives dehumanize their husbands first by cheating on them, then in a literal sense by trapping them in a nonhuman form. These women are then in turn dehumanized by their husbands. In Bisclavret this is done by biting off the wife’s nose, while in The Thousand and One Nights, the wife is turned into a mule. As such, the husbands become truly monstrous, just like their wives, through their appetite for vengeance.

            However, this vengeful desire is not constrained to the characters in the book. In fact, it has been argued that Marie implies that the bisclavret’s wife deserved her punishment [6, p.269]. Under this reading, the wise men (of whom, one is directly referred to as “the wise man”), act as foils to the malicious wife. “This text instructs its audience that those who respect their marriage contract will be rewarded, while those who are derelict will be punished” [6, p.269]. However, this black-and-white approach to justice often leads to abuse, as seen in this text. If the reader accepts the narrative given in the text, they dehumanize the wife, no longer viewing her as a flawed person worthy of compassion, but as a villain who must be destroyed. This is the final irony of the text. If the reader dehumanizes the wife, the reader in turn becomes monstrous. This can serve as a warning to not view reality in such black-and-white terms. Everyone is flawed and can be easily villainized if not viewed with enough compassion and understanding.