Introduction

There are two monsters in Bisclavret: the poem's titular werewolf and - less explicitly - his disloyal wife. As Bisclavret’s humanity allows him to transgresses the human-bestial divide, the consequences of his wife’s actions transform her into something monstrous. In other words, Bisclavret’s wife demonstrates the beginning of the monster-making process, hinting, in turn, a lot about the gendered conditions of monstrosity and humanity across Medieval English society. The passage of Bisclavret between lines 228-258 illustrates the monster-making (and unmaking) process, especially while read against lines 305-314. The earlier passage details Bisclavret, in his werewolf form, attacking his deceitful wife in a vicious fit of rage, which results in her nose being torn off. Instead of facing punishment, a wise courtier steps in to defend Bisclavret, insisting instead that his wife be tortured into revealing what she knows about the wolf. The latter passage takes us to the end of Bisclavret, where the poet explains that Bisclavret’s wife and her lover are banished, and all of their female descendants are consequentially born without a nose.

The emphasis on Bisclavret’s wife’s lack of nose confounded me. I wondered, upon each reading, what the metaphorical significance of this could possibly be. It turns out that its significance is much more literal, as is revealed by my selected medieval artifact: the Oakridge Cranium. The skull is that of a medieval teenage girl, and shows evidence of possible scalping as well as the removal of her upper lip and nose. Although the skull notably predates the lais of Marie de France, it nevertheless holds up a mirror to Bisclavret’s noseless wife, and reflects back the conditions of the centuries of violence against women that lie between the two.