Literary Monster

Among the most looming questions surrounding Bisclavret are: what are the conditions of humanity? And who is it afforded to? Bisclavret, for instance, seems to check all the boxes of what makes a monster: shrouded in mystery, he collapses the boundaries between the human and the animal other, and in that animal form, through displays of chivalry and humility, is an uncanny mirror to the cultural norms of Medieval English society. These are some of the prerequisites for the disgust and fear that monsters are designed to elicit (Cohen). Additionally, the poem's speaker frames Bisclavret with a description of how fearsome and bloodthirsty werewolves are (ll.8-13). Despite all of this, Bisclavret emerges in the poem as a celebrated, yet victimized hero. This is clear in the courtier’s defence of Bisclavret. He begins his speech with the acknowledgement that he is discussing an “animal,” and vouches for Bisclavret’s quality of character. And, even though the wolf is an animal, the courtier asserts that Bisclavret’s wife must have done something to provoke such a response in the creature (ll. 240-259). While he is not wrong, I want to emphasize that, without knowing that he is really human, the courtier and the king hold a wolf in higher esteem than the woman who’s nose he has just bitten off. On nothing more than the courtier’s suggestion that this woman provoked his pet wolf, the king is willing to torture the woman in order to elicit a confession of wrongdoing. Even as a wolf, Bisclavret is treated as more human than his actually-human wife.

Readers never learn Bisclavret’s wife’s name. This is a symptom, from the start, of her dehumanization. Like Grendel’s Mother in Beowulf, she is defined, instead, in relation to her male counterpart. The character of both women - their needs, motivations, objectives - are obscured in the shadow of the tale’s male hero. All we know about Bisclavret’s wife, beyond her “worthy soul,” is that she is “elegant and beautiful” (ll.20-21). And, again like Grendel’s mother, she bares the curse of her lineage. It is this detail that cements Bisclavret’s wife’s status as monster. Noseless, a defining feature of “beauty” is stripped away from her. Her disfigurement is racialized, and her female descendants fall in line with a new "race” of creature: noseless, and baring the symbol of their matriarch’s deceit and adultery (l.311). Like true monsters, they are laden with their society’s cultural fears.