I am firmly of the belief that great women have always existed and always will, and one of the clearest markers of the existence of strong women in the Middle Ages, in my opinion, is Geoffrey Chaucer’s Criseyde (one of the protagonists in his epic poem “Troilus and Criseyde”, most assuredly now in the public domain), the Trojan widow who broke a prince’s heart and caused the fall of her city.
This runs against the grain of popular opinion, which most often sees Criseyde as an entirely unsympathetic character, even though she has been hailed as one of the most complex and accurate portrayals of female subjectivity in the medieval literary canon.
There are two main schools of thought about Criseyde, either that she is conniving and heartless, casting aside a good man and betraying her countrymen, or that she is weak and naive and easily swayed by a strong man. I disagree. I am about to show you how radical Criseyde is, and by the end, I promise you will love her as much as I do.
The main reason Criseyde is such an unpopular figure is that after a rapturous love affair between herself and Troilus, she leaves for the Greek camp and takes up Diomede, a Greek soldier, as her new lover, leaving Troilus heartbroken.
My main concern with this viewpoint is that the love affair is not as mutual and joyful as it at first seems. Criseyde never actively chooses Troilus. He chooses her and she seems less than pleased about it for the majority of the first half of the poem. In fact, the first time they ever go to bed together is the result of a trick played by her uncle Pandarus, who lets Troilus (presumably nursing an unquenchable fire of the loins) into her bedroom while she sleeps, and talks her into accepting him.
Aside from the unsavoury motivations of Pandarus here, which deserve a book all to themselves, alarm bells begin to ring when we see that Criseyde is at this moment described as a “nightingale.” In classical and renaissance texts, the “nightingale” allegory is almost without exception used as shorthand for an invasion of chastity, a defilement, not to put too fine a point on it, a rape. I find it hard to sympathise with a love plot between the two protagonists, when it begins this way.
Bearing this in mind, can we really be surprised that when Troilus bows to popular pressure to give Criseyde over to the Greeks as part of a hostage trade, when she leaves the city under a cloud, she chooses not to risk her life to escape and return to him? Can we blame her for the fact that Troilus’s love-sickness manifests itself as melancholia and self-absorption rather than stirring him to do battle and win her back? It seems rather unfair to place the blame at Criseyde’s door.
While Criseyde is certainly manipulated throughout the first half of the poem, I don’t believe she can be characterized as weak. There are key moments when she is fearless in spite of everything.
The moment Troilus first sees Criseyde she is at the temple, amongst the crowds: an intimidating place to be, given that her father has already turned traitor and defected to the Greeks. To clarify, Calchas, her father, has already jumped ship, because the stars have told him that Troy will fall. Criseyde stays. She remains in a city surrounded by people who consider her family to be traitorous, and she goes to the most public place in the city – the temple – carrying on her normal routines regardless.
Now, enter Troilus. He sees straight through the crowd to Criseyde and stares at this beautiful woman. She feels his eyes on her and… she stares right back, as if to say “What! May I nat stonden here?” She faces down the king’s son. It’s a daring show of spirit.
Another often forgotten point is that Criseyde is a widow, not a blushing maiden. She is a woman of standing and, importantly, property. That actually makes her eventual decision not to return to Troy a very difficult one. She will go from a wealthy, respected woman, to an camp follower, trailing the soldiers through war zones without a place to call her own.
A number of particularly nasty successors of Chaucer wrote epilogue poems about Criseyde, most notably the deeply misogynist Robert Henryson, whose “Testment of Cresseid” sees her as an army doxy, ridden with pox both moral and physical and passed around the camp.
This fate seems unlikely for Criseyde. Her father is one of the first to pledge allegiance to the Greeks, and clearly has influence with them as it is he who suggests the hostage trade. That the Greek army agree to hand over their prize captive, Antenor, for a mere townswoman, of no strategic value, is testament to Calchas’s importance in the camp.
Unless Calchas is as morally bankrupt as uncle Pandarus, it seems impossible that he would arrange this deal just to watch his beloved daughter become prey to an invading army’s appetites.
We are left to wonder why Criseyde stays in the Greek camp. I suggest this possibility: within Troy Criseyde is constantly watched, observed, under pressure to behave in a certain way to preserve her privileged position in society. It is her societal obligations, after all, that trap her into accepting Troilus, thanks to her uncle’s machinations. In the Greek camp she is free of these ties and strictures, under the protection of both her father, and later Diomede, a top soldier, and she can finally conduct herself however she wishes without the threat of social isolation.
Once she leaves Troy we hear very little of her thoughts or feelings eventually falling silent altogether. At this point we only hear of her actions indirectly, through Pandarus or another third party. As Criseyde slips from view we realise that as readers we have been poking into her life and innermost thoughts just as much as the Trojans. By staying in the Greek camp Criseyde finally engineers her escape, and even we don’t get to hear about it.
There you go: a fearless, resourceful lady who plays the system and wins. What’s not to love?
Tags: books, chaucer, medieval europe, the middle ages
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My main concern with this viewpoint is that the love affair is not as mutual and joyful as it at first seems. Criseyde never actively chooses Troilus. He chooses her and she seems less than pleased about it for the majority of the first half of the poem. In fact, the first time they ever go to bed together is the result of a trick played by her uncle Pandarus, who lets Troilus (presumably nursing an unquenchable fire of the loins) into her bedroom while she sleeps, and talks her into accepting him.
Completely agreed! Criseyde is just not particularly interested in Troilus. As you say, she’s a widow; she’s been married and isn’t just a naive young thing scared of a relationship; she knows what she’s doing, and she doesn’t want to be with him. And then he guilts her into it (“oh no, I am wasting away without your love, how can you do this?”), and tricks her into sex, and essentially just behaves like a total dick. I loathe Troilus. And Henryson’s Testament of Cressid is very unpleasant.
Hurrah! I was always stared at in bewilderment when I said these things. But I too loathe Troilus and very quickly get bored of his whinging.
In classical and renaissance texts, the “nightingale” allegory is almost without exception used as shorthand for an invasion of chastity, a defilement, not to put too fine a point on it, a rape
Not to cheapen this excellent piece with pop culture, but I think this maybe explains all of the “give us a song, little bird” stuff in Game of Thrones between Sansa and the Hound during the Battle of the Blackwater.
innnnnnnnnteresting
It was pop culture then 🙂
I agree. I also think that scene is very interesting, and I love how the un-kiss resonates with both Sansa and Sandor.
Huh! I had never noticed that! Good spot 🙂
When Chaucer describes Criseyde as a “nightingale,” he complicates tradition by merging myths and creating narrative layers. As you point out, his works are neither as simple nor straightforward as we would like medieval literature to be. Chaucer is not simply translating an ancient episode from within the broader epic tradition but actively applying his own interpretation. It reminds me of Shakespeare’s Hero and Leander, where the hero and heroine are not the simple characters we know from myth.
I share this love of Criseyde and the desire to defend her, but. BUT.
I can’t help but feel parts of the argument are somewhat tenuous here. To describe Criseyde as ‘fearless’, for one, is simply inaccurate: certainly she displays courage at certain points, but a large part of her character is her cautiousness, her anxious hesitance to act: while certainly Troilus is more obsessed with her than she is with him, there’s definite, intense emotion from her side as well: in the consummation scene, when Troilus playfully tells her to ‘yield’, she replies, ‘Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere,/ Ben yolde, y-wis, I were now not here!’ – essentially, I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t fallen for you already. Her fear, in my view, is what keeps her from coming back to this man she loves and who is clearly (if perhaps unhealthily) in love with her: she’s an ordinary woman, not the perfect beloved Troilus foolishly sees her as, and as such it’s easy for her to go to Diomede for his protection (being Calchas’ daughter isn’t necessarily to her advantage even in the Greeks’ camp – a traitor is a traitor, whether he’s working for you or not), easy to give in to his calculated seduction.
Criseyde’s trajectory is not heroic or liberating: it’s tragic, more tragic than Troilus’ in my view, albeit in a subtler, quieter way. I also disagree with the above characterisation of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid: the plot summary sounds horrifically misogynist, but (as in most literature) the treatment is everything, demonstrating an austere lkind of compassion and a critique of Criseyde’s writing-out by Chaucer.
I’m sorry to take issue because I am SO PLEASED to see an article about Criseyde!! This poem matters so much to me and it was great to read the engagement with it here 🙂
Good points, and I will happily admit that ‘fearless’ may have been a little strong. My point was that she does show considably more agency than many critics suggest in branding her hesitant and anxious – I pulled on the moment in the temple as proof that she does have a backbone, but there are plenty of other moments of fire – certainly she seems to have Pandarus’s measure.
I think if you keep the trope of a walled city in mind as you read, Criseyde’s exit from Troy *can* be seen as a liberation – she has been a prisoner caught in trap after trap and forced to make the performance of her life in public view.
I don’t want to hijack the comment thread to write a second article (!) but if you’re interested I extend my argument here: http://www.harvardsententiae.org/=p59
Thank you so much for this.
To sully things with yet another popular culture reference:
In “Mirador,” by Sarah Monette, one of the female characters is revealed as a spy and called Cressida (another spelling of Criseyde, surely??) and what you’ve written here really sounds like the name was meant as an allusion to Criseyde’s story and a bit of insight into Cressida’s past and choices.
THIS is why Cressida Bonas and Prince Harry broke up. SHE’S A SPY!
Well I mean obviously.
If Cressida is a widow and a woman of standing, it follows that she has property. Which suggests a motive for Pandarus – to get the control of that property into hands more malleable.
This makes me think of the Odyssey, and the enormous pressure there must have been on Penelope to take a new husband, and how strong and clever she was to avoid this, and keep things going in hopes of Odysseus’ return. Twenty years is a long time to keep the whole, “Oh not right now, I’m busy weaving” thing going.
I also think it’s fascinating to see how the Trojan legend develops in the Middle Ages. Because Criseyda is ultimately the Iliad’s Chryseis — filtered through Dictys and Dares and such. That over time she goes from a completely passive figure, literally only there as an object of contention, to a character with a complicated backstory and agency is really cool!
I don't think it matters whether or not Vergil treated anyone well (don't forget that we see Aeneas on his knees crying in book one–not exactly the macho guy one would expect from ancient epic); that's not the point of the narrative and is reductive vis-a-vis ancient sexuality and gender. So what if he doesn't treat them well? It is a better exercise to analyze the motives and goals of Vergilian women within the context of ancient mythography, poetry, and Augustan literature. We should not apply our own ideas of how a male author should or should not treat a female character to a work that was written over 2,000 years ago.
Oh darn, and here I was, about to write my dissertation De mulierum repraesentatione Maroniana quantoque vitiosior sit aliis scriptoribus et in primis Homero.
So why is it nobody has written an awesome historical fiction (or fantasy) novel from Cressida’s POV? Or is there one out there & I just can’t find it?
So why is it nobody has written an awesome historical fiction (or fantasy) novel from Cressida's POV? Or is there one out there & I just can't find it?
BUUUURN (or should I say… UREBAS)
I am firmly of the belief that great women have always existed and always will
Thank you! My boyfriend and I got in an argument about Cosmos the other day because I am increasingly frustrated that they have failed to feature any women scientists! I haven’t seen the 4/27 episode yet, so correct me if by the 7th episode they finally get around to it. His point was that, well, there just weren’t enough women making significant discoveries to feature any. NOPE. I then had to dig up as many women as I could who made similar discoveries or impacted science in the same fields that they have covered, and although difficult, I could find at least one per episode theme.
In a related note, does anyone know of a good website or book about the history of women scientists?
So, this interpretation is exactly how my Courtly Traditions in Literature professor taught Troilus and Creseyde.