138 - The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France

The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France

By Penny Schine Gold

Chicago, the University of Chicago Press, 1985. 182 Pp. $20.00.

The contents of this book are exceptionally diverse. Gold deals with religious history (nuns and their relations with male monastic orders), economic history (women's role in property transfers), art (sculpture of the Virgin), and literature (women in chansons de geste and romances). Rather than presenting an overview, she focuses on case studies. After a brief sketch of women's religious orders, for example, she centers mainly on relations between women and men at Fontevrault. She- cites other material for comparison and at one point explicitly invites the reader to test her conclusions against further examples. Her approach thus combines diversity with specificity. She is not afraid to generalize, but she does so within clearly defined bounds.

The central argument of the book, and the theme which holds together the diverse material covered, is the "ambivalence" of medieval culture toward women. Gold argues persuasively that one cannot categorize the images of women or the realities of women's life as "good" or "bad," as improving or deteriorating, in ways that would allow comparison with the status of women in other cultures. Things were not that simple, as she demonstrates. Perceptions of women were, instead, "ambivalent." This key notion of ambivalence is one that she develops convincingly in certain contexts. She discloses the ambivalence, for example, in male attitudes toward nuns. On the one hand, they were cherished as spiritual companions, while, on the other, they were feared as distractions and temptations. Likewise, there is clear ambivalence when romantic heroines function both as objects for quest and as hindrances to personal attainment.

In other contexts, however, Gold seems to stretch the concept of ambivalence to cover simply any form of complex and nuanced image or behavior. If the Virgin is seen as exalted above other mortals yet submissive to God, we are to understand this representation as ambivalent. Romanesque portrayals stressed the majesty and uniqueness of Mary, while Gothic images emphasized human virtues of humility and virginity which mortal women might imitate. She sees ambivalence also within single images-especially the Coronation of the Virgin, which displays the Virgin as submitting to Christ in the very act of coronation (unlike the earlier Triumph of the Virgin, in which Mary and Christ appeared as "equals"). Granted, there is a kind of contrariety here on the level of abstraction, in the sense that both "exaltation" and "submission" are affirmed. But is there genuine tension in the theological claims or in the cultural images? Medieval writers were themselves

139 - The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France

fond of invoking the paradox that it was precisely because of her humility that Mary was exalted. Yet paradox differs from ambivalence, in that it points to a fundamental harmony of concepts, not dissonance.

Likewise, chansons de geste portray women as counseling and nourishing male warriors while remaining themselves segregated from the center of action (the battlefield). Yet Gold does not really show that the authors were struggling with contrary ideas of women or that their attitudes were essentially ambivalent. There may at times have been real though incidental ambivalence about women's essentially supportive role, but the fact that their main role was supportive (and thus related to battle but not in battle) does not in itself establish the ambivalence.

I stress the point because the concept of ambivalence is central for Gold and because it seems only partly appropriate to her analysis. To suggest contradictions and unclarity where there was merely nuanced complexity is to distort the mentality revealed in the sources. No doubt there were medieval men who, like many of their modern descendants, were indeed ambivalent about women in general or particular women. But to suggest systematic ambivalence, deeply rooted in the medieval male psyche and inherent in the customs and artistic forms of the era, is surely to overstate the case. Images which brought diversity into harmony cannot be taken as evidence of psychological tension in the minds of those who produced them.

The book remains, however, an important contribution both to medieval studies and to women's studies generally. It is particularly important because it so carefully avoids misleading value judgments. Because the book is valuable for its methodological contribution, this dimension of the work deserves particular scrutiny in the interest of even greater precision.

RICHARD KIECKHEFER

Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois