Page 167 - Costellazioni 5

DANIEL T. LOCHMAN, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

Redcrosse, whom she has just rescued, must spend the night at Castle
Joyeous. Within, the armored Britomart becomes the object of sexual
desire of the castle’s lady, Malecasta, reputed as her name implies for
a lack of chastity. When retiring in her chamber, Britomart “despoil[s]”
herself of the protective armor that makes her appear a male knight,
and she awakens during the night to find Malecasta, unaware of Brit-
omart’s sex, lying “close couched by her side” (3. 1. 62. 1). Leaping to
grasp her weapon, Britomart surprises first Malecasta, who screams in
“suddein feare and ghastly drerihedd” (3. 1. 62. 5), and then the whole
household, including Redcrosse, who rush to the scene only to be con-
fused, terrified, and dismayed by the shrieks and posture of the terri-
fied Malecasta “on the sencelesse grownd” and by their new awareness
that the knight is a “warlike Mayd,” now appearing in her mixed role
as warrior and woman, “Al in her snow-white smocke, with locks vn-
bownd, / Threatning the point of her auenging blaed” (3. 1. 63. 5-9). In
this episode, the complex figuration of divergent points of view — from
differing characters as well as from the reader — is marked by a similar
range of affective associations centered on schematic cues, especially
Britomart’s gendered “locks vnbownd” that serve as a salient marker
34
of the surprising revelation. Intensifying surprise, even when chan-
neled through focalized characters, emphasizes the twinned strength
and vulnerability of Britomart, an intuition strengthened in the next
cantos, when the narrator digresses to the backstory of her vision of
Arthegall and travel with Glauce to Merlin, the magician who is first
able to see through her disguise of “straunge / And base tyre” (3 .3. 7.
1-2) and proffer her a past, present, and future — thereby linking her
anticipated destinies as warrior and mother to an identity being created
through remembered experiences.
Britomart’s disarming and unbinding of her hair initiates a net-
worked sequence of intratextual memories. Later in Book 3, the inhab-

34 Surprise is conveyed both to readers and characters when the arrow of Male-
casta’s follower, Gardante, wounds Britomart’s side, leaving in her a mark of
unanticipated fragility (3. 3. 58-60). On early modern significance of hair, see
Edith Snook, “Beautiful Hair, Health, and Privilege in Early Modern Eng-
land,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 15, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 22-51.

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