Britomart: Overcoming the Gender Binary at the House of Busirane
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Faculty Mentor
Matthew Fike, Ph.D.
Abstract
The gender of Britomart, Edmund Spenser’s female knight of chastity in The Faerie Queene: Book III, has received widely varying interpretations. She has been considered highly masculine (Judith Anderson), fairly feminine (Tracey Sedinger), anti-patriarchal (Mary Villeponteaux), androgynous (Susan Frye), and properly balanced (Iris Tillman Hill). Most of these views participate in one part of the masculine-feminine gender binary or the other. The purpose of this paper, then, is to use the episode at the House of Busirane in cantos 11-12 to reply to these critics by showing that Britomart’s gender actually disproves the gender binary completely. The fluidity of Britomart’s gender relates to her Freudian backstory, phallic armor, the figurative castration of Busirane, and two different hermaphroditic conclusions (Book III’s alternative endings). Gender theory, psychoanalysis, and feminist criticism buttress the argument. Ultimately, because Britomart embodies both gender presentations (male and female roles) as well as neither gender presentation, her gender deconstructs the binary that has been foremost in the minds of previous critics.
Start Date
24-4-2015 2:35 PM
Britomart: Overcoming the Gender Binary at the House of Busirane
DiGiorgio Campus Center, Room 114
The gender of Britomart, Edmund Spenser’s female knight of chastity in The Faerie Queene: Book III, has received widely varying interpretations. She has been considered highly masculine (Judith Anderson), fairly feminine (Tracey Sedinger), anti-patriarchal (Mary Villeponteaux), androgynous (Susan Frye), and properly balanced (Iris Tillman Hill). Most of these views participate in one part of the masculine-feminine gender binary or the other. The purpose of this paper, then, is to use the episode at the House of Busirane in cantos 11-12 to reply to these critics by showing that Britomart’s gender actually disproves the gender binary completely. The fluidity of Britomart’s gender relates to her Freudian backstory, phallic armor, the figurative castration of Busirane, and two different hermaphroditic conclusions (Book III’s alternative endings). Gender theory, psychoanalysis, and feminist criticism buttress the argument. Ultimately, because Britomart embodies both gender presentations (male and female roles) as well as neither gender presentation, her gender deconstructs the binary that has been foremost in the minds of previous critics.
