Man-woman relationships in literature

In medieval France, much of the written literature was dominated by the system
of courtly love, in which the married noble woman held the position of authority over her
lover or knight. Yet this courtly system was entirely literary and did not change women's
subjugated position in feudal society, and even propagated misogynistic ideals. In John
Beverly's theory of Subalternity, the struggle for power within different systems is shown
as having two main groups, the elite and the subaltern; the former having control over the
representation of the latter, and therefore control over how the subaltern shapes its selfimage.
In medieval, courtly love France, those who manufacture the literary
representations of women are male, and those texts that aided in the re-affirming of
feudal society; though some women, like Christine de Pizan, resisted those
representations. Conversely, in medieval Spain, courtly love does not take hold as a
literary phenomenon due to the different cultural and social environment of Spanish
noble women.

If queer is an applicable label for that which aims to subvert or counteract normativity, then Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wife of Bath's tale, and her Prologue are each, in their own ways, queer texts. I examine the ways in which the feminine presences of Morgan le Fay and the Loathly Lady influence and challenge the heteronormative, homosocial space of Arthur and his knights. The two knights in each respective tale journey away from their heteronormative spaces, in which a complex system of homosociality and chivalric patriarchy dominate, to a queer space where each must go against his societal norms and rely on feminine agency and talismans in order for their quests to succeed - and to ensure their survival. It is this very convergence of heteronormative and queer spaces that enables Morgan's defiance of heteronormativity and dominance over those who enter her feminine, non-normative domain.