#engl210

My shrink once told me that jealousy stems from a desire to protect what you perceive to be yours. I remember being caught off guard when I heard that, having previously thought of jealousy as, as I am sure most of us do prior to further reflection, the feeling that arises from watching other people enjoy what you wished you have. What the definition I was offered changes about this assumption is that it instills it with a very irrational, but very personal, sense of possessiveness, and it got me thinking about how jealousy in action across the stories we have read this term has manifested as a particularly interesting brand of evil. Jealousy as an emotion often spilled out, consciously or unconsciously, as violence and destruction against what the characters we read about have seen—rightly or wrongly—as being rightfully their own. This essay will explore at length how these various characters allowed for their possessiveness and jealousy to run afoul of reason, resulting in the chaos that drove their stories forward.

Going all the way back to somewhere between the tenth and eleventh centuries from what researchers can gather, one of the very earliest manifestations of jealousy as the leading cause of evil can be found in the epic poem Beowulf. Beowulf is exclusively a story of live action, with the events of the story unfolding in descriptions of the physical and material, and with no attention paid to the inner workings of our characters’ minds, their psyches, and their motivations. The result of this is that the reader, based on the few clues they are offered, are left to themselves to determine what maxims our characters are acting upon.

There are three villains present in Beowulf: Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the wealth-hoarding dragon (who distinctively reminds me of Jeff Bezos for some reason). The root of the dragon’s evil, and Grendel’s mother’s evil, are apparent on the surface: the dragon was greedy and hoards wealth that the humans want for themselves, and will protect his wealth with violence, and Grendel’s mother wants to avenge her son who was murdered by the humans, just as any mother would. Grendel himself is a little more subtle, but the reader is left with one major clue as to exactly what causes him to attack the humans in the first place:

…people lived in joy,

blessedly, until one began

to work his foul crimes—a field from hell.

This grim spirit was called Grendel,

lightly stalker of the marshes, who held

the moors and fens; this miserable man

lived for a time in the land of giants,

after the Creator had condemned him

among Cain’s race—when he killed Abel

the eternal Lord avenged that death.

No joy in that feud—the Maker forced him

far from mankind for his foul crime.

From thence arose all misbegotten things,

trolls and elves and the living dead,

and also the giants who strove against God

for a long while—He gave them their reward for that.

Grendel is personified, either metaphorically or physically, as a descendant of Cain’s; as a byproduct of the biblical character’s evil. Grendel arose from how the Lord punished Cain for his sin, and Cain’s sin, quite blatantly, was that of jealousy: He saw his brother, Abel, as receiving the love from God that Cain himself should have been receiving. Cain felt a sense of entitlement to God’s love, and when he did not receive it, was driven with jealousy to murder his brother so that more of God’s love that ought to have been his would have come his way; he was to have less competition. This passage quite literally frames Grendel as a creature born from the very first human sin after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden: an act of pure jealousy.

Grendel, therefore, seems to be inherently a jealous creature, but the reader also has good reason to see that he might have good reason to have acted the way he did within the confines of this story. Or, if not good reason, then at least, some reason: the Danes’ Heorot Hall was erected on the land Grendel previously inhabited, while he, “a bold demon who waited in darkness/wretchedly suffered all the while,/for every day he heard the joyful din/loud in the hall, with the harp’s sound,/the clear song of the scop.” While the narrator of the poem is making Grendel out to be a monster that acted solely out of hatred from humans, there is clearly something else going on here as well. Grendel watched from the shadows as the Danes built a noisy hall on the land he had called his own, and their celebrations and the beauty of human civilization surely must have been hard for him to witness in a similar way to how they affected Frankenstein’s creature, as they reinforced his sense of his own ugliness, loneliness and misery, now paired with the fact that his land was not his own anymore. While this may not exactly justify Grendel’s actions as correct, the reader, upon reflecting upon these details, may develop a deeper sense of sympathy for Grendel, as his evil was not unprovoked, but rather, a result of the recognition that something that was his was not anymore, and he was surrounded by constant reinforcement of the beauty of human civilization that was not his either.

Jumping forward a handful of centuries to The Canterbury Tales, we can find an interesting example of how a sense that something ought to have been yours, even with no evil intention present, can result in a whirlwind of chaos, violence, and eventually death. In The Knight’s Tale, Palamon and Arcite, while in prison, both fall in love with the only woman present, the unfortunate Emelye who certainly had not planned on getting dragged into this mess. Similar to the conception of jealousy at hand is the notion they are both regarding Emelye as something that ought to be theirs, when they both become smitten with her beauty and get it into their heads that they must escape prison and marry her:

…Venus, if it be thy wil,

Yow in this gardyn thus to transfigure

Bifore me, sorweful wrecche creature,

Out of this prisoun helpe that we may scapen!

And if so be my destynee be shapen

By eterne word to dyen in prisoun,

Of oure lynage have som compassioun

That is so lowe ybroght by tirannye!

The very sight of her, and the feeling of possessiveness that it drives into both men’s hearts, drives forward the rest of the action in the story, and at first, the longing for something they acknowledge as what ought to be theirs spills out into jealousy, and then violence, as Palamon and Arcite cease to see each other as friends and become obstacles to one another instead. Neither man had any claim to Emelye—she was, quite literally, the only woman around. But the singularity of their desires for companionship from the world outside of their prison, in addition to her beauty, gave them a sense like she was the only woman they could ever love. This infatuation was exclusively a byproduct of abnormal circumstances, and in no shape or form could they have made any claim that she was ‘theirs.’

The two are given the chance to battle one another, army and all, for her hand in marriage, ultimately resulting in Arcite’s death. Palamon gets what he wants at the end, at a cost he had not bargained for, providing us with a prime example of the destructive and sometimes deadly results of jealousy and possessiveness, especially insofar as these emotions can envelop us completely if not checked and can cause us to lose sight of everything else that is important in life outside of the singular focus of an intense desire.

John Milton’s conception of Satan is almost wholly motivated by jealousy, and of all the characters within the British cannon—if not all the characters out there—he perhaps signifies the most severe case of jealousy’s destructive powers taken to the their logical conclusion. Lucifer may have been the most beautiful and most loved of all the angels, but that still was not enough for him: God still existed, and God was still more perfect than he was. Lucifer waged a war against God, wanting to take his place that he saw as rightfully belonging to him. Obviously, as God is literally a being of infinite capacities, the war did not go the way Lucifer had wanted it to, and he was expelled from Heaven into the fiery pits of Hell:

…with ambitious aim

Against the throne and monarchy of God,

Raised impious war in Heavn’n and battle proud,

With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power

Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,

With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire…

he, with his horrid crew,

Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,

Confounded, though immoral.

There is some profound irony in Milton’s conception of Hell not being something that Lucifer created, but rather, as a “place Eternal Justice has prepared/For those rebellious; here their prison ordained/In utter darkness, and their portion set/As far removed from God and light of Heav’n/As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.” He is driving home the point that only God has genuine creative power—Lucifer could not even create his own Hell, it was handed to him as a prison. The implications of Lucifer’s lack of creative power is severe: because he cannot create anything on his own, he can only subvert and corrupt what God has already created. And so, he decided to take on God’s most perfect creation yet—Adam and Eve, the first man and woman—and corrupt them; since he cannot create any beauty of his own, he must cause ugliness where there is beauty.

The sense of jealousy returns both when, in Book III, Lucifer sees the Garden for the first time, and again, in book IV, when he sees Adam and Eve. Confronted with God’s beautiful creations, Lucifer’s sense of inferiority is reinforced, and fuels his desire to corrupt these wholly good works of God’s. He assumes the likenesses of a cherub and a snake, to deceive the Garden’s inhabitants, and is successful, in part, in his mission, when he persuades Eve to partake in eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. She in turn gives Adam the fruit to consume as well, and they are subsequently rejected from the Garden by God for their disobedience. But God is always one step ahead of the Devil, and he shows Eve mercy for her sins, rewarding her by making her the mother of all humanity. She is given a powerful legacy of creation on Earth, with her children destined to vanquish Satan, and providing her with such creative powers was another pointed blow to Lucifer in itself.

In the end, Lucifer is left with absolutely nothing. His demons are all turned into snakes by God, his plan to corrupt the humans largely backfired because they were forgiven, and he has been unable to build any sort of a legacy, yet alone anything as powerful as the one he had imagined for himself at the beginning; that would be so great as to overturn God’s rule. We are left with a picture of what jealousy will do to you if you act upon it uncontrolledly—you will have nothing, while all those you envied will move forward in peace.

One last text to conclude this exploration of jealousy is Sheridan Le Fans’s novella Carmilla. Carmilla, a vampire who was bitten and who became monstrous when she was a young woman, of the age where she would soon be married and start a family of her own, goes about pursuing victims that were all in the same place in their lives and who occupy the same place in society as she did when she lost her humanity. She has now been somewhat immortalized in the same physical form she had been when she became a vampire, and so, she still comes across as wholly desirable young woman: “‘She was very witty and lively when she pleased… the features were so engaging, as well as lovely, that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully.’” But she will never be a human again, capable of love, relationships and starting a family, and so, she preys upon women who also meet such a description; who are lovely and would be considered ideal candidates for marriage. Her evil manifests itself as her taking away from them what was taken away from her. Especially considering the strict societal gender roles of the time, wherein a woman’s worth was determined by her relation to a family and mothering children, the inability to become the ideal woman she must have been raised her whole life to be has resulted in her exclusively choosing victims that would have occupied the role she thought was rightfully hers. Driven mad by jealousy, she retains what she thinks ought to be hers by not allowing others to have it either.

We can see from this that what makes Carmilla and Lucifer the most detestable of these villainous characters is that the subjects of their jealousy had done nothing to deserve any form of retribution simply for being in positions these two envied. Carmilla’s victims were a displacement of her own dissatisfaction with her lot in life, and the damage done by Satan demonstrated his sense of inferiority knowing there was a being out there that was more perfect than him. The young women Carmilla preyed upon, and God, the angels, and the humans, all did nothing to spite those who harmed them, and we see from this that jealousy can result in the most tremendous evil when deliberately and consciously aimed at individuals who had nothing to do with your own suffering, instead of dealing with your own suffering directly. With Palamon and Arcite, we also see a case in which Emelye, who was dragged into their strife, was harmed by their jealousy; but we are inclined not to judge those two as harshly as Carmilla and Lucifer because they lacked evil intention—they just also lacked the sensibility to realize that neither of them had any claim to this woman, and that their senses of possessiveness were wholly irrational. And while Grendel still did wrong, by all means, we can see that his jealousy in part springs from a sense of actually being wronged, with something that belonged to him actually having been taken from him, and so, because there is to some extent a personal vendetta against the humans because they are responsible for his plight, we may be inclined to have more sympathies towards him as well.

Most, if not all, destructive acts, can be tied to a desire to have something you think you ought to have, on some level; and stories like these do an excellent job at reminding us what can happen, intentionally or not, if we fail to critically analyze our own emotions as they arise by surrendering reason to be the slave of the passions.

Works Cited

“Beowulf.” The British Library, December 9 2014. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/beowulf.

“Beowulf.” In The Broadview Anthology of British Literature One Volume Compact Edition, 62-103. Peterborough, Ontario; Broadview Press, 2018.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Knight’s Tale.” In The Broadview Anthology of British Literature One Volume Compact Edition, 227-257. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2018.

Le Fanu, Sheridan. “Carmilla.” In Green Tea and Other Weird Stories, 378-439. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Milton, John. "Paradise Lost”. In The Broadview Anthology of British Literature One Volume

Sonnet 36

Let me confess that we two must be twain,

Although our undivided loves are one;

So shall those blots that do with me remain,

Without thy help, by me be borne alone.

In our two loves there is but one respect,

Though in our lives a separable spite;

Which, though it alter not love’s sole effect.

Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight,

I may not evermore acknowledge thee,

Lest my bewailed guilt should do the shame,

Not thou with public kindness honour me,

Unless thou take that honour from thy name:

But do not so; I love thee in such sort

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report

From The Broadview Anthology of British Literature

Note: The in-text citations for the ‘Analysis’ section relate to the line numbers from this poem.

The thinly veiled homoerotic themes featured in Shakespeare’s body of sonnets appear to be of strong interest to modern readers, and for good reason: they serve as one of our earliest examples of an LGBTQIA+ writer who was not permitted to say outright how he was really feeling, and had to be careful to write poems which did not go against his authentic self while not offending the Protestant morality of his era. This theme displays itself more and less blatantly across pieces in sonnets that span a wide range of tones, with some being silly and lighthearted, others romantic, and a few, such as Sonnet 36, being downright heartbreaking.

The plot of the poem invokes an image of the narrator sadly explaining to his lover they must be extremely cautious as not to have their relationship discovered in order to avoid public backlash and the tarnishing of the lover’s reputation. While the two are one in spirit, this external pressure stemming from the homophobic reality of their times forces them apart; they are doomed to remain two distinct bodies sharing one love for each other, instead of the shared body, mind and love they would be publicly seen as sharing had they been married.

The rhyme scheme of the poem, like many of Shakespeare’s other sonnets, goes: A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G. The four separate sets of rhymes break the poem down into four small sections, starting with an introduction of the situation and of the two main themes of the poem; which can be briefly summed up as unity versus division, and honour. The introduction informs us of the basic facts of the situation: our characters are secretly in love and they must take careful measures to preserve their relationships’ secrecy. It is briefly mentioned (but not thoroughly explicated) that our narrator has some kind of a tarnished reputation he feels he must bear alone; he wishes to remain separate from his lover as well in this respect. In the second section of the poem the first theme of unity versus division is developed, while the third section further expounds upon honour and the importance of reputation. Finally, in the brief conclusion, the narrator reassures his lover he truly loves him despite the hardships they will face.

In the introduction and section on unity, the language used is strongly fixated on the united figure they wish to be and the reality of the divide caused by their inability to publicly express their love for one another. While heterosexual couples, when married, were considered within Christianity to be one in flesh and spirit, he observes their ‘undivided loves are one’ (2) but ‘we two must be twain’ (1).

The origins of this concept of a married couple as one flesh date right back to the first book of the Bible; it constitutes the very definition of Christian marriage: ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). Ironically, ‘cleve’ by our tongue is usually affiliated with a separation, but quite literally means ‘to glue together’ in this Biblical tradition. Terminological choices that dominate the first eight lines of the sonnet lament they cannot partake in being imagined as one physical form by their peers, focusing on the unity and duality that plagues their situation: ’by me be borne alone’ (4), ‘in our two loves there is one respect’ (5), and ‘in our loves a separate spite’ (7). This pressure does not take away from the love they share from one another, yet their predicament ‘steal[s] sweet hours from love’s delight’ (8), meaning the judgment forces them apart, pushes them into secrecy and robs them of time they ought to be spending together.

A stylistic device worth noting is the whole poem is written in perfect iambic pentameter, to the exception of a slight deviation present in the eighth line. The alliteration of the letter ’s’ in ‘steal sweet hours’ suggests you should slow down and emphasize all three words, highlighting the injustice these lovers are facing by having their time together cut short.

In the third section of the poem, the narrator returns to shame and honour. He tells his lover he ‘may not evermore acknowledge thee’ (9); pretending to not even recognize him as an acquaintance if he sees him in public; as he perceives his ‘bewailed guilt’ (10) to be so strong it will bring shame upon his lover even if they are seen as mere friends. He implores the lover to return the favour and pretend not to know him as well under the public eye, or the lover will have ‘honour [taken] from thy name’ (12). As the previous section focused on the narrator’s true, subjective feelings, this section ignored them completely and presents itself objectively. He knows he cannot allow for love to affect his lover’s safety. Clearly the matter is weighing on him tremendously, but he has been forced to set his own concerns aside, acting sadly rational about something as irrational as romance to protect his lover.

Passages Referred To

…and to my memory

His promise, that thy seed shall bruise our foe;

Which, then not minded in dismay, yet now

Assures me that the bitterness of death

Is past, and we shall live. Whence hail to thee,

Eve is rightly called, mother of all mankind,

Mother of all things living, since by thee

Man is to live; and all things live for Man.

To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour meek.

Ill-worthy such title should belong

To me transgressour; who, for thee ordained

A help, became thy snare; to me reproach

Rather belongs, distrust, and all dispraise:

But infinite in pardon was my Judge,

That I, who first brought death on all, am graced

The source of life; next favourable thou

Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsaf’st

Far other name deserving. But the field

To labour calls us, now with sweat imposed,

Though after sleepless night; for I see the morn,

All unconcerned with our unrest, begins

Her rosy progress smiling: let us forth;

I never from thy side henceforth to stray,

Where’er our day’s work lies, though now enjoined

Laborious, till day droop; while here we dwell,

What can be toilsome in these pleasant walks?

Here let us live, though in fallen state, content.

John Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’

Book 11 156-180

Days, weeks, months, years

Afterwards, when both were wives

With children of their own;

Their mother-hearts beset with fears,

Their lives bound up in tender lives;

Laura would call the little ones

And tell them of her early prime,

Those pleasant days long gone

Of not-returning time:

Would talk about the haunted glen,

The wicked quaint fruit-merchant men,

Their fruits like honey to the threat

But poison in the blood;

(Men sell not such in any town):

Would tell them how her sister stood

In deadly peril to do her good

And win the fiery antidote:

Then joining hands to little hands

Would bid them cling together,—

“For there is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands.”

Christina Rossetti, ‘Goblin Market’

543-567

An unsuspecting and disobedient woman being offered a fruit by a demonic figure, biting off more than she can chew. A wholly good figure who steps in on behalf of the fallen woman, acting solely out of love and charity, offering her a redemption that she did nothing of her own accord to deserve. The legacy of the mother’s sins that is passed on as a stern warning through the children. Such are among the many parallels between the plight of the biblical Eve, as presented in John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost, and the unfortunate Laura of Goblin Market. One may be able to understand Laura’s character and plight as a re-working of Eve’s fall from the Garden, with religious undertones present but concealed, and a gracious sister filling in the role of the divine spirit that provided Eve with the opportunity to triumph over the Devil. Starting from this position, this paper will examine both the similarities and discrepancies between these women’s misadventures in order to arrive at a comparison of Eve and Laura’s respective fates.

Eve’s tale requires little recapitulation: Perfectly content in the Garden of Eden with Adam, she has been ordered never to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But alas, that pesky Satan disguised himself as a snake, and persuaded Eve to partake in the consumption of the apple. Subsequently, she and Adam are banished from the Garden, and are only to return to God’s kingdom after their physical bodies perish on Earth. The original account of the Fall ends with their exile, and God’s most interesting prophecy for the devil, wherein “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel”. What sets Milton’s interpretation apart from the original account in Genesis, and what, at least to the author of this paper, truly renders it a powerful elaboration of the original story, is that Milton greatly expounds upon this small prophecy, by allowing for the angel Michael to show Adam and Eve much more completely what their fates and future will be—specifically by showing Eve exactly how she is to enact her revenge upon the Devil. And what a revenge! Eve is made the mother of all humanity; with her offspring to survive and thrive for millennia, creating beauty and joy on Earth while all the Devil can do is corrupt and invert what God has already created. At this point, the earlier supposition that Eve did nothing to deserve her own redemption may require more unpacking. While the Devil certainly helped to lead Eve astray, the act she partook in was an exercise of her own free will, and a violation of one of the only orders God had given to them. In fact, she contributed to the digging of her own grave by offering the fruit to Adam as well. After her sin, she performed no redeeming act of her own, and simply by God’s good graces was she permitted to live the life she did, as the mother of all humanity.

Goblin Market deviates from Paradise Lost in that there are many Goblins, as opposed to one snake; and many fruits, as opposed to just the apple. But the parallels are clear, as the Goblins act as a unified whole, trying to push humanity into a fallen state, and the fruits are all of the same nature as well. The apple, additionally, is the first of the Goblin’s fruits mentioned. Poor Laura, like Eve, shows an interest in the fruit, and is goaded by the demonic figures to consume it. Her desperation is curiously reinforced by the fact that, as she had no money on her, she begged the Goblins for an alternate way to pay for the fruit, and does so by offering them a piece of her own body: a lock of her hair. While there is no intervening divine force in the story, there is a sister of an extremely ascetic character who is able to step in and offer her sister salvation. Lizzie ventures into the realm of the Goblins, and as hard as they try to force her to consume the fruit, they are unable to, and the fruit of the Goblins loses its corrupting influence. The fruit now assumes a Eucharist-like nature; as Lizzie implores her sister to “hug me, kiss me, suck my juices/Squeezed from goblin fruits for you/Goblin pulp and goblin dew./Eat me, drink me, love me;/Laura, make much of me”, her sister is saved by consuming the ‘flesh’ of her sister. Laura, like Eve, while not wholly deserving her own downfall, also created her situation for herself as the result of her own free choice, by not being obedient to the important teaching of not eating the Goblin’s fruit, and performed no further action upon consuming it that made her more worthy of rescuing. She simply had a sister who loved her, as Eve had a Creator who loved her, and both loving figures kept those fallen ones alive.

One last point of interest prior to turning to a close comparison of their destinies might be the role of fertility between both texts: Eve is made the mother of all humanity in order to enact revenge upon the devil, while Laura, prior to her sister’s actions, was to be punished for her sin by not being permitted to have children. The nasty effects of the goblin’s fruits upon Laura were that they caused her to age and wither rapidly; like the unfortunate “Jeanie in her grave,/Who should have been a bride; But who for joys brides hope to have/Fell sick and died/In her gay prime”. The implied tragedy is that these young women, who were supposed to marry and have children, were robbed of their age and beauty and fertility that made them valuable, and so, were to die incomplete. Fortunately for Laura, she had a sister who knew what to do to save her, and she was able to go on to have children; in the absence of such a sister, however, Laura surely would have faced the same plight as Jeanie. So while both women become mothers at the end of their stories, the implications of motherhood are quite different for both of them.

In the selected passages which detail the respective outcomes of Eve and Laura, we can note several key similarities. Both feature an allusion to these women’s saviours: Eve acknowledges “infinite in pardon was my Judge,” whereas for Laura, “…there is no friend like a sister/In calm or stormy weather;/To cheer one on the tedious way,/To fetch one is one goes astray,/To lift one if one totters down,/To strengthen whilst one stands.” This reveals that both women recognize they were not capable of seeking salvation on their own, and that a supremely good being was responsible for treating them with grace and offering them redemption; in turn, this appeals to humanity’s fallen nature and the notion that we, on our own, are not capable of being good on our own and are in need of somebody else to serve as our saviour. And thanks to these saviours, both women are given the opportunity to be mothers when otherwise they would not have been. Considering both works hail from times and cultures in which a woman who was not a mother was a hated, feared or pitied character, this ability to bear children is of key importance in assuring both women are to have good lives in the wake of their Falls.

The cautionary element is emphasized in the revelation of Laura’s future motherhood: “Laura would call the little ones/And tell them of her early prime…/Would talk about the haunted glen,/The wicked fruit-merchant men,/Their fruits like honey to the threat/But poison in the blood”. The original story of Adam and Eve is implicitly a cautionary tale; Milton follows in this direction. Surely there is a message present warning us to obey God’s orders, but the emphasis is much more upon salvation. We might even argue Milton stresses the cautionary element even less than the Biblical original, as the Biblical account ends with the banishment from the Garden after some harsh words from God, and Milton’s account is more focused on all the good that came from Eve’s action: “…hail to thee,/Eve is rightly called mother of all mankind,/Mother of all things living, since by thee/Man is to live; and all things live for Man”. This compassionate ending is both an uplifting interpretation of the Biblical account, and is somewhat shocking when considering Eve’s cruel treatment across Milton’s poem.

A key difference can be found in their respective attitudes towards their own destinies is that it seems Eve does not believe she deserved salvation, while Laura makes no reference to a feeling of unworthiness. Eve “with sad demeanour meek/Ill-worthy such title should belong/To me, transgressour”; she is clearly ashamed of herself and expresses gratitude that “I, who first brought death on all, am graced/The source of life; next favourable thou/Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsaf’st/Far other name deserving”. In Goblin Market, there is only gratitude for the sister, and no emphasis on Laura’s sense of guilt or shame. That being said, Laura is not praised or celebrated—only her saviour is—while as we have seen both Eve and her saviour are celebrated in Paradise Lost.

From this comparison we can gather that while both women had very similar stories and character arcs, their respective authors had very different attitudes towards the morality of these apple-eaters. Rossetti treats Laura like a foolish child who has not properly learned the importance of restraint quite yet, and who is offered salvation because she was not deserving of the terrible fate that was to befall her mistake, as she had no malice or evil intent. Milton treats Eve harshly; perhaps it is tough love. He sees her as a grown woman who should have known better. While her sin was greater, though, her reward was as well: Laura was made the mother of her own children, while Eve was made the mother of humanity. Perhaps what these authors have done by characterizing these women these ways is they have demonstrated their own views towards the original Eve from the Book of Genesis, with Rossetti considering her sins to be not as grave as Milton did, and with Milton placing greater value on the value of God’s forgiveness than Rossetti did. And certainly, what these authors have done, is they have established we ought to think carefully about what fruits we consume, for there are infinite unintended consequences for women who choose to eat apples.

Works Cited

King James Bible. “Genesis.” Thomas Nelson, 1991.

Milton, John. “Paradise Lost, Book XI.” Accessed March 23, 2021. http://

knarf.english.upenn.edu/Milton/pl11.html.

Rossetti, Christina. “Goblin Market.” In The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, One-

The Aesthetics of Grieving vs. The Turmoil of Guilt:

Patience Agbabi’s Journey to the Center of Palamon’s Mind

And after this Theseus hath ysent

After a beer, and it al overspradde

With clooth of gold, the richeste that he hadde,

And of the same suyte he cladde Arcite.

Upon his hondes hadde he gloves white,

Eek on his heed a coroune of laurer grene,

And in his hond a swerd ful bright and kene,

He leyde hym, bare the visage, on the beere,

Therewith he weepe that pitee was to heere.

And for the peple sholde seen hym alle,

Whan it was day, he broghte hym to the halle,

That roreth of the criyng and the soun.

Tho cam this woful Theban Palamoun

With floerty berd and rugged, asshy heeres,

In clothes blake, ydropped al with teeres,

And passynge othere of wepynge, Emelye,

The rewefulleste of al the compaignye.

Inasmuche as the service sholde be

The moore noble and riche in his degree,

Duc Theseus leet forth thre seedes brynge.

That trapped were in steel al gliterynge

And covered with the armes of Daun Arcite.

Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Knight’s Tale’

Lines 2010-2031, pages 254-255

Note: Citations in the paper refer to the line numbers, not the page numbers.

He fought to win: I fought for Emily.

I’m dead beat, but I won up here, the

temple,

the messed-up head. Sent her a ring, of

smoke.

Having a big fat Romeo to smoke

don’t make you Winston Churchill. Arc

was altered.

He won the war but lost the plot. The

temple

became his tomb. And me, I got the

damsel.

Patience Agbabi, ‘Emily’

Page 6

Note: Citations in the paper refer to the

page number as line numbers were not

given.

Let us set the scene: Your best friend just died, and the result for you personally is that you obtain the thing you wanted the most badly in the world. How do you—honestly—think you would feel? It seems safe to say your feelings would be, at the very least, conflicted.

Such is where Palamon finds himself at the end of The Knight’s Tale, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and suspiciously absent from the lengthy descriptions of Arcite’s funeral is insight into how Palamon might have been feeling. Sure, we get a public display of emotion, but acting is easy, and his authenticity is questionable. Patience Agbabi seems to be responding to the limited characterization characterizing The Knight’s Tale when she introduces it with J. R. Hulbert’s words: “In Chaucer’s story there are two heroes, who are practically indistinguishable from each other, and a heroine, who is merely a name” (Agbabi, 5); her version redeems the lack of exploration of Palamon’s emotions upon his friend’s burial by delving into them in detail.

In Chaucer’s account, we are given a brief account of the aesthetics of Palamon’s reaction to Arcite’s death: “this (woeful) Theban (Palamon)/With (fluttering beard) and rugged, (ashy hairs)/in clothes (black), (wet) with (tears)” (Chaucer, 2022-2024). The focus is exclusively on what others can see—not what Palamon felt. These are the most descriptive lines concerning his grief yet they give us poor insight. The majority of the narration of Arcite’s funeral focuses on other aesthetic components of the scene. The King prepares the finest funeral proceedings for Arcite, covering his casket and dressing him in “(cloth) of gold, the (richest) that he (had)” (2012). A laurel crown is placed upon his head, a Roman symbol of victory (Petrina, 253); a valuable sword is placed in his hand (Chaucer, 2015-2016), further symbolizing victory. As the funeral proceeds, the hall roars with tears (2020-2021), Emelye roars with tears (2025-2026), even the horses are brought out in their finery (2029-2030). The king clearly has no issue making this emotional ceremony a costly one as well; one gets the impression Arcite was observed as royalty. He certainly has been elevated in status, being referred to here as “Daun Arcite” (2031): a title of honour (The Free Dictionary).

But what, exactly, has Arcite done to deserve such honour? He was not notable before the tournament. In fact, he was quite the opposite: a prisoner who had violated orders. His death was not particularly honourable either. He was not defending his faith or his flag—he was fighting for a woman. He died by accident (1829-1839) and accidents bring no honour. His funeral comes across as an overreaction amidst these considerations. This provides us with some clues as to how Palamon might really have been feeling after the death.

Agbabi’s poem conjures an image of Palamon pacing back and forth, talking to himself, trying to sort out what just happened. Agbabi’s use of Freudian terminology (Agbabi, ’ego,’ 5, and ‘id,’ 6) suggest this poem is psychoanalytical, but there are several different ways this element can be interpreted, and common to all is the sense of guilt quintessential to Freudian psychoanalysis. After all, Palamon wound up with Emelye, and not in the honourable way of winning her in the tournament, but through his friend’s bad luck. By a Freudian account, guilt arises due to a discrepancy between an individual’s desires and the external judgment and values of society (Freud, 113-116), which defines Palamon’s predicament classically—he got what he wanted, but without honour. But there is room for debate on how he is processing this guilt.

In one interpretation, he is absolving guilt by attempting to convince himself he was more deserving of Emily’s love than Arcite was: “He fought to win: I fought for Emily” (Agbabi, 6) He truly loved Emily while Arcite became more wrapped up in the glory of the tournament: “He won the war but lost the plot. The temple became his tomb” (6). As he had the wrong motivations, he did not deserve to win her. Thus, Arcite is transformed into a version of himself whose ego (in a non-Freudian sense) spun out of control so drastically he became a different person: “Having a big fat Romeo to smoke don’t make you Winston Churchill” (6) indicates the glory of war went to his head, resulting in “Arc [being] altered” (6). These suppositions lessen the blow of Arcite’s death. If his friend died a different person, he might feel not like he really knew the person who died; he can distance himself from the tragedy more easily. It is mentioned in passing he is sad he lost his friend (Agbabi, 5), but grief is not at the forefront of this poem—despite being the only emotion Palamon got to express in the original. By this reading, Palamon’s grief expressed in The Knight’s Tale is a cover for his conflicions and secret joy.

A second account which is more charitable to Palamon’s moral character is that he is feeling so overwhelmed, guilty and confused about everything that has just transpired that he is desperately trying to make sense of it all, trying to justify the events that just happened to alleviate these senses of guilt and mourning. This is congruent with accepting his grief expressed in the original tale at face value. Thirdly, he might be experiencing tremendous jealousy, viewing the way his friend is being so honoured, for no good apparent reason. It was quite the ceremony that Arcite received, with no admiration left for Palamon. The jealousy could be represented by the bitter tone this passage of the poem takes on, as well as the lack of compassion present.