Unfortunately, Redcrosse, an all too
guileless, youthfully solemn and impetuous knight, is not forward looking
enough to avoid Duessa after his escape from the House of Pride. In canto vii,
after returning to the House of Pride to find Redcrosse gone, Duessa quickly
finds Redcrosse disarmed by a fountain. Like Ovid’s weary nymph who rests in
the middle of the hunt, Redcrosse also stops to foolishly rest—instead of
continuing on his quest of holiness—and drink from the fountain cursed by Diana
the virgin goddess of the moon, the hunt, and birthing. Now cursed by the
virgin goddess of classical antiquity, Redcrosse immediately begins to suffer
both chill and fever, contrasting states that “anticipate the suffering of the
damned” (1 vii 6 7 7-9).[1] Duessa,
like a caring lover, embraces Redcrosse, who “[a] goodly court he made still to
his Dame, pourd out in loosnesse on the
grassy grownd”, implying that not only is he committed to her, but that she is
his mistress, with whom he ultimately has sex. As a result, Redcrosse is easily
subdued by Orgoglio and becomes his captive, just like one of the mighty and
proud classical figures in the House of Pride. Redcrosse is a captive not only
because he is weakened by sex, but also because he fails to heed Una’s dwarf’s
warning to avoid pride, through avoiding fighting Errour, in the beginning of
Book I. He then fails to heed the warnings presented to him through Spenser’s
use of classical elements— from the structure of Virgil’s Aeneas to the myths of classical antiquity. Sex and pride almost
destroy him, and it is only through Una’s reappearance and subsequent help and
forgiveness that he is able to kill Orgoglio and continue on his quest of
holiness with his true love by his side once again.
The Knight of Temperance: Destroy the
Bower of Bliss or Be Destroyed By Lust and Sex
If
Spenser employs the classical epic structure (Aeneid) and classical historical and mythological figures (in The
House of Pride and Diana, respectively)
in Book I to warn Redcrosse to avoid the destructive forces of pride and sex,
then he employs similar classical elements in Book II to force Guyon to destroy
the very source of that abomination: the Bower of Bliss. As C.S. Lewis puts it,
for Spenser, the Bower of Bliss represents “male prurience and female
provocation, sexual nature in disease.”[2]
The Bower of Bliss presents a grave threat to Guyon and the virtue of
temperance itself, for the threat of absorption to the Bower means that Guyon
must act and fight to destroy it. In order to guide Guyon in this fight,
Spenser once again borrows a pattern out of an epic from Classical Antiquity:
Guyon is guided by the wise and holy Palmer, following the pattern of the
temperate Odysseus guided by the divine Hermes so that he can escape from
Circe’s enchanted island, emblematic of temptation and lust itself. Unlike Odysseus, Guyon must not only escape
from the Bower of Bliss but also destroy it.
Spenser
draws on the classical structure in Odyssey
10 to highlight the dangers of sexuality, personified by Acrasia, in Book II
canto xii. However, though Acrasia is similar to Circe in many respects—their potent witchcraft turns
men into beasts—her place or residence, the Bower of Bliss, a “most daintie Paradise on the ground
[with] painted flowers [and] hills for breathing space,” is even more dangerous than Circe’s
because of exquisite beauty (2 xii 58).
Spenser further classicizes the Bower of Bliss when
describing its outer gate. Just like the Virgilian gate of Hades, “through which pass false dreams,” the
gate of the Bower of Bliss is made of ivory.[3]
With the utmost beauty, (which itself is a
destructive force of deception and “false dreams”), the gate is engraved with a hideous story of lust
and crime from classical mythology, the story of Jason and Medea. Medea, an enchantress not unlike
Circe and Acrasia, burns with lustful passion for Jason, leading her to betray her father, kill
her brother, and burn alive Jason’s new lover, Creüsa. Spenser describes this scene in the following
verse with a tone of an admiration for the art, yet in gruesome detail:
“Ye
might have seene the frothy billowes fry,
Under the ship, as through them she
went,
That seemd the waves were into
yvory,
Or yvory into the waves were sent;
And other where the snowy substaunce
sprent,
With vermell, like the boyes bloud
therin shed,
A piteous spectacle did represent,
And otherwhiles with gold
besprinkeled;
Yt
seemd th’ enchaunted flame, which did Creüsa
wed.” (2 xii 44)
Medea is driven mad by lust and
therefore unleashes death to all those around here. Just like Jason remains
seductive to her until the vary end, so does Acrasia throughout canto xii. She
offers not just “simply sexual pleasure—‘long wanton joys’—but
self-abandonment, erotic pleasure, aestheticism, the melting of the will, the
end of all quests.”[4]
Guyon must exercise extreme temperance to avoid Acrasia’s seduction, and the
intensity of pleasure and release that Acrasia offers must be overmastered by a
still more intense practice of temperance, perhaps even a fear of release.
Ironically, the engraving of Medea’s death and destruction on the gate invites
Guyon to not only fear the release of lust and pleasure in the Bower of Bliss,
but to destroy it, just like Medea destroy all that she came in contact with.
There is an erotic appeal of the Bower of Bliss that elicits Guyon’s destructive
violence. In this episode, everything that Guyon does and is surrounded with
belongs to the order of natural ethics, even the angel that descends from
heaven to nurse Guyon back to health after he faints in the Cave of Mammon
feels out of place in this book. Nevertheless, Guyon cannot overcome the
seduction and destruction around him in the Bower of Bliss all by himself: the
story of Jason and Medea invites destruction; either Guyon destroys the Bower
of Bliss or be destroyed himself. He can only do with the Palmer’s guidance,
and through Grace, just as Odysseus could only escape from Circe through the
divine guidance of Hermes and Aeneas could only bring himself to leave Carthage
and his lover, Dido, through the divine instruction of Mercury (the Roman
Hermes).
Word Count: 1082
