Losing Virginity and Preserving
Chastity: A Quest of Sex and Regeneration
“It
falls on me here to write of Chastity,” Spenser announces in the opening lines
of Book III, “the fairest virtue, far aboue the rest.” Undoubtedly, to Spenser
Chastity is the greatest virtue of all, attaining the “highest place in
maintaining the autonomy of the human (traditionally female) body, that is,
preserving its integrity inviolate.[1] As
the climax of the first three books, Book III is an allegory about a female
night, the personification of (and perhaps an emblem of?) Chastity itself,
Britomart. Britomart is invincible while she wields her magical lance, and
remains unconquered, easily defeating Guyon when they cross paths for the first
time. At the heart of Book III is Britomart’s quest to find the man she’s
fallen deeply in love with, the knight Arthegall, marry him, have sex, lose her
virginity, and found a dynasty that will sustain all of England. Up until this
point, sex and love were seemingly incompatible, for in the first two Books sex
is both seductive and destructive: love is barely mentioned at all in Book I
(except for Redcrosse reuniting with Una after being captured by Orgoglio) and
never mentioned in Book II; and sex is either to be avoided or destroyed. In
Book III love and sex are not at all incompatible; in fact Britomart loves
Arthegall and must therefore have sex with him to consummate that love. She
falls in love with him by looking in Merlin’s mirror, perhaps seeing a part of
herself in him and highlighting a sense of self-love in the process.
Love
and sex, then, are not only compatible with each other but also compatible with
Chastity in Book III. Book III is interested in physical regeneration (whereas
Books I and II were interested in spiritual regeneration). Therefore, it is
absolutely necessary that Britomart have sex with Arthegall in order to give
birth and keep her family line functional. Here, Spenser highlights love in a
version of chastity, a love that is meant to reproduce. When Britomart looks in
the mirror and falls in love with Arthegall, Spenser immediately invokes the
story of Narcissus from classical mythology. The ontology of love can thus be
understood, at least in one respect, in the classical substructure of
self-love. Though Spenser is careful to point out that, for Britomart, this
doesn’t lead to more self-love which is ultimately destructive (as it was for
Narcissus), he nonetheless invokes the classical story for the reader to make
sense of where love comes for from Britomart: within. In order to guard her
from the perversions of outward love and sex, Spenser adorns Britomart with
protective armor and a magic lance, thereby representing the idea of the female
soul as a castle to be guarded. Like the virgin Belphoebe, who was raised and
guarded by Diana, the virgin Britomart, must be guarded and protected from all
outward perversions. Unlike Belphoebe, Britomart’s quest is to not stay a
virgin, but to devote her love and her whole self to Arthegall so that she may
bear offsprings, just like Belphoebe’s twin Amoret, raised by Venus, whose
quest is to devote her love and her whole self to her love, Scudamore.
Britomart
shares traits from both Belphoebe and Amoret, being a virgin and being a woman
dedicated to only one man. Spenser begins to blend characters and stories from
classical antiquity to exfoliate versions of love into one, culminating in one
comprehensive philosophy of love and sex in the story of Britomart: the quest
to remain a chaste and noble virgin, guarded by armor and guided by self-love,
and ultimately find Arthegall so that she may consummate her relationship with
him, and give birth to a royal line that will lead the people of the land,
thereby preserving losing her virginity yet preserving her chastity through
regeneration. Another way that Spenser highlights what love and sex means in Book
III, is by presenting Venus, the personification of love. One version of Venus
is as an overprotective, suffocating force of love keeping her lover, Adonis,
from his hunt and therefore from being a man; yet another version is death
itself—following from the tradition of Virgil and Ovid—as Venus, Love
personified, is on her knees weeping over the wounded Adonis. And yet another
version of Venus, that is presented is a force necessary to repopulate and
sustain the world, for the sexual activity of Venus and Adonis is necessary to
reproduce. In the Garden of Adonis, the reader is introduced to this version in
a vivid detail and dramatic fashion through the image of thousands upon
thousands of naked babies:
“He
letteth in, he letteth out to wend,
All that to come into the world
desire,
A thousand thousand naked babes
attend
About him day and night, which doe
require,
That he with fleshly weeds would
them attire,
Such as him list, such as eternall
fate,
Ordained hath, he clothes with
sinfull mire,
And sendeth forth to liue in mortall
state,
Till
they agayn returne backe by the hinder gate.” (3 vi 32)
Though Spenser’s allegory of the Garden of Adonis is not
necessarily stable and thus subject to much controversy of interpretation,
one thing is clear: mortal love is necessary for regeneration, with death
being a natural outgrowth of love. The “thousand thousand” naked babes are
mortal but part of the natural cycle of love and death. Britomart, too, is
part of the natural cycle of love and death, for when she dies, her
children and her children’s children will have to love and have sex
so that they can make sure that her line survives. Therefore, what Spenser
presents in Book III are different exfoliations of versions of love and
sex that arguably all blend into a justification of sex for Chastity:
Britomart will fully preserve her chastity if she has sex with the right
person (Arthegall) at the right time (perhaps after consulting Merlin again)
that brings forth lots of naked babies.
Conclusion: Classicizing Love and Sex
In Books I-III Spenser uses classical
elements—in the form of historical and mythological figures, and patterns and
substructures borrowed from Classical Antiquity— to move from first warning the
knights against sex, then justifying the zealous destruction of sex, and
ultimately accepting the necessity of sex in love for the purpose of regeneration.
In Book I, Una’s dwarf warns leads Redcrosse out of the House of Pride, where
classical characters are chained because of their lustful and proud ways; it is
only through Una, his love and Truth, that Redcrosse survives
from his fall from grace when he has
sex with Duessa; in Book II the inscription of Medea’s destructive nature on
the ivory gate of the Bower of Bliss foreshadows Guyon’s destruction of the
Bower itself; in Book III the stories of Venus, Adonis, Amoret, and Belphoebe
and the description of the Garden of Adonis serve to not only highlight different
aspects of love and sex, but ultimately fuse to justify the preservation of
chastity through sex for the purpose of regeneration. Classicizing elements in The Faerie Queene, Books I-III, then, are
employed by Spenser to warn against the evils of false love and non-purposeful
sex (Redcrosse with Duplicity), to justify the destruction of enticing beauty
harboring unrestrained lust (Acrasia’s Bower of Bliss), and to advocate for an
anatomy of love that “extends outwards to the natural order and the cosmos, and
to the political order in which ‘most famous fruits of matrimoniall bowre’ (3
iii 3-7) are the progeny of the English kings.”[2]
