!Women in OE Literature Essay Plan

Judith, Juliana, Elene

Intro (thesis statement/LOA)

• The illustration of gendered relations in Judith, Juliana, and Elene complicate binary distinctions drawn between masculinity and femininity

• They present a reconfiguration of the woman, and more broadly of gendered representation, by presenting women who resist inherited assumptions and disrupt normative expectations of behaviour, power, and virtue

Intro (further points)

• Within the Old English corpus, Judith, Juliana, and Elene are exceptional in that they are the only poems to position women as their central figures, and one of the few verse texts with an eponymous heroine

• the attribution of ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ labels to particular traits fundamentally constrains both characterisation and our broader understanding of humanity

P1 (Judith) 4 introductory points

• Nowell Codex (with Beowulf → Grendel’s mother as possible monstrous comparison for women)

• Unlike other female literary counterparts as she is the only character to actively engage in wielding a weapon, yet it is her wisdom and God-given strength of character that are most prominent in the text 

• As the poem adapts the story of the Old Testament from the Deuterocanonical book ‘Judith’, it is unsurprising that there are undercurrents of her piety evident throughout the narrative 

• She is perhaps only considered a heroine when her piousness remains intact, and becomes merely a warrior should she not have her religious foundations  

• A divine stamp to legitimise her battle 

P1 → Judith quote about killing Holofernes, but remaining pious

‘Iċ him ealdor oðþrong þurh Godes fultum’ 

‘I deprived him of life through God’s help’

P1 (Judith) point about remaining pious

• Religiously inflected heroism → her wisdom and God-given strength of character as most prominent in text

• Retainer’s strength → strength as a woman might be glossed as the strength of one of God’s retainers, hence the gruesome killing

• Divine stamp given to her strength, perhaps to legitimise her ‘battle’ with Holofernes

P1 (Judith) Ironic domestic imagery after killing Holofernes quote

‘Then the mindful maiden quickly placed the warrior’s head so bloody into her foodsack which her attendant a pale-cheeked lady excellent in her ways had brought food for them both’ 

‘þæs herewæðan heafod swa blodig/
on ðam fætelse’

P1 (Judith) significance of the placing of the head into the foodsack

• Vivid graphic descriptions of cannibalism;  

• Practicality to her actions; weirdly domestic imagery, female sociality  

• Unnamed handmaiden – relying on each other for sustenance 

• Moment of agency 

P2 (Juliana) → difference in emphasised heroic characteristic to Judith

Religiously inflected heroism is visible too in Juliana, but instead of her strength being highlighted like it is in Judith, it is her bravery 

P2 (Juliana) quote/analysis about how bravery in invoked in her character

• Bravery conveyed through the motif of the prefix ‘ellen-’

• ‘ellen-’ can be variably translated as meaning ‘strength’, ‘power’, ‘valour’ in compound words such as ‘ellen-heard’ meaning ‘hard of courage’ or ‘courageous’ 

P2 (Juliana) proof of Juliana staying pious despite having to take on the noble quality of being brave (quote)

• She is subject to brutal torture at the hands of her father, Affricanus, and her husband, Heliseus, yet remains devoted to God

• ‘seo þe forht ne wæs, Criste gecweme’ (‘she who was not afraid, pleasing to Christ’) 

• Even when she encounters the devil during her imprisonment 

P3 (Elene) → how religious piety and power coincide in elene (point and quote)

• In Elene, Cynewulf utilises Elene’s piety, pushing it further as a mode through which she exercises power over a group of retainers

• This commanding position she is placed in, mimicking being a commander of an army, markedly blurs the line between gender norms. 

• The wording of ‘soð sigora frea’ (‘Lord of victories’) echoes the reference to Elene as a ‘sige-cwén’ (‘victory queen/victorious queen’), putting Elene as a figure in conversation with Christ

• It emphasises godliness as a pathway to excellence, above the hierarchical earthly nature of gender distinctions and privileges. 

P3 (Elene) Elene as teacher/instructor/father figure (quote + analysis)

• Judas explaining that his father

• ‘on fyrndagumun weaxenne wordum lærde, septe soðcwidum’ (‘in ancient days when I was young taught me in words, instructed me with true sayings’) 

• mimics what Elene was doing, thus elevating her to the same level of wisdom and respectability as a father

P3 (Elene) Elene as preacher (quote + analysis)

• Elene takes on the masculine position of a preacher through the way in which she presents God’s word to the retainers

• Almost as if she is the one who has the power to alter their fates, as she implores them repeatedly to deliver penitence for their sins

• ‘“Þe synt tu gearu, swa lif swa deað, swa þe leofre bið to geceosanne. Cyð ricene nu hwæt ðu þæs to þinge þafian wille”’

• (‘“For you, two things are prepared, either life or death, whatever is dearer to you for the choosing. Make known quickly now what you want”’). 

[CRITIC] Borysławski → ‘hyrbrid attitudes’…

Borysławski posits the heroines Judith and Juliana as embodying ‘hybrid attributes ... becoming examples of what early Church Fathers such as St Jerome described as perfectum virum, ‘perfect man’’ 

[WIDER READING] St Jerome’s ‘Against Jovinianus’

• Man as the baes figure of comparison and crux of humanity

• Famously, the only surviving excerpts from philosopher Theophrastus’ Liber Aureolus de Nuptiis (Golden Book of Marriage) survive in his writing, and lay groundwork that misogyny has been rooted in throughout the ages

Effect of St Jerome’s ‘perfect man’ on the female heroines

• While the Church subscribed to such ideas, to consider the frame of reference of a ‘perfect man’ posited by St Jerome as a lens through which to view these heroines seems to be a hypermasculinisation of their characters 

• It is more apt to consider that their actions were likely not in a ploy to become more masculine, but in an attempt to embody a more divine feminine 

[CRITIC] Brian Murdoch’s definition of a hero → distinguishing hero and warrior

• Brian Murdoch defines a hero, as portrayed in Old English poetry, as ‘one who performs acts of valour in a life-threatening situation, out of loyalty to a lord, gaining a glorious reputation as a result’ 

• The touchstone of the hero is exemplified in ‘the vital relationship between retainer and lord’ 

• Expanding upon this, ‘in the poetic articulation of the heroic ethos, a warrior’s paramount goal is the achievement of a lasting reputation’ 

• This warrants an interpretation of all three women as heroes, as they all feature as versions of retainers within their respective environments, facing life-threatening situations, with relationships not necessarily with any lord, but with the Lord 

Conclusion

• Judith, Juliana, and Elene resist reductive gendered classification, not by aspiring to masculinity, but by exposing the limits of gender as an interpretative framework altogether 

• These poems gesture towards a more capacious understanding of humanity in Old English literature, one in which virtue and authority are not gendered absolutes but human possibilities 

• Far from reinforcing patriarchal norms, these texts unsettle them, offering female figures whose complexity and autonomy mark a significant reimagining of the heroic ideal