LURe Literary Undergraduate Research Co-Editors-in-Chief Angel Bullington Mackenzie Campbell Student Associate Editors Sydney Bollinger Abigail Driver Brittney Drummond Sally Hobson Leah Mirabella Taylor O’Kelly Julia Powell Faculty Advisor Dr. Lisa Crafton LURe is a peer-edited journal devoted to publishing rigorous works of undergraduate scholarship on any literary text, film, literary theory, or cultural study. By publishing academic papers from undergraduates, LURe opens up a forum for dialogue and discussion within the academic community, provides a medium for recognition of exceptional work, and encourages students to view themselves as vital members of the intellectual community they inhabit. LURe would like to thank Mrs. Susan Holland and Mrs. Jonette Larrew of the UWG English & Philosophy Department for their invaluable as- sistance in compiling this issue; Dr. Pauline Gagnon, Dean of the UWG College of Arts and Humanities for her support; Dr. Meg Pearson, Chair of the UWG English & Philosophy Department, for her promotion of, contributions to, and general enthusiasm for the journal; and all the individuals without whom this issue specifically and the journal generally would have been unrealized imaginings. Cover Art: Caitlin Whitehead LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research Volume 6 Fall 2016 The Intricacies of Punishment and Power in Gendered Medieval 5 English Society: Exploring Alison’s Curious Escape from Punishment in Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale” by Abigail Driver Becoming Redeemed: Lancelot’s Journey of Faith in Malory’s 14 Le Morte Darthur by Sydney Bollinger Defining a Savage Passion: Post-Colonial Perceptions of the 22 Colonial and Native American Women in Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie by Sally Hobson “Meet My Wife”: Bertha Mason as the Abject in Jane Eyre and 30 its 2011 Film Translation by Abbie Smith Disabled, Disgusting Bodies: Their Unfortunate Asymmetry 42 by Taylor O’Kelly Phallacies behind Assenting Behavior 52 Marla Williams Mental Illness, Transgenderism, and Society’s Silence: Abjection 62 in The Silence of the Lambs by Mackenzie Campbell Superiority Theory, Humor’s Messianic Power, and Changing 69 the Situation in Forrest Gump by Kristen Leonard Foreign War Portrayals: Objectivism and Othering in HBO’s 77 Band of Brothers by Olivia McGregor Too Ideal to be Real: A Marxist Inspired Critique on M.T 85 Anderson’s Feed and 21st Century Society by Brhianna Russell Policing the “Pagan”: Postcolonial Divisionism in Adichie’s 95 Purple Hibiscus by Sam McCracken What Kind of Bird Are You?: Redefining Bildungsroman in 103 Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom by Shelby Hearn Exchange of Play in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom 113 by Leah Mirabella The Intricacies of Punishment and Power in Gendered Medieval English Society: Exploring Alison’s Curious Escape from Punishment in Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale” Abigail Driver eoffrey Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale” from The Canterbury G Tales relates a story of scandal, adultery, and social expecta- tions. Using the events from this bawdy fabliaux, Chaucer clearly paints each of the characters as flawed. John the miller fails to notice his wife’s trickery; he becomes the cuckolded husband he wishes to avoid. Nicholas pursues a married woman, and Absolon womanizes rather than preach the Word of God. Alison also appears flawed because of her unfaithfulness to John and her pleasure in Absolon’s embarrassment. However, in the final lines of the tale when the characters each receive specific punishments for their failures and sins, only the males experience punishment. Unlike the other characters, Alison gains what she desires without any repercussions. In fact, she essentially obtains the last laugh in the story, which suddenly gives her enormous power and agency compared to each of the humiliated men. This moment of escape and agency contrasted with Alison’s objectification, animalization, and ultimate dehumanization throughout the story work together to reveal insights into medieval English culture’s misogynistic perception of women. However, when Chaucer allows Alison great agency as the only character to escape the consequences of her actions, he breaks from this misogynistic cultural view and underhandedly asserts that because of medieval English culture’s view of women, women deserve—and can achieve—a special agency and differentiated treatment that men can neither receive nor merit. Alison’s difference from the male characters in the text de- mands attention before exploring her escape from punishment, Throughout “The Miller’s Tale” Alison consistently receives 6 Abigail Driver animalistic characterization—not in passing moments, but in a repeated, systematic, focused way. Although Chaucer admits her beauty, calling her a “fair […] yonge wyf” (125) who “was full […] blissful on to see” (139), he also compares her small, slender body to the body of a “wezele” (126) and says that she is “softer than the wolle is of a [sheep]” (141). Additionally, he declares that “hir song, it was as loude and yerne / As any swalwe sittynge on a berne” (Chaucer 149-50), comparing her voice to a swallow. He even goes so far to say that “she koude skippe and make game / As any kyde or calf” (Chaucer 151-2), and he declares that “[skittish] she was as is a joly colt” (Chaucer 155). Eventually, in what serves as one of the most vivid and shocking examples of Alison’s animalization, Alison “[springs] as a colt dooth in the trave / And with her heed she [twists] faste awey” (Chaucer 174-75) when Nicholas, the university student, “[catches] her by the [genitals…] and [holds] hire harde by the haunche bones” (Chaucer 168, 171). In this moment Chaucer describes Alison’s response to Nicholas’s sexual advances more like the responses of an endangered animal than of a frightened woman. Each of these moments work together to establish Alison as animalistic, stripped of agency and even humanness. She more frequently receives animal-like treatment—by both the author and the characters—than treatment as a person with value aside from her physicality and sexuality. Unlike the male characters in the story who Chaucer characterizes based on their occupations and reputations, all of Alison’s characterization stems from her beast- like physicality. To make the difference even clearer, each of the animals associated with Allison—a weasel, a sheep, a swallow, a goat, a calf, and a colt—are each animals of small size and little power, symbolic of Alison’s separate position in society. Chaucer makes Alison’s separateness as a female unquestionable. Additionally, Chaucer also crafts Alison’s feminine clothing to contain and restrain her supposedly animal-like nature. Just as John the miller “heeld hire narwe in cage” (Chaucer 116), Alison’s clothes also restrain her. Chaucer writes, “A [girdle] she werede ybarred al of silk” (127), and he also states that she wears a “white [cap]” (133) and a “[headband] brood of silk” (135)—three constraining articles of clothing. In Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, V.A. Kolve states, “We are shuttled back and forth LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research 7 between similes that suggest an animal nature—free, instinc- tive, sensual, untamed—and an inventory of the costume that is meant to contain those energies” (163). Kolve goes on to explain how Alison’s “clothing […] is steadily registered as something that limits and confines” (163). Ultimately, within the very first pages of the tale, Chaucer characterizes Alison as an animal and simultaneously attempts to constrain that animal freeness through her clothing, shedding light on the negative connotations of her animal spirit. From the start, Chaucer blatantly uses Alison’s characterization—physically and visually—to place her in a social, physical, and sexual category separate from the male characters. Women become represented by flesh and sinfulness. While the male characters enjoy definite classification human—as men, respected individuals—Alison exists in a limbo of sorts where she lives out the dichotomy of animal and woman. This separate social category indeed presents an accurate repre- sentation of medieval English society’s misogynistic perception of women. At the time Chaucer pens The Canterbury Tales, English women experience a culture of blatant misogyny. In her book Species, Phantasms, and Images: Vision and Medieval Psychology in The Canterbury Tales, Carolyn Collette provides an example of the inequality—the different categories—experienced by men and women that begin even at the marriage alter. She writes, “The discourse of medieval marriage constructs the woman as unruly will, a lesser partner whom the sacramental texts of the Church regard as dangerous to the rational male, the dominant partner in the union” (Collette 62). She explains how the sacramental wedding “prayer begins by recalling woman’s role in the original sin […and] it recalls the female weakness that led up to the Fall” (Collette 62). In this seemingly tiny moment, the church itself validates medieval English society’s misogynistic views by underscoring women’s weakness and promoting the idea that women fall into a separate category from men. Women are weak; women are wild. To make the differentiation even more blatant, Collette observes how the “fact that there is no equivalent prayer for men underscores the pervasive nature of the assumption that women’s behavior or misbehavior cause[s] problems in medieval marriage” (63). Women begin marriage already on an unequal playing ground, and beginning this way gives medieval English 8 Abigail Driver women little hope for equality. Similarly, Alison begins her mar- riage to the miller in an unequal state, making her dehumanizing characterization unsurprising and even expected within the mi- sogynistic cultural context. Although it appears that this separate categorization serves to differentiate and belittle Alison and ultimately all medieval wom- en—which it certainly accomplishes—it also works for the female benefit. Since Alison exists on a lesser level of humanness—on an animal level—it follows that her moral code, social expectations, and punishments fall on a different plane as well. At the end of the text Chaucer sums up each of the men’s embarrassments and downfall, declaring, “Thus [made love to] was the carpenter’s wyf / For al his kepyng and his jalousie, / And Absolon hath kist hir nether eye, / And Nicholas is scalded in the [rear]” (Chaucer 742- 5). However, the text’s animalized female, the character with the least support from society and the character expected to succumb to weakness and wildness, remains unscathed through the closing events. In fact, Chaucer only mentions Alison to note how she “told every man that [John] was wood” (Chaucer 724). She revels in her husband’s embarrassment and quickly covers her tracks by passing him off as crazed. In his book Philosophical Chaucer: Love, Sex, and Agency in the Canterbury Tales, Mark Miller attempts to reconcile Alison’s sudden burst of agency and escape from punish- ment with her previous degradation by stating, “[Alison] alone never acts in such a way as to erect an artificial barrier between herself and her own pleasure; she alone consistently lets instinct settle questions of what to do, or rather lets it prevent those ques- tions from even arising” (57). Essentially, Alison, embracing her lesser, animalistic status in society, accepts her forced social role and uses the lesser expectations to her advantage. Miller suggests that “as a result [of embracing her animalistic status] she alone remains unpunished by the crushing inevitability of cause and effect at the tales end” (57). Surrounded by falling men, Alison stands tall thanks to the uneven playing ground established by medieval English society; she embraces the inequality and twists it to her advantage, using it to escape the expected retribution for sexual promiscuity. Interestingly, Chaucer’s choice grant Alison enormous agency after lines and lines of dehumanization presents little surprise LURe: Literary Undergraduate Research 9 when considered within the context of his life. Historical docu- mentation reveals that Chaucer’s audience largely dictates his writings. In his essay “Signs, Symbols, and Cancellations,” John Gardner writes, “All the hard evidence we have suggests that Chaucer, all his life, [writes] mainly for the feminine leaders of the court: Lady Blanche, Queen Anne, Princess Joan, and so on” (197). With a largely female audience, Chaucer walks a narrow path. He comprehends the necessity of recognizing the power of these important and influential females and simultaneously at- tempts to provide realistic, culturally-relevant stories. Therefore, Alison’s agency at the end of “The Miller’s Tale” functions doubly to pacify his female audience seeking validation in his writings and to also provide an accurate representation of medieval Eng- land’s misogynistic culture. When writing about “The Wife of Bath,” Gardner reinforces this idea when he states, “[G]iven the personal affairs of certain key members of Chaucer’s audience, Chaucer, whatever he may privately have believed, [is] not in a good position to make much point of sexual incontinence” (198). This concept similarly applies to the “The Miller’s Tale” where Chaucer also lacks a position to completely strip the female entity of agency. He recognizes how his audience and their prestigious positions influence his writing choices. Perhaps Chaucer’s rep- resentation of women in “The Miller’s Tale” provides a skewed representation of his personal views, but it certainly reveals the pressures and expectations placed upon Chaucer as an author. Additionally, this monumental female agency holds impor- tance because of the intense culture of misogyny in medieval England at the time. Doubtlessly, Chaucer breaks from this social expectation, but he makes this break in an underhanded way that both works to his advantage and pacifies his misogynistic audi- ence. Kolve writes in Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative that the animalistic characterization of Alison “commended itself to Chaucer as a way of disarming certain kinds of potential response among his audience, as well as affording him a chance to write about a period of human life in which he took self-evident de- light” (172). Chaucer faces not only writing to please his royal audiences, but he exists in a misogynistic culture where even the church supports the blatant oppression of women. In Chaucer’s text he skillfully creates a pretext of misogyny only to shatter the 10 Abigail Driver construct in the final moments of the tale. By that point readers have become so entrenched in the misogynistic point of view penetrating the tale that only the most alert readers pick up on the enormous moment of agency granted to Alison. Chaucer skillfully uses the humor of his fabliaux to screen his underhanded promotion of at least some sort of equality for women in a culture that preaches misogyny. Not only does Chaucer’s inclusion of Alison’s sudden agency promote female capability and power despite the crippling cultural norms, but the conclusion of “The Miller’s Tale” also recognizes the difference of males and draws attention to their flaws and inability to find salvation. In fact, Alison’s escape from punishment provides a context for examining the actions that prevent Absolon, John, and Nicholas from receiving salvation like Alison. Although each of the male characters receive punish- ment for different reasons, each exhibits inexcusable qualities that Chaucer’s audience cannot overlooked due to the males’ higher and more humanized status in society. First, Absolon receives punishment for his failure to live up to his assigned social role as the parish clerk. Kolve explores this idea and proposes that “Chaucer is interested in Absolon not merely as the recipient of an insult, but as someone who creates occasion for its delivery” (193). Indeed, examination of Chaucer’s text backs up Kolve’s proposal. Absolon spends his time in alehouses, and Chaucer writes, “In al the toun nas brewhous ne taverne / That he ne visited with his solas / Ther any gaylard [barmaid] was” (226-7). The source of Absolon’s downfall appears to be his promiscuous lifestyle. However, Chaucer paints the problem not simply as a matter of flirtatiousness, but highlights Absolon’s wandering eye in light of his status as a religious leader. When Absolon ap- proaches Alison saying, “My faire bryd, my swete cynamone? / Awaketh lemman myn, and speketh to me” (590-91), he begins to place Alison—and sexual experience in general—above his religious duties. Ultimately, although existing at the higher male social plane appears to Absolon’s advantage, this differentiation actually causes his downfall. When Absolon fails to meet the ex- pectations for someone in his position, his character requires, and promptly receives, punishment at the end of the text. Essentially, the male exaltation creates the context for the male downfall, an