Nobility was fond of using their children as bargain chips. Baby daughters were betrothed to sons of friends and rivals as a way to unite families and build alliances. Although they were married, the daughters were raised with their parents and reunited with their husbands later, once they reached the acceptable age of consent. Even then, the marriage was not legally binding until it had been consummated. Prepubescent girls were not typically (although plenty of exceptions were made) tossed into bed with a stranger/husband. She was saved until she reached maturity, which was usually between the ages of 12 and 14 years old. What else typically happened between the ages of 12 and 14? Oh, yes, she started menstruating.
In the twelfth century, a monk named Gratian composed a set of rules that became the canon law throughout Europe. His writings set the age of consent for girls at age twelve and for boys, age fourteen, and marriages between youngsters would be sealed and binding so long as neither one asked for an annulment before the union was consummated, at the onset of puberty.
If a groom had raped his bride prior to her menarche, it was still considered a binding, consummated marriage, leaving many young girls forever tied to their rapists. What is important about Gratian’s laws is that it was the first time an age, although still very young, was attached to a marriage contract, thus saving children from pre-mature marriage arrangements. These age guidelines remained in place until the late 1800s.
For an eligible young lady in medieval times, much focus was placed on her vagina. When would it start to bleed? For that means she ready (perhaps physically, but probably not psychologically and emotionally) to begin using her vagina — to pleasure her husband and to birth children.
THE ARTS
Chapter Overview
We like to think that people in the Middle Ages were a bunch of prudes who didn’t talk about such taboo subjects as the vagina, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Writers, poets, musicians, painters, and sculptures frequently worked the vagina into their art. References to the feminine organ, either subtle or overt, are plentiful. In the next few chapters, we take a look at some of these references, pondering the message they can give us about medieval attitudes and beliefs about the vagina.
The Cunt Chapter
“And trewely, as myn housbond tolde me, I hadde þe beste queynte.”
Queynte. That’s a strange and unfamiliar word. Spelled out, it looks a bit like queen or quaint. But, pronounced aloud, it sounds a lot like cunt.
Cunt, queynte and a slew of other similar terms for vagina are abundant in medieval literature. Geoffrey Chaucer certainly wasn’t bashful about using them in his work. But was Chaucer a perverted old man? Was he writing literary smut? Doubt it. Cunt was not considered an X-rated word in medieval times. That vulgar connotation came later.
So when Chaucer’s most notorious character, the Wife of Bath, declares that her husband told her she had the best cunt, she wasn’t being crude and offensive. She was simply using a commonly accepted word for female genitalia, in much the same way we would use vagina today. It is in the glossing of queynte where the vulgar naughtiness is born. Numerous modern translations of the Canterbury Tales assign a raunchy equivalent to this word, such as pussy, piece of ass, quoniam (vulva), or Venus chamber. It seems that modern translators were eager to spin the word cunt in a distasteful, odious, and offensive direction, as it is currently viewed, which, in turn, reinforces the Wife of Bath’s reputation as a bawdy, sex-crazed whore.
One of the few female authors of the Middle Ages, Christine de Pizan, included queynte in her writings which, we contend, proves the word was commonly used and accepted during this time. In her Epistle of Othea, written around 1364, de Pizan, via Othea, is offering seduction tips to Hector, a handsome young knight. He should coo to his lover, “With Cupid, the young and jolly, It pleases me that thou queynte is truly.” We read this to mean that Hector is trying to convince his fair lady to chill out and have a little fun… as long as it’s with him only. The message may be salacious but the word choice is not. After all, a cunt by any other name is still a cunt.
Although queynte is among Chaucer’s favorite words for the vagina, it isn’t his only one. Always one for a good euphemism, he also uses belle chose (lovely things), lantern, candle, instrument and small thing as labels for the vagina. If you think those sound chuckle-worthy, consider the vaginal euphemisms Shakespeare used: bird’s nest, Venus’ glove, withered pear, flower, box unseen, nest of spicery, crack, and salmon’s tale! I’m sure most women today would be pissed if their man referred to their hoo-ha as a withered pear or a salmon’s tale. Note to men: Terms like this do not for good foreplay make.
But even the good ol’ bard himself, who wrote after the time when cunt’s reputation as a word was heading south, couldn’t resist the allure of the c-word. In one scene in Hamlet, the title character has made a sexually suggestive comment to Ophelia, who responds with shock. Hamlet says, “Do you think I mean country matters?” The use of the word country here is a play on words as it is impossible to say country without saying cunt.
In Twelfth Night, Malvolio reads a note he beliefs to have been written by his beloved Olivia. He says, “these be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts”. He missed a letter, you may be thinking. Perhaps. But remember that Shakespeare’s words were meant to be heard and not read. Read this sentence aloud and the word and sounds like the missing N.
Thomas of Briton used queynte in Sir Tristam, a 1330 epic poem that likely influenced the Arthurian story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Sir Thomas Malory, famed for Le Morte D’Arthur, a collection of stories about chivalrous knights and virtuous ladies, was not a lewd and crafty storyteller like Chaucer or Shakespeare, yet sex drives many of his plot lines. Tristram and Isolde, for example, bop like bunnies even though Isolde is married to another man. Sir Gareth and Lyone try to do the nasty, but their efforts are continuously thwarted.
And then there is the tale of Igrayne who hops into bed with Uther, lamely disguised as her husband. Spinning the idea of the willing, submissive wife to her favor, Igrayne shruggingly remarks that “ther came unto my castel of Tyntigaill a man lyke my lord… so I went unto bed with hym as I ought to with my lord.” Malory’s work is heavy on the sex but light on the sex talk. He avoids the dirty talk but the message is clear — women are expected to be pure and unsullied but men, particularly knights and kings, are to be admired for their sexual exploits and conquests.