By April Chronowski (Fall 2022)
There is an assumption that discussions of gender in literature are limited to modern conversations surrounding contemporary pieces and that archaic works of literature do not contain any representation of nonbinary gender identities. A text like Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance, originally written by Heldris of Cornwall and translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi, proves otherwise. Little is known of Heldris of Cornwall and the history of Silence, as the poem is seemingly his only work and only one copy of it exists with two translations, but the contents of the text are unspeakably significant in modern discussions of gender in literature. The titular character is an individual that is born a biological female but is raised and socialized as a man to work around an oppressive law that prohibits women from inheriting their parents’ estates. Due to this, Silence exists between masculine and feminine and faces oppression and issues of identity. This representation of someone outside of the gender binary is simultaneously revolutionary and fraught with deeply problematic language and situations. As the central focus of the plot, Silence’s gender identity is defined through its intersectionalities—specifically its intersectionalities with marriage and families, queerness, and amatonormativity. The intersectional themes of gender within Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance, while clearly archaic, are crucial to both understanding the perception of gender within the piece and improving discussions of gender in contemporary literature.
The entire basis of Silence’s gender identity comes at the beginning of the poem before they are even born. As the result of a fatal duel between two counts who married twin women and could not decide who was entitled to their wives’ inheritance, King Evan of England passes a law that prohibits women from inheriting the estates of their parents. The only way for a woman to inherit is through marriage, and even then, it is technically her husband who is entitled to the estate, not her. Eufemie and Cador, Silence’s parents, meet in service to King Evan and Queen Eufeme as a physician and knight, respectively. Little is said in the poem about Cador’s background, aside from the fact that he is a young and accomplished knight, but it is early on established that Eufemie is the only child of Renald of Cornwall and therefore the “crowning glory of his estates” (Roche-Mahdi 400). This choice of language implies that Eufemie is a part of Renald’s estates—more property than woman—which is the same way that the twin women in the original conflict were also seen. Their husbands were exclusively arguing over their money, and they were merely collateral.
Cador soon indebts himself to King Evan by killing a dragon, and Eufemie does the same by healing Cador from the aftermath of that battle. Both are promised the same thing as a reward: their choice of a spouse from any in the kingdom. Eufemie and Cador, who are already deeply in love and have been suffering due to their supposed unrequited feelings, choose each other. Upon their marriage, they are promised “a thousand pounds a year…and the territory of Cornwall / upon the death of Renald, without fail” (Roche-Mahdi 1295–1298). It is unclear what would have happened to Renald’s land and estate were Eufemie not married by the time he died, but since neither Eufemie nor her mother would be able to inherit it, the women would have been left with no money or property. Therefore, marriage becomes an economic arrangement, specifically motivated by the gender of its participants. This is not to say that marriage was not commonly an economic arrangement in the period in which Silence takes place, but Eufemie and Cador’s story is specifically presented as one of love, not strategy. Still, it can be assumed that Eufemie is motivated by her status as a woman to marry quickly to ensure that she will not lose access to her father’s wealth.
After they marry and officially inherit Renald’s estate and political position, Cador and Eufemie conceive a child. Immediately, Cador begins to experience anxiety over the biological gender of the child, knowing that if the they are born female, they will not be able to inherit Cador and Eufemie’s estate. This puts their child into a similar position to Eufemie prior to her marriage. The stress is increased since Renald’s estate has now been in the family for another generation. It is this stress that “if [they] have a daughter, / she won’t get a shred of [their] earthly possessions” which leads to Cador concocting the plan that they will raise their child as a son no matter what (Roche-Mahdi 1751–1753). This fear that a child will be left without a safety net—financially or otherwise—is a timeless one. Parents want the best for their children and are often willing to do whatever it takes to get that.
Cador and Eufemie’s child is born biologically female and just like they planned, the couple decides to raise them as a boy. They are sent away to grow up in an isolated home and once they are old enough, Cador explains to them why it is necessary that they present as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. Silence is a character that, while not canonically nonbinary within the story, still defies the gender binary. However, the text still uses gendered language. Cador and Eufemie decided to name their child based on the word Silence, with the variations Silentius if they are a boy and Silentia if they are a girl. Within the text, Silence is exclusively referred to using the gender-neutral version of their name, with the only exception being when their name is directly being discussed or during dialogue. The text also switches between referring to Silence with feminine and masculine pronouns. Usually, masculine pronouns are used during exposition or when Silence’s actions are being described, versus feminine pronouns being used whenever Silence’s internal conflict is being explored. This internal conflict, which runs throughout the entire story, is Silence’s identity crisis related to their gender. Often, they are described as being a girl masquerading as a boy, and a significant amount of emphasis is placed on their biology, with the text saying that “he’s a she beneath the clothes,” which also serves as an example for the way gendered pronouns are used (Roche-Mahdi 2480). The reason for this focus on Silence’s physical body is because they are “a triumph of Nature’s art,” made with all the beauty and perfection that Nature could fit into one person (Roche-Mahdi 1799). As Silence grows up as Silentius and partakes in masculine activities like hunting and wrestling, their feminine beauty is masked by their rough, boyish exterior. It is seen that they are “wasting” their beauty and implied that, were people to know what Silence has done, they would be upset because Silence was not making any use of the gift Nature gave them.
Nature and Nurture, as well as Reason, are personified within the text. However, due to the poem’s fantastical nature, it is unclear if they are physical characters or simply manifestations of Silence’s internal conflict. The audience is not privy to Silence’s unfiltered thoughts or feelings throughout the story because when they are spoken, it is usually through the voice of the narrator, who has a strong moral compass and opinion of Silence’s gender. When Silence is twelve—though they are incredibly skilled at all the things their male peers do—they are “deeply disturbed about this, / for her conscience [tells] her / that she [is] practicing deception by doing this,” since they are not biologically male (Roche-Mahdi 2497–2499). Nature appears to Silence, angry that Silence is wasting all the beauty that she poured into them by conducting themself like a man. Silence’s response captures an incredibly modern view of gender:
Who am I then?
Silentius is my name, I think,
or I am other than who I was.
But this I know well, upon my oath,
That I cannot be anybody else!
Therefore, I am Silentius,
as I see it, or I am no one. (Roche-Mahdi 2532–2538)
As Silence says, they have gone their whole life knowing themself as Silentius, or a man, and if they are not a man, then they do not have an identity. Nurture, who appears soon after, seems to agree with Silence, arguing that she has “completely disnatured [them]” by turning them from a woman into a man (Roche-Mahdi 2595). In the end, it is Reason who convinces Silence that it is okay for them to continue presenting as male despite their insecurity. Of course, she does not consider Silence’s own comfort or opinions but instead reasons that King Evan would not renege on his decree that women are not allowed to inherit land were Silence to reveal their biological gender.
Silence, however, is happy being a man. In fact, the confrontation between Nature, Nurture, and Reason ends with Silence deciding “that a man’s life / was much better than that of a woman” (Roche-Mahdi 2637–2638). This is where the broader themes of gender within the text reconnect with the queer subtext. Silence realizes that women in the society that they live in live objectively worse lives with less agency and opportunity, and recognizes that they have a unique advantage as a man that they do not want to give up just because Nature believes that they are lying. The text does not, however, have the language to describe nonbinary identities, so it is forced to use binary pronouns and terms. Silence was raised as a boy while being biologically female. Silence was socialized male and enjoys presenting and being perceived as a man. By all modern definitions, Silence is a transgender man or nonbinary (due to the usage of both masculine and feminine pronouns). Any stress they experience relating to their gender comes from outside sources, and the deciding factor for them to remain socially male is the fact that they live in a patriarchal society.
Furthermore, Silence’s relationship with sex and marriage differs from that of the people around them—something which is clearly connected to their unique gender identity. After their encounter with Nature and Nurture, Silence continues to live as a man. Eventually King Evan hears of their reputation and chooses them as a retainer for his court. Queen Eufeme takes a liking to Silence and repeatedly tries to seduce them, but Silence always rejects her. This is in part because Silence experiences no attraction to her, but also because they are deeply terrified of their biological gender being discovered and revealed to King Evan. Driven mad by the rejections, Queen Eufeme devises a complex plan to send Silence to France to be killed, but Silence escapes it and returns to King Evan’s court, where Queen Eufeme once again tries and fails to seduce them. She convinces King Evan to send Silence on a fool’s errand into the forest to capture Merlin, who has become a wild, uncivilized man. It is said that he is a powerful sorcerer with the ability to interpret dreams and divine the truth, but that he can only be lured out of the forest by a woman’s charms. Both Eufeme and Evan believe that Silence will be unable to capture Merlin because they are a man, but Silence is successful and brings Merlin back to the castle where he reveals Silence’s “true” gender. King Evan, out of his love for Silence, reverses the law that women cannot inherit and then marries them.
Silence and King Evan have never had any romantic interactions prior to their marriage. The affection that does pass between them seems exclusively homosocial, which is heightened by the fact that Silence is both in a position of servitude to and significantly younger than the king. The story would have hardly been altered were Silence and King Evan not to get married. Their marriage is a result of amatonormativity. Defined by Elizabeth Brake in her book Minimizing Marriage, amatonormativity is a “disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as special sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal” (Brake 88). This is a new concept that has come into discussions surrounding asexuality and aromanticism, but to use it as a retrospective lens also has some merit, especially in a piece like Silence. Marriage is such an important relationship within the poem that it almost creates the tangible effects of amatonormativity—marriage (especially for women) is so important that it is necessary.
Eufemie was also a woman who was the sole inheritor of her father’s land, but instead the focus was placed on her marrying Cador as opposed to partaking in a convoluted cross-dressing plot. Of course, King Evan’s law did not exist when Eufemie was born. Still, Eufemie and Cador could have focused on finding Silence a husband that could then inherit the estate, but instead they choose to raise Silence as a man. As a result, Silence shows no romantic or sexual attraction to anyone within the story, but the second that they stop existing outside of the gender binary, it is assumed that they will marry a man. No talk of them getting married existed when they were presenting as a man. This is due to the interaction between the transphobic idea that Silence is “hiding” something and the assumption that marriage would involve an active sex life, therefore leading to Silence’s secret being discovered. In this way, Silence actively defies the concept of amatonormativity by existing as both an asexual and aromantic character, furthering queering their existence.
Silence does, however, still exist as a woman in a time when marriage was a matter of both survival and economic security. As a woman and their parents’ only heir, Silence is responsible for producing a child to inherit the estate that their parents worked so hard to ensure stayed in the family. Therefore, Silence’s genderqueer identity is unsustainable if they are to fulfill the duty they feel toward their parents. The narrative is constructed to ensure that every aspect of Silence’s queerness is reversed by the end of the story. They identify as their biological gender and marry a man, thus no longer disrupting the hetero- and amatonormative society they live in. Silence never had to marry King Evan. They could have gone on to inherit their parents’ land without getting married at all whether they were a woman or a man. It is merely an expectation that, for a happy ending, the female main character must be a wife.
Modern understandings of gender identity continue to grow and change, but it is important to remember that gender identities that break the binary are not a new idea. Silence presents various struggles that women still face today, like systemic inequalities relating to their financial agency and the expectation of marriage and children; and it also approaches the construction of gender by using a fantasy setting to personify the nature/nurture debate that still exists today. While some modern audiences may look at Silence on the surface and understandably be taken aback by the transphobic and misogynistic language, plot, and characters, that does not mean that the piece does not still have merit in modern discussions of gender. Silence presents a theoretical view of the construction of gender by taking a person that was born biologically female and examining how that person would view their own gender if they were raised male. Throughout the story, Silence views gender as a purely utilitarian thing. They show little discomfort with being viewed as a man despite being biologically female, and actively choose to continue presenting as a man when given the choice. They define their gender based on its intersectionalities. They present as a man because they feel they must to maintain their inheritance, they show discomfort with their transgender identity because they are told that they should, and they defy amatonormativity because the society that they live in is not accepting of nonbinary sexualities. Silence is the perfect example of why gender cannot be viewed in isolation. One must take into account all the facets of culture that interact with gender, like class, queerness, and amatonormativity; and furthermore, concepts like race, age, and ability—which are not mentioned in the poem. Understanding the complexity and intersectionality of gender in a piece like Silence is not only instrumental in understanding the historical existence of nonbinary identities but in moving forward to discuss gender in a wider literary environment.
Works Cited
Brake, Elizabeth. Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Heldris of Cornwall. Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance. Translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi, Michigan State University Press, 1999.
Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern. Edited by Great LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Kisowska, Cornell University Press, 2021.
Wade, Lisa and Myra Marx Ferree. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.
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