I found The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle the most interesting of the three Sir Gawain poems we had to read for Monday's class. The character of Dame Ragnelle is truly fascinating: she is monstrous, "she was as ungoodly a creature / As evere man sawe, withoute mesure" (228-9), she exhibits agency and a desire for "sovereynte" and, after her marriage to a knight and magical transformation into the most beautiful woman at court, is also magically transformed into an obedient wife. Her trajectory in the poem reminded me of the Saracen princess or queen who displays all the qualities that are disdained in a good Christian woman but is still considered a herione and, upon marriage to a knight and conversion from paganism, becomes the perfect wife.
In many ways we can think of Dame Ragnelle as a proto-feminist: she wishes, above all, for autonomy. She is shrewd and she is bold and she is willing to risk disloyalty to the only family member we know of, her mischief making brother Sir Gromer Somer. She is similar to Queen Bramimonde who also exhibits her own agency and has no problem hurling curses at her own gods thus demonstrating that she, too, is willing to exhibit disloyalty to religion and family which is only further confirmed by her later conversion. Both are willful women who are tamed by marriage and absorption into a new society. Dame Ragnelle, despite her insistence that all women really want sovereignty, is all too happy to give this up, voluntarily, upon her marriage to Sir Gawain and Bramimonde-Juliana becomes fully absorbed into Christian society as a mild mannered lady.
For all the parallels, however, it is the difference between Dame Ragnelle and the typical Saracen princess/queen that struck me. Dame Ragnelle is ugly, is monstrous, is so completely other, whereas medieval poems typically portray the Saracen princess as beautiful, alluring and, most importantly, white. (I know there are cases when she is black but, as far as I know, when she converts to Christianity her blackness melts away into whiteness.) The Saracen princess is exactly like a Christian heroine except she is willful and disobedient to her family and faith. These kinks, as it were, are remedied upon her conversion and marriage whereupon she is transformed into the good Christian woman. In the Saracen princess case, her monstrosity is her paganism and sense of agency which can be changed by conversion. In Dame Ragnelle's case, however, she may already be Christian but she is willful and disobedient and, most importantly, really really ugly. The Saracen princess is admired for her beauty, already in a sense belonging to the society that she will join at the end of the poem, but there is no place for Dame Ragnelle and she has to force her way into society where she is barely tolerated. It begs the question: what is the function of Dame Ragnelle's monstrosity? Is it caused, in part, by her agency and willfulness or is that just a symptom of it?
In both cases, however different on the surface, there are two women who are figured as monstrous - one for her geographic location and one for her appearance - and a marriage to a knight is central to her transformation, not only into an acceptable Christian lady who must look the part, but also one who must act the part.
I think you're right in describing Dame Ragnelle as a "proto-femininst". That would help answer the question I brought up in my presentation about whether or not we can subject these texts to feminist criticism. We might ask instead where Dame Ragnelle ranks in the evolution of female characters in literature. She is certainly something more than the women we've seen up til now, but still far from what we would consider a fully-realized female character.
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