Pity and the Authority of Feminine Passions in Books V and VI ofThe Faerie Queene

Abstract

Spenser’s readers have long recognized Book V’s challenge to the regiment of women, one developed through a series of attacks upon the dangers of pity, which is repeatedly presented as an effeminizing weakness that threatens the order of the civic polity. Critics have not noticed, however, the ways that Spenser revisits pity in Book VI, paradoxically casting it as a necessary part of just authority. Spenser models the feminized authority of Book VI’s heroes on Chaucer’s celebration of pite as the central virtue of gentillesse, pairing that theme from chivalric romance with Christian responses to Stoic attacks upon misericordia. Spenser’s return to romance in Book VI is a return to pity, feminizing male authority not despite but through the dangers and pleasures of that suspect passion. Whereas those in Book V who succumb to the “tender heart” of pity appear weak and effeminate, those in Book VI who do not have a “tender heart” appear cowardly and unmanly. The reversal does not cancel Book V’s attack upon the regiment of women, but it does reopen a space for women where true authority is grounded in a reciprocal exchange between values and passions typically gendered as masculine or feminine. By focusing on pity, moreover, this essay revalues the chivalric romance cantos of Book VI. The book is unified by a concern with the ways that pity should impel virtuous action, and examining it from this perspective gives precedence to the narrative of chivalric romance over the pastoral retreat that is often taken by critics as the superior part of the Legend of Courtesy.

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