Ian Kessler

October 20, 2014

Professor Mullen: Indo-European Epic

Paper #1

Messages on Women in Indo-European Epic

The Indo-European tradition of epic poetry in the

crystalized forms of Beowulf, The Tain and The Shahnameh portray the

different cultures that birthed them. The heritage these cultures

share is one of warriors and warlords, superstition and the oral

tradition. Such a tradition that has preserved common values,

themes and details within each of these epics pointing to

inherited material from shared ancestral culture. The grasp on

similarities in these epics is important but nevertheless should

not overshadow that each is distinct from the other and has

unique qualities which enriching each epic’s tale. Bards who had

lords to please, morals to teach and glory to win were the

storytellers that generation after generation embedded the power,

politics and psychology of the feminine within patriarchy. The

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message they proclaimed and sang is that great women save their

virtue, council for peace, learn wisdom and are compassionate all

under subservience their fathers or husbands; sexual freedom,

bellicosity, scheming and cruelty, ultimately all forms of female

independence i.e. deviation from this patriarchal script are

symptoms of depravity wherefore punished to promote the moral

paradigm.

The maidens in these epics are t valued for their purity,

beauty and fertility. Following the Irish tradition in Before the

Tain, the druid Cathbad prophesies that the child of Fedlimand

mac Daill, a storyteller for King Conchobor, once grown would be

the loveliest woman in Ireland:

“Heroes will contend for her, high kings beseech on heraccount; then, west of Conchobor’s kingdom a heavy harvest of fighting men. High queens will ache with envy to see those lips of Parthian-red opening on her pearly teeth, and see her pure perfect body….Derdriu shall be her name. She will bring evil”1.

Born, Conchobor claims the infant Derdriu, rescuing her from

warriors seeking to kill her because of the prophecy. He jumps on

the opportunity because the prophecy shows how stunningly

beautiful and coveted she’ll be. Who better to be his bedmate and

1 Kinsella. 2002. 10

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the mother of his children than such a woman? She epitomizes how

the maiden is coveted simply for her beauty. Here it cannot be

her rank because she is not nobility. Amazingly Conchobor thinks

that he will be able to control Derdriu despite the prophecy’s

warning of destruction and death. So he raises her in solitude to

jealously hide her away from other men, until the time he may bed

her. Derdriu is a sex object to him from birth, she is a prize

and an investment that he patiently and arrogantly waits to pay

off. He is blind that she will grow into a fully fledged person

with free will. As a young woman she escapes her enclosure and

falls in love with another, Noisiu, and together they flee the

kingdom. By fleeing servitude, she sets up the prophecies

fulfillment, because now the world of men will covet her. She

must be punished because of her beauty. Eventually Conchobor

discovers them and has Noisiu killed. Her fatal beauty drove

Conchobor to obsession. He tries to woo Derdriu once she's back

in his snare. But she has nothing but hate for him and misery in

her trapped existence, eventually she commits suicide having

fulfilled her prophecy. Conchobor should greedily took her in the

first place and that the greed that her beauty generated had to

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be punished because it was so dangerous. An independent beautiful

woman is very dangerous in a time where woman are valued for sex

and reproductive potential. Maybe the lesson the bards tried to

send was she should have obeyed her father/husband, which would

keep power structures constant, but she had to be punished

because of her rejection of societal power. Ultimately the real

tragedy is really, despite her beauty her role as maiden is never

fulfilled, she dies before bearing children the maiden’s

intrinsic purpose.

The intrinsic purpose of child bearing in the maiden’s role

is present because her marriage and reproduction create blood

ties, serving the function of the strategic proposal. Thus her

kinsmen and suitors value her for this purpose, so her kinsmen

raise her by values that will most empower them. Thus the

female’s role of peacemaker in inextricably linked to her

betrothal, evident in Beowulf:

“Sometimes Hrothgar’s daughter distributed ale to olderranks, in order on the benches: I heard the company call her Freawaru as she made her rounds,

presenting men with the gem-studded bowl, young bride-to-be to the gracious Ingeld, in her gold-trimmed attire.The friend of the Shieldings favors her

betrothal: the guardian of the kingdom sees good in it and

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hopes this woman will heal old wounds and grievous feuds”2.

Freawaru is a princess and has been raised in a hall and trained

for her feminine role. In the first sentence her duty as the cup

bearer is shown. She strengthens the bonds of peace between her

father King Hrothgar and the men of his court by giving them his

in order of rank, tacitly rewarding each man for his loyalty. She

does this on her father’s bidding, allowing him to honor his

retainers while also training her to be good Queen. In fact the

quote shows that she is already promised to Ingeld, the king of a

rival tribe. Both kings, her father and Ingeld approve of this

match. Ingeld approves because of her virtues as a maiden,

assumed because these virtues are shown just previously the

sentence before the betrothal's introduction. Hrothgar approves

because the marriage and their children would inextricably link

the two royal families, thus ensuring peace and amity between

them instead of the violence that wounded them before. Ingeld

should also tactically approve for the same reasoning here as he

wants peace for his people as ruler too, as well as gaining

strong allies.

2 Donoghue and Heaney. 2002. 52

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The theme of the maiden’s strategic betrothal and its

underlying values is reprised in The Tain, however much more

dramatically. Queen Medb orders her daughter Finnabair to ask the

enemy warrior Rochad for a truce allowing her to sleep with him

as well. Medb does so because Finnabair loves and she wants her

daughter to be happy. All the while she had already been promised

to multiple other men, heroes and kings alike. Medb had been

proactively using her daughter, in her youth and virginity, as a

chess piece to weave alliances for her warfront:

“The Seven Munster Kings got to hear of this, and one of them said: ‘The same girl was promised to me, on the guarantee of fifteen men, to get me to join this

army.’ One by one the other six kings admitted that the samedeal had been done with them. So they went off to venttheir pique on Ailill’s sons”3.

The defilement caused outrage in the first king because he

thought that the promise was genuine and so he had been cheated

out of her maidenhead alone and secretly, an angering experience.

Eventually each learned this of each other’s treatment therefore

they all grew angry not just at the unchaste behavior of

Finnabair but her mother’s and her conspiracy too. Both actually

in complete deviation from the Indo-European moral code. The

3 Carson. 2007. 174

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conspiracy because Medb has deceptively used Finnabair to benefit

herself at the kings’ expense. The strategic betrothal backfires

because it was false, but had worked up until the deception was

uncovered. Following the quote Medb then attacked the kings

resulting in seven hundred slaughtered men: “When Finnabair heard

that seven hundred men had died on her account, she dropped dead

of shame”4. Thus Finnabair’s depravity in her promiscuity and

conniving has been fittingly punished. Medb as well has been

punished by her only daughter’s death. Evidently the positive

role of the maiden that obeys her kinsmen in Indo-European

culture is revealed and supported by Freawaru in Beowulf, but

Derdriu’s and Finnabair’s deviation from the role in contrast

leads to their deaths in each of their respective tales.

The logical continuation of the woman’s role after

maidenhood is the more dynamic role of motherhood, which is to be

compassionate with her children, to be loyal to her husband and

work for peace. A strong example of the mother’s compassion is in

The Shahnemah, when Katayun’s son Esfandyar wants to seek out

battle with the hero Rostam. Katayun to Esfandyar:

4 Carson. 2007. 174

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“Your father’s grown old, and you are young, strong, and capable; all the army looks to you, don’t let this anger of yours put you in harm’s way. There are other

places in the world besides Sistan; there’s no need to be so headstrong, so eager for combat. Don’t make methe most wretched woman both here and in the world

to come; pay attention to my words, they come from a mother’s love”5.

Her speech to her son explicitly shows her working very hard to

convince him to not go off to war. She loves her son and does not

that he is a capable warrior, but she still wants him to be safe.

She sees the conflict he intends to embark on as ultimately just

a fight for him to win glory, but not one that must be fought.

Esfandyar feels that he needs to finally taste blood to prove

himself in the warrior culture and that battle is his only

option. Her praiseworthy show of compassion and pacification

ultimately show what the mother’s role is. In continuation of the

mother’s role, Wealtheow in Beowulf defends her sons’ aptitude in

the face of Hrothgar, her husband’s adoption of Beowulf as a

son. Wealtheow: “I am certain of Hrothulf. He is noble and will

use the young ones well. He will not let you down. Should you die

before him, he will treat our children truly and fairly. He will

honor, I am sure, our two sons, repay them in kind, when he

5 Ferdowsi. 2007. 375

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recollects all the good things we gave him once”6. The adoption

obviously caused her to worry for her sons, in the event that her

husband dies. Anxiously she requests that her nephew and adopted

son should inherit the rhone in that case, in reaction and

opposition to Beowulf. Passively within the system she works to

manipulate greater safety for her sons by emphasizing the kinship

of her nephew, which would strengthen his obligation to her sons

over Beowulf if her were king. Both Wealtheow and Katayun very

well show the shared role of mother in both their connected

cultures. Just like the maiden’s their role is intrinsically

linked to working for peace, but they also both differ that they

already have children and the bulk of their compassion as mothers

obviously goes towards them. In addition neither of them disobey

their husbands wishes in the way they advise, but instead advise

gently but passionately for what they want.

The positive values of the queen are simply an expansion

from the mother’s caring for her children to the queen caring for

her people. The responsibility as wife is continues in both as

queens just like mothers become so through marriage. The queen’s

6 Donoghue and Heaney. 2002. 32

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compassion is shown in this quote from The Shahnemah, in which

Rudabeh, in morning for the hero Rostam despairs. Zal, the king

and her husband says: “Foolish woman, the pain of hunger is far

worse than this sorrow”7. She then starved herself and grew thin

an afford to communicate with Rostam’s spirit. Maybe in rebellion

to her husbands cruelty, this starvation is dangerous and

unreasonable in the face of what she has gone through, at least

in the author’s view. Once she was on the verge of death,

servants fed her and set her to sleep. When she awoke the author

says, her reason had returned. She then told Zal: “What you told

me was wise: the sorrow of death is like a festival to someone

who has neither eaten or slept. He has gone, and we shall follow

after him: we trust in the world creator’s justice. Then she

distributed her secret wealth to the poor, and prayed to God”8.

Ferdowsi writes that reason had returned to her after her she

awoke because in her state of insubordination before that she

almost killed herself. Which is to be expected, being that these

authors all reinforce the value of women’s subordination to their

men. However Rudabeh’s compassion for her people in her charity

7 Ferdowsi. 2007. 4338 Ferdowsi. 2007. 433

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is a trait to be celebrated. Made evident by her invocation of

god and her prayer, as well as Ferdowsi stating that her reason

had returned just before she carried out these actions, showing

wisdom. Ferdowsi lived in Muslim Persia, and these actions in the

culture are positive and would be received as such. Just like her

counterpart Wealtheow and how she acted earlier by protecting her

sons, Rudabeh does the same for her people. She is a good queen

and a good woman, shown by her wisdom, compassion, subservience

and loyalty.

The final role of woman in the Indo-European epic is the

wicked woman. This woman is characterized by utter disregard of

the patriarchy and complete abandon of virtuous female aspects

for scheming, cruelty, violence and sexuality amounting to an

evil depravity. Furthermore the women that fulfill this role best

are queens, because they are naturally allotted the most

independence in society by ruling it. Queen Sudabeh in The

Shahnameh is one such lady. She tries to seduce her stepson

Seyavesh in secret and make a pact with him that he would be with

her after the her husband King Kavus’ death. Already the

seduction and the intention of cheating on the king is the utmost

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disloyalty and is shameless behavior. On top of that she carries

out a plot against Seyavash after his rejection of her to then

destroy him, a plot which is also in complete disregard to the

order and cruel as well. Even after she is found out by the king,

she is relentless:

“When Sudabeh realized that Kavus despised her, she began to plot against Seyavash, nourishing the tree of vengeance with her wiles. One of her intimates

was a witch who was enduring a difficult pregnancy, and Sudabeh gave her gold, persuading her to take a drug that would abort the twins she carried. Sudabeh said

she would tell Kavus the babies were hers, and that she had miscarried because of Seyavash’s evil behavior”9.

She nourishes the tree of vengeance, the complete antithesis of

peace working. The peace working that is so celebrated in

Freawaru’s uniting of the two ruling kingdoms in Beowulf is worked

in reverse by Sudabeh, who instead seeks to rip apart her own

family. In addition, she colludes with her witch consort,

obviously called so because of her evil act of abortion, to frame

Seyavash. This is extremely evil because she orders the death of

the woman’s babies to further her own selfish and evil plans.

This is a complete inversion that the role a mother and queen

should take. She replaces fertility with death and compassion

9 Ferdowsi. 2007. 224

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with ruthlessness. Her public deception in declaring the

stillborns as her own then blaming their deaths on Seyavash

ultimately forces Kavus to put his son through a trial by fire.

During which she prays for his incineration. Over and over again

Sudabeh relentlessly breaks boundaries and acts truly evil.

Medb in The Tain follows the same route of evil in her own

way. Most evident in her manipulation of the hero Fer Diad, to

make him fight Cu Chulainn to simply buy time for her campaign.

Her daughter Finnabair receives Fer Diad, flirting and kissing

him and serves him wine until he is drunk and happy, as Medb

planned. Then Medb offers to give Fer Diad a wealth of warrior’s

equipment, land, residence, unlimited wine, tax exemption, her

gold leaf shaped brooch and: “Finnabair, my daughter and

Ailill’s, as your consort, and the friendship of my own thighs.

And if you so require, the gods will guarantee it.’… [Fer Diad

said], I would rather leave them with you than go out to fight my

own foster-brother”10. She offers him a ludicrous amount of

wealth and privilege in addition to her daughter’s marriage,

which would make him king one day as well as her body. The

10 Carson. 2007. 124

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promiscuity here is shameless just as with Sudabeh above and so

are the depths she is willing to go to get what she wants. She

knows Cu Chulainn and Fer Diad are foster-brothers and will go to

any length to get Fer Diad to renounce his brother and fight him

instead. A huge and unforgivable taboo in patriarchal warrior

culture where warriors are often shown listing their male

relatives to each other before they battle to make sure they

aren’t related. Then, she cunningly deceives Fer Diad saying that

Cu Chulainn said Fer Diad’s downfall would be a lesser triumph of

his. This deception, also characteristic of the wicked woman is

completely morally bankrupt in the values of the society.

Tricked, Fer Diad is insulted by this and swears by the gods that

he would fight Cu Chulainn the next morning. He did and it would

have never happened without Medb’s evil plotting and the violent

war she began. Medb gets what she wants, but even so, the next

morning Medb says to Ailill the king: “The same man who’s bidding

you farewell will not come back to you on his own two feet”11.

Her disregard for Fer Diad and is palpable. Even after promising

her own daughter in marriage to him she feels nothing. Medb is

11 Carson. 2007. 133

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cruel, conniving, brutal, deceptive and unbridled. Repeatedly and

seemingly endlessly she has wanton disregard for morality and

order. She as well as Sudabeh are eventually punished by both

plots for their antagonism to the patriarchal script. In

outrageous fashion Medb is captured at the penultimate battle of

The Tain by Cu Chulainn while she is relieving herself because of

the gush of her menstruation. Her femininity at the battle is a

male warrior culture quandary that is promptly dealt with by

shaming her for her indisposition. The inferences to be made are

easy enough as to why. But then, the episode is topped off by

Fergus, Medb’s close ally, inculcates to the reader and also

snaps at Medb: “When a mare leads a head of horses - all their

energy gets pissed away, following the rump of a skittish

female”12. The Tain only takes place because Medb’s ego makes her

start a war, and ends with Fergus putting down all women as

unable to lead and undeserving of the role of leader. This claim

neatly illustrates the ultimate claim these bards and their

societies make about women. In addition Fergus is especially

disrespectful, insulting and lessening her and all women for her

12 Carson. 2007. 206

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feminine attractiveness, and insulting her and all as fickle and

excitable creatures.

In sum, the bards from these cultures delineated clearly

what women were allowed to do and what they were not allowed to

do; what they were supposed be like and what they were not

supposed to be like. The nice and honorable women were

subservient, peaceable, compassionate and even wise. Their

opposites, the wicked women showed everything women should not be

like, commanding, viscous, libertine schemers. They were punished

to show that deviance would not be tolerated, and should not be

tolerated. Across the epics this theme arrises and the lesson the

bards make is instilled on each reader, boy or girl. Thus the

cultural knowledge was passed on and each generation learned its

lessons and values from the previous generation, perpetuating the

masculine warrior culture that so exemplifies the past.

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Bibliography

Carson, Ciaran. The Tain: A New Translation of the Tain Bo

Cuailnge. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Donoghue, Daniel, and Seamus Heaney. Beowulf: A Verse

Translation: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. New

York: Norton, 2002. Print.

Ferdowsi, Dick Davis, and Azar Nafisi. Shahnameh: The Persian

Book of Kings. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.

Kinsella, Thomas, and Louis Le Brocquy. The Tain: From the Irish

Epic Tain Bo Cualinge. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

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