Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance
by Sarah Roche-Mahdi

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Book Reviews of Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance

Book Review: The Orlando of the 13th century
Summary: 4 Stars

Silence is born a girl to an ambitious gentrified couple who, knowing that a female can't inherit, decide to raise her as a boy. He is packed off to a secluded part of the country and grows to be a superlatively handsome, polite, talented young man. In doing this, Nature is furious, having expended masses of beauty on this youth only to have it wasted on hearty activity and bronzed skin. Nurture, however, is not to be undone and is determined to demonstrate her power over Nature.

The use of these linguistic metaphors, as well as that of Eufemie (Euphemism) make a remarkably modern point about the marginalised position of women in language. These personifications are just some of the amusing features of this story. Throughout his adventures, Silence battles with his gendered conscience, becomes a minstrel, is plotted against by the Queen, becomes a knight, a battle hero, and eventually faces Merlin.

Heldris of Cornwall, despite using plots that would not be unfamiliar to any 1970s essentialist feminist, is no lover of women and meanders onto all kinds of moralising trajectories in the course of the story (this is, as one easily forgets, a mediaeval text, after all). However this tendency manages not to detract from either the wonderfully precocious gender-bending possibilities, nor the sheer fun of the story. Please don't relegate this to the margins of women's studies departments, it's great fun, and deserves far more attention.

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