Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

to procreate but the accepted manifestation of sexuality is dependentupon anatomical sex.Sexuality in medieval culture was gendered, therefore acceptableforms of sex in literature was gendered as well. More often thannot, the object of the sexual action, the character being actedupon is female, while the subject, the character doing the act, ismale (Karras 3). Simply put, the capability of agency is basedupon gender. Women’s sexuality was threatening because women,operating as the aggressors, became the subjects of the sexualaction. This was considered to be unnatural and therefore ‘other’and scary. Interestingly, societal gender is established for thefemale by juxtaposing women’s natures with that of men’s (Robin166). “Querelle des femmes,” a debate from the Renaissance period,discussed the natures of the genders (Robin 167). Gender nature,in a text, is established by a stock of stereotypical characters. Thiswas a homogenization of historical women that explained giftedand intelligent women as men trapped in women’s bodies (Robin167). For the female in question to act outside of society’s acceptedgender roles create fear. Grendel’s Mother by becoming an avengerand seeking revenge for the death of her son, acts as a male wouldin the Anglo-Saxon familial revenge system causing medieval readersto question her character (Beowulf 1257).Jeffery Jerome Cohen, in “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”, saysthat the whole of society is monstrous, meaning that monsters do notand cannot exist without the ‘us’, and the ‘us’ cannot exist withoutthe ‘them’ (Cohen 4). The monster is created by the cumulative bodyof culture as a way to explain and rationalize events uncontrolledby humanity (Cohen 4). Since culture defines and is defined by the‘other’, “the monsters body is both corporal and incorporeal; itsthreat is its propensity to shift” (Cohen 5). The monster is neverdead. It can never die because the fears of the cumulative culturealways shift. There continuously is the introduction of a new idea,anna iuppa 105