Hindrance or Helpmate: Speaking Woman as Guide in the Divine Comedy

I.                   Introduction: Hindrance, Helpmate, and the Incarnation

            In the middle of the journey in Purgatory, which is the middle realm of the Divine Comedy, Dante has a dream about a Siren, whose ugly appearance turns desirable in Dante’s imagination.  Dante’s imagination becomes so wayward that “a saintly lady” (Purgatorio   XIX.26)[1] appears before the misdirected poet and calls upon Virgil to unmask the Siren’s false beauty, thus saving Dante from the Siren and himself.  It is noteworthy that this little drama of desire, temptation, and salvation between the Siren, Dante, and the woman occurs in Purgatory, the spiritual image of the middle realm that is human life on earth.  As Robert Hollander puts it, “Such schematic triangulation of desire asks the reader to acknowledge that love, in its various permutations, may be directed toward worthy or unworthy objects” (77).  In the dream of the Siren, both sides of a desire that can lead either unto temptation or deliverance, are in action: One is the discourse of an unworthy guide – the Siren – towards an unworthy object – “inviting them to joy” (XIX.21).  The other is the discourse of a worthy guide – the unnamed lady – towards a worthy object – truth.  The middle placement of the Siren in the journey shows how Dante was in the beginning of his journey, lost in the dark wood of his error, and how far he has come along in his journey to Paradise.  The drama of the two speaking guides – one as hindrance and temptress, the other as helpmate and savior -- informs the thematic structure of the poem as a whole.   Thus, women who speak in the poem display their respective positions as either hindrances or helpmates of those they have guided and those – like Dante the pilgrim – they are guiding.  Dante the composer makes this epic comedy of man’s journey – his fall through the guidance of tempters and his salvation through the guidance of saviors – obvious by means of a division of the poem itself: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

What ultimately authorizes the validity of guidance through such women as the Siren or the unnamed lady,[2] however, is the sacramental, or incarnate, worldview.  Real women can become agents and mediators of evil or of good, can possess damning or salvific qualities for others, because of the precedence of Eve and Mary.  Eve is created to be Adam’s “suitable partner” (Gen.2.18) but instead, persuaded by the serpent, leads him to his fall (Gen.3.6).  Mary becomes the mother of God and therefore an analogue of Christ’s relationship with God the Father on behalf of humanity, as seen in the Wedding at Cana (John 2.3-11), in which Mary speaks to Jesus on behalf of the wedding guests.  As seen in the speaking women in the poem, Dante makes clear that this fall and / or salvation via the guidance of others are not isolated, past events but are re-enacted, re-incarnated, through one’s own personal experience -- in this case, in the experiences of Dante himself.

II.                Speaking Women in Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso

In the beginning of this poem, Mary  -- “A gracious lady” (Inferno II.94) -- initiates the process of Dante’s salvation because, as Louise Cowan states, “the chief feature that illumines the world [of epic]… is the affinity of the feminine with the earth and the power of the feminine to affect the course of action” (17).  But Dante is so deep into his dark wood of misplaced love, that is, his sin, that he is too spiritually distant for Mary to enact an immediate cause to Dante’s re-education.  Aware of this distance, Mary calls upon Lucia, who is a member of the Communion of Saints (II.97).  Lucia, aware that Dante needs a still closer guide, calls upon Beatrice because she is “the one whose love was such / it made him [Dante] leave the vulgar crowd”(II.104-05).  Beatrice, however, knows that Dante has lost sight of her; he has fallen in with his Siren, so to speak.  So Beatrice calls upon the one guide who is closest to Dante’s heart as a poet: Virgil.  He becomes the agent for Mary, Lucia, and Beatrice, the “three… gracious ladies / who are blessed”  (II.124-25) such that the reader – and Dante the pilgrim – only hear their speech through the mouth of Virgil, a pagan and a man.  Thus Virgil, as a stable and rational agent acting on behalf of a woman, foreshadows the Siren dream later in Dante’s journey.

In the Inferno proper, the women residing there are damned and have led others to damnation, incarnating the siren seen later in the poem. This notion of woman-as-siren is, as Thomas Bergin puts it, “at the farthest remove from idealization, unless it be indeed a kind of negative idealization of its own.  It looks symbolically to the wickedness of Eve rather than to the redemptive power of Mary” (67).  Only three feminine voices are heard in this dark place: the first is the notable exchange of Francesca in the second circle of the lustful (V.88), the second are the Furies before the gate of Dis (IX.7), and the third is the brief, carnal response of Thais, as recounted Virgil, in the bolgia of the flatters in the eighth circle of the fraudulent (XVIII.133).

In Francesca, the road to damnation is subtle, hidden in poetry and romance.  Renato Poggioli characterizes Francesca’s speech as having “evoked a vision of romantic love through both empathy and sympathy, through the alluring mirror of both sentiment and art” (63).  Similarly, Franco Masciandaro describes Francesca and Paolo’s act of adultery “as the desire to create their own paradise, their myth of a ‘second innocence’” (62).  Both critics agree that behind this beautiful veneer, however, is idolatry and destruction:  “It was the worship of passion, the ideology of love, its idolatry and cult, which had hidden from their consciences the danger of damnation and the ugliness of sin,” asserts Poggioli (65), because, as Masciandaro states, “[their] love… is directed away from the community and God.  True love, Dante suggests, is social” (83).  The role of Francesca as the guide who has led herself and her lover to damnation is displayed in Francesca and Paolo’s actions in Hell while Dante listens. She speaks, and, as Bergin states, “her story is about herself and her tragic love” (84), which culminates with, as Poggioli says, “a cry of passion, where pride mingles with despair” (63): “this one (who shall never leave my side)” (V.135).  Paolo, however, does not speak but weeps, alone and silent in his sorrow.

            In the Furies, the road to damnation is revealed, similar to what the Siren shows after Virgil has ripped open her beautiful veneer, revealing a stinking belly.  The Furies are such a hindrance for Dante that to look at what they offer – Medusa’s head – will freeze him in his sin, i.e., literally harden his heart.  Fallen human nature, however, is so disordered that man will habituate himself to evil and call it good.  This disordered nature is why Virgil, not trusting Dante to look away by himself, physically turns him around and,  “did not trust my hands to hide my eyes / but placed his own on mine” (IX. 58-60).  Taking the Furies and the Siren scenes together, one sees that fallen man is fascinated with evil and desires to imagine and experience evil (sin in thought and deed) such that he creates a fiction of ultimate good around evil.  “This desire is not creative but destructive,” Masciandaro explains, “not merely because it stems from fiction – that which the [sinners] have created within themselves – but because this fiction does not point to the vastness beyond it, to the totally other of the transcendent” (100).  The physical, external act of Virgil, an analogue of the spiritual, external act of grace, forces Dante to move beyond himself, to move toward a community, culminating in God.  Dante’s acceptance of Virgil’s action before the Furies becomes a sign of Dante’s preparedness for that community – in the Purgatorio and Paradiso.

            Thus, by the time Dante hears the harlot Thais flattering one of her lovers in a vulgar fashion, he can see her as a Francesca whose stinking belly is already open and, therefore, cannot elicit his sympathy or curiosity.  After all, it is Virgil, not Dante, who points out her excrement immersed body and then narrates Thais' flattery, "Very?  Nay, incredibly so!” (XVIII.135).  Virgil mediates her words, allowing the full brunt of her sin -- a flattery in service of her own lust -- to appear without the rationalizing obstruction of the sinner.  Dante accepts this information without comment, which is in sharp contrast to his reaction to Francesca (sympathy) and the Furies (fearful curiosity).  Similar to the episode of the Furies, Dante accepts Virgil's action, but this time he is able to see evil and not become ensnared in it, which is another sign of Dante's preparedness for the Purgatorio and Paradiso.

            Purgatorio contains the greatest number of speaking women in all of the Divine Comedy.  La Pia in Canto V, Lucia in Canto IX, Sapia in XIII, the visions of meekness in Canto XV (in which Mary and Pisistratus' wife speak), and the vision of the victims of the wrathful in Canto XVII (in which Amata speaks) occur before the pivotal dream of the Siren.  All of these speaking women (except for Lucia, who carries Dante and speaks to Virgil, and Pisistratus' wife, whose husband displays calm before her righteous indignation) are guides of the endurance of suffering, of the passive reception of grace in order to withstand adversity.  It is notable that Dante here is more acted upon than active: Lucia carries him through the gate of Purgatory (IX.55-57), and Virgil exposes the Siren’s inherent ugliness before Dante’s dreaming eyes (XIX.31-33).

            After the dream of the Siren, the speaking women exhibit the active Christian life.   Leah speaks in the dream of Leah and Rachel in Canto XXVII , contrasting her active life to her sister’s contemplative life.  Matelda, caretaker of Eden, begins by singing in Canto XXVIII and is active to the end of the canticle in order to prepare Dante for Paradise.  Beatrice begins speaking in Canto XXX  and becomes Dante’s guide to mysteries beyond the scope of Virgil’s ken.  The four Cardinal Virtues, incarnate as the four handmaidens to Beatrice, greet Dante in Canto XXXI after his baptism and become his guides to Beatrice (XXXI.108-38).  The three Theological Virtues, incarnate as three other handmaidens, sing to Beatrice, beseeching her, “Turn, Beatrice, your sacred eyes / …and look upon your faithful one” (XXXI.133-34).  Caretaking, singing, and interceding, these women guide Dante towards God, not only through words but also through deed.  It is apt that the union of word and deed, displayed in the temporal realm of Purgatorio becomes the figure of the union of word and deed in the Paradiso such that earthly word and deed gives way before the radical union of Divine Word and Existence for which there are no earthly words to describe it.

            The speaking women in the Paradiso are few in number because Dante is so spiritually close to God that mediation by others, other than Christ himself, becomes unnecessary.  Before Dante’s vision of the second Person in the Trinity, he has Beatrice as guide, reflecting God in her eyes for Dante to see and reflecting God’s wisdom in her discourse for Dante to understand.  This guidance continues until Dante’s spiritual sight becomes strong enough for the vision of Mary, the originator of his journey, and of God, his final cause.  Before then, the two speaking women Dante encounters in his journey among the levels of heaven are Piccarda in Canto III and Cunizza in Canto IX.  The difference between the two could not be greater: Piccarda was a nun, forced to leave her vows, while Cunizza was a promiscuous woman of many marriages.  The paradox is that Piccarda is in a “lower” level of Paradise while Cunizza is in a “higher” level.  One can perhaps understand why Piccarda is where she is; she allowed her “veil over her heart” to be loosed (III.117).  But Cunizza, a woman given unto Eros while alive, seems less likely to be in heaven than, say, Francesca. Upon comparing her speech with Francesca’s speech, however, one sees the difference: Francesca was selfish and led her lover not to God but to damnation.  In contrast, Cunizza, as Bergin points out, “is able to give Dante an account of things to happen in her native region…. She is able to feel strong indignation for social and political injustices which do not affect her personally. ….A kind of altruism she has, a kind of generosity of temperament” (85).  Of course, Francesca gives her solipsistic speech because she died unrepentant while Cunizza, whose speech displays "a kind of generosity of temperament" died repentant.  Still, in being the vessel of active Love, perhaps Cunizza was spiritually generous (if not morally conventional) to her lovers and her husbands.  And her unconventionality perhaps reminds the reader of another vessel of active Love – Mary – who, after all, was the mother of a son whose father was not her legal husband.

In the Empyrean, where language begins to fail to describe one's vision, Mary’s response to Dante and St. Bernard’s prayer is not with the convention of words.  Instead, she responds with her own body, that is, her eyes: “Those eyes so loved and revered by God, / now fixed on him who prayed, made clear to us / how precious true devotion is to her; / then she looked into the Eternal Light” (XXXIII.40-43).  Mary shows the way, and Dante, guided by her, finally sees God unmediated and feels what she feels, knows what she knows: “At this point power failed high fantasy / but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning, / I felt my will and my desire impelled / by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (XXXIII.142-45).  In this radical vision, divinity and humanity are one, in the image of the Incarnation, in the conformity of Dante's humanity to God's divine love.

III. Conclusion: Poet as Guide, in the Image of the Incarnation

Thus, in the Divine Comedy, the speaking women guide Dante the pilgrim, giving him examples of bad guides, as seen in the Inferno, and examples of good guides, as seen in the Purgatorio and Paradiso. The foundation of guidance to damnation or salvation is the sacramental, or incarnate, world view such that real persons can become agents and mediators of evil or of good, can possess damning or salvific qualities for others, because of the precedence of Eve, who became the spokesperson of the serpent and Mary, who became the vessel of God and God’s grace.  But the vessel who carries this grace and serves as guide to others has a dignity, an integrity made valid by the Incarnation such that man, made in the image of God, also becomes a God-bearing participant in the image of the Incarnation.  By the end of his journey, Dante has become transcribed by love such that he is both transcript and transcriber of God's divine love.  As Warren Ginsberg states:

Dante’s answer equates his identity as a poet with his existence as a human being.

I’ mi son un che, quando

Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo

Ch’e’ ditta dentro vo significando

[I am one who, when Love inspires me, takes note, and in the manner he dictates within goes signifying.][3]

….Dante is not a sign but an incarnation of love. ….When Love dictates within, the word is made incarnate, and Dante himself becomes its aesthetic expression. (78, 90)

In a sense, then, Dante’s journey has been an education in how to be a good guide, a good analogue of the Incarnation.  For Dante, this means how to be a good poet in order to guide his readers with the image of his Incarnation, The Divine Comedy.  As Mark Musa puts it, “[The poem] tells how God through the agency of Beatrice drew the poet to salvation; and the moral that Dante wishes his reader to keep in mind is that what God has done for one man he will do for every man, if every man is willing to make this journey” (xxxi).  Beatrice, through the agency of the spoken word, is to Dante as Dante, through the agency of written word, is to his readers.  This analogy describes the sacramental vision and the mission of Dante the poet: to guide others to God.  Thus Dante goes signifying with the faith, hope, and love that his readers will go signifying for others.

Notes