Mary and Pearl2

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Joseph Leiber

Christine Harker

ENG 342 01

1 December 2009

Mary and Pearl

Finding Biblical parallels in a medieval text is anything but challenging.

The Catholic Church played such a pervasive role in the mind of the masses

that very much of the surviving fiction pays tribute to the state religion in

some form or another. Pearl, written by the Gawain-Poet, along with the

other poems of Cotton Nero A.X, is no exception. A morality-driven dream

vision tale, Pearl’s main narrative thrust is tied to its Christian message, as it

is purveyed to the grief-stricken narrator. In this respect, Pearl is clearly a

Christian work, as its numerous references to Biblical parables and New

Jerusalem imagery make clear. However, a more subtle Biblical parallel is the

Gawain-Poet’s equivocation of Mary and the titular Pearl, the narrator’s

daughter who died at a young age. Though the Gawain-Poet does not draw

direct, concrete correlations between the two (i.e. he is not trying to argue

that the narrator’s daughter is Mary), his use of Mary-imbued imagery forces

us, as readers, to consider this comparison. Through her physical description,



the narrator’s use of pearl imagery, her lofty place in heaven and gender

role-reversal, it is clear that the Gawain-Poet is seeking to elevate his

fictional Pearl through comparisons to Mary.

Parallels between the iconic Virgin and the Gawain-Poet’s titular dream

guide are initially unavoidable, due to the author’s use of a female in a

leading role. The deceased daughter plays the role of guide and mentor to

the male narrator, her grief-stricken father. In this tale, the female plays the

role of leader, while the male character plays the role of follower. As Mary is

known as the “queen of heaven” (Reed, 140), any leading character in a

catholic-oriented medieval text would initially incite accusations of Mary-

imagery. As Pearl is a dream vision story, taking place in the luminal space

between earth and the New Jerusalem, more parallels between the Pearl and

Mary are struck. As author Teresa P. Reed says, “Called the “window” and

“yate of hewen” (Brown 41:24 and 27), Mary is a trope on the boundaries

between heaven and earth, translating things of one sphere into another”

(136). In the same way that Mary serves as a middle-man between Heaven

and Earth in her birthing of Jesus Christ, the Pearl brings celestial truths to

the narrator in a similar luminal space. Pearl is a story of grief, loss and

learning to let go of loved ones. The narrator, suffering the death of his

daughter (the titular Pearl), spends the first several stanzas of the poem

expressing his indescribable woe at her passing. Through this exposition, the

author sets up the father’s reconciliation of his own intense longings with the

weight of reality. Much like the Pearl, Mary works as an intercessor, a figure

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of salvation and conversion, and is both physically and psychologically

powerful (Reed, 137-38). Finally, the author’s use of the inexpressibility

paradox. Dreams are employed as visions of something otherworldly and

fantastic, and the sudden revoking of access to these realms implies their

bare existence. This is compounded in Pearl as the author explicitly

expresses the “inexpressibility” of events that he goes on to describe

literally. As author Ann Chalmers Watts describes, “Such destructive

connections are surprising, because the Pearl poet is a poet celebrated for

his love of what words can make. He is a poet of words’ victory, not of their

failure” (26). Medieval poets surely were masters of the art of playing with

the inexpressible, as the Gawain-Poet expresses “inexpressibility” four times

in Pearl (Watts 26). This is contiguous with medieval Mary traditions, as Reed

explains “On the most basic level, symbols surrounding the Holy Virgin

attempt to name the unnameable. Mary becomes paradoxical in such

attempts: metaphorically she is, for example, at once bride of her son,

mother of her father, and sister and mother to all of humanity” (134).These

surface-level parallels are apparent and unavoidable. However, the Gawain-

Poet’s use of allegory runs deeper and constitutes a more subtle web of

comparison and contrast, from Pearl imagery to physical appearance and

setting.

The maiden’s name is the first of these more subtle elements. Though

it is the title of the poem, the author spends less time explaining the imagery

of the pearl, though it does play a major part in the narrative. The maiden

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marker of divinity and heavenliness. As Reed puts it, In the same way that

the figure of Mary is often inserted in a narrative to represent humanity or

divinity depending on context and narrative necessities, the above passage

[see previous paragraph] sets up a series of substitutions… this passage

metonymically allies the maiden’s body with the lamb, who reigns in the

poem’s New Jerusalem” (150). As a symbol of both Mary and the daughter of

the narrator’s purity and heavenliness, the pearl serves as an unmatched

metaphor.

Not only does the pearl serve as a remarkable signature of the Pearl

Maiden’s similarities to the Virgin Mary, but her physical appearance serves

as a similar marker. For the entirety of his heavenly dream, the narrator

finds himself separated from his daughter. Though their encounter takes

place in a heavenly landscape, with both characters equally present in the

beautiful locale, the narrator cannot approach his daughter. Separating the

two is an uncrossable stream; the daughter’s beauty is visible, but not

approachable. The river, a bejeweled waterway flowing from New Jerusalem

itself, represents the transitional nature between the Virgin Mary and her

Child, Jesus Christ (Field, 7). The daughter’s inapproachable nature serves as

a metaphor for the daughter’s holiness, much like the Virgin Mary. Adding to

this metaphor is the Pearl Maiden’s excessive beauty and the elaborateness

of her garb. Were it not for her overflowing beauty and its inapproachability,

the strength of the Pearl Maiden’s correlation with the Virgin Mary would be

significantly weakened.

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The Pearl-Maiden is not just another soul welcomed into heaven

following her death. Rather, the narrator derives a great deal of confusion

and awe at his discovery that she has been elevated to a lofty position in her

new home. In stanza VII of Pearl, the Pearl Maiden states that “A blysful lyf

thou says I lede;/ Thou woldes knaw therof the stage./ Thow wost wel when

thy perle con schede/ I was ful yong and tender of age./ Bot my Lorde the

Lombe thurgh Hys godhead,/ He toke myself to Hys Maryage,/ Corunde me

queen in blysse to brede/… Hys prese, Hys prys, and Hys parage/ Is rote and

grounde of alle my blysse” (Dunn, 352). The Pearl Maiden has been crowned

Queen of Heaven, married to the Lamb himself. She assumes, therefore, the

highest rank that a female could take in heaven, alongside Jesus Christ

himself. This in and of itself should evoke images of the Holy Virgin’s

relationship to Jesus, but a further investigation yields a yet stronger tie

between the two. Reed explains the medieval tradition regarding Mary’s rank

and place in heaven as follows “Such comprehensively contradictory

figuration continues as Mary becomes Queen of Heaven. In section eight of

Pearl, the maiden attempts to explain to the narrator her relation as a queen

of heaven to Mary, whom the narrator understands to be the Queen (line

432)” (140).

The Pearl Maiden is not on the Queen of New Jerusalem, but is also

connected to it physically. Reed outlines the place of the pearl in the

landscape of the narrator’s dream in New Jerusalem: “The pearl image next

appears as a part of this landscape. As the narrator walks, gazing at the

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‘crystal klyffez so cler of kynde’ – ‘crystal cliffs so naturally clear’… he hears

the crunching of gravel under his feet. He looks down to find that it consists

of ‘precious perlez of oryente’” (143-4). This is not a simple recycling of

visual motif on the Gawain-Poet’s part. Rather, it is an artful connection

between city and body, a tie that is central to the psychological and physical

construction of both the individual and the city itself. As the Queen of New

Jerusalem, the Pearl Maiden’s physical appearance must be more tightly tied

to the city than an ordinary citizen, as Sarah Stanbury explains “The

Vitruvian or ‘classical notion of embodiment,’ as Anthony Vidler calls it, looks

to the human body as ‘the authoritative foundation for architecture,’ finding

in the human prototype origins for architectural composition, the form that

shapes matter” (32). Through her tie, through pearl imagery, to the jeweled

river, the Pearl Maiden is subsequently tied to the Holy City, and therefore

God himself.

The Gawain-Poet’s final use of Holy Virgin imagery is perhaps his most

unique. It is distinctly notable that Pearl features no more than two

characters: the Pearl Maiden and her father the narrator. This adheres with

the two figures of the Holy Virgin: Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. However,

in Pearl, the two characters take on distinctly opposite roles. In the Passion

of the Christ, Mary is a figure of weeping and sorrow, whereas the narrator

takes on these tropes in the Gawain-Poet’s work. Mary’s role in Christ’s death

was one of weeping and sorrow, much like the narrator cannot overcome his

grief at his daughter’s passing. The narrator takes on features distinctly

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resembling those of the Holy Virgin while still maintaining opposite genders.

Jesus, on the other hand, bore themes of perfection and ascension in his

death, going from perfection and innocence on the earth to royalty in

heaven. In the same way, the Pearl Maiden perishes at an early age, before

she becomes susceptible to sin and disobedience. She is pure before her

death, just as Christ was pure, and, as a result of her purity, achieves a high

place in heaven. The narrator himself is stunned and confused and her high

rank, citing her lack of great deeds on earth as his reasoning. However, he

does not understand that heavenly stature is achieved through purity rather

than deeds. The Gawain-Poet sidesteps tradition Holy Virgin imagery, and

instead achieves a unique and effective tie between the Pearl Maiden and

the Virgin Mary.

Much of Pearl’s use of Biblical imagery can be lost through focus on

metaphor logic (Reed, 134). The Gawain-Poet does not draw similarities

between Mary and the Pearl-Maiden with traditional use of metaphor, but

rather artfully weaves these parallels into a deeper reading of his work. The

connection in Pearl is a fluid one, as Reed explains: “Yet, we can also

recognize that there is another logic at work in Pearl, a metonymic logic,

which tends to pluralize the heave of the poem, connecting it fluidly to

human desires and bodies” (135). This work cannot be fully understood

without realizing its use of metonymy, rather than traditional boundaries

created by metaphor-logic.

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Works Cited

Brown, Peter. “On the Borders of Middle English Dream Visions.” Reading

Dreams. Ed. Peter

Brown. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 22-50. Print.

Gunn, Susa. “Pearl: Medieval Dream Vision And Modern Near-Death Experience.” Journal of Religion &

Psychical Research. (1995): 132-141.

Kruger, Steven. “Medical and Moral Authority in the Late Medieval Dream.”

Reading Dreams.

Ed. Peter Brown. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 51-83. Print.

Oseberg, Richard H. “Pearl: Overview.” Reference Guide to English

Literature. Ed. D. L.

Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press, 1991.

Reed, Teresa P. “Mary, the Maiden, and Metonymy in ‘Pearl.’” South Atlantic

Review (2000):

134-162.

Stanbury, Sarah. “The Body and the City in Pearl.” Representations (1994): 30-47.

Watts , Ann Chalmers. “Pearl, Inexpressibility, and Poems of Human Loss.”

PMLA (1984):

26-40.

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Works Cited

Field http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3728760.pdf

Hamilton http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/460115.pdf

Stanbury http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2928609.pdf

Schofield http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/456801.pdf

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http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3728760.pdf








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