The Dream of the Fair Aude

The age of a boy ago, I was given the assignment, in a college class studying the Chanson de Roland, of imagining what went through 'the Fair Aude's' mind when she heard the news of her fiance Roland's death, and sank down into a swoon.  Translated, it went something like this:

[messenger]:  "Roland is dead, Madame."

Aude:  "And Olivier, my brother?"

[messenger]: "Alas, Madame, dead too."

Aude:  "And shall Roland die--and my brother Olivier!--and I yet live?  Alas!"  For the first time in my life I belong to no one!  I must think..."Alas! And I yet live?"  I close my eyes--so.  Incline my head--thus.  They think I've fainted...And I have time to think.  Ah, the world which concerns itself so little with women somehow never imagines that, by depriving us of any particular right to live,  it exempts us from obligatory death.  Poor Roland!  So beautiful in his shining armor--and up close, so pitifully unclean!  Really he didn't love me so much as he loved my brother, in me....That English monk whom the Emperor brought over to teach us Latin, in teaching me how to read, he taught me to know myself.  Things weren't always thus..In the time of Alexander and of Caesar, women often lived for themselves.  Alone, I might travel as far as Constantinople..They know the language of the Romans there.  Who knows but that I shall find a life for myself as well.  Very well then, I shall "waken."  "And yet I live!"

My professor, a very nice, intelligent, and, as it happens, a very beautiful woman, was enormously impressed.  She wrote things on my paper like "Quel bel argument!  Cela montre une érudition impressionante, de la part de la belle Aude, et de son créateur.  On dit, 'Femme instruite, femme dangéreuse'!"  She also praised its exemplary Feminism.  Which surprised and perplexed me.  Somehow I doubted that my having turned the Fair Aude into Margaret Fuller would find favor with feminists.   And I doubt it today even more.