THE FLEECE AS BLONDE HAIR
The idea that the Golden Fleece represented blonde hair appears to be another unfortunate result of Philip the Good's Order of the Golden Fleece and the scurrilous legend that grew up around it after its founding in 1429 (Julian) or 1430 (Gregorian).
Legend says that Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, having heard that the lords of his court had laughed at the vivid colour of the hair of a beautiful lady of Bruges, who was highly placed in the princely favour, decided to silence the critics by making a lock of this lady's hair the insignia of the highest honorary distinction of his State, and the most coveted order of the continent of Europe.
Source: Charles Terlinden, “The Order of the Golden Fleece,” The Edinburgh Review, October 1920, 307.
Source: Charles Terlinden, “The Order of the Golden Fleece,” The Edinburgh Review, October 1920, 307.
The metaphorical linkage between the Golden Fleece and the locks of blonde women did not go unnoticed by poets.
The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare
c. 1596-1598
Bassiano:
In Belmont is a lady richly left;
And she is fair, and, fairer than that word,
Of wondrous virtues: sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages:
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia:
Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece;
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
O my Antonio, had I but the means
To hold a rival place with one of them,
I have a mind presages me such thrift,
That I should questionless be fortunate!
(Act 1, scene 1)
Shakespeare
c. 1596-1598
Bassiano:
In Belmont is a lady richly left;
And she is fair, and, fairer than that word,
Of wondrous virtues: sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages:
Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia:
Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece;
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
O my Antonio, had I but the means
To hold a rival place with one of them,
I have a mind presages me such thrift,
That I should questionless be fortunate!
(Act 1, scene 1)
Nineteenth and twentieth century theorists, including psychoanalysts following Sigmund Freud, made the linkage between blonde hair and the Golden Fleece explicit, casting the Fleece not as blonde locks on the head but as blonde pubic hair.
Sex and Sex Worship
O. A. Wall
1920
The story of Jason, dating back before the siege of Troy, is explained as a sun-myth. The sun was a ram with a golden fleece, who flies through the air from the land of the rising to the land of the setting sun; here the ram is sacrificed and his fleece is spread out (the golden glory of the sunset) on a tree (the sky of night with its golden stars) where it is captured by Jason. Jason sailed in the ship "Argo;" wherefore Jason was called an argonaut. The name suggests the Indian "argha" or sacred yoni shaped vessels, and some writers have suggested that the "golden fleece" referred to the pubic hair.
Source: O. A. Wall, Sex and Sex Worship (Phallic Worship) (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby & Co., 1920), 549-550.
O. A. Wall
1920
The story of Jason, dating back before the siege of Troy, is explained as a sun-myth. The sun was a ram with a golden fleece, who flies through the air from the land of the rising to the land of the setting sun; here the ram is sacrificed and his fleece is spread out (the golden glory of the sunset) on a tree (the sky of night with its golden stars) where it is captured by Jason. Jason sailed in the ship "Argo;" wherefore Jason was called an argonaut. The name suggests the Indian "argha" or sacred yoni shaped vessels, and some writers have suggested that the "golden fleece" referred to the pubic hair.
Source: O. A. Wall, Sex and Sex Worship (Phallic Worship) (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby & Co., 1920), 549-550.
The Mother as Source of Power
Leon Balter
1969
One might speculate that the fleece represents [...] the anatomical region of the mother most attractive to the oedipal boy: the vulva with its pubic hair.
Source: Leon Balter, “The Mother as Source of Power: Three Greek Myths,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 38 (1969): 226.
Leon Balter
1969
One might speculate that the fleece represents [...] the anatomical region of the mother most attractive to the oedipal boy: the vulva with its pubic hair.
Source: Leon Balter, “The Mother as Source of Power: Three Greek Myths,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 38 (1969): 226.
Contemporary Views
The symbolic value of the Fleece as women's pubic hair has led to the adoption of this view by feminist authors and scholars.
In a similar gesture, [French feminist theorist Monique] Wittig aggressively asserts parallels between women's pubic hair and the Golden Fleece as sacred mythic object.
Source: Kathleen L. Komar, "Feminist Curves in Contemporary Living Space," in Margaret R. Higonnet and Joan Templeton (eds.), Reconfigured Spheres: Feminist Explorations of Literary Space (University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 97.
[British novelist Michèle] Roberts makes a similar comparison in the short story 'Hypsipyle to Jason', when she presents the golden fleece as Hypsipyle's golden pubic hair.
Source: Sarah Falcus, Michèle Roberts: Myths, Mothers and Memories (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 116.
Source: Sarah Falcus, Michèle Roberts: Myths, Mothers and Memories (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 116.
