Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations and Realities by Hollie L. S. Morgan (review)

The cover image of Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England features an illuminated initial A, the beginning of the word adulterium, in which the apparently disembodied heads of two adulterers emerge eccentrically from the corner of a square, geometrically patterned quilt, propped on a single pillow. The implication of the image is that the couple are violating proper order simply by occupying the bed. This book aims to shed light on the idea of the bed and chamber in late medieval England, and part of its achievement is to show that medieval interactions with beds and chambers—real, imaginary, and metaphorical—are freighted with more complex meanings than modern scholars have noticed.

The approach of the book is interdisciplinary: it has a great deal to say about Middle English romance, but ranges widely, analyzing sources including didactic texts, wills, court documents, manuscript illustrations, and even surviving beds. The titles for the chapters are taken from a didactic poem, “Arise Early,” found in multiple manuscripts, early prints, and painted on a chamber wall. This approach feels strained at times: Chapter 1, “Fyrst Arysse Erly,” which mostly explores the meaning of the terms chamber and bed, ends with a disconnected discussion of what it means to get up early. The next four chapters deal with different kinds of activity that take place in bedrooms: communication with God in Chapter 2; communication between people in Chapter 3; recreation of various kinds in Chapter 4; and sex in Chapter 5. There is relatively little discussion of sleep; instead, Chapter 6 is devoted to exploring chambers as female spaces, including as places for childbirth and healing.

Morgan’s careful description of the various parts of medieval beds in Chapter 1 taught me a great deal. She explains, for example, that medieval blankets always come in pairs, and that people slept in a sandwich of sheets surrounded by nether blankets and top blankets. The bedstead or frame seems to have been almost beneath medieval attention, which was instead focussed on the “silour” or canopy above and the coverlet, often richly decorated. Morgan shows that these latter items often featured devotional images. These might have assisted with personal religious practices in the chamber: Chapter 2 shows that the chamber was an important space for personal piety. They were also bequeathed to churches to be hung there or (in a postmedieval example later in the chapter) displayed on the street during festivals.

The analysis of how beds symbolize marriage, meaning that adultery is conceptualized as a violation of the bed, is a highlight of Chapter 5. As well as analyzing the cover image mentioned above, Morgan discusses a range of legal cases and literary scenes: her readings of Sir Tristrem and Octavian are particularly compelling. The use of beds in proxy marriages, where a stand-in for one party got into bed with the other party and, simply by doing so, was legally held to have consummated the marriage, is another interesting manifestation of this symbolic meaning of the bed.

In Chapter 6, Morgan persuasively demonstrates, partly through an analysis of semantic relationships, that chambers are women’s spaces. The idea of the birthing chamber as a space where female power is exercised is familiar, as is, to a lesser extent, that of women as healers. But these observations are also brought to bear on romance plots that may have been generated by male anxiety about this female power: of men trapped in chambers by their female healers and babies stolen from their natal homes. She argues that women in romance often have special physical power within their chambers and are better able to fight off their antagonists there.

Women also have much greater freedom to speak in the chamber, as Morgan shows in Chapter 3—in bed with their husbands, women speak at greater length...