Florimell's Girdle

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“Ungirt, Unblest” – A Note on Florimell’s Girdle

When Florimell’s girdle reappears in Book V of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, it continues

to metonymically represent female sexuality by being linked to women’s “middles”, “loynes”, and

“wast” (5.3.28). Surprisingly, false Florimell has somehow managed to finally fasten it to herself.

Equally befuddling is the idea that the magical object could have simply slipped off of the real

Florimell in the first place. These seemingly loose ends in the plot can be tied up by the careful

reader who recognizes that Spenser uses the presence of the girdle as a narrative device to explore

the Florimells’ duplicity. Readers would better appreciate how prominently the girdle-as-chastity

metaphor figured into the plot if they were alerted of the biblical roots and contemporaneous uses

of “ungirt unblest” on page 326 of the Dorothy Stephens edition.

An explanatory note is especially necessary since the proverb has fallen out of use since

Book IV was published in 1590. A Google search for relatively newer proverbs, such as “When in

Rome, do as the Romans do,” can result in over four million hits while a search for “Ungirt

Unblest” results in 563 rather repetitive hits. Indeed, a 1628 quatrain by Robert Hayman, available

on the Literature Online (LION) Database, seems to tease the researcher though it reveals that the

elusive proverb is concerned with Christian righteousness:


Vngirt, vnblest: a Prouerbe old, and good,
A true one too, if rightly vnderstood:
Vnblest he shall be euerlastingly,
Who is not girt with Christian verity.

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that “blest” is a version of “blessed”. Likewise, “girt” is

a version of “gird” which means either to wear a girdle or to prepare oneself for action. Notably,

knights readied for action by equipping themselves with a sword suspended from their girdles or

belts. The OED, along with several historical resources indicates that “gird” was often employed

“with more or less direct allusion to biblical passages”. The OED cites Isaiah xi. 5, “righteousness

shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.”
Joseph Hall, a 17th-century English bishop, defines the proverb by likening girding to

praying: “‘Ungirt, unblest,’ was the old word; as not ready till they were girded, so not till they

had prayed.” Indeed, “in the Old Testament language, the girdle is emblematic of reverence,” says

Reverend Charles Wordsworth’s 19th-century survey on Henry IV, Part 1. Shakespearean

character Falstaff evokes the proverb praying that he be unblessed (“I pray God my girdle break”)

if he is guilty of irreverence. The 20th-century historian Richard Onians’s explanation of the

proverb points out that many Europeans held the almost literal belief “that this or that good fortune

could thus be bound about one”. Considering these sources, “ungirt unblest” suggests that being

blessed is analogous to being girded. Poet Robert Aylett is in line with this interpretation when he

praises Spenser saying he used Florimell’s girdle to “shadow” true love and chastity. “Looser

ladies”, who failed to fasten the girdle, “Ungirt unblest, were that had beene unchaste.”

An article by Gordon Tesky, available via the JSTOR Database, disagrees with Aylett

pointing out that false Florimell was “loose” yet girded; Spenser does not use the girdle to shadow

“truth” but rather to facilitate the division of Florimell into two identities and he reintegrates the

girdle with the original Florimell only after the fake has melted. Moreover, Tesky argues, when

Florimell was ungirded, she was “cast forth into adventure”. On the other hand, a work by

Rebecca Yearling, found using the MLA International Bibliography, more convincingly suggests

that the girdle really is a narrative tool to trace chastity. Yearling points out that the false Florimell

is girded only after achieving “basic fidelity” with Braggadochio, but such chastity is still inferior

to the sort demonstrated by Florimell and Marinell. Moreover, the Spenser Encyclopedia’s entries

on “Europa” and the “Fisher” suggest that Florimell’s chastity suffered when she was, like Europa,

ungirded at sea. Florimell was made to face rather than flee male sexuality when the fisher “threw

her downe” and defiles her “garments gay” (3.8.26). Readers ought to know that it is in the

context of this strong correlation between wearing the girdle or not, and experiencing fidelity or

defilement, that Spenser adds in the proverb, “ungirt, unblest”.


Works Cited

Aylett, Robert. The Brides Ornaments: Poetical Essayes upon a Divine Subject. [In The Song of
Songs, Which Was Salomons.]. London: William Stansby, 1621. Spenser and the
Tradition: English Poetry 1579-1830. Virginia Tech University. Web. 8 Mar. 2013.
<http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=33235>.

Crowther, John, Ed. “No Fear Henry IV Part 1.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 8
Mar. 2013.

"girt, V.". OED Online. December 2012. Oxford University Press. 8 March 2013 .

Hall, Joseph. Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments. London:
Printed for William Baynes and Son, 1825. 385. Google EBooks. Oxford University, 16
July 2007. Web. 8 Mar. 2013.

Hamilton, A.C.. Spenser Encyclopaedia. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012. Ebook Library.
Web. 08 Mar. 2013.

Hayman, Robert, Fl. 1628. 81. Ungirt, Vnblest. [from Quodlibets (1628)]. London. Printed by
Elizabeth All-de, for Roger Michell [etc.]. Source: Literature Online (1992).

Onians, Richard Broxton. The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul,
the World, Time, and Fate. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 357. Google EBooks. Web.
8 Mar. 2013.

Spenser, Edmund, and Dorothy Stephens. The Faerie Queene: Books Three and Four.
Indianapolis [u.a.: Hackett, 2006. Print.

Tesky, Gordon. "From Allegory to Dialectic: Imagining Error in Spenser and Milton." PMLA
101.1 (1986): 9-23. JSTOR. Web. 8 Mar. 2013.

Wordsworth, Charles. Shakespeare's Historical Plays: Roman and English. Vol. 2. N.p.: W.
Blackwood and Sons, 1883. 206. Google EBooks. Harvard University, 31 Oct. 2008. Web.
8 Mar. 2013.

Yearling, Rebecca. "Florimell's Girdle: Reconfiguring Chastity In The Faerie Queene." Spenser
Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual20.(2005): 137-144. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 8 Mar. 2013.

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