The Faerie Queene as a Moral Allegory

An allegory is a fable or story in which under imaginary persons or things is shadowed some real
action or instructive moral or it may be defined as a narrative in prose or verse in which the
characters, events and settings represent abstract qualities; or, it is somewhere very shortly
defined by Plutarch, it is that ‘in which one thing is related and another thing is understood’.
“The Faerie Queene” is a historical, political and moral and spiritual allegory. Underlying the
fairy tale of the first book, there is a deep underlying moral and spiritual allegory. For example,
the Red Cross Knight stands for Holiness or piety or true religion. Una stands for Truth. The
Dragon stands for atheism and heresy. True religion and truth always remain united. But
Holiness cannot remain pure. The Red Cross Knight has to encounter and overpower the serpent
monster of Error in its den. Truth and Holiness will always overpower Error. This is the first
truth of moral and spiritual life.

The norm of Holiness is represented by the Red Crosse Knight, when fully disciplined; by Dame
Caelia, who presides over the house of holiness; by her daughters, Fidelia, Speranza, and
Clarissa; by Prince Arthur, who figures in the successive books as the resplendent apotheosis of
all virtues, the Magnificence, or perhaps better, the High-mindedness of Aristotle, which
Spenser, following his master, calls the perfection of all the other virtues. The opposite of
Holiness is represented by such characters as Archimago (Hypocrisy), Lucifera and Orgoglio
(Material and Spiritual Pride), Sansfoy (Faithlessness), Sansloy (Lawlessness), Sansjoy
(Joylessness) and the like.

In the opening stanzas the hero appears a gentle knight, of a pleasing but grave countenance, and
fearless withal. "Yet nothing did he dread" is a just tribute to his moral courage, for however
fierce the enemies who subsequently assault him, he never shows fear. At his side is Una, or
Christian Truth, seated upon an ass, the symbol of humility, and attended by a lamb, the symbol
of purity and innocence. Her face is heavily veiled, and the knight has never seen beneath this
veil, for he does not behold Truth in the fulness of its beauty until he has long committed himself
to its service.

On first acquaintance Una is a rather disappointing character. Frail and dependent, she seems a
sorry representative of Truth, which we would fain conceive as regal, self-sufficient, serenely
enthroned in her own cloudless light, far removed from all passion and turmoil, remotely
accessible alone, and revealing herself only now and again to a favored mortal, and then only in
part. Spenser, we say, here displays his limitations, here shows how slender his grasp upon the
best classical or Christian thought. Una, on the other hand, is a profoundly social conception, and
a profoundly Christian and compassionate one.

In the first adventure of the Red Crosse Knight, the conflict with Error in the labyrinthine wood,
a wood so dense that heaven's light nor any star can pierce, as in the Inferno a symbol of
worldliness, the knight is victorious. Protected by the shield of faith and wielding the sword of
the spirit, he is clearly the superior of his adversary. Having slain the monster, the knight then
learns that falsehood is ultimately self-destructive, for the filthy brood of Error feed upon their
fallen mother only to swell and burst.Blinded with rage, and guided by will rather than by
reason, the Red Crosse Knight flees from the hermitage of Archimago. Among all unfavourable
conditions such is the instinctive loyalty of his nature that the knight at once recognizes
Faithlessness as an enemy and opposes it victoriously.

No sooner has the knight overcome faithlessness than he falls under the spell of Duessa, or Faire
Falsehood, who here masquerades as Faith (Fidessa). Indeed, so anxious is he to be true to his
knightly vows and to succor the distressed, that he even pursues after her, betrayed by his own
naive sincerity. Thus may the disheartened Christian overcome the temptation to adopt the frank
negation of faith as his philosophy, only to be caught by an erroneous positive philosophy which
has speciously insinuated itself into his thinking.

Canto Three, through the allegory of Una and the Lion, shows how a glimpse of the Truth of
Christianity can soften and win the fiercest nature, and how the native goodness and primi tive
courage of untutored man can serve the cause of Christ, opposing blind superstition (Corceca),
and attacking those carnal and rapacious forces which feign allegiance to the Church but
undermine it from within.Yet because the simple children of the faith, typified by the Lion, are
undisciplined and uninstructed, and governed primarily by their emotions rather than by reason,
they often succomb to the spirit of lawlessness, even after they have made a beginning in the
Christian life. The Lion thus presents, under a fresh aspect, insufficiency of faith, but an
insufficiency grounded in undisciplined emotion rather than in doubt. Professor H. S. V. Jones
makes the very happy suggestion that the Lion may stand for the Law of Nature, a sug gestion
with very rich possibilities.

With Canto Four the narrative returns to the Red Crosse Knight who, in the company of Duessa,
comes upon the house of Pride, where Lucifera and her councillors, the six other deadly sins, are
taking their pleasure, the centre of a great throng of vain worshippers. Immune from all the six
deadly sins, but as pride is the sin which most besets a man of spirit and of lordly nature, the hero
is here subjected to the temptations of carnal pride, as in a later venture, to the much more severe
temptation of spiritual pride. Although the knight makes humble obeisance before the throne of
Lucifera, he does not feel himself one with the gay fickle crowd which surround her, and
intuitively holds himself aloof:

Yet the stout Faery mongst the middest crowd

Thought all their glorie vaine in Knightly vow,

And that great Princesse too exceeding prowd,

That to strange Knight no better countenance allowd.

With Canto Six the narrative returns to Una, who has been led into a wild forest by Sansloy. In
the breast of Sansloy anger has given place to lust, and he first tries to win fair Una by guile and,
when this fails, to overcome her by force. In her dire extremity she cries aloud for help and
attracts thereby

A rude, mishapen, monstrous rabblement

This bit of allegory is especially interesting as revealing certain aspects of Spenser's religio-
social thinking. The proper champion of Christian truth is the Christian gentleman, educated,
disciplined, and morally courageous, who brings the enlightened control of reason to his
leadership. Deprived of such champions, Truth is in a perilous state. In this canto the poet reveals
much Calvinistic severity and something of the intolerance of an intellectual aristocrate.

In Canto Seven the Red Crosse Knight, who was last seen hastening from the House of Pride, is
overtaken by Duessa, who finds him sitting by a fountain, spiritless, wearied, his armor laid
aside. The fountain is itself symbolic of sloth, for the pre siding nymph was one who had,
through weariness, foregone the chase when hunting with Diana. Courting Duessa,

Pourd out in lossnesse on the grassy ground,

Both carelesse of his health, and of his fame,

The knight is suddenly attacked by an hideous giant, Orgoglio, and after a feeble resistance is
thrown into a remorseless dungeon. Duessa, for her part, offers herself to the giant as a mistress,
is accepted, and is enthroned by him upon a monstrous seven-headed beast. The Dwarf,
meanwhile, escapes with the armor of the Knight, comes upon Una, and is guiding the distracted
maiden to the castle of Orgoglio when they fall in with Heavenly Grace in the person of Prince
Arthur, who calms Una by his goodly reason and offers his services. Allegorically, the knight,
deceived as to his own power to resist temptation, and weakened in body, for the first time he
yields to sensuality. Then it is that he is attacked by the most dreadful foe of mortality, spiritual
pride.

In Canto Eight Prince Arthur slays the giant; cleaves one of the heads of the beast, who, aided by
Duessa and her magic cup, the cup of abominations, had all but overcome the Squire of the
Prince; liberates the Red Crosse Knight who was hoping for release only through death; and
strips Duessa of her finery, revealing all her loathsomeness. After the miracle of salvation has
finally been performed, the knight sees falsehood in all its ugliness.The Red Crosse Knight
undertakes to destroy Despair, through pity for the despairing Trevisan, but he makes the mistake
of trying to reason with Despair, and is himself so sorely tempted by the plausible arguments of
the cursed old man that he is saved only by Una's intervention. The allegory is of course
obvious.. Then comes the reassurance that God is merciful as well as just, and that the elect are
justified by faith:

“In heavenly mercies hast thou not a part?

Why shouldst thou then despeire, that chosen art?

Where justice growes, there grows eke greater grace,

The which doth quench the brond of hellish smart,

And that accurst hand-writing doth deface.”

Canto Eleven is occupied with the conflict which serves as a climax to the knight's exploits, a
conflict upon which the poet has expended his best descriptive efforts. With full knowledge of
the truth, taught by hard experience to rely upon heavenly grace, established by discipline both
intellectual and moral, the knight is ready for the overthrow of the great dragon, Anti christ,
which has long kept Una's parents from enjoying their kingdom.

In the final canto the parents of Una are liberated, and her "aged Syre, the Lord of all that land,"
the "aged Queene," and the "sage and sober peres"? the patriarchs and apostles? throw laurel
boughs at the feet of the knight. Then the King yields his daughter and his kingdom unto the
knight, a symbol that the redeemed and spiritually enlightened man shall possess the truth and
inherit the earth.The last vain efforts of Archimago and Duessa to reclaim the Red Crosse Knight
serve to emphasize the completeness of his victory, and to show how impotent are deception and
false hood when the Christian has entered into possession of the truth.

Thus Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene(Book 1) is to a great deal successful as a moral allegory
with the concepts of spiritual allegory surrounding it. Spencer’s ideal gentleman would be a man
in whom the Christian virtues would be harmonized, but Spenser believed that one must seek
first the kingdom of God. Indeed the whole journey of the Red Crosse Knight is a spiritual
journey containing a deep allegorical tone from the very beginning to the end.