The Wounds of Jesus Christ: Chromatic Symbolism in Marguerite’s Mirror

Marguerite d’Oingt was not the only woman to have a vision of Jesus, but her faith was unique in what it presented: “She had put sweet Jesus Christ so firmly into her heart that it sometimes seemed to her that He was present and that He held a closed book in His hand in order to teach from it” (Blumenfeld-Kosinski 42). Marguerite has a vision of a book belonging to Jesus covered in colorful letters, and she compares the book to the metaphorical one that belongs to her. Finding her own book lacking, she strives to match his, reaching for an ideal that may just be understood through the lens of fairy tale theory. The colors that Marguerite sees are red, showing the wounds and blood of Jesus; white, showing the heavenly purity of Jesus; and black, showing his suffering at the hands of others (43). Francisco da Silva claims that red is a representation of the end of innocence as well as the potential for fertility (da Silva 245), white is a representation of purity that will be tinted (246), and black represents death (247). Marguerite’s use of red, white, and black to cover blood, innocence, and suffering respectively reflect but do not perfectly follow da Silva’s mapping of chromatic symbolism of women in fairytales. The religious context in which Marguerite uses these colors shifts their meanings slightly but can still be better understood through the feminine symbolism that da Silva claims.

While there are many topics that scholars and theorists of fairy tales engage with, two that are common are gender within and surrounding fairy tales, and the relationship between fairy tales and religion, especially Christianity. Dr. Munejah Khan’s “The Politics of Children’s Literature” is one text that emphasizes the creation of gender and identity in people through the consumption of fairy tales. She notes the ways that women in fairy tales may be expected to act, specifically playing the compliant role of servitude: “The role that a woman is expected to perform in a patriarchal society is clearly spelt out by the dwarfs and Snow White has no choice but to comply” (Khan 148). Additionally, she notes how Snow White impacts young readers, claiming, “The princess in the whole tale is portrayed as an object of male gaze and has absolutely no opinion to express. Patriarchal ideology used docile characters to provide subtle orientation to females through such tales” (149). The literary fairy tales of those such as the Brothers Grimm have a different influence on behavior than those such as the fairy tales depicted in Disney movies. The Disney versions of these tales, as she says (149), influence the expectations of young girls and boys on how they should behave in society. The other side of gender analysis in fairy tales is the study of gender within the stories, such as Anna Knyazyan’s study of gender stereotypes. Knyazyan examines the words of Hans Christian Andersen and the works of Walt Disney, drawing conclusions about the use of gender by each author. For example, she notes that Andersen tends to have male characters with more emotions, going against the stereotype of the emotional woman (Knyazyan 167). In Disney’s work, she identifies five themes related to male characters and four themes related to female characters that consistently recur.

On the religious side of academia, the two main areas of concern are parallels thematically and genre-wise between fairy tales and religious stories, such as those within the bible, and the use of religion within modern fairy tales. The debate on the hermeneutical distinction between biblical stories and fairy tales is quite contentious. John E. Zuck examines this debate, taking no particular side. As he considers it, “the authors [Karl Barth and J. R. R. Tolkien] are showing something very important about the appropriation of a story by a reader, and that comparing biblical narrative to fairy stories, up to a point, is not at all damaging when these tales are understood in their deeper mythic context” (Zuck 300). In a sense, the comparison of biblical stories with fairy tale stories is a question of how texts interact with the genres of history and myth. With modern fairy tales, Christian influence is often more explicit and the authors are often vocal about their religion. Jack Zipes identifies both The Chronicles of Narnia and the work of J.R.R. Tolkien as modern fairy tale texts. The influence of their religion is also apparent: Lily Glasner mentions “the common view of the Chronicles [of Narnia] as…Christian” (Glasner 55), and Zipes refers to Tolkien’s Catholic background (149).

Francisco Vaz da Silva, too, was interested in gender and religion in regard to fairy tales. He developed a relevant theory surrounding the use of color in these stories. According to anthropological studies, societies tend to name colors in the order of white, black, red, and so on. This is a semiotic coding process regarding what colors are relevant to the ability to function in society (da Silva 241). According to da Silva, European fairy tales in particular utilize the chromatic trio of red, white, and black to represent the ideal of womanhood (242). He particularly emphasizes the story of Snow White as an example of this. As he mentions, many fairy tale heroines are described specifically as white tainted with red, especially as white skin “tainted” with rosy red cheeks. The queen in Snow White taints white with red when she wishes for her daughter. She lets three drops of her blood fall onto the snow and wishes for a daughter with skin as white as snow, cheeks as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. Again, the main distinction is the contrast between red and white (243). Da Silva then defines his representations of red, white, and black. Red, of course, is most often blood. Oftentimes the blood is a stand-in for menstrual blood. Menstrual blood, to da Silva, is a representation of the end of innocence as well as the beginning of fertility (244). White is “luminosity and untainted sheen” (245). Da Silva takes this to represent human purity and heavenly purity. His white-tainted-by-red is taken to an extreme. White is only important to the heroine when it is to be tainted by red:

We may understand this in at least two ways, which are by no means contradictory. First, the ideal woman born by supernatural intervention, or else actually searched for in some unearthly kingdom beyond water, is otherworldly (which white represents). But her destiny is incarnation and motherhood (which red epitomizes). Second, this is a theme of passage from the purity of infancy (white) to the mature realm of procreation (red). In both perspectives, the red-on-white stain embodies a threshold. (246)

The bridge between the heavenly (represented by white) and the human, especially the role of the mother (represented by red) is drawn on these heroines, making their fates inevitable. Lastly, black often appears in these fairy tales in the form of a dead bird. Da Silva describes these birds as otherworldly and connects their death to death as a literal or symbolic representation (246). Oftentimes, this death comes before a rebirth or resurrection of some kind, such as when Snow White comes back to life. This death and rebirth, da Silva says, is also represented through the menstrual cycle of a woman. These three colors connect inherently to idealized womanhood in fairy tales because “women bring forth white,” or babies, “from black,” the non-life before life, “by means of their sex-specific fertility,” their womb, “epitomized by red” (248). Lastly, da Silva discusses the Madonna as the ideal woman of Christianity. He says that Mary has significant white and red symbolism in iconic representations. This combines the idea of the heavenly as white with the blood of the womb as red. He also notes representations in some cultures of a black Madonna that focus on her as the mother of humanity, coming from and returning to a place beyond life (248-49).

After examining da Silva, it’s clear that there’s some crossover between the representative usage of color as he describes it and the depiction of women in religion, or at least one woman in one religion. When we examine how women in medieval times used color in their writing, however, some other perspectives emerge. Marguerite d’Oingt, a Carthusian prioress and mystic, used color as a central aspect of her writing in Speculum or Mirror. In the first chapter, Marguerite writes of a vision she has of Jesus. He holds a closed book, and the outside of the book is covered in letters of various colors. She says the letters are white, red, and black, and there are also gold letters on the clasps of the book. She says the following about each color:

In the white letters was written the saintly life of the blessed Son of God who was all white through His great innocence and His holy works. In the black letters were written the blows and the slaps and the filthy things that the Jews had thrown at His saintly face and His noble body until He looked like a leper. In the red letters were written the wounds and the precious blood that was shed for us. (Blumenfeld-Kosinski 42)

She goes on to explain how she studied the book: first confronting that she has acted opposite to Jesus by examining her own book, and using Jesus’s white letters to correct her wrongdoings; then learning to be patient with tribulations by studying the black letters; and then studying the red letters and learning to not only bear but to enjoy tribulations, and to find only disgust in pleasures (43). In the gold letters, she learns to desire heaven. In chapter two, the book opens, and Marguerite is faced with a mirror. She is able to use the mirror to contemplate Jesus and the heavens (44). In the final chapter, she instructs the reader on how to contemplate Jesus and God and the heavens and closes by hoping that she and others may live so purely that they will get to know Jesus’s face when they die (47). Although Marguerite follows many of the conventions of medieval writing, she also takes some liberties to assert her authorship and cultivate authority. Like other female medieval writers, she spends much of the text referring to herself in the third person, such as when “she thought of the great humility that was in Him” (42). However, this seems restricted to herself in the sense of the character she represents, as she establishes her authorial self using first person pronouns, saying “I will tell you” repeatedly throughout the text. She also refers directly to her audience, not only in the literary sense (“I will tell you”) but also to give them the opportunity to reap the benefits of her visions, as she says, “because I desire your salvation as my own” (41). Marguerite invites the reader to accept the gift that she has received through her visions and to examine their lives as she has her own. As Cary Howie writes, “Divine favour – literally grace – is something unthinkable in isolation” (Howie 150). It’s crucial to Marguerite that everyone is given grace.

As we can see, with the focus on chapter one of Marguerite’s Mirror, there is the same chromatic representation that we see described by da Silva. Still, whether this overlap is meaningful remains to be seen. What I believe connects the dots between the book that Marguerite sees and the patterns that da Silva identifies is the representation of Jesus as a feminine figure in medieval writing. Caroline Walker Bynum so beautifully argues in “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother” that the labeling of Jesus as a maternal figure was widespread by the 12th century (258, 270). This depiction was focused much more on the positive aspects of the motherhood relationship, such as nurturing, conception, and the womb, rather than the traumatic separation of childbirth. This maternalism was extended also to other religious figures (Bynum 259), but it was especially pronounced in the figure of Jesus. Imagery of breasts and nourishment is particularly pronounced (261). This imagery is related, importantly, to the idea of union, unlike the separation that imagery of birth evokes. Bynum’s analysis reminds us that this imagery must be understood in context: this imagery of motherhood is within the context of the relationship between monks and God, not their views of actual women. Because Marguerite focuses on the values and actions of Jesus in her writing, she too is separating the idea of motherhood from any real woman. Thus, this is a useful magnifying glass from which to explore Marguerite’s writing within the frame of da Silva’s chromatic symbolism.

Before delving into Marguerite, however, it’s helpful to explore another writer whose writing contains both a feminine Jesus and significant chromatics. Mechthild of Magdeburg, in chapter 22 of the first book of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, describes how Mary came to be the mother of Jesus. This visceral description is bisected by two descriptions of feeding. First, and more prominently, Mechthild describes how Mary feeds all of the prophets and saints and Jesus, and then how Jesus’s wounds fed her blood until she was able to recover after her “death and birth” (Magdebourg 51) to continue to feed all of God’s children until the end of time. Although it’s brief, the mention of Jesus’s blood feeding and nourishing Mary is very intriguing. Mary’s milk is white and of course, represents a heavenly purity, but Jesus’s red blood doesn’t taint her purity. In the text, it’s described more specifically as “sparkling red wine” (51) that he feeds her from his wounds on the cross. The color black is not mentioned: it seems that red has taken its place. Da Silva’s death and resurrection of black is instead Mary’s death and rebirth from consuming Jesus’s red blood. Whether Mechthild’s use of chromatics is intentional is unimportant. More interesting, here, is simply how her feminine Jesus provides nourishment through his red blood. Although red has taken up the role of black, it still retains its da Silvian symbolism. Red, to da Silva, is not only the end of innocence. It is also the beginning of fertility. Upon consumption of Jesus’s blood, Mary is capable of nursing every single child of God for all of time. She is spiritually fertile as she was unable to be before her death.

Unlike Mechthild, Marguerite doesn’t directly draw a comparison between Jesus and other women. The first question that arises upon attempting to apply da Silva’s theory to Marguerite is why Marguerite’s colors don’t show up as characteristics of a woman. However, keeping in mind Bynum’s claim that the feminine perspective of Jesus does not reflect the perspectives on actual women, we can understand why the chromatics that Marguerite uses are not applied to any woman, including herself or Mary, mother of Jesus. Marguerite’s feminine Jesus is seen more easily after da Silva’s theory is applied. There is some obvious crossover between da Silva’s ideas and Marguerite’s: the heavenly white, the earthly and deadly black, and the bloody, tainting red. Digging deeper, however, interesting points arise. While da Silva insists that white be tainted by red, Marguerite’s white stands separate from the other colors. The white and the red deal with entirely separate realms of her Jesus. The white innocence is a heavenly innocence that can’t be removed because Jesus is the Son of God. Marguerite’s red, like Mechthild’s approaches to some features of da Silva’s black, especially regarding rebirth. Although Marguerite only explicitly states that the red is Jesus’s blood, we know that his wounds and bleeding lead to his resurrection. Unlike Mechthild, however, Marguerite does not retain the fertility that red represents to da Silva. It does still retain some loss of innocence, but it also represents a new innocence that Jesus gains in his ascent to heaven. Lastly, Marguerite’s black focuses much more on pain and suffering than literal or metaphorical death and rebirth, but both have ties to the physicality of the earth and the body. Possibly more interesting to explore through da Silva than Marguerite’s application of color to Jesus’s book is how she then applies the ideas of the book to herself. After reading the white letters that explain Jesus’s heavenly innocence, Marguerite takes it upon herself to correct her misgivings and flaws to follow the lead of Christ. In studying the black letters, she bears her tribulations as Jesus does (44-45). With the red ones, she gains enjoyment in those same tribulations and gives up pleasures (44-45). It seems almost as though Marguerite is attempting to shape herself into the ideal of womanhood: Jesus himself.

It’s far too simple to say the incongruity between da Silva’s chromatic symbolism and the chromatics of Marguerite proves that fairy tales and religious texts are unequivocal genres; equally, would it be bizarre to say that the similarities prove that they are hermeneutically identical. Many fairy tales that we know, including the ones that da Silva references in his theory, were written several hundred years after the end of the medieval period in Europe. Despite this, the persistence of red, white, and black as important symbolic colors is clear. Anthropologically, it’s fascinating to point to the persistence of certain colors and the themes tied to them. It’s easy to trace themes across time, but it’s interesting to trace change. There are differences in religious writings and fairy tales aside from genre: while both Marguerite’s Mirror and many fairy tales aim to instruct people on how to act, there is no world in which Marguerite is encouraging the readers to see Jesus as a direct representation of themselves in her vision. And yet, with a backward-focused lens, it’s not hard to see how a fairy tale may reflect Marguerite’s vision.

Works Cited

Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, and Marguerite d’Oingt. The Writings of Margaret of Oingt, Medieval Prioress and Mystic (d.1310). D.S. Brewer, 1997.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing.” The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 70, no. 3/4, 1977, pp. 257–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509631.

da Silva, Francisco Vaz. “Red as Blood, White as Snow, Black as Crow: Chromatic Symbolism of Womanhood in Fairy Tales.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007, pp. 240–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388837.

Glasner, Lily. “‘But What Does It All Mean?’ Religious Reality as a Political Call in the Chronicles of Narnia.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 25, no. 1 (90), 2014, pp. 54–77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24353116.

Howie, Cary. “Mysticism.” The Cambridge History of French Literature. Ed. William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond, and Emma Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 145–152. Print.

Khan, Munejah. “The Politics of Children’s Literature: Constructing Gender Identities through Fairytales.” Language in India, vol. 19, no. 3, Mar. 2019, pp. 145–50. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=mzh&AN=202432755596&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=umaah.

Knyazyan, Anna. “Gender Stereotypes in Children’s Literature (with Special Reference to H.Ch. Andersen’s and W. Disney’s Fairytales).” Armenian Folia Anglistika, vol. 13, no. 1–2 (17), Oct. 2017. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.46991/AFA/2017.13.1-2.165.

Magdeburg, Mechtilde De. The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Translated by Frank J. Tobin, Paulist Press, 1998.

Zipes, Jack. “Once There Was a Time: An Introduction to the History and Ideology of Folk and Fairy Tales.” Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, University Press of Kentucky, 1979, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jcv4c.7.

Zuck, John E. “Tales of Wonder: Biblical Narrative, Myth, and Fairy Stories.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 44, no. 2, 1976, pp. 299–308. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1462342.