The Faerie Queene II: 7-9

     In Canto 8 of Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, the main antagonist Duessa unveils her true form. Stories use appearances to highlight the inner characteristics of their characters. You see it often in old Disney animation. The Evil Queen and Mother Gothel go from beautiful but sharp and hard to old hags, and Scar is dark and cloaked in shadow compared to the others. What do Duessa’s looks say about her?

     Duessa was perceived as beautiful and alluring throughout the story, but mid canto 8, the protagonist Una took Duessa’s cloak and showed her true form. Spencer created Una to embody the one good and right truth, and Duessa to represent two truths, to have the wrong narrative. Among other things, Duessa is noted to have a disheveled fox tail, and it is noted “her deceitful head was altogether bald, having preferred that to honorable grey hair.”

     Duessa is negatively feminine, she’s chaotic, and destructive, but she destroys through truth, because she is two truths. "We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." ― Ayn Rand This statement seems irrelevant, but to ignore reality is to become blindsided by your ideology. 

     Edmund Spencer was a staunch Protestant during the Protestant Reformation. He used this story to steer readers away from the then-traditional Catholicism. However, in modern day it has a similar effect, Progressivism is today’s Protestantism. Both ways of thought get some things right, defining possible truths; however, branching away from what is traditional will always do something incorrectly.

     Duessa, like the fox, is a trickster, and everyone has a Duessa. She tricks herself internally to create two truths. Duessa does this by siding with the prideful, awesome, and powerful giant Orgoglio. Ideology has its appeal. The conservative influencer Amala Ekpunobi’s story is a great example. Amala tells her story of being a bi-racial woman leaving her black lives matter activist life when her white mother was being taught to believe she should take a back seat because being white meant she was an oppressor throughout history. Being a black woman in black lives matter creates pride and a feeling of being powerful, having authority over others, but it's a false narrative. Duessa was a beautiful woman, but when she was truly revealed, she was an ugly beast.

     It is easy to hold onto the giant that is pride, but when an organization is sitting on a false narrative, it is only so long before you are lying to yourself by refusing to see what lies beneath. There is something like a lie in the origin of some beliefs, but that doesn’t mean it was a lie for you. When it isn’t a lie for you, you still want to hold onto your worldviews, because to let go of everything you have built creates a world of unknowns, which is scary and chaotic. It creates anxiety and entropy in your life, but you leave the better for steering away from Duessa.

Works Cited

Ekpunobi, Amala. Interview. "I Was a Woke Activist... Not Anymore!." Trigernometry, YouTube, 26 Apr. 2023. , youtu.be/BFx6I8xBI64?si=AIryChZLNqSGPtR0.