When I read the story about Bisclavret, I was shockingly surprised about the human soul of Bisclavret and how different were the society back then. De France informed us that she remiss to omit the lay of Bisclavret, a werewolf from the old days of Brittany. She begins her tale by introducing a noble and handsome baron who is loved by all in his home realm of Brittany. De France describes the werewolf as a savage beast who "eats men, wreaks evil, does no good", "he lives lives and roams in the deep wood". While I was reading the tale, one thing I didn't expect to happen is that the half man, half wolf sadly gets rejected by his wife after he confesses to her about his wolf transformation. That's when Marie reveals the wife's true feelings - she is disgusted and no longer "wished to lie with him". To me that sounds really harsh because the wife sees him as a brutal beast, the way he disappears into the woods and she would no longer accept him for who he is. I was actually surprised about the way the King reacted to the wolf, out of many people who fear and ran away, the King is the only person who sees the humanity within the wolf. What really surprised me is that the highest level of admiration is what lead the King to bring the wolf into his kingdom and to treat him with much love and care. Let's say the wolf attacks the wife or a thief, the king would simply stand by his side and believed in him instead of judging, and clarify the misunderstanding about the wolf attacking someone. Overall, it is an interesting story that I have read.
According to the class note "The Wolf as Symbol", the wolf came "to represent the unacceptable faces of society: sexual predation in LRRH just like the way he used to bully the Three Little Pigs. The sexual connotation is kind of odd, the part where LRRH (as a teenger rather than a child) seduces the werewolf in bed (rather than escaping from the wolf) and it shows the violent inner nature of a man.
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