In the reading of Melusine, one moment that really stuck out to me was the scene where it exposed not only a secret about the Melusine’s body, but also a deep anxiety about women’s autonomy in medieval romance (pp.13-18). Raymondin’s decision to spy on her as she bathed was framed as immoral but also as an act of control as he had been told to not disturb her on Saturdays yet his feelings of suspicion caused by gossip pushed him to violate this vital boundary.

What he finds behind the door is described with a lush ambivalence: “[Melusine]…more pale than usual, pearled almost to transparency, combs her hair beside a pool while a ‘great serpent tail’ gleams in the water.” Here, her hybrid form shows the contrast between the wife and monster where she embodies a possibility for women’s agency beyond a fixed role. One of power and secrecy. Yet Raymondin turns this liminality into a threat by forcing her secret out into the open, where he transforms her into a mere spectacle, something to be ridiculed and judged.

Melusine’s response makes it clear that she forgives her husband but insists that his mistrust had “broken the promise made” and condemned her to wander until Judgment Day. This exemplifies the precariousness of female power where she could only exist as a wife only as long as her husband respected the terms and once they were broken, she was stripped of the social position marriage gave her and was reduced to a mythic curiosity. She then soars away as a winged serpent as a refusal to remain under a punitive gaze.

Melusine showcases the familiar gender script where the woman attempts to carve out a private space to retain some selfhood only for the man to betray that trust and violates that privacy out of a perceived betrayal. The romance portrays her departure as one of tragedy but also one of her attempting to retain some dignity. The author underscores the cost of patriarchal curiosity where it not only destroys trust, but also drives powerful women out of the domestic sphere

In Steve Mentz’s Ocean: Deterritorialzing Preface, he suggests that we reframe our thinking of how we use language to think about culture and environment by exchanging land-associated metaphors for oceanic ones. In the opening paragraph, Mentz challenges, “What happens to ‘grounded’ metaphors when everything solid becomes liquid? Let’s start by swapping out the old terrestrial language for saltwater terms” (xv). By proposing these seven new words, Mentz asks us to change our perspective of these terms through the medium of water.

One striking passage that stuck with me was under his explanation of the word “distortion (formerly clarity)” where he writes, “Water bends light. Water-thinking makes distortion a baseline condition” (xvii). On land, clarity and stability are things that are highly prized by us humans but water, on the other hand, resists that clarity by refracting images and creating a visual distortion. We cannot hope to understand the ocean if we cling to the idea of perfect transparency.

Later, Mentz turns to the word horizon as a metaphor of possibility, “I imagine horizons as sites of transition, like beaches or coastlines, and also as places where perspectives merge… These are places from which new things become visible” (xvii). This description complicates the standard association of the word horizon which is a clean line where the sky meets land or the sea. The horizon is not a rigid boundary but a living and constantly shifting threshold. This way, the horizon invites us to look outward, to be more aware of what comes into view depends on our perspective and the sea itself.

With these metaphor changes in mind, reading Preface this way highlights how blue humanities thinking unsettles the habits of certainty we tend to enjoy. Each of the seven term trains us to value transition, movement, and rationality. Mentz does not simply describe the ocean, but challenges us to use it as a method and urges us be more open minded.

A passage that caught my eye in the introduction of The Penguin Book of Mermaids was “These [mermaid] tales speak to the discrepancy between men’s longing for a woman unfettered by social mores and their attempt to control her by domesticating her” (xvii). This sentence is an illumination on how in folklore, mermaids stories often reflect the patriarchal desire to fold unruly femininity back in the bounds of the control of men.

I find Bacchilega’s word choice rather intriguing as “domesticating” suggests the taming of a wild creature, stripping it away from what makes it free in favor for instilling more desirable traits. Even the attraction to a “woman unfettered” is more about the alluring fantasy that ultimately ends in the mermaids containment. It goes to show the discrepancy that the very freedom that men desire is not one they would allow to persist.

Later in the introduction, the author then goes on to state how “when the wife is instead an ‘animal bride’…the marriage fails because her domestication as a human wife and mother does not succeed in eradicating…her desire to be in her own skin and element” (xix). This passage exemplifies the limits of patriarchal control and how suppression cannot erase identity.

With these two passages, it shows how mermaid tales are a reflection of men’s fear and fascination of women’s autonomy. This reading makes clear that these tales are a mirror of the patriarchal urge to domesticate these “free women”, however yet, they also portray the enduring spirit of these women in not fully erasing their identity