Dion Jones
Prof J. Pressman
ECL 305; Literature and the Environment
18 October 2025
Melusine: the Mermaids, the Marginalized, the Merry
“Then hear my request. It is that you must by all sacraments you hold holy as a Chrisitian that on each Saturday, from sundown till dawn on the following day, never—and I will say it again so there is no doubt about it—never must you try to see me in any way whatever, nor seek to know where I am.” Andre LeBey The Romance of the Faery Melusine (27).This quote gives invaluable insight into the social environments in which Melusine was concocted. The titular character offers to be both a powerful ally and resource to a man seeking power and legitimacy. This single stipulation is all-but-guaranteed to be violated. I believe that the inclusion of this quote sets up the story as a critique of the powerful and its eventual overexertion of its resources—human and otherwise.
She Was a Faery; She Was a Hybrid. A Hybrid of What; of Who?
Following our class’s themes of mermaids and other nature/human hybrids, I seek to explore the hybridity of Melusine as part insider, part other/outsider. I accomplish this by reading Melusine as a woman of Jewish ethnic and cultural heritage and as a natural resource. The traditional Hebrew Sabbath day—day of rest and worship—is on Saturday, as opposed to its daughter faith’s Sunday. While Melusine’s Sabbath lasts only half as long, and bridges the late hours of Saturday to Sunday rather than Friday through Saturday, it strikes a parallel. Days of worship suggest the practice of rituals either public or private, allowing Melusine to adhere to her Sabbath without the prying eyes of her Christian partner—Raymondin.
The natural world is an invaluable resource that makes life possible for itself and for those who make use of it whether they understand themselves as extensions of it or not. Melusine may act as a metaphorical representation of the natural environment, her request for the strict adherence to her personal Sabbath and boundaries may reflect the fact that wildlife, air, and water systems tend to need time to repopulate/replenish unimpeded in order to avoid the tragedy of the commons: a problem/condition where a person(s) is encouraged to act in their self-interest, depleting a shared and limited resource to the detriment of the common good of all.
How Does this Relate to Power?
The legends that inform LeBey’s story were in circulation well after the Edict of Expulsion by the English King Edward I—which expelled his Jewish subjects from the lands—and even longer after the Norman conquest of England. According to George Hare Leonard‘s The Expulsion of the Jews by Edward I. An Essay in Explanation of the Exodus, A.D. 1290, Jewish people were used by the wealthy and powerful—especially English Kings—as a source of revenue from their banking/money lending businesses due in part by non-Christians being barred from Christian guilds which controlled most other professions (104). Further, Christians were essentially barred from banking and money lending businesses due to scriptures—or assumption of surrounding them—not shared with their mother faith, creating a niche that could only be filled by members of outsider groups (Leonard 106).
Jewish people—especially the money lenders and bankers—were brought from Normandy—France—to the British Aisles by William the Conqueror as a protected class for the express purposes of enriching him and his line. Through the alienating nature of their relationship to power and the masses, antisemitism festered over the centuries, became weaponized by the powers that exploited them, and were ultimately harmed by and expelled by the non-Norman rulers who, again, benefitted from moneylending.
I argue that this same relationship between power and the exploited is the core of The Romance of the Faery Melusine whether or not we read Melusine as an insider/outsider hybrid or as a human/nature hybrid. . Those who are powerful will form social and political contracts with more vulnerable people and extract whatever value they can. When receiving value, Christian sacraments may bind a noble, but their greed likely won’t be stopped. Melusine can give Raymondin the world, but he will always thirst for that which he cannot have. If timber builds chips and palaces, a noble will have every last tree fell if it will maintain his seat or aid in robbing another of their own.
Works Cited
LeBey, Andre. The Romance of the Faery Melusine. Pearson Professional Development, 2011.
Leonard, George Hare. “The Expulsion of the Jews by Edward I. An Essay in Explanation of the Exodus, A.D. 1290.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 5, 1891, pp. 103–46. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3678048. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.