What caught my attention most after having read Thomas Knightley’s summary of “Legend of Melusina” in The Penguin Book of Mermaids was the religiously charged symbols of feminine power and male transgression. The story integrates many aspects of medieval Christianity ambivalence towards female agency and nature. One way this can be seen is from Melusina’s curse of transforming every Saturday into a hybrid snake-woman which highly reflects Christianity’s mistrust in female agency.

Melusina’s hybridity and curse draws many parallels to that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Like Eve, Melusina falls short on transgression of obedience. For Eve it was being tempted by Satan (in the form of a serpent) to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil and in turn she and Adam are banished from Paradise. For Melusina, she “took the king[, her father,] and all his wealth, and, by a charm, inclosed him in a high mountain, called Brandelois” for which her mother “condemned Melusina to become every Saturday a serpent from the waist downward” (87). Both Eve and Melusina’s transgression and fates align with medieval Christian conceptions of the Fall of Man as the result of female agency. These parallels of serpent imagery correlate with duplicity and evil. Satan as a serpent in Eden and Melusina’s hybridity being duplicitous. As a liminal figure, Melusina is a representation of religious binaries: God/Satan, man/woman, good/evil. Often in Medieval perspective, hybridity see’s these binaries as dangerous, suggesting a sense of impurity and crossing of boundaries. On top of Melusina being an impure hybrid, her curse is somewhat of a ritual happening every Saturday or Sabbath, something unholy happening on a holy day. This can be seen as female impurity especially in relation to menstruation something natural yet taboo. With that, Raymonds is in violation of “the taboo” and commits a sin of curiosity, much like Adams sin of disobedience.

While Medieval Christianity views her transformation as a mark of shame, I view it as more of breaking of trust on Raymonds part. Much like many men in this time he ventures into and violates lands and people that are not his, under a sense of religious authority. Yet it is her suffering and departure that leave behind, not destruction but, a mark of sanctity. She leaves her footprint in stone (307), and becomes symbolically a martyr of mans ambition and an example of feminine agency. Her Saturday transformation is something sacred that when crossed exposes human kinds desire for dominance over that which they cannot comprehend.