Mixed Up: Race, Degeneration, and Irish “Old English” Politics in Spenser’s Castle Joyous and Bower of Bliss

This essay builds on insights into Malecasta’s wanton character to examine her politicized meaning in the allegory of The Faerie Queene Books I–III, as a discourteous and inhospitable threat to the idealized “British” and chaste woman warrior represented by Britomart. Malecasta represents in her bad rule of Castle Joyous (III.i) social pollution with a proto-racial emphasis, that is, degeneration. An unnoticed cognate with Malecasta’s punning name is the Spanish malecasta, to be of “mixed race.” As such, Malecasta in her “bower” appears to allegorize on one level the corrupting influence of Spanish and Continental romances, including those with Irish subject matter, and, on a political level, the Continental-leaning, colonial Old English culture found in Spenser’s Ireland: old noble houses that had intermingled with the Irish, grown and decayed over centuries through excess wealth and power. Comparisons are made with Acrasia in the Bower of Bliss to demonstrate how Britomart in Castle Joyous must not only resist her own sexualized nature but must avoid being pulled down to the muddy level of Malecasta’s corrupted social sphere.