➼The Man’s Bow and Arrow: How Hallgerd and Merida Challenge Gunnar, Legolas, and Hawkeye➻

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id you know that the bow and arrow is a symbol of masculine strength?

              This isn’t a crazy suggestion. Well, at least, not according to scholarly research based on several different cultures (http://www.atarn.org/chinese/seligman/seligman.htm).

              In southern India, the Assam state in northeastern India, and China, the bow and arrow is used for fertility rites in which it is associated with masculinity. In southern India, a husband physically gives his pregnant wife an arrow, thereby tangibly representing his role as a father in relation to the mother in the partnership. In northeastern India, a bow and arrow is put up next to the door of a house to publically declare the birth of a boy in the family. And in certain parts of China, a celebration ceremony for a royal prince requires a bow and arrow. However, having kids is just the beginning. The bow and arrow is also related to political transfers of power.

              In areas of Africa and the Far East, a bow and arrow signifies ownership. An African king ascribing to such traditions shoots arrows in the cardinal directions of land that he has recently acquired in order to emphasize his possession. Inhabitants of the Far East have been known to connect the bow and arrow with male death: arrows are fired to call back the souls of departed men, or miniatures of them are sacrificed to ancestors to protect the arrival of a newborn son.

              What does this mean? Why does it matter that the bow and arrow is all about boys as children, or about boys getting the throne and either being summoned home or allowed to stay on Earth?

              It matters because real-world evidence consequently says that the bow and arrow is widely seen as an indicator of manhood. And that changes how we read.

              For example: Gunnar in Njal’s Saga. Do you remember the weapon that his life depends on? Yep—his bow and arrow. His exact words, my friends, are, “[My attackers will] never be able to get me as long as I can use my bow” (128).

              Substitute the concept of “manhood” for “bow.” The sentence now becomes, “My attackers will never be able to defeat me as long as I am still a man—still have authority, still wield the symbolic embodiment of my fighting prowess, still am mastering my defined gender role in our medieval Icelandic society.”

              It’s a mouthful. Anyway, the picture of Gunnar’s request has been altered. As soon as he turns to Hallgerd, he is actually, surprisingly, asking—from a literary perspective—for his spouse to not only provide him with the locks of hair that will enable him to create a new bowstring and save his life from his pursuers, but also, in essence, his manhood. The loss of control of his bow and arrow is the figurative loss of his manhood.

              Hallgerd, of course, refuses to grant him the hair he needs. As a result, she defies his manhood. She flips the script; she turns the tables. The reason is simple—once she is in charge of the usage of the bow and arrow, she is the man. She is the person who decides the rules, and she is no longer merely a housewife (albeit a shockingly spiteful and underhanded one). Does she deny him the hair due to a slap she received many years earlier? Yes. Is she murdering her well-renowned partner, who has always been true to her, over a trivial slight? Yes. Her choice is unjustifiable, morally speaking.

              Even so, she is doing something few women in her time frame do: seizing a chance to call the shots and metaphorically oppose sexist standards. She’s not a child-bearing housecleaner. She’s a powerful female prepared to step into traditionally male shoes—and she does it the second she first objects to the marriage that her father arranges for her, as well as continues to do so with every nuptial agreement thereafter, being present and negotiating her own terms (19-20, 27-28, 52-53).

              Thus Hallgerd, in addition to being evil, is a boss.

“Nope.”

              Along the same lines, Disney’s animated movie Brave, featuring the fiery Scottish Merida as the lead, contradicts stereotypes both openly and subtly. Merida voraciously objects to her kingdom’s age-old custom of marrying princesses off to neighboring princes to afford for state interests and fights her mother, the queen, on the practice over and over again. She likewise engages in a brilliant shooting contest wherein she illegally vies for her own hand and, in an emblematic sense, outperforms her princely suitors with a bow and arrow to illustrate that she can be a “man” as well as or better than they can. In terms of running a country, she’s as fit to wear a crown independently, and to make decisions, as any of her supposedly hardier competitors are.

              Hence, each time Merida ignores her mom’s demands that she abandon her love of the bow and arrow, she is taking their argument concerning her duties and purpose in life to a metaphorical level. She is yelling Éowyn’s line from the Lord of the Rings on the battlefield—“I am no man!”—and proving that the conventional understanding of manliness preventing her from reaching her full societal potential is a joke.

              In the moment that she is readying herself to land the bullseye on the last of the three targets lined up for her suitors, one per man—she gets all of them, not satisfied with simply acing one—her mother orders her not to loose another arrow.

              Merida draws a deep breath, focuses on the target, and, in slow motion, releases her final arrow. Neither she nor Hallgerd were born to conform. They were born to rebel.

              Step aside, Gunnar, Legolas, and Hawkeye. You have some girls to compete with.

              And they’re not taking no for an answer.