Cathedral of the Madonna Whores
There is a limited series on Netflix titled Cathedral of the Sea, based on a book of the same name. It has been translated into numerous languages since its original Spanish publication in 2006. The historical fiction novel by Ildefonso Falcones follows the story of Arnau Estanyol, a young man growing up in 14th century Barcelona. Arnau’s life story is mirrored by the construction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Del Mar, built for the “common people.” Or perhaps, I should say the common “man.” I haven’t encountered a story that hated women so much since I read the Bible.
The first rape happens in the first ten minutes and the tone is pretty much set from there. A serf named Bernat Estanyol marries Francesca, the daughter of a neighbor. The wedding party is about to sit down to their feast when the local nobles show up on horses to exert the right of droit du seigneur. The concept is better known as prima nocta, made famous by the movie Braveheart. It refers to right of the local feudal lord to have sex with women of lower social standing on the night of her wedding. There is no solid historical evidence that such a law existed in history. However, the idea does not seem to want to die.
After raping the young bride, the nobleman forces her husband to rape her as well. Her pleas to be left alone echo as the camera pans away from her body, curled up in the fetal position with blood trickling down her face.
The next scene is several months later. She is visibly pregnant. Her husband awkwardly tiptoes around her, trying to be gentle and accommodating of her. She does not frown, cry, or make any facial expressions at all. This could be interpreted as psychological numbness following her trauma. But I believe it is more indicative of the fact that the story as a whole, including the rape, is not about this woman at all. The main concern is for the male character who is closest to her, in this case her husband and later her son.
Francesca gives birth to her son without alerting Bernat. She retires to her bed after leaving the newborn in a cradle by the fireplace. Bernat discovers the child when he returns from working in the fields and sees that the child is his own after seeing that they have the same birthmark. Bernat all but begs Francesca to give the baby attention. She does so without any display of emotion, good or bad.
Months following Arnau’s birth, the nobleman who raped Francesca arrives at their house to demand she return with him to his home and be a wet-nurse to his son. Bernat puts up a great protest but Francesca obeys. A somewhat convoluted series of events passes that ends with Bernat rescuing his son from the nobleman’s house while Francesca must remain there to be abused by the nobleman’s soldiers. We don’t see or hear about her again for six episodes of the eight part series.
Bernat and Arnau take refuge with his sister’s family in Barcelona. It is there that we meet a group of cartoonishly cruel nobles and social climbers. I’m not sure what the author or screenwriters were going for here, but it was not subtlety . The story continues through Arnau’s childhood, which he spends with his cousins. The two male cousins are usually silent. The female cousin amuses herself with endless taunts about Arnau’s parentage. She frequently blames Arnau for bad deeds she committed and relishes in seeing him punished.
Arnau befriends a young boy named Joan, whose mother is being imprisoned by her husband for adultery. The only contact Joan has with her is when he visits her cell once a day, and she reaches an emaciated arm out the window to stroke the top of his head. Mother and son never see each other’s faces. Following her death, which presumably is from malnutrition, Bernat adopts Joan as a second son.
Further in the story, Arnau is approaching adolescence. He becomes a bastaix, a stoneworker who carries rocks from a quarry to the site of the construction of the Santa Maria Del Mar. Arnau agrees to marry the daughter of a fellow stone worker. Arnau’s wife is meek, sweet, and wants nothing more than to be a good wife. Arnau, however, will not consummate the marriage because he is in love with another woman.
This other woman, Adelis, is beautiful and willful. She is forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive husband and desperate to escape. Adelis threatens to expose her affair with Arnau if he doesn’t agree to run away with her. Public knowledge of his behavior would cost Arnau his place within the stoneworkers’ guild, thus depriving him of his mission to help construct “the people’s” cathedral. Adelis is in a position that makes her fearful for her life, but she is still presented as a manipulative bitch. She might love Arnau, but she still has self-interest.
Adelis’ adultery is discovered by her husband and father, who imprison her in a wooden box. She is the second woman in this story to meet this punishment. She escapes with the help of her sister and goes on the road in search of Arnau, who has been drafted into the army. She is raped at least once in her travels, adding absolutely nothing to the story.
Finally, Adelis reaches Arnau’s army camp and is taken in by a band of prostitutes. She confides her story, including Arnau’s name, to the madam. This madam turns out to be none other than Francesca, who has apparently escaped captivity at her rapist’s home many years before. Francesca decides that Adelis is not good enough for her son and tells her that she heard Arnau had been killed.
The story skips another five years. Arnau returns home as Barcelona is being swept by the bubonic plague. He discovers his wife on her death bed. She dies hours later. The episode ends with Arnau placing his wife’s body on a cart of dead bodies as he looks sad and guilty.
Arnau spends most of his time between tragedies developing a sense of noble suffering. He frequently tells people that he is a sinner and deserves to be punished with unhappiness. These people uniformly respond that he is good and honorable.
A pattern arises. When the women of the story transgress, they are punished with violence, sexual assault, and death. When the men transgress, they are punished by watching the women in their lives suffer violence, sexual assault, and death.
The narrative actually gets creepier from here. Arnau adopts an orphaned girl named Mar. Mar seems to be about eight or nine years old. Once again, the story skips ahead by a decade. It becomes obvious right away that Mar is in love with Arnau, who has raised her as his daughter. For anyone not clear on how creepy this is, imagine if Cosette and Jean Valjean from Les Mis started fucking.
Through another series of events that don’t make a huge amount of sense, Arnau is “given” a new wife, Elionor, by the king of Castille. As with his first wife, Arnau refuses to sleep with her. Arnau’s foster-brother Joan, who is a Jesuit priest, becomes convinced that Mar is going to seduce the virtuous Arnau. In order to preserve Arnau’s integrity, Joan conspires with Elionor to have Mar kidnapped and raped (because that is a completely logical response).
After the kidnapping, Joan convinces Arnau that he must insist Mar marry her rapist in order to save her dignity in the eyes of society. Elionor instructs the rapist-for-hire to bring Mar out of his house so they can “tell her the good news.” Mar emerges with blood on her face and her clothes torn. Mar is told she must marry her rapist. She pleads with Arnau, whom she calls “Father,” to not let this happen. Apparently, she doesn’t like this “good news.”
The last major time jump shows Arnau prosperous but unhappy. For some reason not sensical enough to remember, he is called before the Inquisition (which in reality did not exist for another century). Francesca is called as a witness for some reason I don’t remember. This is the first time mother and son meet in Arnau’s adult life. Francesca denies that she is Arnau’s mother or that she, as a prostitute, has any connection to him whatsoever.
In the end, Arnau is acquitted. Mar, whose rapist/husband has died, is reunited with him. They marry in the Santa Maria Del Mar. Francesca and Adelis sneak out of Barcelona without speaking to Arnau. They are tainted women who do not want to ruin anything for the prosperous and virtuous Arnau.
What was obviously intended to be a lovely ending, was in fact quite gross. From the beginning of the narrative, the women are introduced, abused, and then disappear. When they reappear, such as Francesca and Adelis, they are damaged and no longer eligible to be a part of Arnau’s life. Mar is rewarded with marriage because of her eternal reverence for Arnau, despite the fact he forced her to marry her rapist.
The brutal treatment of the women is not to display the injustice of the past or misogynist societies. If that were the case, the story would have focused on the women themselves. Rather, the women are tortured and sacrificed in order to provide drama for the male characters and propel their story forward. These women were raped, tortured, and killed so that the camera could focus on the face of their nearest male relative and revel in the sadness there.
The entire story could be encapsulated with one image: that of Arnau placing his plague-felled wife on a cart of dead bodies, before she is carted away to be disposed of while he looks sad.
