ew medieval tropes capture the sense of female inaction better than the metonymy, pervasive in European literature from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, between a woman's body and the castle, tower, or anchorhold that encloses her. The women in these architectural strongholds are seen as both contained and containing, as fragile vessels easily broken, as both closed off from the world and inviting it in by the attractiveness of the obstacles placed in the way. Typically there is stasis in their containment. What could be more stationary and less able to act than a figurative castle?1 At least so it would seem. Critics have tended to treat this metaphor of the woman enclosed as homogeneous, unchanging over centuries and among authors. Closer examination of the texts shows, however, that there are significant differences in the way this metaphor is used, both over time and among authors who used it at the same historical moment.Many are familiar with the equation of woman and castle from the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose; there, the woman, signified by the rose, is enclosed in the tower intended to protect her. Of course, it only incites the lover to violate her barriers. The architectural symbol of the tower is mapped onto the woman's body in order that the man may more clearly penetrate and subordinate her sexually. In the end, his progress into the tower becomes a graphic metaphor for his sexual intercourse with her, and the woman herself merges with and disappears into the architecture. Not only is the rose static and powerless to act; if she ever existed as a woman, she-and whatever agency she had-vanishes in the end. It is as though a metaphor about female sexuality, as described