(from Wikipedia article on The Faerie Queene, now taken off, for some reason – GF 10.27.2009. Retrieved from Web Archive - http://web.archive.org/web/20080108143816/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faerie_Queene )
The allegorical narrative The Faerie Queen is a story following Knight Red Crosse on his path to finding Christian salvation. Through the character of Red Crosse, Edmund Spencer explores the two virtues he believes to be the most important in the Christian religion, Chastity and Holiness. Red Crosse is representative of the virtue of holiness. He desires to be united with Una, a beautiful woman who represents Truth; however, he cannot attain her without the knowledge of Christian truth. Red Crosse runs into trouble when he mistakes Truth for falsehood in the character Duessa, who attempts to get Red Crosse to leave Una. Duessa is also very beautiful, but it is a beauty that is only skin-deep, a detail Red Crosse learns the hard way.
According to author Lyle Glazier, Red Crosse represents all Christian souls in search of truth. Like other Christians, he faces representations of everyday forces of good and evil and it is through the reactions of those images that salvation is achieved (383). The everyday forces can be found in Spencer’s characters that represent the general rather than the specific. The purpose of Spencer’s generality, according to Glazier, is to present all aspects of Virtue and Vice. To show only certain aspects of each would cause for failure to show the powerful effects each has on human emotions (384). Red Crosse, like many other Christians at this time, is at an immature state of knowledge where it more likely to make mistakes and fall to temptations rather than fight to reach the ultimate Truth. This can be seen though the characters of Una and Duessa. Una represents all aspects of Truth rather than one specific idea just as Duessa represents all Errors. Red Cross is constantly fighting the temptations of Duessa, just as Christians fight the temptations of the devil while at the same time seeking the Christian Truth.
Una is a major protagonist in Book I of The Faerie Queen. She is a beautiful woman representative of Truth, the truth that Red Cross must obtain in order to seek salvation and become a true Christian. As said by author Richard A. Levin, Book I is a love story as well as a story of Red Crosse’s path to salvation. He says Red Crosse is both a hesitant lover and a straying Christian and Una is both a woman who saves Red Crosse from lust and is the Truth saving him from Error (1). As noted from Dr. Rust's lecture; Una is representative of the "True" Church, the Church of England. As a result of the English Reformation and the break from the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant religion had been reinstated by Queen Elizabeth I. In order for Red Crosse to make the full transition and become a true Christian, he must seek and obtain the Truth of Una. However, Una’s devotion to Red Crosse is stronger than his devotion to her. Red Crosse hasn’t fully committed himself to the Church of England; therefore he must conquer the temptations of Duessa in order to achieve his salvation.
When Duessa is first introduced in Book I she is dressed all in red and wearing a Persian headdress. She is representative of all things evil. She is beautiful on the outside but her beauty is merely skin deep. Duessa is a representation of what Spencer believes to be one of the greatest evils, the Roman Catholic Church (Black 575). Duessa manages to trick Red Crosse into abandoning Una. It isn’t until the crucial moment when Duessa is stripped of her clothing that her true self is revealed. Duessa is really an ugly witch who is representative of all things evil (Glazier 386).