Abstract
Three of the Canterbury Tales — those of the Man of Law, the Clerk and the Second Nun — present adult women of amazing virtue. Their virtues are specifically Christian: between them they illustrate charity, patience, constancy, faith, fortitude, chastity, self-sacrifice and missionary zeal. The Nun tells the story of the saint and martyr Cecilia. The long-suffering heroine of the Man of Law’s Tale is aptly named Constance. The Clerk tells the tale of that byword of wifely obedience, patient Griselda. All three stories are set in the past, the age of miracles. Two take place in the early centuries of the Church. Saint Cecilia probably lived in the first, second or third century, the time of conversions, catacombs, persecutions and martyrdom. The Man of Law’s Tale opens ‘whilom’, once upon a time, in the vague past, though some of its characters derive from late sixth-century originals: in the Tale, Rome is now a Christian empire, Islam is already an established religion in the Middle East and Christianity is gaining ground in Anglo-Saxon England. The Clerk also opens his narrative with ‘whilom’ and concludes by setting it and its values firmly in the past: ‘Grisilde is deed and eek hire pacience’ (IV 1177).
‘Fader,’ she seyde, ‘thy wrecched child Custance,
Thy yonge doghter fostred up so softe,
And ye, my mooder, my soverayn plesance
Over alle thyng, out-taken Criste on-lofte,
Custance your child hire recommandeth ofte
Unto youre grace, for I shal to Surrye,
Ne shal I nevere seen yow moore with ye.
‘Allas! unto the Barbre nacioun
I moste anoon, syn that it is youre wille;
But Crist, that starf for our redempcioun
So yeve me grace his heestes to fulfille!
I, wrecche womman, no fors though I spille!
Wommen are born to thraldom and penance,
And to been under mannes governance.’
CT II 274–87
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative (London, 1984) pp. 285–93, argues persuasively that the Man of Law’s Tale is told on the first morning of the pilgrimage and should be considered part of the first fragment.
Sheila Delany, ‘Womanliness in the Man of Law’s Tale’, Writing Woman: Women Writers and Women in Literature Medieval to Modern (New York, 1983) pp. 36–46, makes a similar contrast between the two women and, like me, finds the class/gender analogies of the Tale distasteful. She suggests: To Chaucer’s courtly pilgrims, employers and friends, the tale of Constance must have been a welcome reaffirmation of the hierarchical values which had so recently been attacked’ (p. 63).
Lee Patterson, ‘“For the Wyves Love of Bath”: Feminine Rhetoric and Poetic Resolution in the Roman de la Rose and the Canterbury Tales’, Speculum, 58 (1983) pp. 656–95, interestingly connects the authority of men with the authority of literature as problematic for Chaucer (though he mistakenly suggests that Alla exiles Constance): ‘we are not allowed to forget that her suffering, however edifying it may be to us, is to her both very real and a function of the sexual authority of men, just as, at the level of narrative form, her exemplary role is a function of the generic authority of hagiography’ (p. 692).
Essays which engage with the central problems of the Tale include James Sledd, ‘The Clerk’s Tale: the Monsters and the Critics’, MP, II (1953) pp. 73–82,
reprinted in Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. E. Wagenknecht (New York, 1959) pp. 226–39,
and Chaucer Criticism, ed. R. J. Schoeck and J. Taylor (Notre Dame, Ind., 1961) vol. II, pp. 160–74;
Anne Middleton, ‘The Clerk and his Tale: Some Literary Contexts’, SAC, 2 (1980) pp. 121–50;
Jill Mann, ‘Satisfaction and Payment in Middle English Literature’, SAC, 5 (1983) pp. 31–45;
Charlotte C. Morse, ‘The Exemplary Griselda’, SAC, 7 (1985) pp. 51–86.
Michael Wilks, Chaucer and the Mystical Marriage in Medieval Political Thought (Manchester, 1962) investigates this analogy with particular reference to the Wife of Bath’s Tale and points out: ‘During the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it came to represent a double tradition. On the one hand the analogy, particularly as used by the medieval papacy, stood for the principle of absolutism. … Against this there came to stand a tradition of limited rulership. … Aristotle, in his comparison of marriage and government, had declared that whilst the wife should uphold the forms of obedience to her husband, there was nonetheless a basic equality between them — and had added that governor and governed might change places. … The ruler’s imitatio Christi comes to involve the acceptance of limitations: his authority ceases at the point at which it would become harmful’ (pp. 520–1, 529).
Lawrence L. Besserman, The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1979) points out that Chaucer redistributes Job’s patient and impatient utterances to a woman and a man respectively: ‘By attributing Job’s patient words to Griselde and Job’s impatient curse to her father [901–3], Chaucer in a sense splits the biblical figure. Griselde becomes a new, more perfect Job’ (p. 113).
Roger Ellis, Patterns of Religious Narrative in The Canterbury Tales (London and Sydney, 1986), proposes a ‘double reading’ (p. 65) of the Clerk’s Tale: ‘By the end of the work Petrarch’s authority has been so undermined that it is necessary to recall it in order to support an interpretation in which the narrator seems to have lost confidence. … At first, it affected to ignore the claims of the audience in favour of the tradition. Increasingly, as it proceeds, it shifts the balance in favour of the audience’ (p. 64);
Elizabeth Salter, Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale (London, 1962) pp. 61–2, similarly argues on the basis of style that the tale presents a double world.
Sheila Delany, ‘“Mulier est hominis confusio”: Chaucer’s Anti-Popular Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, Mosaic, 17 (1984) pp. 1–8.
Ellis (Patterns of Religious Narrative, pp. 93–7) emphasises the importance Chaucer placed on translation and remarks that for the Second Nun ‘literature is not pastime, as it is for most of the other pilgrims, but business’ (p. 101). Ruth M. Ames, God’s Plenty: Chaucer’s Christian Humanism (Chicago, 1984) pp. 48–9, also emphasises her active virtue.
John Fisher (ed.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (New York, 1977) p. 309.
C. David Benson, Chaucer’s Dream of Style: Poetic Variety and Contrast in ‘The Canterbury Tales’ (Chapel Hill, NC. and London, 1986) p. 141.
Copyright information
© 1996 Priscilla Martin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Martin, P. (1996). The Saints. In: Chaucer’s Women. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378636_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378636_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-64142-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37863-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)