Loathly Ladies' Lessons: Negotiating Structures of Gender in The Tale of Florent, The Wife of Bath's Tale and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle

Abstract

Gower's "Tale of Florent", Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" and the anonymous romance "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" are three late medieval English texts that repeatedly confront their male protagonists with the problem of female desire, asking them, at each crucial stage of the development of the plot, to acknowledge women's sovereignty in both the senses of "autonomy" and "power". It might seem that in so doing they express a critical view of established period ideas of appropriate gender roles. However, a closer look at the individual plot configurations in which they explore the theme shows a more complex set of attitudes at play in the respective texts; ultimately, they reveal the tensions among the various systems for placing women (and men) which the culture sustains. At the same time, their account of a contestation of sovereignty between genders develops into a commentary on other kinds of social hierarchy, other concepts of control. Finally, the texts also negotiate the limits of the generic framework in which they operate and of the value system which it embodies.