The Villainess Does Damage Control: Cultural Rescue in the Man of Law’s Tale

Authors

Lucy Esplin, Brigham Young UniversityFollow

Keywords

Chaucer, Man of Law's Tale, Constance, The Sultaness, Alexandrian Crusade, Floya Anthias

Abstract

In the late fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterwork, The Canterbury Tales, a satirical frame narrative centered on English society. The tales follow a group of pilgrims spanning a wide range of English society, who engage in a storytelling contest as they embark on their pilgrimage. One story is the “Man of Law’s Tale,” a crusader romance that follows the pious Constance in her missionary-like journeys. She first travels to Syria to marry a Sultan, after negotiations between the Roman and Syrian rulers demanded the Sultan be baptized and control over Jerusalem would be handed over to Christians (Chaucer 225-245). Upon Constance’s arrival, the Sultaness, the Sultan’s own mother, violently ends their engagement. This devout Muslim woman rebels against the mass Christian conversion in her court by killing her son and banishing Constance to the sea. Many readers see these events as a storybook cliche as the beautiful and innocent heroine falls victim to the evil old hag. However, these two women are more similar than they first appear. So how does Chaucer take these two similar women and evoke such completely opposite reactions from readers? And for what purpose? I argue that Chaucer foils Constance and the Sultaness to incite fear toward the ‘otherness’ the Sultaness represents. This fear then serves the ultimate purpose of uniting his audience of Christian men in an attempt at cultural rescue.

Although my claims are centered on Chaucer as an author, I acknowledge that these motivations are layered, and to a degree interwoven, with those of the narrator, the Man of Law. In the General Prologue where Chaucer introduces each pilgrim, the Man of Law’s portrait consists mostly of the lawyer’s professional experience and prowess before moving on to less flattering suggestions. One of these observations is that the Man of Law is a buyer of land. It is a vague statement with a harsh implication that he aspires to a higher social class. In Chaucer’s day, social mobility was limited and aspirations to a higher, more innate social class were deemed deplorable as it insinuates that he “schemes to increase his estates at the expense of his neighbors” (Mann 88). Despite the elitist mindset of the narrator, it is interesting that this tale “aims to restore a sense of community and the parameters of the storytelling contest after their dissolution across the first four Canterbury Tales… a sort of ‘reparative tale’” (Sanok 90). As previous pilgrims have told tales that shock and divide the party, the Man of Law aims to restore and repair the solidarity within the group. It is through this aspirational narrator that Chaucer takes seemingly disparate perspectives and characters to make a tale of unity, at least for some.

In this essay, I first explore my argument that Chaucer places the Sultaness in opposition to Constance in order to draw parallels between the women. While the critical conversation has long been intrigued by similarities between the two women, it is their projected temperamental and religious differences that inform Chaucer’s purpose in foiling them. The tale’s perspective on these women is informed by the cultural context fogging Britain during the fourteenth century, including unflattering societal perspectives on foreigners, non-Christian religions, and even women. As the Sultaness and Constance interact with this perspective and ensuing expectations, we see how their disparate actions lead to the moral unification of the audience. From this point, I will explore my second argument that Chaucer’s careful vilification of the Sultaness aids his underlying goal of restoring the cultural unity that was disturbed by the Alexandrian Crusade in 1365. The Alexandrian Crusade and the lingering distaste of the First Crusade left many in Britain in a state of moral and cultural dilemma. By analyzing Chaucer in the cultural and historical context of his life and of his literary work, we can consider motivation and discover purpose in his depiction of Constance and the Sultaness.

My argument will employ Floya Anthias’ idea of ‘hierarchical otherness’ in the framework of positionality to contribute to the critical conversation surrounding the “Man of Law’s Tale.” Positionality is understood as the relationship between individual identities and hierarchies of power. Floya Anthias argues for a framework to understand and study social inequalities in terms of gender, ethnicity, and class. She argues that these divisions share common features in how differences and positions are categorized. Anthias explores these positions as possibilities of discrimination but also points out that “to be proud to be woman/feminine, black/minority ethnic… is to refuse the attribution of a hierarchical otherness" (520). While systematic societal discrimination is very much alive, identity is rooted in individual situation. Anthias goes on to explain that identities have different levels of value, and also place differently on a pole of negative to positive. However, when one chooses to reject their hierarchical otherness that results from these power intersections, they take advantage of their multilayered identity and reject their assumed social positioning.

The concept of positionality illuminates the tension in the “Man of Law’s Tale” by exposing the tension between the expectations of how certain characters should act based on their intersecting identities and the reality of their behavior and social positioning. This tension is apparent when analyzing the characters of the Sultaness and Constance.

Another method my argument in part relies on is the ‘rhetoric of proximity’ as originally coined by Jonathan Dollimore and later adopted and expanded upon by Susan Schibanoff. She asserts that it is not anachronistic to apply this term to the relationships and characters in the “Man of Law’s Tale” as the notion is familiar although the term is new. Schibanoff then delves into the medieval heresy discourse, where groups of people are categorized as ‘us’, ‘inlaw’, or ‘outlaw’. The ‘us’ is defined by the social norm that is being presented. There is then the ‘outlaw’ who embodies characteristics that directly oppose that of the societal norm. Then there are the ‘inlaws’ who fall somewhere in the middle, close enough to show similarities to both parties but different enough to cause discomfort. In this scenario, the ‘inlaw’ is seen as a greater danger to the ‘us’ or societal norm than the ‘outlaw’. This danger comes from perceived infiltration and perversion of familiar and upheld values, as opposed to the lesser danger of obvious wrongdoing. The exemplary parties in the medieval heresy discourse categorize mainstream Christains as ‘us’, non-believers as ‘outlaw’, and heretics as ‘inlaw’.

Issue and Volume

vol. 17, issue 1

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Esplin, Lucy (2024) "The Villainess Does Damage Control: Cultural Rescue in the Man of Law’s Tale," Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 17: Iss. 1, Article 6.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol17/iss1/6