Introduction

Summary

At the opening of the Franklin's Tale, the narrator tells us that the heroine Dorigen took pity on her suitor Arveragus, and

That pryvely she fil of his accord

To take hym for hir housbonde and hir lord,

Of swich lordshipe as men han over hir wyves.

(V, 741–3)

Although the Franklin' Tale is set in ancient, pagan ‘Armorik’ or Brittany, the reader is not asked to understand Dorigen's actions as belonging to that alien culture. Rather, we are invited to apply to the text our general understanding of the sort of ‘lordshipe’ that men have over their wives. We are to supply the referent for that ‘swich’. By implication, we are to assume that in ancient Armorica husbands and wives behaved according to the same conventions as those we know, and use these to interpret just what Dorigen is agreeing to do.

The twenty-first century reader trying to interpret these lines struggles to know what to do. The notion that husbands have any kind of ‘lordshipe’ over their wives now seems at least archaic, if not objectionable. The last century's revolutions in sexual politics make us very conscious that behavioural norms in marriage and sexual relationships are negotiable and culturally specific and that there have been major changes over time. It is therefore hard for us to construct a plausible way of understanding just what Chaucer meant by ‘swich lordshipe as men han over hir wyves’.