Good Women?

A line in “The Miller’s Prologue” got me thinking of Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women. Robin, the miller, has announced the story he’s going to tell. Osewold, the reeve and a carpenter, is offended and tells the miller he shouldn’t defame husbands and wives. Robin tells Osewold not to take it personally. One of the things Robin says is, “Ther been ful good wives many oon,/And evere a thousand goode ayeins oon bade” (3154-3155). Robin goes on to say he has a wife too, but doesn’t assume himself a cuckold. In The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer, like the miller, is in trouble for defaming women. Only Chaucer is in trouble with the god of love. The god of love calls Chaucer his enemy for writing so many bad things about love and women. Chaucer defends himself by saying:

But truly I wende, as in this cas,
Naught have agilt, ne doon to love trespas.
Forwhy a trewe man, with-outen drede,
Hath not to parten with a theves dede;
Ne a trewe lover oghte me nat blame,
Thogh that I speke a fals lover som shame.(Balade, 462-467)

These two excuses seem very similar to me.

There are a couple of other things that make me wonder if Chaucer was thinking of The Legend of Good Women while writing about the miller. The very first line of the balade is “Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere;/ Ester, ley thou thy meknesse al a-doun” (249-250). We all know how it is going to end for Absolon and his gilt tresses. Chaucer continues to tell men to hide and women to come forward. When Alceste is defending Chaucer, she points out that not all his writing about women is bad, and she uses the story of Palamon and Arcite as one of the good examples (Balade, 420-421).

So does this change my understanding of The Canterbury Tales? Both the wife of Bath and the god of love agree that one of the most offensive items is The Romance of the Rose which Chaucer partly translated. Or in the god of love’s words:

Thou hast translated the Romaunce of the Rose,
That is an heresye ageyns my lawe,
And makest wyse folk fro me withdrawe. (Balade, 329-331)

Maybe as stories about women continue to go downhill with the reeve and the cook, the host functions like the god of love, redirecting Chaucer’s tales. “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” certainly redeem women in diverse ways. Alceste asks the god of love to have mercy on Chaucer. At the end, Alceste will tell Chaucer that his restitution is to spend most of every year of his life writing about good women. Is this like a knight spending a year learning what women want? Perhaps with some of his Canterbury tales, Chaucer is still paying restitution.


Works Cited:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Miller's Prologue." The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Jill Mann. London: Penguin, 2005. 114-17. Print.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Legend of Good Women “Balade." OMACL: The Legend of Good Women. Ed. Douglas B. Killings. Online Medieval and Classical Library, Nov. 1996. Web. 23 Sept. 2013. <http://omacl.org/GoodWomen/>.