The Legend of Good Women

Summary

Prologue

The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as Troilus and Criseyde—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds.

The incomplete nature of the poem is suggested by Chaucer's Retraction from The Canterbury Tales which calls the work the xxv. Ladies. Fifteen and nineteen are also numbers used to describe the work. In the prologue several women are mentioned—Esther, Penelope, Marcia Catonis (wife of Cato the younger), Lavinia, Polyxena and Laodamia—whose stories are not recorded and the nineteen ladies in waiting of Alceste mentioned in the prologue might suggest an unfulfilled structure.

The command of queen Alceste is said, by John Lydgate in The Fall of Princes, to be a poetic account of an actual request for a poem by Anne of Bohemia who came to England in 1382 to marry Richard II. If true this would make Chaucer an early poet laureate. Joan of Kent, Richard's mother, is also sometimes considered a model for Alceste. The supposed royal command is one suggested reason for the poem's unfinished state as Chaucer got bored with the task and gave up. Several passages hint at Chaucer's dissatisfaction:

These lines, late in the poem, could simply be occupatio or paralipsis, the rhetorical device common in Chaucer of bringing up a subject merely to say you will not mention it.

Whether the poem's state is due to Chaucer becoming bored with it is uncertain, but it is not regarded among his best work, despite being popular when first written. One early fan is Chaucer's own character, the Man of Law, who praises Chaucer and the poem which he calls Seintes Legende of Cupide. The work is rather inconsistent in tone, with tragedy mixed uncomfortably with comedy, and the legends are all somewhat similar with little of the characterisation which is key to The Canterbury Tales. Some scholars have conjectured that the work is deliberately poorly written and the work is actually a satire against women although this is not widely agreed with. Another idea is that it is a satire on the idea of taking stories of classical origin and twisting them to give them contemporary moral meanings. This would suggest that the poem is not only an early use of heroic couplets but also one of the first mock-heroic works in English.

The nature of the poem with its separate legends makes dating it difficult but it is clearly placed between Troilus and the Tales around 1386/1388. Chaucer seems to have returned to the work a decade later to rewrite the prologue, but the latter text, which survives in only one manuscript, is generally considered inferior to the original.

Tennyson used the poem as theme for his own poem A Dream of Fair Women.

Legends

The poet recounts ten stories of virtuous women in nine sections: Cleopatra, Thisbe, Medea, Phyllis, Hypsipyle, Ariadne, Lucretia, Philomene, Hypermnestra, Dido. The work is similar in structure to the later Monk's Tale and like that tale, and many of his other works, seems to be unfinished. Chaucer's sources for the legends include: Virgil's Aeneid, Vincent of Beauvais, Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, Gaius Julius Hyginus' Fabulae and Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides.

The Legend of Cleopatra: Mark Anthony leaves his wife (the sister of Octavian) in search for another wife. He finds Cleopatra and falls in love with her. They get married and have a great feast but shortly after the feast Mark Anthony learns that Octavian is still angry and is sailing to meet him. Cleopatra and Mark Anthony sail out and meet Octavian. Mark Anthony is defeated in battle so to save his reputation he stabs himself. Cleopatra hears of the death of Mark Anthony and mourns his death extensively. She had sworn that whatever happened to him, would happen to her. So she filled a pit next to Mark Anthony's shrine with venomous snake and laid herself into a final rest next to him.

The Legend of Thisbe: Thisbe and Pyramus love each other dearly. However, they are not able to be together. They talked through the crack in the wall that separated their dwellings. They planned to meet at a tree later that evening. Thisbe arrives and sits under the tree waiting for Pyramus to show up. Suddenly a lion appears. The lion's mouth is covered in blood so Thisbe decides to flee. While fleeing, she drops the veil that she was wearing. Pyramus finally arrives at the tree and finds the veil. He assumes the worst and decides to stab himself with his sword. Thisbe soon returns to find her lover dead. She takes the same sword and kills herself.

The Legend of Dido: Aeneas is told by Venus that he is to seek out Dido and win her heart. When Aeneas is out hunting with Dido, it begins to storm. They run to seek shelter in a cave. They soon notice that they are alone in the cave. Aeneas confesses his love for Dido. At first, Dido refuses to confess that she loves Aeneas back. However, she finally admits to him that she loves him dearly. Aeneas begins to court Dido but eventually he loses interest in her. He starts to plan how he will leave her and not return. Dido learns that he is trying to leave and she attempts to stop him from going. Aeneas leaves despite Dido trying to stop him. Dido then calls upon her sister to prepare a funeral arrangement. When Dido sees the funeral arrangement she takes Aeneas’ sword and stabs herself.

Analysis

The Problem with Two Prologues

The story itself has two alternate prologues Chaucer authored for the story. The prevailing theory is that the contemporary criticism of the story following its release motivated Chaucer to sanitize or edit his prologue to be more fitting for the audience at hand. With Queen Anne in power, the topic of feminism was very much a hot button issue. Chaucer's motivation for authoring the work in the first place is understood as a penance of his previous and unflattering depictions of women in his society. This factor could have had a strong influence on Chaucer to edit his original take.

There is a shorter and a longer of the two, and nobody can definitively assess which is the original and which is the edited. The context of the story, and the subject matters relations to the other works of Chaucer tells us that it was most likely penned sometime in the midpoint of his career. The authorship of the story is not known to an exact date, but the existence of these two prologues has helped to determine the specific period in Chaucer's career that the story was likely written, it has a practical significance in decoding Chaucer's career. The lack of information surrounding the stories publication and mysterious origins has influenced critics over the years to debate not only which of the two is the original version but also which is the superior one for the story.

Contemporary English criticism and analysis of these two prologues has traditionally focused on the opening paragraphs of both versions, since the first half of both poems are largely identical. Some critics point to the stories purpose in its shared details between both versions of the prologue as the indicator of the story as a sort of “Ladies Handbook” based on the stories and characters admirable femininity. In the prologue itself, Chaucer states how its authorship was motivated by his previously ill portrayal of women in his other works. Other critics take this sentiment of penance as the real indicator as to which of the two works is the original as well as the superiorly honest. If this were true, then the original version of the prologue would most likely be the more brutally honest of the two, perhaps the longer less edited version. It has been argued that his continued unfavorable portrayal of his stories purpose in this prologue caused him to edit it down. So, it's largely subjective what the reader will take the story as with these two differing contexts. Was Chaucer simply trying to sanitize his public image or was he really admentally motivated in creating a companion text for women to utilize? And, if so, how did these sentiments motivate the editing process? These are the essential questions that drive the critical conversation.

Importance of Women to the Poem

Women play an important role in Chaucer's collection of legendary stories, The Legend of Good Women. Not only do women make up the majority of the characters in the poem, but it is also thought that women form a large part of the audience for this poem as well.

The most clear depiction of the importance of women to this piece would be the ten female characters: Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra. All of these female characters are taken from classical legends and mythology, which Chaucer decides to retell in his own poem. Nicola F. McDonald notes that throughout the narratives, Chaucer makes reference to his predominantly female audience and even questions them in the piece itself. These pagan mythological characters whose stories all include love and betrayal could serve as warnings and cautionary tales to the poem's female readers. McDonald also speculates that some of the text might serve as “motherly advice” to young women on how they should act and think properly during that time period which would also support the idea that this poem was meant for a female audience.

Because it was controversial during that time period to show individualism, especially for women, Chaucer's style of writing in The Legend of Good Women could be read as both conservative and radical depending on who was reading it. Although this series of poems seems to be about the legends of these women and their difficulties with love, it has a political undertone that points to the controversial topic of individualism. Helen Phillips writes that Chaucer uses a specifically “amorous” tone in these poems to veil this controversy, while adding in political jargon to these otherwise unpolitical stories to still suggest this underlying topic. Most likely the female audience would have read this story as a satire rather than as an informational story on how they should act, which is how the male audience would have read the poem. So, the women played an important role in interpreting this piece in the way that Chaucer intended.