Chaucer - Impossible Role Models

Impossible Role Models

The narratives delivered by Gregory Chaucer’s characters the Prioress and the Second Nun in his work The Canterbury Tales explore the representation of sainthood and holiness in late-medieval literature, especially in regard to portrayals of female divinity. This essay examines the accounts of the Prioress and the Second Nun for two purposes. The first is to show how both accounts represent holy female figures as embodying a paradoxical sense of motherhood and virginity, within a broader and restrictive patriarchal context. The second purpose is to show how both accounts offer different (and contradictory) archetypes for achieving female divinity, creating a tension between the two narratives.

The Prioress’ Prologue reflects how patriarchal influence and the roles of motherhood and virginity factor into Chaucer’s representation of female holiness.

        The speaker of The Prioress’ Prologue addresses the Virgin Mary in a simplistic, infantile manner, revealing that holy female figures were expected to fill a maternal role in their relationship with humankind.  The speaker begins by equating adult worshippers with children, saying that not only do men of dignity speak of God’s good will, “But by the mouth of children thy bountee / Parfourned is, for on the brest soukynge / Somtyme shewen they thyn heriynge” (Chaucer, 457-459). From the outset, adults and children are viewed in equal terms and with imagery (“for on the brest soukynge”) that implies a motherly and dependent relationship with divinity. Thus, the Prologue develops a representation of a feminine and caring holy spirit that must attend to a maternal duty. The Prologue concludes by returning full circle, as the speaker claims that her ability to praise Mary is the same “as a child of twelf month oold, or lesse, / That kan unnethes any word expresse” (484-485). This closing remark emphasizes the motherly nature of female holiness, as Mary’s relationship with adults is characterized by their inability to speak of her better than “a child of twelf month oold, or lesse.”

While the Prologue reveals the centrality of Mary’s motherhood (for humankind, as well as for Jesus), it also emphasizes her paradoxical virginity. The narrator states that she wishes to speak in praise “Of thee and of the white lyle flour / Which that the bar, and is a mayde always” (461-462). Thus, feminine divinity is presented in antithetical terms: earlier as a caring mother and here as a “white lyle flour,” a “mayde always.” In the book Mary Through the Centuries: her place in the history of culture, Jaroslav Pelikan says of Mary: “as Virgin she served as the unique and sublime paragon of chastity. At the same time as Mother she was uniquely “’blessed among women”’ (Pelikan, 113). Both of these themes, motherhood and virginity (and consequently female divinity itself), are necessarily framed in the context of patriarchal power. The paradoxical demand for virginity and maternity draws connections to the text’s contemporaneous patriarchal society, which feared female sexuality, but also demanded that female lives revolve around motherhood. Correspondingly, a sense of female submissiveness is created as the speaker continues: “My konnyng is so wayk, o blisful queene, / For to declare thy grete worthynesse” (481-482). Again, the speaker belittles herself in comparison to Mary as an unthreatening figure whose “konnying is so wayk.” Given that the speaker is understood to be the Prioress and female, this sentiment attributes an undertone of masculine authority to holiness—even a female holiness—by presenting the need for reduced female power in relation to it.

The Prioress’ Tale builds on the Prologue’s portrayal of motherly empathy, virginity, and the influence of male power, while also heightening the significance of these qualities in opposition to a ‘Jewish’ otherness. Additionally, it offers an archetype for female divinity: Mary, whose model for becoming a sacred female figure is defined by passive behavior and spiritual, but not physical presence.  

        While The Prioress’ Tale is an origin story for the sainthood of Little Saint Hugh, his relationship and connections to Mary further reveal Chaucer’s representation of female divinity. For instance, the speaker comments on how Hugh works to memorize and repeat a Latin phrase, alma redemptoris, but, “Noght wiste he what this latyn was to seye, / For he so yong and tendre was of age” (523-524). Hugh’s devotion to singing a phrase that he can’t fully comprehend indicates his complete and blind faith. Similarly, Pelikan quotes John Paul II as saying “’faith as lived by Mary is total, trusting, self-surrender of mind and body to God’” (153). That God is a male figure to whom Mary must “surrender her body” further reveals the role of patriarchal power both within medieval Christian theology and in medieval society^[1]. Furthermore, Hugh’s acts show the ubiquity of blind faith as a means of obedience throughout holy Christian hierarchies. In addition to blind faith, the Second Nun’s narrative also emphasizes the role of virginity as a form of saintly obedience and as a source of divinity.

        Mary’s reaction to Hugh’s death clarifies the importance of his virginity both from her perspective and in the piece as a whole. Immediately after Hugh’s murder, we are given Mary’s sole dialogue: “O martir, sowded to virginitee, / Now maystow syngen, folwynge evere in oon / The white lamb celestial” (579-581). Here, the sacred significance of Hugh’s death is not exclusively his martyrdom, but as Mary states, his virginity. That Mary’s only lines focus on chastity represents its importance not only for Hugh, but also for Mary herself. She then quotes Saint John, who “In pathmos wroot, which seith that they that goon / Biforn this lamb, and synge a song al newe, / That nevere, flesshly, wommen they ne knewe” (583-585). Here, the sacred nature of virginity is further developed as Mary lends her and Saint John’s authority to its importance. Indeed, in Sacred Biography: saints and their biographers in the Middle Ages, Thomas Heffernan claims that by this time “Virginity… eclipsed the ideal of martyrdom as the most worthy imitatio Christi” (Heffernan, 252-253). As the tale progresses the importance of Hugh’s virginity as a form of imitatio Christi becomes apparent not only in Mary’s declaration, but also through the violence employed to revenge his death.