Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages | David Salter (Essay Date 2002)
DAVID SALTER (ESSAY DATE 2002)
SOURCE: Salter, David. “‘Born to Thraldom and Penance’: Wives and Mothers in Middle English Romance.” Essays and Studies (2002): 41-59.
In the following excerpt, Salter discusses misogyny, the depiction of gender, and the marginalization of women in medieval romance.
Wommen are born to thraldom and penance,
And to been under mannes governance.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Man of Law’s Tale (286-7)
Romance: A Feminine Genre?
Near the beginning of Book II of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, during the first encounter that we witness between Criseyde and her uncle, Pandarus, there is a brief but characteristically witty exchange between the two characters that offers us a tantalising glimpse of contemporary responses to romance, and the ways in which those responses were bound up with, and shaped by,...
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