“Þat louely foode”: Relationships between Mothersand Daughters-in-law in Floris and Blancheflour and the Constance Romances
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In this essay, I compare the ways in which the mid-thirteenth century English romance, Floris and Blancheflour, represents relationships of the Spanish pagan queen to her adoptive Christian daughter who becomes her daughter-in-law, with the ways in which Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and other so-called Constance romances delineate relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. What draws me into these romances is the fact that they both convey the intergenerational relationships of women. However, the texts become distinct from each other in the way in which each depicts women characters and their relationships with one another. In this paper, I argue that the level of intimacy that the mother-in-law figure has with the daughter-in-law figure plays a defining role in making the former perform her agency for or against the latter. In the Man of Law’s Tale and other Constance romances, the daughter-inlaw figure is in every sense an alien or ‘outsider’ to the mother-in-law figure. To the contrary, Blancheflour in Floris is a sort of ‘insider’ to the queen because they lived in the same household for fourteen years— ever since the girl’s birth. The queen, therefore, should have a high degree of intimacy with Blancheflour. I argue that the pagan queen’s intimacy to the daughter of a Christian-European captive has enabled the queen to protect the girl as her adoptive daughter first and as a daughterin- law second, namely contributing to her unreserved endorsement of the inter-racial-religious-class union between her only son, Floris, and Blancheflour. This is one major factor that distinguishes the relationship of the queen and Blancheflour in Floris from the dysfunctional relationships of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in the late medieval Constance romances, where women of different generations are strangers to each other, and no way is imagined for women of different races and religions to get along with each other.
Abstract
In this essay, I compare the ways in which the mid-thirteenth century English romance, Floris and Blancheflour, represents relationships of the Spanish pagan queen to her adoptive Christian daughter who becomes her daughter-in-law, with the ways in which Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and other so-called Constance romances delineate relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. What draws me into these romances is the fact that they both convey the intergenerational relationships of women. However, the texts become distinct from each other in the way in which each depicts women characters and their relationships with one another. In this paper, I argue that the level of intimacy that the mother-in-law figure has with the daughter-in-law figure plays a defining role in making the former perform her agency for or against the latter. In the Man of Law’s Tale and other Constance romances, the daughter-inlaw figure is in every sense an alien or ‘outsider’ to the mother-in-law figure. To the contrary, Blancheflour in Floris is a sort of ‘insider’ to the queen because they lived in the same household for fourteen years— ever since the girl’s birth. The queen, therefore, should have a high degree of intimacy with Blancheflour. I argue that the pagan queen’s intimacy to the daughter of a Christian-European captive has enabled the queen to protect the girl as her adoptive daughter first and as a daughterin- law second, namely contributing to her unreserved endorsement of the inter-racial-religious-class union between her only son, Floris, and Blancheflour. This is one major factor that distinguishes the relationship of the queen and Blancheflour in Floris from the dysfunctional relationships of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in the late medieval Constance romances, where women of different generations are strangers to each other, and no way is imagined for women of different races and religions to get along with each other.
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