“Is ther no remedye?”: A Question of Battered Women’s Agency in Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale
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Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale addresses the issues of female victimization and battered women’s agency in medieval law and in particular the statute of 1382 authorizing a woman’s paternal guardians to appeal the crime of sexual assault and abduction regardless of the woman’s consent. Chaucer draws on these legal issues in revising Livy’s story of alleged abduction of Virginia and the threat of rape. My paper compares different versions of the story of Virginia and shows how Virginia in the Physician’s Tale resists easy categorization as either an incapacitated victim or a traditional legal subject. By exploiting popular complaints against the legal profession and the confusion of legal terms defining abduction and rape, Chaucer’s revision draws attention to a woman’s subtle resistance to violence, which is ignored by her father’s legal intervention to protect her honor. She demands remedies for the threat of rape. Knowing that she cannot pursue legal action, she consents to her own death at her father’s hand to participate in his resistance against the corrupt judge. However, the significance of her agency diminishes in the court when she is victimized by her father who presents her dead body as evidence of the judge’s lechery.
Abstract
Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale addresses the issues of female victimization and battered women’s agency in medieval law and in particular the statute of 1382 authorizing a woman’s paternal guardians to appeal the crime of sexual assault and abduction regardless of the woman’s consent. Chaucer draws on these legal issues in revising Livy’s story of alleged abduction of Virginia and the threat of rape. My paper compares different versions of the story of Virginia and shows how Virginia in the Physician’s Tale resists easy categorization as either an incapacitated victim or a traditional legal subject. By exploiting popular complaints against the legal profession and the confusion of legal terms defining abduction and rape, Chaucer’s revision draws attention to a woman’s subtle resistance to violence, which is ignored by her father’s legal intervention to protect her honor. She demands remedies for the threat of rape. Knowing that she cannot pursue legal action, she consents to her own death at her father’s hand to participate in his resistance against the corrupt judge. However, the significance of her agency diminishes in the court when she is victimized by her father who presents her dead body as evidence of the judge’s lechery.
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