1 - ‘The name of soveraynetee’: The Franklin's Tale

Summary

The franklin's tale opens with a description of a marriage of apparently idyllic happiness. Arveragus and Dorigen's marriage follows a long courtship where the knight Arveragus served his lady Dorigen through many acts of chivalry, and their union will to some extent preserve this model of male deference. Arveragus swears:

That nevere in al his lyf he, day ne nyght,

Ne sholde upon hym take no maistrie

Agayn hir wyl, ne kithe hire jalousie,

But hire obeye, and folwe hir wyl in al,

As any lovere to his lady shal.

(V, 746–50)

In return Dorigen swears to be his ‘humble trewe wyf’ (758). The narrator approves this as a ‘humble, wys accord’ (791) and goes on to explain that, paradoxically, Arveragus is:

[…] bothe in lordshipe and servage.

Servage? Nay, but in lordshipe above,

Sith he hath both his lady and his love;

His lady, certes, and his wyf also.

(794–8)

This arrangement has been seen as utopian – most famously by Kittredge, who argued that ‘a better has never been devised or imagined’ and asserted, as I mentioned in the Introduction, that it was Chaucer's own ideal. Indeed, it leads to more than a year of marital bliss.

However, it contains a contradiction that is more than a merely elegant oxymoron. Although Jill Mann argues that the alternation between ‘lordshipe’ and ‘servage’ represents a flexible, fluctuating relationship, the fact is that Arveragus' public role is going to show no such flexibility.