Custance and History: Woman as Outsider in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale

Custance and History: Woman as Outsider in Chaucer's Man ofLaw's Tale David Raybin Eastern Illinois University T.INTRooucnoN to Chaucds Man ojlaw) Tai, begins with an explanation ofthe mechanics oftimeas the Hostdeterminesthehourofthe day through complex astronomical calculations. He then turns to the assembled company and, in a double comparison, warns them of the dangers ofmisusing time. In the Host's words Chaucer offers his readers a theoretical foundation for the ensuing tale. It is thus surprising that very few critics have looked at the passage, and virtually none have noted its relevance to the tale. 1 The introductory comparison proposes that time in this world is unstable, even insubstantial. The tale then demonstrates the insufficiency of patriarchal history, the limitations of institutionalized religion, the more positive values in femaleness and sexuality, and ulti­ mately the necessity for a woman's spiritual power in the context ofsuch a world. In this article I explore the world view of The Man ofLaw's Tale in light of Harry Bailly's statements on time. I show how Chaucer took traditional medieval concepts of time (both divine and human, as ex1 A significant exception is William E. Rogers, Upon the Wiiys: The Structure ofThe Canterbury Tales (Victoria, B.C.: EnglishLiterary Studies, 1986), who notes briefly that the question "What is the use of time, the point of human life in time?" lies "at the heart of the tension in the Man ofLaw's Tale" (p. 48). Alfred David, "The Man ofLaw vs. Chaucer: A Case in Poetics,"PMLA 82 (1967), states simply that, "likePandarus, Harry Bailey waxes tedious in counseling 'bisinesse' " (p. 224). Robert T. Farrell, "Chaucer's Man ofLaw and His Tale: The Eccentric Design," in Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, eds.,]. R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memonam (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979), criticizes sensibly other pans of David's argument but says no more of the time metaphors than that "Harry Bailly, in a rare mood of reflection, muses" (p. 165). V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery ofNarrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984), pp. 286-90, sees the Hostas critiquing the immediately preceding tales of group A and asking for a different kind of narrative. 65 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER pressed by Augustine) and artistically transformed them to formulate a powerful expression regarding the positive use of time in this world. The first part of Harry Bailly's comparison relates the passing of time to the flowing of a stream (MLH 20-24):2 "Lordynges, the tyme wasteth nyght and day, And steleth from us, what pryvely slepynge, And what thurgh necligence in oure wakynge, As dooth the streem that turneth nevere agayn, Descendynge fro the montaigne into playn." The image of time slipping away like the flow of water, a medieval commonplace, is central and overt in The Man ofLaws Tale.3 The details of the elapsed time are obscure, but much of Custance's life is spent "dryving" on the water (lines 948-49), Somtyme west, and somtyme north and south, And somtyme est, ful many a wery day, .... VA. Kolve insists that "what comes immediately to mind when one thinks ofthe tale" is simply "the image ofa woman in a rudderless boat, afloat on the sea."4 One pictures a woman perpetually atprayer, univocally spiritual, entirely self-given to Christ and Mary, drifting outside the stream of ordinary human life. When we meet Custance, she is "yonge" (lines 275, 448), of marriage­ able age but in her own words still her parents' "child" (lines 274, 278). When for the last time Custance "Toward the toun of Rome goeth hir weye" (line 1148), she is a mature adult, mother of "the child Maurice" (lines 2 Quotations from Chaucer aretakenfrom Larry Benson,gen. ed.,TheRiverside Chaucer, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Miffiin, 1987). 3 Similarstatementsconcerning the irrecoverabilityoflost timeoccur in HF1257-58 ("For tyme ylost,this knowen ye,/ Be no way may recovered be") and TC 4.1283 ("For tyme ylost may nought recovered be"). See also On the Properties o/Things:John Trevisa's Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, ed. M. C. Seymour...