Indecent Exposure: Gender, Politics, and Obscene Comedy in Middle English Literature by Nicole Nolan Sidhu (review)

For Nicole Nolan Sidhu, obscene comedy represents a medieval discourse that extends beyond the narrow reach of fabliau, indeed beyond any literary genre that can be identified in formal terms. It is marked by domesticity of setting, is populated by the lower classes, and exhibits a world turned upside down, usually upended by women. Yet for all its lowly associations, it occurs in Middle English literature within crafted pieces written for audiences more well-to-do than the characters it portrays. If that fact suggests that obscene comedy simply reaffirms the gentry's sense of superiority, Sidhu nonetheless claims it as politically innovatory, with gender politics lying at the heart of that innovation. The chapters follow chronologically, from Langland to sixteenth-century drama.

In Chapter 1, on Piers Plowman, a more obviously comic moment like the behavior of Gloton is overlooked in favor of unexpected examples such as Meed, characterized as close cousin to fabliaux wives like May in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale, ladies of questionable morals who convince their admirers they are virtuous. A doting patriarch who cannot discern the reality behind a woman's façade is a danger to both household and realm, and in this way Langland indirectly critiques weak kingship. Such indirection constitutes the general hallmark of obscene comedy because criticism of authority always comes from the mouth of a compromised character and thus can be excused as mere jest whenever necessary. In Langland's particular case, Sidhu points to his "garbling techniques" (p. 40), such as insertion of Latin tags obliquely related to the matter in hand, which undo the perceived quietism of his politics. Other passages analyzed include the third vision, where the dreamer's turn to self-examination marks a sharpening of political critique. Sidhu's analogies with obscene comedy are often suggestive, although they can also become so qualified that one wonders at their initial applicability; her own language occasionally recognizes this ("attenuated," "vague"; p. 59). For example, the resemblance of Will to an unruly woman as he berates Scripture, Reason, and Ymaginatif is then undercut by the capacity for shame he demonstrates, a quality not shared with the stock shrew. Later, in Passus XX, the marriage between Will and his wife, despite his impotence and their bickering, suggests a model of political cooperation that persists through imperfection. This marital model threads through Sidhu's discussion of the subsequent authors.

In Chapter 2, The Reeve's Tale receives attention as the least fabliau-like and most politically critical of the fabliaux. Hinging on a daughter's betrayal of her father, it mirrors The Knight's Tale by means of the Ariadne story, hence Theseus's betrayal of women. Sidhu also brings the Ariadne legend in the Legend of Good Women to bear on her analysis. The Reeve's Tale stands out for its interest in the psychological motivation of its men and for the extent to which they are driven by one-upmanship and social pretension. By teasing out the possible insinuations of Chaucer's comment that Aleyn was so nippy in bedding Malyne that she didn't have time "for to crie" (which is one of the ways of claiming rape), Sidhu explicates how violence against women enables the tale's masculine pretensions. In this way The Reeve's Tale corrects for the "political failings" (p. 79) of The Miller's Tale in particular and the fabliaux generally through their restricted focus on the domestic.

Lydgate's work is another unexpected candidate for obscene comedy, yet Sidhu finds in the Mumming at Hertford, and in elements of the Troy Book and Fall of Princes, a misogyny that unites men across all social classes. The henpecked husbands of the Mumming, who must simply accept their wives' right to be shrews, provide an ideal male subject-position of...