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Mutual Masochism and the Hermaphroditic Courtly Lady in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale

‘‘The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so,’’ writes Thornton Wilder in The Matchmaker,1 and his words capture a simple truth of narrative pleasure: in many instances, readers prefer depictions of conflict over companionship, of aggression over amour, and such is certainly the case throughout Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Marriage recurs frequently as a subject during the Canterbury pilgrimage, but, as is readily apparent, often in problematic or unsettling ways. Cuckoldry and sexual aggression dominate the portrayals of marriage in The Miller’s Tale, Reeve’s Tale, Merchant’s Tale, and Shipman’s Tale (and even when cuckoldry is not surely depicted in Chaucer’s fabliaux, its specter lingers, as in the flirtatious behavior between Thomas’s wife and the friar of The Summoner’s Tale). Domestic violence, both physical and emotional, disrupts marital harmony in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, Clerk’s Tale, and Manciple’s Tale, and marriage catalyzes religious conflict in The Man of Law’s Tale (in which Custance’s mothers-in-law embark on their murderous and duplicitous acts in response to their sons’ unions) and Second Nun’s Tale (in which Cecilia threatens Valerian with his imminent demise should he seek satisfaction for the marital debt). Due to the antagonism, pain, and humiliation associated with marriage in so many of the Canterbury Tales, The Franklin’s Tale, with the apparently egalitarian relationship between Dorigen and Arveragus, stands as the strongest antidote to Chaucer’s matrimonial satire.2