Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer's Women and Medieval Codes of Conduct
- Author / Editor
- Hallissy, Margaret.
Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer's Women and Medieval Codes of Conduct
- Published
- Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood, 1993.
- Physical Description
- xvii, 224 pp.
- Series
- Contributions in Women's Studies, no. 130.
- Description
- Using a tripartite structure of woman's role in society drawn from medieval codes of conduct, Hallissy explores Chaucer's depictions of women in light of accepted modes of behavior. Each section establishes medieval expectations for female behavior and then presents Chaucerian examples that exemplify or counter these behaviors.
- Topics include the giving of rules to women, suffering women and the chaste ideal, transition from perfect virgin to perfect wife, women's speech and domestic harmony, the gossip and the shrew, woman and architectural space, women and sartorial excess, widowhood, the archwife, and authority and experience. Hallissy gives particular attention to LGW,WBPT, BD, and TC; some attention to GP, ClT, FranT, MLT, MerT, ParsT, PhyT, and Mel.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Legend of Good Women.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Book of the Duchess.
- Troilus and Criseyde.