Brains or Beauty. Limited Sovereignty in the Loathly Lady Tales: 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,' 'Thomas of Erceldoune,' and 'The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle'
- Author / Editor
- Caldwell, Ellen M.
Brains or Beauty. Limited Sovereignty in the Loathly Lady Tales: 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,' 'Thomas of Erceldoune,' and 'The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle'
- Published
- S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 235-56.
- Description
- Loathly lady tales "reveal the consequences" for women of "ungendered" transgressive behavior: the lady "enjoys more power" when she performs roles counter to her biological gender, and she loses the power when she subsides into feminine roles. When the lady in WBT abandons her ugliness, she gives up her challenges to male sovereignty in marriage and to "aristocratic women's superiority."
- Alternative Title
- English Loathly Lady Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.