Which Was the Most Free?
The Franklin's Demande D'amour
For this week in the Word-Hoard, I was interested in taking a closer look at the question posed at the end of Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tale. Let’s begin with a quick synopsis of the Tale: Dorigen is happily married in equal partnership with the noble knight Arveragus. They live on the coast of France, but Arveragus has to go to Britain for a while, and while he is away the squire Aurelius tries to court Dorigen. In an effort to get him to stop, Dorigen recklessly promises that she will love him when all the many rocks sticking out of the water near the coast vanish. Aurelius then hires a magician who, for the price of one thousand pounds, magically raises the tides so that all the rocks are now covered by water for a brief time, during which Aurelius demands that Dorigen keep her promise. Dorigen tells what has happened to Arveragus who has recently returned, and Arveragus, while grief-stricken, says that Dorigen must keep her word. So, Dorigen goes to Aurelius, but when he sees how distraught she has become, he releases her from her oath. Aurelius then tells his tale to the magician who, moved by Aurelius’s act of mercy, forgives him of the thousand-pound debt.
The tale concludes with the Franklin presenting a demande d’amour, a “love-problem” popular in medieval love poetry posed to stimulate conversation and debate among the court and audience. Line 1622 asks, “Which was the most free, as thinketh you?” or in other words, which of the four characters was the most generous or acted the most nobly? Clearly, like questions of morality, a demande d’amour has no correct answer, and depends on what a person values the most. For that reason, in attempting to answer this question this post will ultimately be my own opinion, but I hope to go through each character and explain my reasoning and spark debate on my conclusions.
Right away, I think it’s pretty easy to eliminate Aurelius from the running. Yes, Aurelius eventually released Dorigen from her promise, but he was the one who created the problem of the Tale and put Dorigen in that situation in the first place. It’s great that he eventually came to his senses and realized that what he was doing was wrong, but by deliberately committing the immoral act of pursuing a married woman and going to such extreme lengths to catch her in a loophole, Aurelius clearly shows himself to be worse than the other three characters.
That leaves us with the married couple and the magician, whose generosity comes from an emotional and a monetary place respectively. A thousand pounds was a lot of money at this time, so the magician forgiving this debt is certainly nothing to scoff at, but personally, I see the connection between Dorigen and Arveragus to be priceless to them, worth far more to each other than any amount of money could be worth to the magician. They are described as happy together, treating their marriage to each other as an equal partnership and acting with faithfulness, honesty, and respect. If it were me, it would be much harder to sacrifice something like that than to sacrifice a good payday. I think we’re given the least about the magician, but he seems like a chill guy just doing his job, and while he acted generously, for me he goes in third place.
That leaves us with Dorigen and Arveragus. Now before anyone judges what they decide to do in the narrative from our modern viewpoint, I think it’s important to recognize that neither of them want to be in this lose-lose situation, and they were both depressed that their love had to be tested in that way. It may be easy for a reader to dismiss Arveragus as someone who would make his wife sleep with another man instead of defending her honor and considering her feelings, but we have to understand that in Chaucer’s day, especially for a noble knight like Arveragus, a person’s word, like the sacrament of marriage, was sacred, not to be given lightly like Dorigen made the mistake of doing. (Yes, she never thought that situation would ever come to pass, so it was meant to be taken as hyperbole for “I’ll never love you, Aurelius,” but because of the weight that promises held in this age, she should’ve been more careful with her word choice.) It’s not as if Arveragus gives Dorigen up to Aurelius, he simply advises her that if she made a promise, she should keep it, no matter how much it hurts him or the fact that he didn’t make the promise. It’s for this reason that I think they both easily belong in the top two.
But who was the most noble? For me, I’m going to have to go with Dorigen. Arveragus advising his wife to do what in his eyes is the right thing is very selfless, but it holds more weight for Dorigen because she is the one who would actually be committing the act of sleeping with Aurelius. Also, I am NOT implying that Dorigen’s obedience to Arveragus’s wishes is what makes her the most noble (Dorigen is certainly no Griselda), but listening to him makes her realize that she needs to own up to her mistake and take responsibility for her actions, which is much harder to personally do yourself than it is to advise someone else to do.
So I have, as thinketh me,
Declared Dorigen the most free
But what do you think? Do you agree or disagree with my assessments? Let me know in the comments, and thank you for reading.
This is a great post Jay. For me personally, I believe Arveragus sacrificed the most. Dorigen, though she didn't intend to, did wager her marriage in a sense. But putting even that aside, Arveragus comes back from battle to this news. Instead of reprimanding her, he consoles her. Instead of worrying about his own honor and even their marriage's sacrament, he puts her own honor first by asking her to make good on her word. There is a way in which Arveragus feels, to me, as if he would rather lose all that he has as long as Dorigen is saved morally; and there's a lot of weight to that.
Thank you again for this read.
I think it is very interesting that the Franklin poses this question at the end of the tale, especially considering that in many of the other tales, the answer would be largely male. I really like your reading of Dorigen as having the most power/freedom in this situation, as she certainly has a more noble kind of freedom than many of our other women, like Alisoun or May. I do, however, think that the two men of the tale do ultimately have more freedom and power than her, as they are the ones who still seem largely in power of her fate. She is a large improvement from most of the other women we have seen so far in the tales, and I appreciate that she is even in the discussion!