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Abstract
This article examines equity’s enigmatic treatment in Book V of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. It focuses on the central Isis Church passage, in which the Isis priest beguiles Britomart into believing that equity constitutes a subtle power women can exercise over men—but only from behind the scenes rather than in a ruling role. Britomart’s final action in the text—her sole ruling role—reflects this lesson: she resubjugates the Amazons to male rule. The sort of equity presented here does not correspond well to the equity described in legal and political treatises of the time, and reflects a little-documented sixteenth-century transformation in equity’s meaning, as well as Spenser’s profound appreciation for equity’s derivation from the Greek επιείκεια (epieikeia). The equity taught at Isis Church and its reflection in Britomart’s actions are comprehensible in terms of Book V’s historical allegory when viewed in light of the controversy over the Elizabethan succession. Spenser twists equity’s meaning to deliver a lesson to a select segment of his audience. This lesson involves persuading gentlemen such as Lord Buckhurst or Sir Walter Raleigh to attempt, very subtly, to influence Queen Elizabeth to favor the sole male contender for the throne, James VI of Scotland, rather than one of the female contenders.
Notes
1. Donald V. Stump, “Isis versus Mercilla: The Allegorical Shrines in Spenser’s Legend of Justice,” in Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual III, 87–98 (New York: AMC Press, 1982)
, reviews the competing work of scholars who identify two different centers to Book V, the first being the Isis Church passage in canto vii, the second being the events occurring at Mercilla’s court in canto ix (87–89). These scholars, Stump notes, differ over which of these passages is “the conceptual heart” of Book V (87). I align with those scholars who identify the Isis Church passage as the conceptual heart for the following reasons. First, the Isis Church passage occurs at the numeric center (the exact bisection) of Book V ( Alistair D.S. Fowler, Spenser and the Numbers of Time [London: Routledge, 1964], 45 ). Second, justice, as an Aristotelian rather than a Christian virtue, is more closely identified with equity than mercy—in fact, equity was still considered to be the very essence of justice at the beginning of the Renaissance in England. Classically, mercy was not associated with justice, except for certain elements internal to equity that we now identify as relating to mercy. (Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1373a24–1374b23). This distinction appears to be made in Book V—equity is explicitly identified by the narrator as part of justice, but the narrator introduces mercy by pointing out that “Clarkes doe doubt … / Whether this heauenly thing … / To weeten Mercie, be of Iustice part” (V.x.1.1–3). Consequently, equity, and its treatment at Isis Church, appears to be thematically much more central to the Book V treatment of justice than mercy. Third, Aristotle distinguished not only between unjust persons (people who take more than their share) and just persons (people who take just their share), but he also distinguishes these from the most just persons—who he describes as equity personified—the “equitable.” Equitable persons are satisfied with less than the shares to which the laws entitle them. The discussion of equity at the center of Book V appears to reflect an appreciation for equity’s relationship to the core essence of justice in the Aristotelian scheme.2. The meaning most frequently and famously associated with επιείκεια (epieikeia) was a device that intervened between the laws and the specific cases to which they were applied. Because, as Aristotle observed, the laws were necessarily general in statement, and the cases to which they were applied specific and unique, the strict application of the laws was frequently unable to fit the penalty to the offense. Epieikeia resolved this difficulty by quietly intervening between the laws and the specific cases, and producing outcomes that were fitting by taking into account the unique circumstances of each case and ignoring, where necessary, the strict letter of the laws. Epieikeia invisibly created the impression that the laws were in fact capable of consistently producing fitting outcomes. This meaning carried through in somewhat changed form and emphasis in the English term equity until the change in meaning that began during the sixteenth century.
3. Justice, the overriding theme of Book V, is in many respects the most ambiguous of virtues. It can mean simply the impartial enforcement of the laws of a particular regime, or it can relate in its more comprehensive sense to a transcendent sense of fairness that supersedes any particular regime’s laws. If the latter, then a regime’s laws are always subject to challenge as unjust in some absolute sense—a state of affairs that is in tension with the objectives of quick, convenient, predictable and inexpensive results in legal proceedings.
4. See, generally, J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 3rd ed. (London: Butterworths, 1990), 25–42
.5. The initial stages of this shift are noticed by Thomas More in Book I of his Utopia. See, generally, Andrew Majeske, Equity in English Renaissance Literature: Thomas More and Edmund Spenser, Literary Critiscism and Cutlural Theory Series, William E. Cain, ed. (New York: Routledge, forthcoming)
, chapter 3. Although he does not appear to address it directly in The Faerie Queene, Spenser appears to be aware of equity’s political and jurisprudential significance in England in the 1590s. Not only is he aware of the changes in equity’s theoretical importance in the preceding century, he appears to be aware that the chancery court’s equity jurisdiction was becoming a centerpiece of the power struggle between Crown and Parliament—a controversy that was a contributing cause of the tumult of 1642 and beyond. The portion of the English idea of equity that derives from the Roman aequitas (most clearly evident in the works of Cicero) rather than from the Greek epieikeia is the ultimate source of the simple identification of equity with equality. Etymologically aequitas derives from the same root as aequor, aequalis, and aequare, all of which evoke “the image of a level field that does not slant to any side.” It “alludes and cannot but allude, to the idea of ‘equality,’ of ‘equal treatment in equal cases.’” ( Arnoldo Biscardi, “On Aequitas and Epici Keia,” in Aequitas and Equity: Equity in Civil Law and Mixed Jurisdictions, Alfredo Rabello, ed. [Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1997] , 7). Perhaps the clearest presentation of this principal meaning of classical Roman aequitas is by Cicero, who, in his Topica, states that “what is valid in one of two equal cases should be valid in the other … equity should prevail, which requires equal laws in equal cases” (4.23). The identification of equity with equality has become so complete that equity has little other meaning today.6. Jay Martin, “Must Justice Be Blind? The Challenge of Images to the Law,” in Law and the Image, Costas Douzinas and Lynda Nead, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 19–20
.7. She loses much more than this. Because she is blindfolded, she cannot tell which way the scales are tipping: this cannot be determined by feel because the pivot point will feel the same whichever way the scales lean. It is also problematic, of course, that she cannot tell who she is supposed to strike with her sword. A blind swing is as likely to strike the innocent as the guilty.
8. “Newer” may be too strong a word—but this aspect of its meaning’s rise to prominence makes it seem new. See Baker, supra note 4.
9. The Greek concept of epieikeia, on the other hand, considered these same traits as strengthening the Polis and enhancing justice. See supra note 2 and infra note 85.
10. Katherine Eggert, Showing Like a Queen: Female Authority and Literary Experiment in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 9
, 21, 23, 31, 37, 41, 45.11. The extent of Spenser’s knowledge of Greek is uncertain. However, Greek was part of the standard curriculum in his grammar school and at Cambridge during the years he attended. See Alexander C. Judson, The Life of Edmund Spenser, vol. 11 of The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, Edwin Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, and Frederick Morgan Pedelford, eds. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1945), 14
; and A.C. Hamilton, The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 131 . Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics were also required reading at Cambridge at the time. It is also clear that Spenser was interested in Plato, as he himself translated into English the dialogue Axiochus (since determined to be spurious). Perhaps the most persuasive evidence of the extent of Spenser’s knowledge of Greek and of Aristotle and Plato comes from Spenser’s friend Lodowick Bryskett, who, in his A Discourse of Civill Life, describes Spenser’s erudition. In the dialogue, Bryskett complains that he is not capable of the “exacting study demanded by Plato and Aristotle.” Bryskett then entreats Spenser to help him on this score, knowing him to be not only perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in philosophy, both moral and natural. “For, of his love and kindness to me, he encouraged me long sithens to follow the reading of the Greek tongue, and offered me his help to make me understand it” (quoted in Judson, id., at 106).12. Eggert, supra note 10 at 41.
13. Id., at 15.
14. I use the word “ensample” here in the way Spenser uses it in his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh describing The Faerie Queene. Edmund Spenser, “Appendix 1: A Letter of the Authors,” in The Faerie Queen, A.C. Hamilton, ed. (London: Longman, 1977), 737–38
.15. Eggert, supra note 10 at 23.
16. Id., at 27.
17. Id., at 25–26.
18. Id., at20.
19. Id., at 20–21.
20. Id., at 50.
21. Spenser’s treatment of flexible equity occurs at the center of Book V in a narrative digression. Digression, of course, is one of the stereotypically feminine characteristics. Digressions, far from being beside the point, call special attention to themselves—especially the attention of careful readers—by rupturing the narrative flow. Often, their content provides critical insight into how to interpret the surrounding narrative. Book V’s digression begins when Artegall is distracted from his quest to free Irene by Radigund’s beauty. Instead of completing his victory over the fallen Radigund, he becomes captive to her beauty. The digression ends when Britomart rescues Artegall. In between these two events there occurs an inner digression consisting of Britomart’s visit to Isis Church. Spenser’s treatment of flexible equity, occurring in this inner digression, is effectively buried within—veiled by—the narrative structure of Book V.
22. The rigid equity associated with Artegall’s justice was gradually becoming predominant in late sixteenth-century English jurisprudence. Artegall’s name, of course, directly identifies him as equality (égalité), not equity (équité).
23. John Seldon, Table Talk (London: Wm. Pickering, 1847), 64
. Richard Eaden, in a sermon delivered around 1600, also discusses the problems inherent in equity’s use of a flexible measure:It were beyond all credit, if it did not offer itself to all eyes, how many sleights this witlesse wittie, and learnedly unlearned age hath devised to make the rules of good and evill like that leaden rule of Lesbia, pliable to purposes, and to serve turnes: how many pleas iniustice hath found out to justifie it selfe out of iust lawes; how many shadowes ungodlinesse to shroud it selfe under the law of God.
Quoted in Lowell Gallagher, Medusa’s Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 148–49
. The leaden rule of Lesbia is unmistakably associated with flexible equity The rule of Lesbos was a malleable measuring device, probably made of lead, used by road builders to fit together uneven paving stones. Aristotle first associates it with επιείκεια in the Ethics (5.10; 1137b).24. Fowler, supra note 1 at 44; and James E. Phillips, “Renaissance Concepts of Justice and the Structure of The Faerie Queene, Book V,” 33 Huntington Library Quarterly 103–120 (1970)
, at 106.25. Eggert, supra note 10 at 45.
26. Judith H. Anderson, “‘Nor Man It Is”: The Knight of Justice in Book V of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene” 85 PMLA 65–77 (1970)
, at 65.27. As Eggert notes, Artegall also follows in the footsteps of Guyon. Guyon destroyed the Bower of Bliss with “rigour pitilesse” (II.xii.83.2). Eggert, supra note 10 at 26, associates this destruction with an initial unsuccessful attempt at defeminization of the The Faerie Queene’s poetry. Artegall is also associated with Hercules in that Hercules is reported to be the father of Osyris, who according to the Isis priest’s interpretation of Britomart’s dream, is an analogue for Artegall in all relevant respects.
28. Implicitly, it would seem that Artegall’s equity is associated solely with a rigorous justice based purely on the positive laws, whereas Isis’ flexible equity looks beyond the laws to at least a general sensibility of what is fair, if not to a transcendent standard.
29. For more on the Lesbian rule, see Eggert, supra note 10 at 20–21.
30. Isis is the wife of the god Osyris. Isis and Osyris are purported to represent an Egyptian king and queen who were posthumously deified. Edmund Spenser, “Book V” in The Faerie Queen, supra note 14 at 573, note to V.vii.2–4.
31. Although Britomart is in disguise as a knight, it later becomes apparent that the temple priests had seen through her disguise and know she is a woman.
32. Many elements of this dream will later appear to be in considerable tension with the Isis’ priest’s interpretation
33. Angus Fletcher, The Prophetic Moment: An Essay on Spenser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 271
.34. The priest’s full description is:
If we assume the omniscience of the gods of Isis Church is suspect, then there are other ways to explain the priest’s piercing of Britomart’s disguise. Most likely, the priest identified Britomart the previous night when she fell asleep without her helmet at the foot of the altar. There is also some indication that the priests knew she was a woman before admitting her to the Isis Church, because they barred entry to the male Talus.
35. It should be noted that clemency is really only a small part of classical equity, not all. Classical equity’s objective is to produce a fitting result—it is entirely possible that what is fitting is more severe than what the laws dictate if there are aggravating circumstances that the law does not take into account.
36. And, of course, implicitly also to Queen Elizabeth.
37. Moreover, describing equity as having a controlling power over laws—which is in effect what happens in the Isis Church passage—would be highly controversial in England in the early 1590s, when the general trend in English jurisprudence was to consider equity as “following” the law rather than leading it. The beginning of the tremendous struggle between the equity and common law courts, that would temporarily give the equity jurisdictions the ascendance, was still a decade in the future. See, generally, Mark Fortier, “Equity and Ideas: Coke, Ellesmere, and James I,” 51 Renaissance Quarterly 1255–79 (1998)
.38. Aristotle’s formulation for επιείκεια intends its operation to be discreet so as to preserve the impression that the laws themselves are capable of producing fitting results in particular cases.
39. Susanne Woods, “Spenser and the Problem of Women’s Rule,” 48 Huntington Library Quarterly 140–58 (1985)
, at 155.40. Of course Spenser’s probable audience for the “ensample” of these passages will know that there really is no controlling power of equity of the sort described at Isis Church—women are merely meant to think there is.
41. The moderate and extreme Puritan positions on women’s rule are discussed below.
42. The succession controversy will also be discussed in more detail below.
43. Eggert, supra note 10 at 35. An interesting analogue to Eggert’s distinctions between feminine flexibility and masculine rigidity is Plato’s description of the rigid “woof” and flexible “warp” of all regimes. It is particularly interesting to note that Plato’s book 5 digression in his Laws opens with the discussion of the woof and warp, then moves on to the topic of regime change, and equity’s role in this process (5:735a).
44. Eggert, id., at 30–35. Again, I am taking my cue about distinctions Spenser is making about his audience from Spenser’s letter to Raleigh, supra note 14. I discuss Spenser’s audience in more detail below. As Lowell Gallagher observes, supra note 23 at 152, Spenser captivates his audience by causing a “rupture of the narrative scheme” of Book V—the digression of the central episodes. Focusing on how men have resorted to a feminine mode in devising the bait of the secret controlling power of equity reveals how Britomart is unwittingly recruited to the masculine cause. As Eggert notes, supra note 10 at 21, 41, only Britomart can subdue Britomart. And Britomart can only overcome herself if she is captivated and thus subdued.
45. Upon entering Castle Joyous, Britomart “greatly wondred” at the “superfluous riotize,”—its fantastic and beautiful artistic adornment (III.i. 33.6, 33.8). Even so, she was not captivated in the same way or to the same extent as her companion, the Redcrosse knight, who quickly disarms (III.i.42.6). Britomart merely lifts her vizor, revealing her eyes and gender to Malecasta’s knights. This action, together with her complete disarmament when she goes to bed, appear to be the causes of her later wounds inflicted by Gardante.
46. The Faerie Queen, supra note 14 at 168, note to V.vi.25.
47. Stump, supra note 1 at 92. “Idol worship is the enemy of spiritual vision in Book III, the Legend of Chastity, not just in the ‘fowle Idolotree’ before Cupid’s statue in the house of Busirane (III.vi.49) but also in the cult that surrounds the false Florimell, twice identified as as ‘Idole’” (Hamilton, supra note 11 at 388). This should be relevant to Britomart, of course, because she was Book III’s knight of Chastity. It is also useful to keep in mind that “[i]dolotry is Redrcosse’s fate when he accepts Duessa as his companion. In her ornaments, in the mists she stirs up to becloud reason, and in her playing on the victim’s fears (of which she is in part composed), she represents the idolatry that follows upon ‘errours’ (the monstor Error) and ‘superstition’” (Hamilton, id., at 387). Of course, not all idols in The Faerie Queene are suspect, nor are all pagan practices necessarily evil. In each case the circumstances must be examined to determine the proper interpretation. The combination of factors I have pointed out should “encourage further investigation [by the reader],” and certainly should have placed Britomart on her guard. Richard F. Hardin, Civil Idolotry: Desacralizing and Monarchy in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), 102
.48. Hardin, id., at 102.
49. Artegall, at least, is award of his captivation, and has submitted to it. Britomart is unaware she is caught. The customary interpretation of the Isis Church episode does not view it critically. See Frank Kermode, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 50
; Stump, supra note 1 at 93; and Nicholas W. Knight, “The Narrative Unity of Book V of The Faeire Queene: ‘That Part of Justice Which Is Equity,’” 21 Review of English Studies 267–94 (1970) , at 293–94. Hamilton, supra note 11 at 388, suggests that idol worship is acceptable at Isis Church. I believe I have provided several compelling reasons to depart from the customary interpretation.50. As Gallagher, supra note 23 at 156, notes, the priest has the “authoritative” “last word on the subject” of the dream, and “the reader is left … to contend with certain disjunctions between the dream and its translation.”
51. Possibly Britomart’s own tendency toward fiction—toward artifice and guile—make her particularly susceptible to the crocodile. We learned earlier that Britomart is accustomed to framing “diuerse plots” and masking them in “strange disguise” (III.iii.51.9). Moreover, when she is on her guard she readily employs guile to defeat guile (III.xii.28.1–2).
52. Of course, Britomart herself has in some significant sense become guileful as a result of the Isis Church episode, though she does not realize it. It seems to follow that just as the product of her union with the crocodile in part signifies guile, so will the product of her union with Artegall. To follow this logic one step further, guile is intrinsic to Britain from its mythical inception.
53. The chief priest, as his title implies, is clearly male (V.vii.20.5,20.9). And based on his attire and the other symbols reminiscent of the “old church,” he could well be a catholic priest—perhaps even a Jesuit.
54. For these reasons, I argue against the view that accepts the Isis Church passage uncritically. If we accept it uncritically, we the readers have been taken in by the outward beauty of the fiction of the Isis Church passage, just as Britomart is taken in by its “reality” We, too, become the victims of guile. At first glance it must be observed that men appear to benefit from this guile at the expense of women. However, both men and women suffer from the long-term consequences of these untruths in that the true nature of just and equitable political, legal, and social arrangements are obscured in the cause of a misguided male chauvinism.
55. It should be remembered that the lesson about equity delivered to Britomart occurs in a church: the issue here is one of belief rather than reason.
56. Eggert, supra note 10 at 27.
57. James E. Phillips, “The Background of Spenser’s Attitude Toward Women Rulers,” 5 Huntington Library Quarterly 5–32 (1941)
, at 28.58. Joel Hurstfield, “The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England,” in Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, S.T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield, and C.H. Williams, eds., 369–96 (London: Athlone, 1961), 371
.59. Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., “Introduction,” in Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), xii
. Apparently a play like Gorboduc, famously critiqued by Sir Phillip Sidney in his Defence of Poesy, and written by the queen’s cousin Thomas Sackville (later her Lord High Steward) and Thomas Norton, both law students, was not subject to this edict, in spite of its thinly veiled allusion to the succession issue. It was written by nobles and performed only twice—at court for Twelfth Night, 1562, and a command performance two weeks later for Elizabeth.60. Robert Lane, “‘The sequence of posterity’: Shakepeare ’s King John and the Succession Controversy,” 92 Studies in Philology 460–81 (1995)
, at 461–62.61. After all, James I immediately perceived this connection (Hamilton, supra note 11 at 281). Moreover, fresh in Spenser’s mind would be the fate of the Parliamentarian Peter Wentworth, imprisoned initially from August to November 1591 and again from February 1593 until his death in prison in 1597 (Spenser published the first three books of The Faerie Queene in 1590. Books IV through VI were first published in 1596). Wentworth wrote a short treatise entitled A Pithie Exhortation to her Majestie for Establishing her Successor to the Crowne. He prudently did not publish it, instead presenting a copy to Elizabeth through an intermediary However, copies were distributed, resulting in his first arrest. After his release, he attempted to lobby support for his position on the succession in the Parliament of 1593, which led to his second arrest. The example made of him probably foreclosed any public discussion of the succession during the balance of that Parliament. See Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 384
. Adding bitter irony to Wentworth’s plight was that his judge was Thomas Sackville—Lord Buckhurst—the co-author of Gorboduc. Spenser could certainly not expect his even less transparent historical allegory to escape the notice of a person with Sackville’s literary credentials. Sackville was likely part of Spenser’s select audience. The issue is not that Sackville must fail to appreciate what Spenser is saying, rather it is that Spenser must say it in a way that only his select audience will understand it. Wentworth’s problem was his indiscretion.62. Elizabeth Bieman, “Britomart in Book V of The Faerie Queene” 37 University of Toronto Quarterly 156–74
(1967–68), at 156.63. William Nelson, The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 174–75
.64. Fowler, supra note 1 at 45.
65. Id., at xi, 3. Eggert, supra note 10 at 32–33, explores the significance of the feminine centers of The Faerie Queene’s books.
66. Williams, supra note 61 at 383. Although neither Mary nor Elizabeth were formally “legitimized” by Henry VIII, the 1543 Succession Act effectively did so by placing them in the line of succession. Cauthen, supra note 59 at xxiv; and Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (New York: Random House/Anchor, 1991), 14
.67. Somerset, id., at 104.
68. Id.
69. There was, of course, a jurisdictional problem in Mary’s case. Should a foreign monarch be subject to the laws of England? It makes much more sense that only subjects could commit treason.
70. Somerset, supra note 66 at 68,561.
71. Williams, supra note 61 at 384.
72. Mary Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession, vol. 5 of Royal Historical Society Studies in History (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 92
.73. Id., at 94.
74. Id., at 92; and Somerset, supra note 66 at 560. Doleman’s theory is criticized in Shakespeare’s Richard II (Axton, supra note 72 at 93).
75. James E. Phillips, “The Woman Ruler in Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” 5 Huntington Library Quarterly 211–34 (1941)
, at 211.76. Id. Perhaps another way to think about the “moderate” Puritans is that they possessed a higher degree of political prudence than the more extreme Puritans.
77. Id.
78. Id., at 213.
79. Britomart’s actions, as described earlier, were as follows:
80. Others in this select audience might be identified by looking among the men to whom Spenser wrote dedicatory sonnets. See Edmund Spenser, “Appendix 2: Commendatory Verses,” in The Faerie Queen, supra note 14 at 739–43. Obviously, Raleigh’s direct influence upon Elizabeth waned after his conflict with the Earl of Essex (1589) and his affair with and marriage to Bessie Throckmorton in the early 1590s. Consequently, the political lesson is not directed at Raleigh so much as gentlemen like him.
81. Spenser, supra note 14.
82. Id., at 737.
83. Id.
84. Recall here how Plato deals with the issue of regime change in his work devoted to “government such as might best be,” the Laws. In his own book 5 digression, Plato suggests that for regime change to occur without civil unrest, it must occur behind the scenes, veiled from the existing government. A select group of men, acting out of a sense of equity, must take action gradually to effect the change (5:735e–737b). Spenser is using equity in a similar fashion to try to achieve regime change in England. Something about equity’s flexible, shifting nature (at least equity based on επιείκεια)—its behind the scenes application—lends itself to the task of regime change. Spenser’s objective as regards regime change, the shift to a masculine monarch, is more modest than Plato’s, who sought to reduce the disparity between the wealthiest and poorest segments of society. Consequently, he is not constrained by Plato’s timeframe for such change, which is measured in generations. But Spenser is bound by equity’s secrecy element—the head of the existing regime cannot perceive that such a change is being attempted.
85. See, for example, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. There the reader learns that what women secretly desire above all else is “maistrie” over men—according to the Prologue and Tale, men do not know this, and most women are ignorant, as well, that this is their deepest desire. Those who are aware and who achieve dominance, exercise it discreetly—they do not act tyrannously like Radigund. Jankin, the wife of Bath’s fifth husband, grants Alison (the Wife of Bath) “maistrie” in a situation analogous to Artegall’s submission to Radigund. Jankin has “beaten” Alison in a domestic quarrel; Artegal has “beaten” Radigund in battle. Both men are overcome by emotion afterward and, as a result, voluntarily submit to be ruled by these women. But unlike Radigund, Alison does not act tyrannously. She readily grants Jankin’s one requested condition, and agrees to maintain the outward appearance of subservience to Jankin in public. Similarly, the unnamed old witch in the Tale, whom the unnamed knight has agreed to marry in exchange for being told the secret of what women desire most—mastery over men—acts most graciously to the knight after he has granted her mastery over him. The knight makes the grant after being offered the choice of accepting the witch (who he has agreed to marry in exchange for learning the secret) as old, ugly, and chaste, or young, fair, and unchaste. After his submission, the witch grants his implicit wish that she be young, fair, and chaste. Moreover, thereafter she even “obeyed him in every thing / That mighte doon him plesance or lyking” in spite of her mastery over him (399–400).