The legend of good women

By means of the Prologue, which lauds female purity, Chaucer sets us up for the shock that portraying women as "pure maidens and faithful wives...steadfast until death" (287) is equally, if not more tragic than portraying them as villians, as he did in Troilus and Criseyde.

As a result of choosing to remain true to their gentle, feminine values, women in the various stories in the poem neglect the lord Danger(2), and are eventually cheated and exploited by men. In Chaucer's accounts, women fail to see that "there are many flatterers, and many artful, tattling accusers, who drum many things in your ears out of hatred or jeolous imaginings, or to have friendly talk with you" (4). Ironically, these words are the advice of Alceste herself, the epitomy of the feimine figure. Perhaps this is Chaucers way of saying that while women of are aware of the double-edgedness of love, in the attempt to enshrine their purity, they turn a blind eye and become meek to the devious acts of males. As such, portraying women as the absolute victims of love, and men the oppressors, in line with the god of love's request, may result in an even more tragic and miserable image of women.

Furthermore, such an image also fails to reflect the indiscriminate harm love can inflict on both women and men(as in the case of Medea and Dido) . The god of Love is depicted as one who possesses 2 incongruously "fiery arrows" (3) and is embroidered in green (presumably symbolizing the envy which promulgates the turmoil arising out of jealousy in the later stories of the poem). Such a figure does not bear any traits to one which seems inclined to only victimizing women.