Ovid, Verducci and Chaucer

I was reviewing the Ovid and Verducci in comparison to Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and trying to pinpoint why the former two were so much more effective for me; I think the reason, in part, comes down to the utilization of sex and gender. The Chaucer piece seems much more acutely conscious of gender: Jason is “coy as a maiden” as he deceives, “look[ing] piteously and sa[ying] nothing” (Chaucer 15) and women are “high-born […] tender creatures.” (Chaucer 13) The narrator is constantly taking characters’ gender temperature: later, Jason is “a proper and lordly man, and had great renown, […] regal as a lion in his demeanor, and pleasant and courteous in his speech.” (Chaucer 15) Hypsipyle is frequently referred to as “this lady” or “my lady,” rather than by name, so that the first things that come to mind when seeing her name are the reader’s class/gender preconceptions rather than, perhaps, the actions of Hypsipyle herself.

Reading the pieces in conjunction with one another, it’s definitely harder to dismiss Legend of Good Women’s misogynistic tendencies. Chaucer’s string of exclamation marks in the opening paragraph of the Hypsipyle and Medea legend prefaces the women’s tale with shrill absurdity. In contrast, there is a restraint to both Ovid’s and Verducci’s opening lines. Obviously sex and power loom large in all of these pieces, but Ovid and Verducci seem to employ it more subtly. The first person narrative helps with this, I think, as do touches like Hypsipyle’s concern for her children with her stepmother; there seems to be a wider web of character references, so that it isn’t simply a tale of male-female x-done-wrong.