ESC: English Studies in Canada

C H A U C E R ’ S F R A N K L I N A N D T H E T R U T H A B O U T “ T R O U T H E ” DOUGLAS J . W U R T E LE Carleton University I t may be thought that the problem of Dorigen’s rash promise and the rightness or wrongness of Arveragus’s insistence that she keep it has long since been resolved. That the opposite is true comes out in the variety of recent critical opinions on the question since D. W. Robertson’s A Preface to Chaucer (1963) and B. F. Huppé’s A Reading of the Canterbury Tales (1964, rev. 1967) , both censorious of Arveragus and the narrator of his story, the Franklin. To do justice to all the conflicting critical judgments on the central problem posed in “The Franklin’s Tale” would, as Geoffrey of Vinsauf might say, “ take a very long time.” Understandably, a great deal has been written on the problem, a difficult one and still far from being settled. It lies at the root of the Franklin’s views — and some would think Chaucer’s — on the essential question of “gentilesse” and “ trouthe,” and focuses on the motif of the rash promise, the heart of the problem. The situation surrounding Dorigen’s rash promise has been succinctly out­ lined by Huppé : Dorigen and Arveragus are married lovers. In his absence she foolishly promises to grant her love to a young squire, Aurelius, if he can remove the coastal rocks which frighten her. He hires a clerkly magician to perform this feat; the clerk succeeds in creating the illusion of their disappearance. In the meantime Arveragus has returned. Aurelius asks Dorigen to fulfill her promise. The husband is horrified, but generously insists that she must be true to her word. The squire is not to be outdone by the husband and sends her back untouched. The clerk, not to be outdone in turn, refuses to accept the large fee which he has earned.1 His story ended, the Franklin then poses a demande d’amour similar to the question posed in what seems to be his main source, II Filocolo:2 “Which was the mooste fre, as thynketh yow?” 3 The Franklin does not reveal his candidate for the title of the “ most generous,” knight, squire, or clerk — it could hardly be Dorigen — and there is no end-link to record the pilgrims’ E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , x iii, 4, December 1987 debate. Present-day debate has, in fact, centred not so much on the question put by the Franklin as on the fundamental problem of whether or not Arveragus should have required his wife to keep her rash promise, made “in pley” as the Franklin points out (988). An unfavourable view of the knight’s conduct was expressed in Robertson’s brusque verdict: “When the time comes in the Franklin’s story for Arveragus to assert his husbandly authority, all he can do is to advise his wife to go ahead and commit adultery.”4 Arveragus finds himself in this position, Robertson holds, because of his original unwise plan to contract a marriage in which “the husband keeps only the ‘name’ of lordship.” 5 This view Huppé confirms and extends: by the terms of their marriage pact, “Arveragus has already relinquished hus­ bandly control, has surrendered his reason to his will,” and hence the solu­ tion to the marriage problem offered by the Franklin “violates God’s moral order which prescribes that the husband . . . may not forswear his duty as husband by surrendering his appointed ‘maistrie’ to his wife.” 6 In ordering Dorigen to fulfil her promise to the squire on the grounds that ‘“ Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe’” (1479), Arveragus should not be seen as acting honourably, because in fact he is “ not surrendering anything over which he has control, and he has something positive to gain, namely, his wife.” 7 In sharp disagreement with these verdicts have been the numerous critical judgments which take a...