The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England.

Author/Editor
Cady, Diane.

Title
The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England.

Published
Cady, Diane. The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. ISBN 978-3-030-26260-0 978-3-030-26261-7.

Review
Cady states the major contention of her monograph early: "The focus of this book is on how dominant Western theories about the intrinsic nature of money and value are intimately tied to its beliefs about gender and gender difference. Put another way, gender ideology does not simply inform notions of money and value, it actually forms them. The roots of this isomorphic relationship can be traced to the late Middle Ages" (2). In support of this claim, she examines four works: the "Squire of Low Degree," Lydgate's "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum," Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," and, from the "Confessio Amantis," the "Tale of Midas," in her third chapter, entitled "Midas's Touch: Common Property and Erotic economies in Book 5 of the Confessio Amantis." In point of fact, her remit is a whit broader, to compass the initial 746 lines of Book V. Having established that Aristotle in his "Politics" designated women as property and that "in the realm of a heterosexual economy, owners are male and property is female," she follows the development of this idea in the work of Tertullian, Augustine, and Aquinas as they wrestle with whether holding property privately is sinful. All eventually conclude that private property is a lamentable but necessary result of the Fall (90-96). Medieval jurisprudence translates the problem of ownership into legal terms (she cites John of Paris and John Fortescue), establishing that "labor is an investment that gives one the right to own a particular good" (96). All of this is preamble to her understanding of Gower's "complex and seemingly contradictory approach to avarice and the synergies and tensions between fiscal and erotic economies" (86) in Book V. The problem Amans faces in Book V--his wish for exclusive possession of his lady, which seems at first glance to dance on the knife-edge of Avarice, and likely make him culpable--has struck readers as a serious dilemma, given the obvious alternative: sharing her with the "'press' of men" that always surrounds her (98). Amans, however, takes a narrow view, denying any tinge of avarice, since he says he cares so little for gold, but only for his lady. Cady points out, however, that Amans "very quickly begins to fantasize about possessing his lover in language that echoes Genius's earlier depiction of avaricious enclosure and its tactile pleasures" (100). "Tactile pleasures" becomes key to Cady's analysis of the "Tale of Midas," for obvious reasons. (This analysis brings her to comment briefly on the tales of Tantalus, "Vulcan, Mars, and Venus," and "The King and His Steward's Wife"). Midas's joy in handling gold recalls Gower's description of the miser--a figure Amans treats in a questionably uncritical manner: "Amans's envy that a miser is able 'to grope and fiele al aboute" his "tresor" [a word Cady has linked to a woman's virginity (100)] whenever he wishes is decidedly disturbing, and hints at the dark violence bubbling underneath this erotic economy" (101). But for Cady Midas himself is less creepy than usurious--that is, by making gold without labor, but just with his touch, he "is perverting both the laws of nature and the laws of economy" (107). It has occurred to Amans, Cady notes, that his lady might be a usurer, in that she accrues benefits, i.e., his love, without labor (111-13)--an observation that requires her to range much farther than the 746 lines she staked out when she began. What she claims Amans "is articulating is a theory of give and take, a principle of exchange, that is at play whether one is talking about fiduciary or erotic matters" (112). This for Cady is the key to Gower's complicated Book V: Amans's love-service is treated as a form of labor that both in contemporary jurisprudence and natural law should earn reward--a reward that, ultimately, is woman's valorization. Her "tresor" has "no value if hoarded" (122); rather her worth derives from her sharing it, but only with one man. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]

Date
2019

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis