Racial Lens
This section will look at The Man of Law’s Tale through the lens of its racial implications. Before moving backwards in an attempt to understand race within the middle ages, this analysis establishes a modern working definition of race. This definition helps to explain why the middle ages is often perceived by modern scholars as being racially innocent (i.e.: incapable of racist or racial thinking).[1] Ultimately, this lens works to unpack the ways in which race merges with multiple structures within the tale. It is in this merging effect that race can appear abstracted, unfamiliar, or even invisible to the modern reader.
Understanding Race from a Modern Perspective
Race and racism within The Man of Law’s Tale are concepts readily felt when reading Custuance’s story, though much harder to pinpoint and explicate afterwards. This contradictory experience occurs for a few different reasons. First, it is helpful to have a working definition of race held by most modern American culture scholars. The definition of race put forth by Roderick A. Ferguson in “Keywords for American Cultural Studies” contains the following sentiment:
As postcolonial and structuralist theorists have illustrated, race is more than a way of identifying and organizing political coalitions against forms of state repression and capitalist exploitation; it is also a category that sets the terms of belonging and exclusion within modern institutions.[2]
This definition is useful because it illuminates the how the modern American reader might approach the concept of race found in The Man of Law’s Tale. As Ferguson points out, our modern understanding of race is deeply impacted by critical race theory, particularly the work of Michael Omi and Howard Winant in “Racial Formation in the United States.”[3] Omi and Winant demonstrate that the minority movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s fundamentally changed how Americans think about identity and race in U.S. society.[4] So the question arises: how does the modern American reader go about identifying race and racism in a tale that is neither modern nor American? How should one look at race when most modern definitions only allow for its signification in the present? Well … it is complicated.
Race is continually being invented and reinvented throughout time. [5] It is inherently nonlinear and uneven as a concept. Also, it is subject to the cultural whims and reinscriptions of a particular historical moment in time. [6] Therefore, a fixed modern definition of race is simply insufficient for understanding how the concept operates in a tale that is culturally and temporally so far away from the present day reader. Additionally this definition, as Geraldine Heng notes in The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages, is often thought about in terms of western exceptionalism.[7] Meaning, the modern institutions posited by Ferguson are formed under notions of linear, western historical progression. The definition of modern institutions only reckons with historical events like the western industrial revolution, capitalism, and nationalism.[8] Yet, race as depicted in the Canterbury Tales requires a much more expansive framework to properly account for the nuances in the middle ages. The following section will make the case for applying an intersectional framework to the depictions of race found in The Man of Law’s Tale.
An Intersectional Approach to Race: Religion and Gender
To circumvent the problems of a modern perspective when looking at race in The Man of Law’s Tale, adopting an intersectional approach is very a useful framework. An intersectional approach entails looking at structures of power that produce racial identities, rather than emphasizing individual identity.[9]
In The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng unpacks the process of understanding race in the middle ages and the ways in which it is problematized by our modern perspective. Typically the middle ages are incorrectly identified as being racially innocent in comparison to the periods of history that follow. This perceived innocence is marked by an inability to identify more modern racial formations within the historical and literary accounts of the middle ages. Race and racism do exist Heng notes, time and space simply distort the modern readers view of it.[10] Race always merges with the hierarchical systems of power surrounding it. In order to identify race in the Canterbury Tales, Heng argues we must first properly identify the systems it is embedded in since race always operates on more than one level.[11] For example, this passage from The Man of Law’s Tale is a good place to start unpacking these larger conceptual ideas:
We shul first feyne us cristendom to take —
Coold water shal nat greve us but a lite! —
And I shal swich a feeste and revel make
That, as I trowe, I shal the Sowdan quite.
For thogh his wyf be cristned never so white,
She shal have nede to wasshe awey the rede,
Thogh she a font-ful water with hire lede. [12]
Race by way of Religion
In this passage, the Sultaness angirly laments the arrival of Custaunce and her attempt to convert the Syrian people to Christianity. The Sultaness hatches a plan to pretend to receive the word of Christ, killing Custaunce before she becomes aware of the facade. In lines 355-356 the Sultaness makes a quip at Custaunce’s skin color, “never so white,” and that she will need to “wasshe awey the rede” due to the murder she is plotting. Custaunce’s white skin is intimately connected to her Christianity in the eyes of the Sultaness. The fact that Custaunce is “cristned” renders her skin a white hue. In the same vein, her white skin renders her an authentic Christian.[13] Religion is inseparable from race in the middle ages. Religion produces a certain white normativity that in turn circles back to reinforce the pillars of Christianity that created it. [14]
Christian Universalism
An understanding of Christian universalism helps to clarify the theoretical process of jumping from religion to race. Christian universalism involves three tenets: 1.) membership is available to individuals of all backgrounds 2.) Christians “actively” sought all humans as members and 3.) Christians sought to be a unified religion from its earliest periods. [15] This fixed definition of Christian universalism often incorrectly exempts early Christians from being implicated in racist acts or structures. [16] Universalism is another reason why identifying race within the middle ages is difficult (i.e.: How could early Christians be considered racist given the tenets of Christian universalism?) Early Christians still engaged in a process called “ethnic reasoning” which identified who is rightfully considered Christian.[17] The idea of “Christianness” holds racist potential as it implies that the only authentic Christians are descendants of Abraham.[18]Thus, the beginnings of a racial hierarchy are put in place by the vague process of ethnic reasoning. Clearly, the Sultaness is pointing to this relationship between Custaunce’s white skin and the “authentic” nature of her Christianity in the above quote.
Race by way of Gender
Additionally, the above passage introduces another complication for interpreting race in The Man of Law’s Tale: gender. Custaunce’s female figure represents a blank canvas that allows for religious and cultural fantasies to be mapped onto her. [19] Her sexual mobility, reproductive potential, and non threatening femininity work to build a rich cultural fantasy of a Christian presence in the East. [20] This fantasy occurs alongside the very real, male colonialist effort occuring in Eastern locales at the time. With Chaucer behind the Man of Law and the Man of Law behind Custaunce, her femininity becomes more of a political, religious, and racial tool to fantasize about the conversion of Eastern Islamic people to Christianity.[21] In this way, Custuance’s race and gender function less as a personal category of identity, and instead as a cultural tool for envisioning an ideal Latin Christendom. She is the product of the religious, militaristic, and narrative structures surrounding her.
Race and Mother-in-laws
Additionally in discussing race forged through the framework of gender, it is crucial to note the differences between Custaunce’s evil mother-in-law’s the Sultaness and Donegild. The passages below illuminate the hidden subtext of race within The Man of Law’s Tale:
O Donegild, I ne have noon Englissh digne
Unto thy malice and thy tirannye!
And therfore to the feend I thee resigne;
Lat hym enditen of thy traitorie!
Fy, mannysh, fy! — o nay, by God, I lye —
Fy, feendlych spirit, for I dar wel telle,
Thogh thou heere walke, thy spirit is in helle! [22]
O Sowdanesse, roote of iniquitee!
Virago, thou Semyrame the secounde!
O serpent under femynynytee,
Lik to the serpent depe in helle ybounde!
O feyned womman, al that may confounde
Vertu and innocence, thurgh thy malice,
Is bred in thee, as nest of every vice! [23]
In both of these passages, the Man of Law criticizes Donegild and the Sultaness for attempting to interfere in Custaunce’s conversion of their sons to Christianity. Both women are held in contempt for their scheming and rejecting of Christ through Custaunce. However, these passages diverge in a few key ways that expose the Man of Law’s racial bias. Donegild, the mother-in-law of the English Northumberland coast, is given a name. In contrast, the mother-in-law hailing from Syria is not given a name and referred to only as the Sultaness. The Man of Law proclaims that he has “noon English” sufficient enough to describe the terrible qualities of Donegild. Yet, he is capable of describing the “iniquitee” of the Sultaness and thus, her description is far more of an attack on her character.
Donegild walks on earth though her spirit is in Hell. The Sultaness is the serpent under the cover of femininity. The Man of Law makes more attempts to conflate the Sultaness with true evil than he attempts to do with Donegild. Clearly, the gendered attack on the Sultaness is of a higher degree than Donegild’s, which is notable when factoring in a discussion of race. Existing in Syria, the Sultaness embodies a greater “other” than does Donegild. This fact appears to compound her condemnation by the Man of Law. The Sultaness exists at an intersection. She is 1.) condemned by the male Christian narrator for the original sin of all women and 2.) foreign and thus, further othered by the first condition. Since Europeans had limited contact with non-whites the notion of a foreign other came to signify “sin, ignorance, shame, error, and the state of redemption” [24] in the European imagination. The imagination of the Man of Law manifests in the vastly different descriptions between these two women (two women who are otherwise almost the same in the level of their deceitfulness).
Here is a visual guide summing up the above information! In order to understand a concept like race on a theoretical level it is helpful to have “tools” to produce conclusions. The comprehensions “tools” of religion and gender help to build a complete picture of race in The Man of Law’s Tale.
1 Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 15-54
2 Ferguson, Roderick A. Keywords for American Cultural Studies. “Race” New York: New York University Press, 2014, 207-211
3 Ferguson, 207.
4 Ferguson, 207.
5 Heng, 24.
6 Heng, 21.
7 Heng, 22.
8 Heng, 22.
9 Gerber, Amanda. “Intersectionality Lecture.” University of California, Los Angeles, January 30, 2019.
10 Heng, 20.
11 Heng, 27.
12 “The Man of Law’s Tale,” II 351-357.
13 Heng, Geraldine. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
14 Heng, 235.
15 Kimber Buell, Denise. “Early Christian Universalism and Modern Forms of Racism.” The Origins of Racism in the West, by Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 109–131.
16 Buell, 109.
17 Buell, 111.
18 Buell, 110.
19 Heng, 191-192.
20 Heng, 192-193.
21 Heng, 199.
22 “The Man of Law’s Tale,” II 778-784
23 “The Man of Law’s Tale,” II 358-364
24 Heng, 186.
