He proceeds to illustrate the moral superiority of the male by the statement that nuns are often led astray by priests, who enter their convents as confessors or visitors, and under guise of a reforming visitation make the frail women worse than they were before. “I should hold this a most damnable crime,” says Gower, “were it not that—really, woman falls so easily!”
Hoc genus incesti dampnabile grande putarem
Sit nisi quod mulier de leuitate cadit[1630].
After further reflections in this strain, he bursts into a long panegyric of virginity and then passes on to attack the manners of the friars.
Far more interesting than Gower’s conventional moralising is a poem entitled Why I can’t be a Nun, and written early in the fifteenth century[1631]. The favourite device of a ghostly abbey, peopled by personified qualities, is here employed, but the inmates of the convent are chiefly vices and such virtues as have a place among the nuns are treated with scant respect by their companions. The poem is unfortunately incomplete and begins abruptly in the middle of a sentence, but the gist of the missing introduction is clear enough. The author represents herself as a young girl named Katherine, whose desire to become a professed nun has been opposed by her father. The father charges a number of messengers to visit all the nunneries of England and the poem opens with the departure of these messengers, full of zeal to accomplish their task, and their return with the news that the nuns were ready to do his will. Whereupon her father told Katherine that she could not be a nun, and merely laughing at her protests, went his way. Then she mourned and was sad and thought that fortune was against her; and one May morning, when her sorrow was more than she could bear, she walked in a fair garden, where she was wont to go daily to watch the flowers and the birds with their bright feathers, singing and making merry on the green bough; and going into an arbour, she set herself upon her knees and prayed to God to help her in her distress.
At last she fell asleep in the garden and in her sleep a fair lady came to her and called her by her name and bade her awake and be comforted. This lady was called Experience and told Katherine that she had come to take pity on her and teach her, saying:
Kateryne, thys day schalt thow see
An howse of wommen reguler,
And diligent loke that thow be,
And note ryȝt welle what þou seest there.
Then they went through a green meadow till they came to a beautiful building and entered boldly by the gates; and it was a house of nuns, “of dyuers orderys bothe old and yong,” but not well governed, after the rule of sober living, for self-will reigned there and caused discord and debate:
And what in that place I saw
That to religion schulde not long,
Peradventure ȝe wolde desyre to know,
And who was dwellyng hem among.
Sum what counseyle kepe I schalle,
And so I was tawȝt whan I was yong,
To here and se, and sey not all.
Then follows an enumeration of the inmates of the convent:
But there was a lady, that hyȝt dame pride;
In grete reputacion they her toke
And pore dame mekenes sate be syde
To her vnnethys ony wolde loke,
But alle as who sethe I her forsoke,
And set not by her nether most ne lest;
Dame ypocryte loke vpon a boke
And bete her selfe vpon the brest.
On every syde than lokede vp I
And fast I cast myne ye abowte;
Yf I cowde se, beholde or aspy,
I wolde have sene dame deuowte.
And sche was but wyth few of that rowȝt;
For dame slowthe and dame veyne glory
By vyolens had put her owte;
And than in my hert I was fulle sory.
But dame envy was there dwellyng
The whyche can sethe stryfe in every state.
And a nother lady was there wonnyng
That hyȝt dame love vnordynate,
In that place bothe erly and late
Dame lust, dame wantowne, and dame nyce,
They ware so there enhabyted, I wate,
That few token hede to goddys servyse.
Dame chastyte, I dare welle say,
In that couent had lytylle chere,
But oft in poynt to go her way,
Sche was so lytelle beloved there;
But sum her loved in hert fulle dere,
And there weren that dyd not so,
And sum set no thyng by her,
But ȝafe her gode leue for to go....
And in that place fulle besyly
I walked whyle I myȝt enduer,
And saw how dame enevy
In every corner had grete cure;
Sche bare the keyes of many a dore.
And than experience to me came,
And seyde, kateryne, I the ensuer,
Thys lady ys but seldom fro home.
Than dame pacience and dame charyte
In that nunry fulle sore I sowȝt;
I wolde fayne have wyst where they had be,
For in that couent were they nowȝt;
But an owte chamber for hem was wrowȝt,
And there they dweldyn wyth-owtyn stryfe,
And many gode women to them sowȝt
And were fulle wylfulle of her lyfe.