Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

and offers a frank friendship to all “gode folk.” She utters no half truths, and takes no pleasure in deceit, nor was there ever

... through hir tonge
Man ne woman greatly harmed.

There is no touch of pettiness in her nature. One of the most delightful passages in the poem is that in which the Black Knight declares how ready she always was to forgive and forget:—

Whan I had wrong and she the right
She wolde alwey so goodely
For-geve me so debonairly.
In alle my youthe in alle chaunce
She took me in hir governaunce.

At the same time she “loved so wel hir owne name” that she suffered no liberties to be taken with her:—

She wrong do wolde to no wight;

and

No wight might do her no shame.

Through the whole picture there breathes a spirit of vigour and freshness and gaiety. Once again Chaucer seems to foreshadow Shakespeare: Blanche might well take her place beside Rosalind and Portia and Beatrice, as a type of simple unspoiled girlhood. Her frank enjoyment of life, her keen wit, which knows no touch of malice, her combination of tender-heartedness and strength remind us more than once of Shakespeare’s heroines, and like them she is no colourless model of propriety, but has all a true woman’s charm and unexpectedness.

No other of Chaucer’s portraits is so detailed, but he recurs more than once to the same type. Emily is drawn with comparatively few strokes, but she gives us very much the same impression as Blanche. There is the same sense of the open air, the same simplicity and directness. Nothing better brings out the peculiar quality of Chaucer’s heroine than a comparison between the Emily of the Knightes Tale and the Emily of Two Noble Kinsmen. The one walks alone in the garden, gathering flowers, and singing to herself for sheer lightness of heart. The other converses with her waiting-woman, and her chief interest in nature lies in the hope that the maid may prove able “to work such flowers in silk.” There is no reason why the second Emily should not wish to have an embroidered gown, but its introduction here at once destroys the freshness and simplicity of the picture. Canace, too, delights in wandering in the forest in the early morning. She is so closely in sympathy with nature that it seems but natural that she should understand bird-latin, and her quick sympathy with the unhappy falcon is very characteristic of a Chaucerian heroine, for again and again he tells us