Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Eunuchs
Candice Mullen
April 1 2013
Dr. Paul Farkas Memorial Scholarship
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Eunuchs Chaucer and Shakespeare have created literature that has lasted for centuries by no coincidental matter. Many similarities link the two men together, but I believe that the most prominent characteristic that the men share is their innovativeness. More specifically their innovative construction of gender confused characters. Dinshaw’s examination of the eunuch Pardoner in her essay “Eunuch Hermeneutics” distinguishes The Pardoner to be a partial character because of his in-between state. Chaucer and Shakespeare’s construction of partial characters reveals that we cannot trust everything to be true in fiction literature and plays on our desires of wanting it to be true. The characters strive to restore wholeness, just as the reader of a text strives to correctly interpret a story, but neither can be fully satisfied. I find it arguable that most of the characters in The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s works mirror the eunuch pardoner in their partialness. For Chaucer I will primarily focus on “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” and how her inner animus creates conflict within herself and the characters around her ultimately placing her in an in-between state between male and female characteristics. Meanwhile Shakespeare creates the character of Viola in Twelfth Night whose cross-dressing places her in the role of a man while she must maintain her female characteristics as well. The characters in both of these men’s works do not achieve restoration of their rightful gender identity and are therefore partial characters and essentially eunuchs; Chaucer and Shakespeare do this in order to relate with the reader’s own desires for wholeness.
The Wife of Bath mirrors the pardoner’s eunuch characteristics through her psychological partialness. Alison of Bath is an animus driven female. Her lack of polarity between her feminine and masculine characteristics puts her
April 1 2013
Dr. Paul Farkas Memorial Scholarship
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Eunuchs Chaucer and Shakespeare have created literature that has lasted for centuries by no coincidental matter. Many similarities link the two men together, but I believe that the most prominent characteristic that the men share is their innovativeness. More specifically their innovative construction of gender confused characters. Dinshaw’s examination of the eunuch Pardoner in her essay “Eunuch Hermeneutics” distinguishes The Pardoner to be a partial character because of his in-between state. Chaucer and Shakespeare’s construction of partial characters reveals that we cannot trust everything to be true in fiction literature and plays on our desires of wanting it to be true. The characters strive to restore wholeness, just as the reader of a text strives to correctly interpret a story, but neither can be fully satisfied. I find it arguable that most of the characters in The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s works mirror the eunuch pardoner in their partialness. For Chaucer I will primarily focus on “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” and how her inner animus creates conflict within herself and the characters around her ultimately placing her in an in-between state between male and female characteristics. Meanwhile Shakespeare creates the character of Viola in Twelfth Night whose cross-dressing places her in the role of a man while she must maintain her female characteristics as well. The characters in both of these men’s works do not achieve restoration of their rightful gender identity and are therefore partial characters and essentially eunuchs; Chaucer and Shakespeare do this in order to relate with the reader’s own desires for wholeness.
The Wife of Bath mirrors the pardoner’s eunuch characteristics through her psychological partialness. Alison of Bath is an animus driven female. Her lack of polarity between her feminine and masculine characteristics puts her
Cited: Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue. Ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Print. Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Eunuch Hermeneutics." The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue. By Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. 566-85. Print. Fritz, D.W. "The Animus-Possessed Wife of Bath." Journal of Analytical Psychology P163, 18p Vol. 25.Issue 2 (1980): 163-80. Academic Search Premier Plus. EBSCO. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. Masi, Michael. Chaucer and Gender. New York: P. Lang, 2005. Print. Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, Or What You Will. Ed. Keir Elam. Arden Shakespeare, 2008. Print. Stone, James W. Crossing Gender in Shakespeare: Feminist Psychoanalysis and the Difference within. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.