"Virginities" and "Marriage"

Two Resources
I know that a two or three of you are looking into the roles of women within one or more of the tales we have read from Chaucer. That being the case, I highly recommend two articles provided Cambridge's Medieval Women and Writing, which Doug has put on reserve for us in the library. Not only do "Virginities" (Ruth Evans) and "Marriage" (Dyan Elliott) provide a good introduction to the two categories. They also supply in-depth analysis of the history surrounding the idea of womanhood so far as womanhood is connected to virginity and marriage.

How it Impacts my Research 
Especially fascinating in regard to the subject that I am researching (how Custaunce and Grisilde embody the high value placed on constancy and chastity) is the following insight Evans hands on to the reader: "the feminized virgin (twelfth to fourteenth centuries)" replaced "a woman [virgin] acting like a man (ninth to eleventh centuries)" (25). In other words, there were at least two very distinct conceptions of an ideal woman, although both emphasized her virginity. As I am considering how the concept of an ideal woman was differentiated from the concept of an ideal man, Evans' suggestion is very thought provoking.

I hope these two articles will also be helpful for some of you.