My Purse and My Person: “The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse” and the Gender of Money

This chapter explores the ways that fiscal, gendered, and sexual anxieties merge in “Chaucer’s Complaint to his Purse.” Chaucer imagines his purse with two bodies: a female lover who is spending with others what she should keep for Chaucer alone, and as his own body, the masculine integrity of which is threatened by his current fiscal situation. The first section of this chapter seeks to explain why a poem on monetary need is framed in somatic terms, and what this idiom tells us about medieval fears and fantasies regarding money and its intersections with gender ideology. The second section examines how the history of critical inquiry on this poem focuses on Chaucer’s fiscal health and his political allegiances in ways that replicate the investments in value and masculine integrity that I outline in this chapter.

My purse, my person, my extremest means

Lie all unlocked to your occasions

Shakespeare ( 1750 ), The Merchant of Venice 1.1.8

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Notes

Horvath (2002) argues that many of Chaucer’s envoys use generic conventions that produce an intimate effect.

The Riverside Chaucer is representative in this regard: “Chaucer’s poem is unique in its humorous application of the language of a lover’s appeal to his mistress to this well-worn theme” (Chaucer 1987, 1088). All citations from Chaucer’s works in this chapter are from this edition and are cited parenthetically.

The scholarship on money’s meaning in the late Middle Ages is extensive. Useful discussions of the events that led to money’s increasingly important role in the late Middle Ages and the resulting social and culture effects can be found in Spufford (1998), Kaye (1998), Spufford (2002), Wood (2004), and Bolton (2012).

Portions of the discussion of money and gender ideology that follows are drawn from my essay (2006). Original text in de Columnis (1936, 11.17).

A copy of the poem can be found in Jubinal (1839, 2: 264–72). The citation and translation here is from Cowell (1996, 154). The coin in the poem will go on to argue that it does have inherent value , an idea that is reflective of metallist theories of money, which ascribed value to money based on its material properties . While some medieval writers and thinkers will adhere to the metallist theory of money, most (including most of the scholastics) will argue for the conventional nature of money. For an erudite and comprehensive analysis of scholastic views of money, see Langholm (1992). On the influence of Aristotle, in particular on scholastic theories about money, see Langholm (1979).

See Oresme (1956). For a discussion of the practice of debasement and the social impact that debasing the coinage had on different social classes, see Spufford (1998, 289–318). For a discussion of how Oresme’s anxieties about money’s instability parallel similar medieval anxieties about the instability of language, see Cady (2007, 124–41, especially 128–135).

Original text in Augustine (2003, 1147).

Sir Launfal is one of three versions of this story. It is preceded by Marie de France’s Lanval (the oldest and best-known version of the tale) and the anonymous Middle English Sir Landevale. All three romances tell ostensibly the same tale, although with different emphases. For a discussion of some of the economic context of the tale see Smith (2003, 154–187) and Cady (2006).

On analogical logic and its relationship to metaphysics, see Goux (1990, 213–44), for his analysis of how paternalism informs all forms of idealism. For a discussion of how this logic manifests in the Middle Ages, particularly in terms of discussions of money and language, see Cady (2007).

See, for example, in Arthour and Merlin, “sche hir knewe for li[gh]t woman & comoun hore to alle men” (1973, 1979, I: 733, 757).

The Middle English Dictionary does not offer “to die from sexual want” or “orgasm” as definitions of “die” in the fourteenth century, although one finds such usage by the sixteenth. However, the idea of death from sexual want is reflected in The Miller’s Tale, as in Nicholas’ complaint that, “For deerne love of thee, lemman, I spille” (1 [A].3278).

On the effects of the moneyed economy on friars and other religious , see Little (1978). On medieval satire about friars, particularly in their breaking of their vows of poverty and chastity, see Mann (1973, 37–54).

Four copies of the poem have no title, three are called ballads and one is entitled “A supplicacioun to Kyng Richard by Chaucier.” Only three manuscripts give as its title some variant of “Chaucer’s Compleint to His Empty Purse,” which is the title found in the Fairfax MS.16 at the Bodleian Library, upon which The Riverside Chaucer’s version is based. For a list of the manuscripts in which the poem appears and their titles, see Chaucer (1987, 1191). Scase observes that those copies of the poem that include the envoy tend to be labeled as complaints, whereas those that do not are called ballads (2007, 184).

Examples of the former reading can be found in Gerould (1952, 1968, 55–71), Luminasky (1955, 201–23), and Kean (1972, 2: 76–109). Examples of the latter reading can be found in Fritz (1987), Sturges (2000, 35–46 and 63–80), Burger (2003, 119–59), and Rollo (2011, 215–34).

See, for example, Ruud who argues that there is “little reason not to believe that Chaucer had a prosperous and important life (in a business and in a financial way) from 1374 to the end” (1926, 85). Scott also suggests that Chaucer was not poor but rather savvy. Knowing that many people would be making requests for money, Chaucer probably thought it prudent to be among the first in line with his request before the money ran out (1964, 82).

See, for example, Lorimer (1849) and Chute (1951, 292). Ferris calls the poem’s tone “courtly, jocular and probably comically exaggerated” but still, essentially, a begging poem” (1967, 46). Pearsall describes the poem as “suggestive enough to give pleasure without being so obscene as to give offense” (1992, 274).

Strohm, for example, reads Henry’s challenge to the throne as a narrative project, one that relies on the production of texts by litterateurs like Chaucer to support his agenda. He suggests that the terms of the “Complaint” allow Chaucer to agree to the facts of Henry’s conquering and election without necessarily saying that he agrees with what has happened (1992, 75–94). Yeager (2005) argues that the poem’s language and imagery represent a more direct challenge to Henry’s legitimacy as king. For a summary and discussion of Strohm and Yeager’s arguments, see Lindeboom (2008).

Dinshaw goes on to argue that the terms of this rivalry necessitate a violent expulsion of the feminine . For the role that rivalry and gender play in poetic production and property , see Cady (2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mills College, Albany, CA, USA Diane Cady
  1. Diane Cady