The Poynt Of Remembraunce By Chaucer

“The Poynt of Remembraunce”: Chaucer’s Presentation of Women as Literary Characters

Women in the Middle Ages generally had little opportunity to provide influence either in life or in literature. Little is known of their lives and thoughts because little was written from their viewpoint. Yet in an age and a society dominated by the “male gaze,” certain of Chaucer’s works take a different track, exploring the concept of women as characters. His presentation of

Dido in The House of Fame and Anelida in Anelida and Arcite deviates from the traditional complaint genre, shifting the perspective to that of a female protagonist. Chaucer uses the similar complaints of Dido and Anelida, women who have both been deserted by their false lovers, in an

When

Anelida grieves the absence of Arcite, she applies the ubi sunt? motif, lamenting “Alas! Wher is

N. 3 become your gentilesse” (AA 246). Both men display the discrepancy between appearance and reality that Chaucer notes in The House of Fame: “hyt is not al gold that glareth” (272).

Chaucer also challenges the conception of women as the more mutable sex, emphasizing both the fickle nature of the male lover and the constancy of the female. In the traditional complaint genre, it is the woman who is supposed to be fickle; indeed, the suffering lover’s only hope is that she will change her mind and show him pity. Yet in The House of Fame and Anelida and Arcite, it is the men who display their capriciousness. If Anelida’s defining word is

“stidfastnesse,” Arcite’s is “newfanglenesse” (AA 141), signifying his inconstancy in love. He abandons Anelida when he finds “another lady, proud and newe” (AA 144). Aeneas likewise deserts Dido, not for another woman but to pursue his own fame and destiny as the founder of

Rome, having displayed “such godlyhede / In speche, and never a del of trouthe” (HF 330-331).

Once their lovers have left them, Dido and Anelida express their grief at being

Unlike Dido, who was already well-known by readers of the Aeneid, Anelida is

Chaucer’s own invention. Yet he portrays her, too, as more than simply a persona from which to catalogue beauty. Though Chaucer briefly discusses Arcite’s unhappy fate with his “newe lady”

(AA 183), the main topic of the poem is Anelida’s complaint. She, like Dido, laments the loss of her lover both in presence and in her esteem. Her pain lies mainly in the “poynt of

N. 5 remembraunce,” for, as long as she cannot eradiate him from her memory, she cannot find a way to escape her grief. Anelida compares this “point of remembraunce” to a “swerd of sorrowe” that has pierced her heart and left an incurable wound (270). Though Anelida speaks of Arcite’s

“dedly adversyte” (AA 258) in leaving her, she does not follow Dido’s example; rather, she ultimately realizes that life continues despite the pain inflicted by false lovers. We last see her sacrificing in the temple of Mars “with a sorrowful chere” (AA 356), giving the impression that time may heal her grief.

Chaucer’s unique portrayal of the complaint genre, which he uses to express the thoughts and emotions of Anelida and Dido, sets a new precedent in the presentation of women as