The persistent silence of the heroine regarding her history has traditionally been seen as an uncomfortable feature in the Man of Law's Tale and its closest analogues, an unfortunate necessity of the plot inexpertly dealt with by the authors.(FN1) It has long been noted that the tale-type to which Chaucer's tale belongs begins with the Constance character fleeing an incestuous father,(FN2) and many critics locate the source of Custance's unexplained refusal to divulge her identity or her history in the traces of this incest motif that remain in the tale.(FN3) This same odd terseness of the protagonist concerning her background is found in the versions of the Constance story written by Chaucer's contemporary, John Gower, and their, primary source, Nicholas of Trevet.(FN4) But for Chaucer's Custance, this determined silence regarding her true history occurs in a narrative that features Custance speaking at key moments, moments that frequently find no parallel in Chaucer's sources. By examining these moments in light of scholarly criticism and Chaucer's closest sources, this essay offers a reading of Chaucer's tale that asserts a more complex and forceful Custance than most have acknowledged, one who, while nominally obedient, registers resistance through her speech. The most significant of these speech-acts come at moments when Custance is faced with the reality of her own helplessness in the face of patriarchal authority. For Custance, this patriarchal authority is frequently made manifest through male determination to exercise control over her body, most tellingly figured in her father's betrothal of her to the Sultan--the event that replaces the incest in Chaucer's tale and his immediate sources. Her speeches serve to assert strongly both her awareness of her position in the face of male authority and her unwillingness to acquiesce to that authority, while at the same time they confirm her unavoidable acquiescence to such authority in fact. Custance's speeches focus attention on the connection between the incest that has been excised from the tale and the event that has replaced it, and in Chaucer's rendering, the emperor's bestowing of Custance in marriage becomes a less noisome and more socially accepted version of what is at the heart of father-daughter incest: a father asserting control over his daughter's body.
    A closer examination of both these acts of speech and Custance's persistent silence regarding her identity reveals a link between the two, a link forged from Custance's preoccupation with patriarchal authority and her response to that authority. In fact, Custance's silence about her history does not refer to a literal silence, a failure to speak, but rather represents a silence created through speech-acts. Her silence regarding particular aspects of her history is predicated upon speech that insists on concealing her identity, and this silence-creating speech differs from her other speech-acts in significant ways. Nor is this silence about her history the only kind of silence identified with Custance, as she is described as silent at significant moments in the narrative, and she simply functions as such when her response is not given. Such instances when Custance does not speak when she might be expected to register her response to events, particularly events that are imposed upon her, are especially suggestive. Through this interplay of speech and silence, Chaucer reveals Custance's attitude toward patriarchal assertions of control, most significantly that exercised by her father. His insistence on revealing what his closest sources seek to disguise, the incestuous desire of the Constance character's father for his daughter that originally stood at the beginning of the tale, suggests that Chaucer, at least, has not merely swept the incest under the rug, leaving plot inconsistencies behind, but rather has transformed its imprint on the tale in a way that his closest analogues, Gower and Trevet, do not.
    Since both Chaucer's primary source for the Man of Lawrs Tale, Nicholas of Trevet's Chronicles, and the tale written by his contemporary Gower offer versions of the Constance story that do not begin with the heroine fleeing an incestuous father, the question arises as to how aware Chaucer would have been of those "other" versions of women set adrift, and how aware his audience would have been. Margaret Schlauch's seminal study of the folktale and romance analogues to the Man of Law's Tale clearly establishes incest as the motivating factor of the narrative action, and she determines it to be one of the identifying motifs strongly attached to the tale.(FN5) Other critics have extended this identification to indicate that Chaucer, as well as Gower and Trevet, could not have been unaware of this element of the plot and is consciously suppressing the incestuous desire of Constance's father for his daughter.(FN6) There is evidence that Chaucer had direct knowledge of at least one of these analogues, the Middle English romance Emaré,(FN7) which includes the incest as the motivating factor of the tale, and there is the evidence present in Chaucer's text itself: the denunciation of incest stories in the Introduction to the Man of Law' Tale. While much critical debate has circulated over the exact relationship between the Introduction, Prologue, and tale proper,(FN8) the fact remains that at the same time that Chaucer's Man of Law resolves not to tell "swiche cursed stories" (II 80),(FN9) he prepares to tell a story that still bears the imprint of "swiche unkynde abhomynacions" (II 88). By raising the spectre of incest in his introduction and then denouncing it, Chaucer effectively reminds his audience of the incest that begins most versions of his tale.
    Chaucer's version of the Constance story, however, like Gower's and Trevet's, begins not with the incest but with a legitimate contract of marriage. Carolyn Dinshaw, in a discussion based on Levi-Strauss's anthropological analysis of marriage and patriarchal society, has pointed to the connection between the exchange of women, the power asymmetry between the genders, and incest.(FN10) Chaucer's tale, which the Man of Law tells us he learned from a merchant, begins with merchants, and the opening stanzas are filled with images of trade and commerce. Custance herself "is first introduced not in person but in--as--narrative ... [as] a tale told by men,"(FN11) and the tale of Custance's goodness and beauty (II 156-68) is, in fact, the first speech-act in Chaucer's tale, a speech identified as representing "the commune voys of every man" (II 155). This account of her beauty and exemplary character becomes the commodity later brought by the merchants to the Sultan, and the connection between narrative, commodity, and Custance herself is underscored, as Dinshaw points out, by "the parallel narration of [the merchants] loading their ships with merchandise and loading their eyes with Constance"(FN12) in Chaucer's text:
    Thise marchantz han doon fraught hir shippes newe, And whan they han this blisful mayden sayn, Hoom to Surrye been they went ful fayn. (II 171-73)
    Custance will herself be shortly loaded into a ship and sent on the same route, in similar circumstances as the "chaffare" of the merchants.(FN13)
    The presentation of the arrangements for Custance's first marriage emphasizes the contractual and commercial aspects of the arrangement, as the marriage agreement takes place between the Sultan and Constance's father "by tretys and embassadrie" (II233), involving "sufficient suretee" (II243) and the swearing of "accord" (II 244) and including the transfer of "certein gold" (II 242). These details of exchange." highlight marriage as, in Levi-Strauss's words, "the archetype of exchange."(FN14) Dinshaw notes the connection in Levi-Strauss's analysis between the exchange of women and the incest taboo, but observes further that "incest... [as] an act instigated and perpetrated by men, can be seen as in fact another--and more fundamental, because lawless--exertion of control over women."(FN15) This kind of incest, that is, that perpetrated by men, such as father-daughter incest, maintains the standard of male dominance that is key to patriarchal society; however, it violates the principle of exchange on which that society is built, and incest narratives reveal this violation. Both stories mentioned by the Man of Law in his Introduction, the tales of Canacee and of Apollonius of Tyre, function in this way, for both focus on father-daughter incest.(FN16) According to Dinshaw, in the Constance story the incestuous desire of the father is legitimized by being transferred to another man, the Sultan, and patriarchal society is sustained instead of threatened as the marriage brings about the promise of increased power through the conversion of the Sultan and his people to Christianity and alliance with Rome. However, Custance's father does not simply "disappear" from this equation, nor is he completely replaced by the Sultan. He is the orchestrater of this marriage, a fact of which Custance herself is keenly aware as her speech-acts reveal, and it is through Custance's awareness of her own position that Chaucer makes his exposure of the incest motif manifest.
    Custance's reaction to her first marriage is made abundantly clear in Chaucer's tale. In two stanzas of speech (II 274-87) she comes as close to reproaching her parents as a heroine as exemplary as Custance can. She twice refers to herself as "wrecche[d]" (II 274, 285), reminds her parents of her youth, of her great affection for them, and of the bond between parent and child, and hints that their decision will result in her death. She emphasizes that she goes unwillingly and only at their behest, and concludes by reminding herself and her audience that as a woman it is her lot to obey as a slave, and be "under mannes governance" (II 287). In his analysis of Custance's reproach of her parents, her first speech in the tale, Robert B. Dawson points to

the power with which Custance subtly yet insistently portrays herself as pathetic. By repeatedly projecting herself in the third person as a helpless and pliant victim--"thy wrecched child," "thy yonge doghter"--and by emphasizing her filial duty and obedience, Custance clarifies for her parents their heartlessness without openly challenging the validity of their actions or motives.(FN17)

    Her use of the more familiar "thy" in these two lines further emphasizes this projection, and works to hint subtly at both the intimacy of the family relationship and her subservient position; in the rest of the speech she uses the more formal "you" appropriate for a child addressing her parents. It is perhaps significant that in these two lines she is specifically addressing her father; in the next line, it is her mother that she addresses as "ye" (II 276), and she retains the formal usage throughout the rest of the speech.(FN18) There is nothing like this speech in Gower or Trevet; neither one gives us Constance's reaction to her marriage in either direct or reported speech.
    Nor does Chaucer's Custance forget what her father has done. This initial speech-act reproaching her parents, specifically her father, has a corollary in her final speech of the tale. When she finally reveals herself to her father at the end of the narrative she identifies herself as "youre doghter Custance ... That whilom ye han sent unto Surrye" (II 1107-8). It is a startling statement; by this point in the narrative, after two episodes of being set adrift, a murder, a trial, several miracles, a rumored monstrous birth, an escape from rape, and several exchanged letters, the audience has all but forgotten her infelicitous first marriage, and her insistence on bringing it up now, and emphasizing her father's leading role in it, introduces a sour note into this reunion scene. Her use of the more formal "youre" and "ye" here contrasts sharply with her use of "thy" in her earlier speech, injecting a note of deliberate formality and emphasizing the distance between them. She continues her short speech to her father, demonstrating a rhetorical skill designed, as Dawson notes, to "implicate him in effect as the deliberate author of her abandonment to the sea":

[S]he now identifies herself to her father as his victim in fact.... The passive voice of her following sentence, taken in context, is something of a masterpiece of implied slander: "It am I, fader, that in the salte see / Was put allone and dampned for to dye" (II 1109-10).(FN19)

    She goes on to inform him briefly of the suffering she has endured as a result of his action and then makes a request: "Sende me namoore unto noon hethenesse" (II 1112). She ends her speech by presenting her new husband, and now it becomes clear both why she maintained her silence regarding her identity for so long, and why she can at last safely reveal herself: as a married woman she is no longer in danger of her father bestowing her body on another man. This fact points to the emptiness of her request: Custance's father cannot, of course, send her anymore into heathenness for he no longer has power over her body. Yet by making the request, with its emphatic double negative, Custance emphasizes that this was, in fact, what he was doing with her first marriage, and what he can no longer do thanks to her second. Again, there is nothing like this in Gower; his Constance makes no mention of her first marriage when she reveals herself to her father, but merely expresses her pleasure at his good health, as does Trevet's heroine. But Chaucer's Custance is painfully aware that throughout the narrative she is fleeing, if not a blatantly incestuous father, then one who insists on exercising control over his daughter's body.
    A connection between father-daughter incest and the paternal bestowal of a daughter in marriage may be suggested in the reunion scene not only through Custance's verbal reproach of her father and her insistence on recalling his action in betrothing her to the Sultan, and the greatness of her suffering as a result, but also by some details of the scene itself. Custance falls at her father's feet when she sees him again:
    And whan she saugh hir fader in the strete, She lighte doun, and falleth hym to feete. (II 1103-4)
    Dinshaw sees this action anticipated in the Man of Law's description of Antiochus raping his daughter in Apollonius of Tyre "[w]han he hir threw upon the pavement" (II 85),(FN20) a detail which, as scholars have frequently noted, appears to be Chaucer's own invention.(FN21) When Custance returns to Rome after Alla's death and reunites with her father for a second time, she repeats this action:
    And whan that she hir fader hath yfounde, Doun on hir knees falleth she to grounde. (II 1152-53)(FN22)
    If Dinshaw is right that Custance's position on the ground before her father recalls that of Antiochus's daughter presented in the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale, then the - voluntary nature of Custance's action here (falling to the ground rather than being thrown) may point to Custance's appropriating this image and using it for her own purpose--to invoke the specter of paternal control and rebuke her father with it. Yet if this trio of images evokes the suggestion of incest, it does so in a subtle way; Custance's speech draws the connection much more starkly. It is through her verbal reproach of her father, through asserting the reality of her suffering and insisting that it be taken note of, that Custance exerts her influence.
    It is not just in the scenes with her father that Custance exerts influence through her use of language; she does so throughout the story of her adventures. When she is in Northumberland, she is responsible for the conversion of Hermengild and the constable, and in Chaucer's version of the tale it is through the power of her testimony---her speech--that the constable accepts Christianity. Edward Block, who has conducted a detailed study of Chaucer's use of Trevet, observes that in his handling of this scene Chaucer "has emphasized the role of Constance by attributing the constable's conversion to her alone, instead of to her and Hermengyld jointly."(FN23) It is through her words that Custance converts the constable, and in Chaucer's presentation of the scene there is no mistaking just who is acting on whom: "she the constable, er that it was eve / Converteth, and on Crist made hym bileve" (II 573-74). In Chaucer's treatment the constable's conversion is portrayed as a direct result not of Hermengild's miracle in restoring the blind man's sight, but of Custance's testimony, her words. Even the miracle is depicted as coming through the intervention of Custance, and specifically through her verbal command, and not through Hermengild alone: "Custance made hire boold, and bad hire wirche / The wyl of Crist" (II 566-67) .(FN24) Custance's words have power here in this Christian context in a direct and forceful way; elsewhere she exerts her influence through language more subtly, often using her position as suffering victim in order to gain power. It comes as no surprise, then, when Dawson describes Custance as "rhetorically active," finding tohertherespeech." to be "an aggressive, judgmental, and deeply deceptive irony to her speech."(FN25)
    Analysis of Custance's use of language reveals her to act with much more power than many critics have been willing to give her credit for. While she generally cannot act decisively in her own interest, she can, through her speech, manipulate the role of victim to her advantage. As Dawson points out in his analysis of the reunion scene between Custance and her father, "Custance's rhetoric of victimization with her father reverses the actual power-structure of their reunion. Custance completely orchestrates and dominates the scene, which occurs at the time, place, and condition of her choosing."(FN26) Rather than fruitlessly rebelling against the passive role that is forced upon her, Custance uses that role to achieve what power and autonomy she can. The necessity of Custance's less direct approach in achieving some measure of control becomes clear when her mode of action is compared to that of the other two women featured in the story, her mothers-in-law. Both women function as negative exemplars of womanhood and stand in contrast to Custance herself, and both take direct action in attempts to assert power and control their own destinies. Dinshaw notes the abilities of the mothers-in-law "to manipulate language in cunning plots [which allow them to] appropriate power that is deemed properly patriarchal."(FN27) They are of course ultimately unsuccessful and are punished for their transgression, whereas their counterpoint, Custance, who also uses language to assert power, is much more successful because she is more subtle in her approach.(FN28)
    An examination of Custance's use of language can lead us to a more complete understanding of just how Chaucer has transformed the imprint of the incest motif in his version of the Constance story. While his Custance, like the Constance of Gower's and Trevet's versions of the tale, does not, and really cannot, take much direct action to control her own fate,(FN29) she does assert some control through her use of language. In this aspect she differs from Gower's and Trevet's heroines. While all three authors replace the incest at the outset of the tale with the Emperor betrothing Constance to the Sultan, only Chaucer emphasizes Custance's reproach of her father for bestowing her in marriage--in fact, only Chaucer gives us Custance's reaction at all.(FN30) This is especially remarkable because introducing the episode of the marriage to the Sultan not only removes the "abhomynacion" of incest from the tale, but also subsumes the possibility of a disobedient daughter, for instead of fleeing an incestuous father, disobeying his command to wed him, the heroine acquiesces to a paternally arranged marriage. Chaucer, however, reintroduces the possibility of disobedience through Custance's voiced unwillingness to obey, even as she asserts the inescapable reality of her obedience. By reconfiguring the dynamics of the opening scenario, Custance's marriage to the Sultan, Chaucer aligns her reluctant obedience to an unwanted paternal behest with the more customary incest, as in both cases the command to marry is an unwanted paternal demand. Thus in Chaucer's version, this paternal "bequeathing" becomes, through Custance's negative fixation on it, a lesser version of the incest that has supposedly been excised from the tale.
    The betrothal to the Sultan is not the only instance in which Custance finds herself forced to obey a command she perceives as unreasonable from the man who acts as her "lord." When Alla appears to reveal himself as arbitrary and unjust through the command that she be put to sea with their infant son, her reaction is linked to her earlier response to her father's determination to marry her to the Sultan. Just as in the first scenario, her negative reaction is suggested both through her demeanor and her words of subtle reproach. As she prepares to depart Northumberland, Custance is described as bearing "a deedly pale face" (II 822), a description that recalls her "[fful pale" (II 265) appearance years earlier as she prepared to depart Rome for her marriage to the Sultan. It is linked as well to the famous comparison of her countenance to the "pale face" of the condemned prisoner during the trial scene (II 645-51), and this connection is further emphasized when Custance specifically recalls the outcome of that scene, God's earlier vindication of her when she was falsely accused of Hermengild's murder:
    "He that me kepte fro the false blame While I was on the lond amonges yow, He kan me kepe from harm." (II 827-29)
    Her recalling this event to the minds of her listeners accomplishes two things: it intimates her innocence in this circumstance just as in the prior one, and it implies a vague threat. God protected her last time by striking her accuser dead so that "bothe his eyen broste out of his face" (II 671), and it the implication now is that the God she calls on may do the same to the perpetrators of this second injustice. According to Eugene Clasby, "for Chaucer, her confidence in the will of God is not inconsistent with her vigorous questioning of human authority and human justice."(FN31) Custance's confidence in God and her questioning of human authority and justice are not merely not inconsistent, I would claim, but two sides of a single coin throughout this tale.
    Just as the descriptions of her paleness signal a link among these scenes of Custance's distress (before her marriage to the Sultan, at her trial for the murder of Hermengild, and before she is set adrift with her infant son), they suggest a connection between the speeches Custance makes in each circumstance. In her long speech on the shore--her longest in the tale--she does not accuse Alla of injustice directly, just as she did not directly accuse her father when he married her to the Sultan. As she addresses the constable and the gathered crowd, she refers to Alla obliquely through allusion to their son and comes the closest to a direct remonstrance at the end of her speech. She bemoans her child's fate, asserting his innocence and asking "Why wil thyn harde fader han thee spilt?" (II 857). Immediately thereafter she turns to the constable and asks for mercy for her child, a dispensation she never asks for herself. Her questioning of Alla's reasoning here, and her accusation of "hardness," thus serve directly to support her appeal to the constable for mercy for her son.(FN32) Yet even as she makes the request, she seems to understand the impossibility of its being fulfilled and asks instead for a kiss for the child "in his fadres name" (II 861), an action which also acts as a reminder to the constable of his role in this affair as Alla's deputy.(FN33) Only then does she speak any word of direct remonstrance as she looks back at the land and bids goodbye to Alla: "Farewel, housbonde routhelees!" (II 863). This final word is the closest she comes to accusing her husband of injustice, and even here it is not direct wrongdoing that she upbraids him with, but a lack of compassion.(FN34)
    The similarities between this speech and her earlier reproach of her father point to the similarities between the situations from Custance's perspective. By casting her out, as he appears to do through the forged letter, Alla takes on, in Custance's eyes, the same role her father did by sending her to Syria: that of arbitrary bestower of her body. Custance's attitude towards him changes accordingly, and as she did when faced with her father's earlier decision to bestow her on the Sultan, she acquiesces to his (apparent) will while emphasizing his cruelty in her speech of farewell. This correlation in Custance's eyes between Alla's casting her off and her father's sending her away sheds light on another correspondence in the narrative, Custance's twin refusals to divulge her identity. Because of the similarity of the roles played by her father and Alla, from Custance's point of view, when she arrives in Rome Custance believes herself to be in the same position she occupied when she washed up in Northumberland: that of a woman without earthly protection. To reveal herself as the daughter of the Roman emperor would result in her being placed back under her father's control--a position she refuses to occupy. This is the likely reason behind her "inexplicable" silence regarding her own identity, as she refuses to say who she is first in Northumberland: "[f]or foul ne fair, thogh that she sholde deye" (II 525), and again in Rome: "ne she nyl seye / Of hire estaat, althogh she sholde deye" (II 972-73). The intensity of this refusal is apparent not only through its persistence even in the face of death ("[al] thogh she sholde deye," repeated at each instance), but through its responsibility for the only lie the virtuous Custance tells: that she does not remember who she is, claiming "she was so mazed in the see / That she forgat hir mynde, by hir trouthe" (II 526-27).(FN35) The inclusion of this last phrase, the indication that she swears "by hir trouthe," signals the depth of her refusal and the conviction behind it. Furthermore, whereas in Gower and Trevet Constance gives a relatively accurate and fairly detailed account of her situation, though she stops short of actually identifying herself, Chaucer's Custance is much more reticent.(FN36) While Custance is not, as are most heroines of the tales of which Chaucer's story is a version, fleeing an incestuous father, she is fleeing first a father who insists on exercising control over her body, and then a husband who appears to do likewise, and like those other heroines she suppresses her identity because she too "fear[s] the consequences of return to the father ... who ha[s] treated [her] so brutally."(FN37) Only when she is reunited with her husband and knows that he is a good and Christian man (one ready, in fact, to accept a monstrous child as God's sending) is she safe to reveal her identity and approach her father again, and to do so is, in fact, her immediate concern. She orchestrates the reunion scene so that her father has no forewarning of her coming (II 1084-85),(FN38) and makes its point of focus her empty request that he not repeat his earlier action in sending her to heathen lands. Her emphasis on her sufferings and his causative role seems to have the desired effect, for, when she returns to Rome after Alla's death, she is allowed to live on her own terms, and her father attempts to procure no more husbands for her.(FN39)
    This silence regarding her personal history, then, is supported through speech that is similar to Custance's other speeches I have been delineating here in the concern it reveals with patriarchal authority and her own position in regards to that authority. Yet this is not the only silence associated with Chaucer's heroine. As examination of her main speeches has revealed, Custance is not typically silent in the face of an unwanted fate, but at two key moments in the narrative she is specifically described as silent--in fact, at a loss for words--when faced with an unwelcome turn of events. When the constable, with King Alla in tow, comes home and discovers his wife slain and the bloody knife beside Custance in the bed, Custance has no response. The narrator interjects an explanation:
    Alias, what myghte she seye? For verray wo hir wit was al aweye. (II 608-9)(FN40)
    Unlike the instances in the narrative when Custance has a great deal to say in the face of an unwelcome fate, here Custance appears struck dumb, having been wakened from slumber to discover her bedmate slain, the weapon beside her, and herself accused. However, once she recovers from the shock, she does regain her power of speech, praying to God and Mary to save her from death (II 639-44), and she is able to register her dissatisfaction with the unjustness of the turn events have taken.(FN41) The second instance in which the text specifically calls attention to her silence occurs when Custance is faced with her husband Alia in Rome:
    And she, for sorwe, as doumb stant as a tree, So was hir herte shet in hir distresse. (II 1055-56)
    While the suddenness of events is less a factor here (Custance is aware she is being sent before Alla), in both instances her great sorrow and distress are emphasized and offered as an explanation for her lack of speech ("[f]orverray wo" [II 609] and "for sorwe" [II 1055]), and in the second instance, the cause of that distress is specifically identified: "Whan she remembred his unkyndenesse" (II 1057).
    That identification is an important one. While the first of these two instances can perhaps be adequately explained by the extreme nature of the circumstances and Custance's almost complete lack of preparation for their occurrence (to be framed for murder is clearly not an experience she anticipates) and is in any event a silence of short duration, the cause of her distressed silence in the second instance is specified as her recollection of Alia's "unkyndenesse." This is quite different from Gower and Trevet, for whom the reunion is one of unqualified joy.(FN42) But here, in Chaucer, Custance is faced, and with some notice,(FN43) with the man she believes to be responsible for casting out herself and their son. While the pattern and content of Custance's speeches so far delineated might lead us to expect a speech along the lines of her reproach of her father upon his betrothing her to the Sultan or at their reunion, or her speech on the shores of Northumberland, that is not what we get. The fact that this encounter should indeed be aligned with encounters with patriarchal authority is suggested not only by the specification that Custance here remembers Alla's past cruelty, but by Alla's preoccupations in the scene as well. Alla seems only too aware of his wife's misapprehension, as his primary concern in the scene is correcting Custance's false belief. He "hym excuseth pitously" (II 1059), and the entirety of his actual speech is his assurance, in emphatic and unequivocal terms, that he is "giltelees" (II 1062) of her suffering. Alla's first concern in the scene is to dissociate himself from the arbitrary actions of patriarchal authority represented in the false letter banishing Custance, and this seems to be the narrator's concern as well: "the sothe is wist / That Alla giltelees was of hir wo" (II 1072-73).(FN44)
    Yet if this scene is aligned with other encounters with patriarchal authority, it is also differentiated from them by Custance's differing actions and demeanor here, as well as the differing response of her partner in the encounter, Alla. Whereas Custance's sorrow is a feature in general, other encounters emphasize her paleness and a kind of stillness of controlled movement; Custance "stant" and "looketh hire aboute" (II 651) in the trial scene, and in her scenes reproaching her parents before departing Rome and on the shores of Northumberland she is described simply as rising and going forth (II 265, 823). The encounter with Alla, to the contrary, is typified by an almost frenzied movement, as "Unnethe upon hir feet she myghte stonde" (II 1050), standing "as doumb ... as a tree" (II 1055) one moment and swooning (twice) the next (II 1058). Custance shows here a level of emotional distress that exceeds any other she exhibits in the narrative. Perhaps most importantly, where other encounters feature Custance's speech, here Custance is notably silent, and it is the other participant in the encounter who speaks; as far as we are told Custance utters no word in the reunion scene at all.
    Alla's words, his assertion of innocence, act as the catalyst that effects the reunion between husband and wife. Before Alla asserts his innocence, he and his wife exist as separate entities. All pronouns are singular and their actions and emotions are described individually. After his declaration of innocence, husband and wife are described in concert, both in terms of actions and emotions, and all pronouns used are plural:
    Long was the sobbyng and the bitter peyne, Er that hir woful hertes myghte cesse; Greet was the pitee for to heere hem pleyne, Thurgh whiche pleintes gan hir wo encresse. (II 1065-68)
    This change in pronoun use occurs in spite of the fact that the emotional content is essentially the same before and after Alla's declaration. Custance does not appear at first to hear or register his claim, but after he makes it their separate woe becomes a shared grief. The final stage of the reunion scene comes when the truth finally registers---"whan that the sothe is wist / That Alla giltelees was of hir wo" (II 1072-73)--and their shared grief turns to shared joy: "an hundred tymes been they kist, / And swich a blisse is ther bitwix hem two" (II 1074-75). Custance's words when she is reunited with her father a few stanzas later have a similar effect, but this time the reunion is a reunion of three, and the "blisse ... bitwix hem two" effected by Alla's declaration of guiltlessness becomes "the pitousjoye ... /Bitwixe hem thre" (II 1114-15) resulting from Custance's words. Custance's speech both contrasts with Alla's words and corresponds to them, for while Alla's words are a protestation of his innocence, Custance's serve as a reminder to her father of his guilt. Both, however, refer to Custance's perception (false in the case of her husband; true in the case of her father) that her "lord" has exercised his patriarchal authority unjustly.(FN45)
    Custance's failure to register in speech her unhappiness with what she believes her husband has done seems, then, to be located in her extreme emotional distress and in Alla's co-opting of the scene in the face of Custance's apparent inability to speak, an action that accomplishes the reunion between husband and wife. In a sense, he could be said to preempt any possible speech of reproach on Custance's part with his protestation of innocence, and he certainly shows himself to be aware of her preoccupation with his assumed past actions. Custance's acute distress here, figured in her seeming inability to speak, her excessive movement, and the narrator's assertion, points to a significant difference between Custance's attitude toward her husband and her attitude toward her father, in spite of the fact that both "lords" appear to have exercised their patriarchal authority over her unfairly. That difference suggests that Custance's past relationship to her husband is one she has participated in willingly, even joyfully, so that his unexpected alliance with patriarchal authority serves to distress her to an excessive degree. This idea may be confirmed through consideration of one other point in the story at which Custance is notably, and perhaps surprisingly, silent, and which also features her husband: her marriage to Alla.
    Custance's response to marriage with Alla is unknown because she is silent at that point in the narrative. Given her earlier reluctance to be bestowed upon a heathen, in spite of his conversion to Christianity, we might expect her to display a similar reaction to her second marriage, yet she says nothing, and there are several reasons to suggest that Custance's silence here denotes acquiescence. Perhaps primarily, there are the differing characters of her two husbands, for despite the surface similarities between Alla and the Sultan (both fall in love with Custance; both are heathens who convert to Christianity before marriage to her), they are fundamentally dissimilar.(FN46) The introduction of the Sultan emphasizes his curiosity about other cultures as he eagerly seeks news from the merchants: he would "bisily espye / Tidynges of sondry regnes, for to leere / The wondres" (II 180-82).(FN47) King Alla, on the other hand, is introduced as "ful wys, and worthy of his hond / Agayn the Scottes" (11579-80), emphasizing his protection of his own realm rather than his curiosity about others, and he is connected not with merchants but with the constable, another guardian of the realm. While the Sultan falls in love with the merchants' report of Custance's goodness and beauty, Alla actually meets Custance when she is presented to him not as the beautiful and virtuous daughter of the Emperor but as an accused murderer. Although the portrait of the Sultan is not exactly negative, compared with Alla he looks like a dilettante.
    Even more telling are the differing circumstances of the two men's conversions. The Sultan converts in order to marry Custance--and for no other reason. Chaucer is absolutely explicit on this point: "And he answerde, 'Rather than I lese / Custance, I wol be cristned, doutelees,'" (II 225-26). In contrast, there is no indication that Alla's conversion is done for the sake of Custance--or at least not for the sake of desire for her. Alla has instinctively felt Custance's innocence of Hermengild's murder, he has been moved by the witness of all those who know her to be virtuous and loving towards Hermengild, and he has felt compassion for the suffering she undergoes, but there is no suggestion that he "hath caught so greet plesance / To han hir" (I1186-87) as the Sultan did. He converts not in order to marry her, but because he has seen the hand of God smite her accuser and heard the voice of God proclaim her innocence.(FN48) He converts, along with most (II 683-84). of his court, "for this miracle ... / And by Custances mediacioun" (II 683-84).(FN49)
    Custance's mediating role is important here, as is God's direct action--both notably absent from the arrangements for her first marriage. Furthermore, Custance's personal knowledge of both Alla's character, as revealed in his handling of the trial scene,(FN50) and the nature of his conversion suggests her positive reception of the marriage. Chaucer locates Custance's earlier negative reaction to her marriage to the Sultan not only in her separation from her loved ones but in her lack of knowledge of the Sultan's character:
    Allas, what wonder is it thogh she wepte, That shal be sent to strange nacioun Fro freendes that so tendrely hire kepte, And to be bounden under subjeccioun Of oon, she knoweth nat his condicioun? Housbondes been alle goode, and han ben yoore; That knowen wyves; I dar sey yow na moore. (II 267-73)
    The implication, particularly given the final two lines of the stanza, is that the Sultan's character is not good; at the very least his sudden love for Custance and his impetuous conversion suggest a certain rashness and disregard for his country's welfare. It may also suggest that Custance's problem is less with marriage per se than it is with marriage to an unknown and unfamiliar entity. Custance's assumed acceptance of her marriage to Alla, then, can be seen as hinging on her direct experience of Alla's virtuous character. When that character is called into question, however, through the false letter banishing her and their son, Custance registers her discontent by voicing her disapproval, just as she did at the circumstance of her first marriage, now that the two are aligned in her eyes. However, Alla is not physically present during that scene, and her apparent inability to speak when she is finally faced with her husband again in Rome suggests further evidence of the depth of her feelings and perhaps hints at a certain reluctance to view Alla in the role of arbitrary "lord," or at least a difficulty in resolving her earlier knowledge of her husband's character with her subsequent experience. This ambivalence may be further suggested by comparison with Gower on this point, for while both versions have the Constance character refuse to identify herself upon arrival in Rome, Gower's heroine gives a generally accurate account of her situation--that she and her son had been inexplicably cast off at her husband's command. Custance's unwillingness to share this detail may point to an unwillingness to accept it, as may her distress upon encountering her husband again.
    Elizabeth Archibald has called the Flight from the Incestuous Father plot "a searing indictment of patriarchy, which has such unlimited power over women (not least by assessing their marriageability and controlling their marriages)."(FN51) Chaucer focuses on this facet of patriarchy, the father's control over the marriage of his daughter, by following Trevet in making the betrothal to the Sultan the incident that begins the tale rather than the incest that acts as the catalyst for the heroine's adventures in most analogues, thereby directing attention to the insistence on paternal control over the daughter's body that is at the core of both father-daughter incest and the patriarchal custom of fathers giving daughters in marriage. Chaucer's choice of the marriage to the Sultan as the instigating incident of his version and the emphasis he places on Custance's reproach of her father suggest that the problem with father-daughter incest, then, is not the fact that the societal principle of exchange is violated (as Dinshaw suggests), but rather the issue of paternal control over the daughter's body. The fact that Custance's patterns of speech and silence suggest a fundamentally different attitude towards her husband Alla than she demonstrates towards her father points to a different construction of their relationship, and a different figuring of patriarchal control within it. Further, the different attitudes Custance demonstrates towards her two marriages suggest an opposition not to patriarchal authority itself, but to subjection to an unknown, or to someone who abuses that authority. As Marijane Osborn has suggested, "Chaucer invites a very close look indeed at the ambiguities of power structure in this particular story."(FN52)
    Certainly Custance's faith and fortitude in the face of suffering are key features of the tale, and Sheila Delany may be right to talk of Custance's humility and endurance, but it is hardly "silent endurance."(FN53) Custance uses her language to call attention to her role as victim and to highlight just who is responsible for her suffering. Her failure to use language in this way when faced with patriarchal authority figured in her husband, as opposed to her father, suggests a fundamentally different kind of relationship, and the possibility of a marriage constructed apart from such exercise of power. Her fixation on her father as agent of her victimization allows Chaucer to emphasize indirectly the incest that "should" begin the tale, not merely to suppress it as his immediate sources do. Chaucer's treatment of the story calls to light the connection between patriarchal society's insistence on paternal disposition of daughters in marriage--the accepted exercise of a father's control over his daughter's body--and what is its ultimate extension: incest.
ADDED MATERIAL
    Yvette Kisor
    Ramapo College of New Jersey Mahwah, New Jersey ([email protected])

Footnotes
1. Carolyn Dinshaw remarks on the heroine's "consistent refusal to identify herself"; see "The Law of Man and Its 'Abhomynadons,'" chap. 3 in Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (Madison, Wisc., 1989), 88-12, at 101. Willliam C. Johnson, Jr., refers to "Custance's mysterious silences" in "The Man of Law's Tale: Aesthetics and Christianity in Chaucer," Chaucer Review 16 (1982): 201-21, at 214; and Robert Dudley French notes the heroine's "unaccountable reluctance ... about revealing her identity," in A Chaucer Handbook, 2nd edn. (New York, 1947), 224. See also Elizabeth Archibald, "Contextualizing Chaucer's Constance: Romance Modes and Family Values," in The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borwff, ed. M. Teresa Tavormina and Robert F. Yeager (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 161-75.
2. Called alternatively the Accused Queen, the Castaway Queen, the Maiden without Hands, or the Flight from the Incestuous Father plot; for a thorough examination of the analogues to the Constance story in folktale and romance, see Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens (1927; repr. New York, 1969), the classic work on the subject, and Elizabeth Archibald's excellent new study, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford, 2001), esp. chap. 4, "Fathers and Daughters," 145-91.
3. See Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance, 132-33; Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 101; Lillian Herlands Hornstein, "Trivet's Constance and the King of Tars," Modern Language Notes 55 (1940): 354-57, at 355; and Winthrop Wetherbee, "Constance and the World in Chaucer and Gower," in fohn Gower. Recent Readings. Papers Presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 1983-1988, ed. R. F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1989), 65-93, at 69.
4. For discussions of the relationship between Chaucer, Trevet, and Gower, see Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance, 132-34; Margaret Schlauch, "The Man of Law's Tale," in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York, 1958), 155-206, at 155-56; and Edward A. Block, "Originality, Controlling Purpose, and Craftsmanship in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," PMLA 68 (1953): 572-616, at 600-2, esp. note 78. Though there has been some debate concerning the priority of Gower's version, general critical consensus is that Gower wrote first. See Peter Nicholson, "The Man of Law's Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower," Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 153-74, esp. 171n2,172n3, and Wetherbee, "Constance and the World," 66, 91n4.
5. Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance, esp. 3-8, 35-47, 64-85.
6. See Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 88, 230n3; for other discussions of this question see Elizabeth Archibald, "The Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical Precursors of the Constance Theme," Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 259-72; Elizabeth Allen, "Chaucer Answers Gower. Constance and the Trouble with Reading," ELH64 (1997): 627-55, at 641-42; and Elizabeth Scala, "Canacee and the Chaucer Canon: Incest and Other Unnarratables," Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 15-39.
7. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr., argues convincingly for Chaucer's direct knowledge of the romance Emaré, which includes the incestuous father motif; see "Emaré. An Influence on the Man of Law's Tale," Chaucer Review 18 (1983): 182-86.
8. See, for instance, the explanatory notes to the Introduction to MLT written by Patricia J. Eberle in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987), 854-56, at 854.
9. All quotations are taken from The Riverside Chaucer.
10. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, esp. 95-103.
11. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 95.
12. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 95.
13. See Chaucer's use of the word chaffare in CT. for "standard" uses, see MLT (I138, 139), CkT (14389), and ShipT (VII340); for uses relating to women "on the marketplace," see WBPro (III 521) and MerT (IV 2438).
14. Claude Levi-Strauss, Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham, rev. edn. (Boston, 1969), 483. Les Structures ilimentaires de laparenti, first published in France in 1949, appeared in a revised edition in France in 1967.
15. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 99.
16. Father-daughter incest is suggested even in the story of Canacee, for though overtly it concerns brother-sister incest, the tale is charged throughout with the jealous and incestuous desire of Canacee's father for his daughter. See Allen, "Chaucer Answers Gower," 633, and Wetherbee, "Constance and the World," 86-87.
17. Robert B. Dawson, "Custance in Context: Rethinking the Protagonist of the Man of Law's Tale," Chaucer Review 26 (1992): 293-308, at 296-97.
18. The rest of the stanza (II 276-80) is clearly directed to her mother, in the next stanza (II 281-87), Custance could continue to address her mother, turn back to her father, or (perhaps the most likely) address them both.
19. Dawson, "Custance in Context," 299; for a similar assessment, see also David Raybin, "Custance and History: Woman as Outsider in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 65-84, at 81-82.
20. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 101-2.
21. See Eberle's explanatory notes to lines 77-89 in The Riverside Chaucer, 856, and Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 287n40.
22. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 101-2.
23. Block, "Originality, Controlling Purpose, and Craftsmanship," 607; see Trevet: "Puis Hermigild e Constaunce ne cesserent [de precher] a Elda" (Then Hermengild and Constance did not cease [to preach] to Elda). I am using the text of Trevet (based on Oxford, Magdalen College MS 45) found in Schlauch's "The Man of Law's Tale" in Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues, 170; translations are my own.
24. Gower's treatment of this scene is quite different, and it makes the constable's conversion a response to the miracle alone, which takes place without Constance's direct involvement. There is no testimony either by Constance alone or jointly with Hermengild, whereas in Chaucer, Hermengild is represented as initially afraid to act upon the blind man's request that she grant him sight for fear of her husband; it is not until Constance intervenes that she is emboldened to act. See Confessio Amantis, 11.749-78.1 am using the Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching text of Gower's Confessio Amantis, ed. Russell A. Peck (1966; repr. Toronto, 1980), hereafter cited as CA.
25. Dawson, "Custance in Context," 302.
26. Dawson, "Custance in Context," 299.
27. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 103.
28. This subtlety in distance's use of language to assert her position is one that not all critics have perceived, and Chaucer's heroine is not one whom modern critics have tended to embrace. The story of her adventures, which bears many features in common with the saint's life genre, emphasizes Custance's constancy in suffering, her patient endurance, and her unwavering faith. In fact, many readers and critics have responded with distaste to what they have perceived as her passive acceptance of her fate. Sheila Delany, in presenting what many critics have found unappealing in Chaucer's heroine, discusses her "somewhat repulsive masochistic qualities of extreme humility and silent endurance," finding "Constance to be a humble woman who seeks no influence, who does not complain about her role but submits willingly to the authority of father, husband, and God"; see Sheila Delany, "Womanliness in the Man of Law's Tale," Chaucer Review 9 (1974): 63-72, at 63, 67.1 obviously take issue with Delany's assessment of Chaucer's heroine, but her view is not an uncommon one among critics. Even Dinshaw grants distance only a "minimal [sense of] self-awareness [which] allows her no more than passivity" {Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 112). Yet for those critics who do see her as more active, Custance's source of power is centered in her actions as a speaker. In spite of her insistence on Custance's passivity, Dinshaw does assert, somewhat enigmatically, that though "Constance may be a tale told by men ... she seems to be given, by the Man of Law, a certain power of determining her own narrative kinesis" (112). Other critics are more forceful in their views. Johnson observes in distance "suggestions of the heroine's willfulness and incipient autonomy," even "covert feminine resistance" ("Man of Law's Tale," 211), and notes the spirit of complaint and even defiance hinted at in her speech. J. Stephen Russell is another who, while acknowledging Custance's limited scope as an agent acting on her own behalf, locates her sphere of influence in her role as speaker: "Constance does not openly revolt against the world view of the text; she suffers to live in it while testifying to the falseness, unreality or injustice of that genre, that image of the world" ("Dido, Emily, and Constance: Femininity and Subversion in the Mature Chaucer," Medieval Perspectives 1 [1986]: 65-74, at 72).
29. The one exception to this is her defeat of her would-be rapist (II920-24), but the narration is couched throughout in terms that reduce her agency, asserting Mary and Christ instead as the driving forces of the action.
30. Neither Gower's heroine nor Trevet's registers any objection to or unhappiness with the proposed marriage. While their specific reaction is not given, the emphasis on the heroine's active conversion of the heathen merchants and the prominence given to the prospect of Church-sanctioned alliance between Christendom and Barbary (and the Sultan's conversion) suggest it is at least marginally positive.
31. Eugene Clasby, "Chaucer's Constance: Womanly Virtue and the Heroic Life," Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 221-33, at 225.
32. And perhaps, by implication, suggest a reproach of her own father for a similarly inscrutable "casting out"; there are points in common between the position of her son here and her own position at her departure for Syria, at least as distance constructs it through her speeches (II 274-87, 826-63), as in both she emphasizes the helplessness of the child in the face of the father's decisions and implies that the father's action will result in the child's death (II 285, 857).
33. The constable has already demonstrated an awareness that he plays this role, identifying himself as Custance's unwilling "tormentour" (II 818).
34. Other than addressing God as the "hihe mageste, / Which sest the point of every trowthe" (CA 11.1058-59), Gower's Constance ignores the question of the unjustness of her plight and does not refer to her husband at all, focusing in her much briefer speech almost exclusively on her child's suffering (see CA 11.1058-76). In Trevet, Constance is actually shown the letter from her husband, and she responds with an expression of great humility and self-sacrifice: "Ja ne veigne ceo iour qe pur moy la terre feust destrute e que pur moy mes chers amiz eusez mort ou moleste. Mes puis que a dieu plest e a mon. seignur, le rois, moun exil, a bon gree le doys prendre, en esperaunce qe dur comencement amenera dieux a bon fyn, e qil me porra en ]a meer sauuer qi en meer e en terre est de toute pusaunce." (Let the day never come that for me the country should be destroyed and that for me you my dear friends should have death or trouble. But since my exile is pleasing to God and to my lord, the king, with good grace I should accept it, in hope that a hard beginning God will bring to a good end, and that He will be able to save me in the sea, He who on the sea and in the land is of all power.) (Sources and Analogues, 174-75). The contrast to Chaucer is obvious.
35. This episode of Custance blaming her inability to identify herself on being "mazed in the see" may be suggested by a later incident in Trevet in which Constance blames an episode of fainting (she swoons upon hearing news of her husband's impending arrival) on "feblesse de sa seruele qe luy auynt en la mer" (feebleness of her brain which came to her in the sea) (178). Gower includes this incident as well (CA 11.1351).
36. Trevet states twice that Constance will not reveal her identity, in scenes corresponding to those in Chaucer, and like Chaucer he does so through reported speech. Trevet's Constance is both less emphatic and more forthcoming, giving an accurate general account but not identifying any of the parties. In the first instance, Trevet includes as a reason "quar ]a auenture del mourdre del soudan e de les Cristient estoit ia conue par totes terres" (because the event of the murder of the sultan and of the Christians was already known through all lands) (168), though how Constance could possibly know this, having just arrived, is never explained. The second instance includes the detail that she says her name is Couste "qar issint lapelerent lez Sessoneys" (because so the Saxons called her) (177), as does Gower. Gower focuses more attention on Constance's persistent refusal to identify herself, noting five times that she does so, but while he mentions it more often his language is much less emphatic than Chaucer's. Of the five instances, two correspond to the moments in Trevet and Chaucer and three more are Gower's additions: upon her marriage to the king, he asserts that "Bot for no lust ne for no rage / Sche tolde hem nevere what sche was" (CA 11.910-11); in describing the twelve years she lives in Rome before her husband's arrival, he observes that "noman redily / Knew what sche was" (11.1221-22); and after she is reunited with her husband, he asserts that she still refused to tell him who she was even though "With al his wit he bath don sieke" (11.1455; see 1450-55). It should be noted that in the first two of these additions (11.910-11, 11.1221-22), the assertion that she would not reveal herself is followed by the claim that the interested parties still sensed she was noble--a theme important in some more distant analogues of the tale (LaManekine, for example). Of the two instances in Gower that correspond to Chaucer and Trevet, the first is brief (11.738-39), but the second is quite lengthy (11.1148-69, following in expanded form the outline in Trevet) and includes Constance's quoted speech.
37. Archibald, "Fathers and Daughters," 160-61.
38. Custance's orchestration of this scene begins earlier with her instructions to her husband that he seek an invitation to dine with her father, but say nothing about her (II 1079-85). It is unclear whether she explains her motives to her husband, whether she identifies the emperor as her father, or at whose instigation Maurice is present at his father's side.
39. Archibald also notes that the emperor makes no further attempt to marry his daughter off, yet she views this as less of a "happy ending" for Custance; see her "Contextualizing Chaucer's Constance," 172-74, esp. 174, and "Fathers and Daughters," 175n64.
40. Gower's Constance is even more affected by the sight: "swounende ded for fere / Sche was, and stille as eny Ston / She lay" (CA H.846-48). Trevet's Constance discovers her murdered bedmate not through sight but touch, reaching out to wake her and discovering the body "tut moil de saunc" (all wet with blood). Rather than being struck dumb she cries out: "Ma dame est morte!" (My lady is dead!), but quickly fades from the scene thereafter as the false knight takes center stage (171).
41. Compare Gower's and Trevet's heroines, who both cease to function as actors in the scene. Custance's prayer here contains notes of subtle defiance as distance asserts her innocence and implies the unjustness of her accusers, making divine help contingent upon her innocence ("If I be giltlees of this felonye" [II 643]), and through the parallel with Susanna asserting that she too is a victim of "false blame" (II 640). The parallels to the story of Susanna (Daniel 13) are informative: both women are falsely accused, one of adultery and the other of murder, because they refused to sleep with men who lusted for them. In both cases they are surrounded by friends who weep for them, but the men bear false witness against them, and the women turn to God for help. God responds more directly in Custance's situation, but in both justice is done through the actions of a pious man, Alia in Custance's case and Daniel in Susanna's, who witnesses the proceedings, senses the truth, and then determines to uncover it.
42. Neither Gower's nor Trevet's Constance demonstrates any reluctance to see her husband. In fact, both swoon upon hearing news of his impending arrival, "de priuee e celee ioye" (from private and secret joy) in Trevet (178), and "Forjoie which fell in hire thoght / That god him hath to toune broght" in Gower (CA 11.1354-55). For Gower this could be explained by the fact that Constance may not believe her husband to be responsible for casting her out (11.1052), but for Trevet this is not possible, making her great joy all the more puzzling, for she is fully aware of the king's role in her banishment from Northumberland as she was shown the king's false letter (174). In Trevet she swoons again when she sees Alla's face (179), and in both Gower and Trevet she orchestrates the reunion by sending their son to the banquet; in the actual reunion scene itself, Constance hardly registers as a presence at all (Trevet, 179; Gower, 11.1435-45).
43. The Man of Law suggests that Custance may be responsible for her son's presence at the feast before his father, King Alia, as she is in Trevet and Gower. While the narrator hedges initially, he eventually insists on Custance's responsibility for Maurice's presence at the feast: "Som men wolde seyn at requeste of Custance / This senatour hath lad this child to feeste; / ... / But sooth is this, that at his moodres heeste / Biforn Alia, durynge the metes space, / The child stood, lookynge in the kynges face." (II 1009-10, 1013-15). This picture of Custance as orchestrator of the first scene sits uneasily with her great distress upon being faced with Alia again (II 1048-50, 1055-58), but the narrator is quite clear in assigning her agency here.
44. Contrast Gower and Trevet, where the king shows no comprehension that he needs to disabuse Constance of any belief in his responsibility for her exile.
45. The "blisse" (II 1075) effected by Alla's words is contrasted subtly with the "pitous joye" (II 1114) effected by Custance's; the reunion with her father contains a strain of sorrow not evident in the reunion between husband and wife.
46. In contrast, Gower and Trevet emphasize the similarities between them, perhaps most notably by having the king first hear of Custance through a third-party report While Trevet does not specify why the constable tells the king about Custance (170), Gower states that Elda (the constable) may have marriage to Constance in mind: "[he] thoghte his king to plese, / As he that thanne unwedded was" (G411.784-85).
47. The use of the word "bisily" here may be significant; it is repeated just a few lines later to describe the nature of the Sultan's intense desire for Custance ("al his bisy cure" [II 188]); the Man of Law is, of course, described as seeming "bisier than he was" (GP, 1322).
48. Chaucer's sources are quite different on this point. In Gower, the king converts "[f]or loue of hire" because "al his hole herte he leide / Vpon Constance" (CA II. 896-98). In Trevet, the king receives baptism and marries Constance "pur le grant amour qil auoit a la pucele, e pur lez miracles par dieux moustrez" (for the great love he had for the girl, and for the miracles shown by God), asserting his love for Constance before God's miracles as the reason behind the baptism and marriage (172). In both Gower and Trevet, the king's love for Constance, not God's miracle, is primary; in fact, in neither version does the king even witness God's miracle.
49. As in the case of the constable's conversion, Alla's conversion is presented not simply as a result of the miracle (in the constable's case Hermengild's restoration of the blind man's sight), but through Custance's mediation as well. In both cases, Custance figures in the miracle itself, either as its instigator (by bidding Hermengild to restore the blind man's sight) or its focus (as in the trial scene).
50. The king is absent from the corresponding scene in Gower and Trevet; Constance herself barely registers.
51. Archibald, "Fathers and Daughters," 161.
52. Marijane Osborn, Romancing the Goddess: Three Middle English Romances