Holly A Crocker. "W(h)ither Feminism? Gender, Subjectivity, and Chaucer's Knight's Tale." The Chaucer Review, vol. 54, no. 3, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, pp. 352-70, doi:10.5325/chaucerrev.54.3.0352
W(h)ither Feminism? Gender, Subjectivity, and Chaucer's Knight's Tale
Crocker states that "Emelye's alienation is an explicit aim of Chaucer's narrative; the greater threat she poses is to our confidence in individualist subjectivity, and to the masculinist conception of the human that this model of subjectivity sustains" (353). The author reads the tale as feminism without gender to rethink Emelye's subjectivity. Emelye does nothing to gain the attention of the men other than doing her own thing in the garden. Crocker claims that Theseus is seen as feminine because of his reaction to the Theban widows. By saying this, she says that is in that scene the women are seen as vulnerable then so is Theseus. "Theseus stages violence where he can control it to differentiate elite masculinity from other forms of vulnerable existence" (361). The author then goes back to Emelye. She is seen as passive, but she doesn't further the men's authority. She does what she is allowed to do and only for herself. Emelye then puts a condition on her life while praying to Diana meaning she won't let the men control her. Emelye's subjectivity should not be dismissed because she does not give in to the male dominated world.
- Montana Richards
https://mnpals-msumk.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01MNPALS_MSUMK/tvalnd/cdi_proquest_journals_2258729898
