Summary
In The Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea, Chaucer deviates from the standard form of the stories that make up the Legend by combining two narratives in one. The story begins by introducing Jason as the epitome of a false male lover because he betrayed two women, both Hypsipyle and the queen Medea.
The story begins in the Greek city of Thessalie. Jason was the son of the king’s brother, and was famed for his strength and his passionate nature. The king becomes afraid that Jason will steal the crown from his own son, and in an attempt to destroy him, sends him on what he hopes is an impossible quest: to reclaim the golden fleece. The precious fleece is protected by a dragon and two bulls that spit fire. Jason agrees to the quest and sets off with a crew of heroes, including the famous Hercules.
While at sea he happens upon an island and meets Hypsipyle, a beautiful young woman. She meets Jason and Hercules, and admires their nobility, while they are glad to meet someone who can introduce them to the king. She especially admires Hercules, who regales her with tales of Jason’s wisdom, hardiness, wealth, and faith in love. Eventually, she falls in love with Jason and marries him. He uses her to conceive two children, and then sets sail and leaves her behind. She remains true to Jason all her life, and eventually dies of heartbreak.
After narrating her death, the story turns to Jason’s second love affair with Medea. After abandoning Hypsipyle, Jason precedes to Colcos, where the golden fleece is guarded. There, he again meets the king, who is impressed with his bravery and introduces Jason to his daughter Medea. She vows to help him, and guides him in how he can win the fleece. In return, he swears to be her true husband, and goes to bed with her. The next day, he wins the fleece, and returns to Thessaly with Medea without telling her father. Yet he is unfaithful and leaves her with two young children, eventually getting married a third time, to the daughter of King Creon.
The next story recounts the rape of Lucrece. Tarquin was the legendary last king of Rome. While laying siege to a city, he bragged that his wife was the best. His companion Colatyn objects, and invites Tarquin to see the faith of his own wife, Lucrece. They sneak into the house, and watch Lucrece unawares. She is weeping and yearning for her husband, until he reveals herself and she rejoices.
Tarquin, seeing her beauty and her faithfulness, begins to desire her, and then becomes obsessed. He sneaks back to Colatyn’s house and tells Lucrece that he will kill her if she makes a sound. Lucrece faints, and Tarquin rapes her. When he leaves, she reluctantly tells her attendants what has happened. Her primary concern is for her husband's honor, and although the women assure her that no guilt lies with her, she refuses to forgive herself and commits suicide. After her death, the Romans exile Tarquin as a tyrant, and create the republic, while Lucrece is remembered as a saint.
Analysis
The Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea closely resembles the Legend of Dido. Once again, a hero from classical mythology woos a woman and then abandons her. However, Chaucer’s framing of Jason’s actions renders him much less sympathetic than Aeneas. As we discuss in the previous section, the text partially justifies Aeneas’s decision to abandon Dido, although the narrator firmly condemns his actions. Love in the Legend of Dido is destructive, and Aeneas is forced to choose between hurting Dido and abandoning his own identity. In contrast, Jason deliberately manipulates multiple women for his own benefit, seemingly without feeling any desire himself.
Hypsipyle’s story is especially compelling. Chaucer introduces her as a girl “playing / And roaming on the cliffs by the sea.” The vivid image makes Hypsipyle feel more real than the previous women described in the poem, and also emphasizes her youth and vulnerability. Her desires also feel more specific. Chaucer doesn’t narrate the process of falling in love for Cleopatra, Thisbe, or Dido. In one line, the woman meets the man, and when she next appears, she has already fallen for him.
In contrast, he depicts Hypsipyle’s gradual seduction by Jason in a manner that feels more realistic. When she first meets him, she is impressed with his nobility, but more attracted to Hercules. However, Hercules and Jason plot to ensnare her, and Hercules speaks so fondly of his friend that Hypsipyle’s initial desire shifts to his friend.
Thus, rather than an archetypal story of love at first sight, Chaucer tells a story grounded in the idiosyncrasies of real love. When Jason betrays her, Hypsipyle does not kill herself dramatically, but rather pines away for decades. Though less classically tragic, her more understated response to heartbreak is more moving. Stripped of over-the-top, pointedly literary drama, the moment gestures towards everyday emotional experience.
The specificity of Hypsipyle’s desire also makes her an interesting starting point for a feminist analysis of The Legend of Good Women. Although the poem is ostensibly a defense of women, Chaucer often fails to consider women’s internal emotions and fundamental sense of self. Many of the women seem to be merely following a script, falling in love when they must and killing themselves merely to prove the author’s point. By not following this script, Hipsipyle exercises more autonomy in the narrative. We might think of her desire as unruly, violating the gender roles established by the text. She even finds Jason attractive because he is “coy as a maid”!
The story of Lucrece is another one of the more earnest and compelling sections of The Legend. It is also one of the most troubling and intense passages. Like many of the stories, it is punctuated by omissions and digressions. In the introduction, Chaucer announces that he will “but shortly treat” the story. More strikingly, Tarquin’s rape of Lucrece is not depicted. We see him threatening her life. Chaucer quotes Tarquin’s dialogue, as though the narrator is right there in the room with him.
However, once Lucrece faints, the narrative becomes much vaguer. Chaucer writes that she “lay in a swoon, and appeared so dead…[that] she felt nothing, neither foul nor fair.” After stating this, he shifts to berating Tarquin, “Tarquin, who are a king’s heir / And should, by lineage and by right / Act like a lord and a very knight / Why have you acted against chivalry? / Why have you done this lady villainy?” Then he cuts himself off, stating, “But not to purpose; in the story I tell. When he was gone and this mischance had befallen…” The shifts in narrative avoid the rape itself. When Lucrece faints, it is still in the future; when Chaucer returns to the story, her “mischance” is now in the past.
In the previous legends, Chaucer’s use of abbreviatio and occupatio serves to emphasize his control over the story. It takes us away from the events of the narrative, encouraging us to focus on Chaucer’s wit and poetic skill. It also undermines the narrator’s singular argument, emphasizing instead the complexity of the story and the multiple possibilities for interpreting history. Here, however, omission amplifies the horror of Tarquin’s violence. The rape is the central event of the story, and yet the poet cannot bring himself to describe it. In its place, he rails against Tarquin himself. Importantly, while the other stories have quickly moved from berating an individual man to targeting men in general, here Chaucer’s focus remains on Tarquin specifically. He expresses disgust not only at Tarquin’s action, but at his failure to live up to his social role. This individuality makes Chaucer’s anger feel more genuine.
The conclusion of the story does restate The Legend’s thesis: women are faithful lovers, and men take advantage of them. However, here that message does not feel like a generic thesis arbitrarily tacked on at the end, but rather like an idea that grows organically out of the events depicted in the story. First, Lucrece’s faithful love is for her husband, a man who is generally depicted as virtuous, and who is largely absent from the story. Her story doesn’t fit with the Legend’s general paradigm, which focuses on women betrayed by a man they love, and Chaucer doesn’t try to force it into accordance with the rest of the Legend.
Second, Chaucer entreats the reader to “look at the tyranny / men do all day.” Tarquin was an archetypal tyrant, or monarch who oversteps his power. The comparison of male violence to tyranny holds up. In the Middle Ages, male rule over women, like the monarch’s rule over the population, was often understood as natural. Within this framework, it makes sense to see sexual violence as a form of tyranny, as a way that the male “ruler” violently oversteps the rights granted to him by natural hierarchy. Tarquin’s rape thus enables Chaucer to say something new about how patriarchal violence operates in general.
