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We will continue to publish all new editions in print and online, but our new online editions will include TEI/XML markup and other features. Over the next two years, we will be working on updating our legacy volumes to conform to our new standards.
Our current site will be available for use until mid-December 2024. After that point, users will be redirected to the new site. We encourage you to update bookmarks and syllabuses over the next few months. If you have questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us at robbins@ur.rochester.edu.
How the Goode Wife Taught Hyr Doughter
HOW THE GOODE WIFE TAUGHT HYR DOUGHTER, NOTES
Abbreviations: B: Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (SC 6922), fols. 7a-8b; F: Frederick J. Furnivall (1869); E: Emmanuel College Cambridge MS I. 428 (James 106), fols. 48b-52a; H: Huntington Library MS HM 128; La: Lambeth Palace Library MS 853; TM: Tauno Mustanoja.
1 Lyst and lythe a lytell. An exhortation to the audience to pay attention. TM suggests that this text is authored by a male cleric. Diane Bornstein disagrees: "The poem has a rough rhythm, simple rhyme scheme, Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, and a popular proverbial tone. . . . The poem may represent the traditional lore that a mother passed on to her daughter, put into written form or dictated to a scribe by a woman with some literary skill. If it was written by a man, he effectively answered the persona of a woman of the lower middle-class" ("Women's Public and Private Space," p. 64). The MS is highly abbreviated; "and" appears as an ampersand which F has transformed, as have I. He has also accounted for other abbreviations and added final -e where the meter seems to call for it. Many of these emendations have been retained.
8 shalt. B: sh. The gap following sh in shalt is filled in by F. Many such lacunae in B are filled in by F.
11 tythes. Regular payment of tithes to the parish church was expected not only of the head of the household but of individual members of the parish.
16 stowarde. Stewards were important to medieval society and its literature, serving as surrogates for an absent lord. The introduction of the steward's position as one requiring complete trust will play out later in the poem when the daughter is told that a wife is expected to serve as household manager in the absence of her husband. This also suggests that the household has some wealth.
20 meke and myld. This is an oft-used phrase with a range of meanings, many of which are gender specific. The MED defines meke, for instance, as: "gentle, quiet, unaggressive; of a woman: modest; of eyes: soft"; when combined with myld: "full of loving kindness, benevolent, kind, sweet." Chaucer defies gender distinctions in his description of the knight in the Prologue to the The Canterbury Tales:
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,21 And bydde thy bedes aboven alle thinge. The beads referred to here are typically used in prayer.
And of his port as meeke as is a mayde. (I[A]68-69)
22 With sybbe ne fremde make no jangelynge. F reads frennde ("friend") for fremde ("stranger"). The admonition (lines 19 ff.) alludes to the Pauline injunction in 1 Corinthians 14:35 that women refrain from speaking in church.
33 wedde with rynge. The ritual of the wedding ring provided a visible sign of betrothal, a symbol of a private vow made public. La adds bifor God.
37 Loke thou mekly answere hym. F's gloss on this - "do not answer him" - suggests that mekly be understood as an injunction against a woman's vocal response in this social situation. However, as the note to line 20 above suggests, to be meek is to assume a range of postures, most of which imply humility.
38 lyth ne lymme. "Body joint nor limb," i.e., anywhere, completely.
41-44 Fayre wordes. The three fayre worde sayings here are clearly proverbial, though not cited by Whiting, who lists five other "fair word" proverbs (see W581-85).
46 Change not thi countenans with grete laughter. The wife's admonition against uncontrolled laughter reflects proper constraints upon female behavior. "A wyf sholde eek be mesurable in lookynge and in berynge and in lawghynge, and discreet in alle hire wordes and hire dedes," says Chaucer's Parson (CT X[I]936). Restraint in laughter is a sign of modesty in a woman; loud laughter is the opposite, suggestive of scorn, ridicule, or lack of sexual restraint. It is one quality of the unruly woman that the narrator of Dunbar's The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo finds threatening. Chaucer says of the Wife of Bath: "Wel koude she laughe and carpe" (CT I[A]474), suggesting her sanguine irrepressibility; and of herself she observes, "As helpe me God, I laughe whan I thynke" (CT III[D]201). In The Miller's Tale the frisky Alisoun counsels Nicholas, prior to her humiliation of Absalon: "Now hust, and thou shalt laughen al thy fille" (CT I[A]3722), and then laughs herself in one of the most famous lines in Middle English: "'Tehee!' quod she, and clapte the wyndow to" (I[A]3740). Criseyde, filled with thoughts of Troilus, laughs immoderately when Pandarus makes jokes about his role as go-between: "And she to laughe, it thoughte hire herte brest" (Troilus and Criseyde 2.1108). Moderate laughter can be a sign of allurement, as in Swete Thought's soothing of the lover by speaking of "[h]ir laughing eyen, persaunt and clere" (The Romaunt of the Rose, line 2809). But such laughter may likewise suggest comeliness and self-assurance, as in The Book of the Duchess, line 850, where the Good Fair White "[l]aughe and pleye so womanly." Strong women like St. Cecile in Chaucer's The Second Nun's Tale or St. Margaret in the St. Katherine Group may laugh in the face of the tyrant or the fiend, thus humiliating him, but these women are not the models the good wife would invoke for her impressionable daughter.
52 betyde. B: betytde.
55 blame. B: blane.
61 gase. "Goose." Or possibly a "gad about," or "gaze about."
69 other. B: or. The poet/scribe (Rate) consistently abbreviates this term.
73 Ne go thou not to no wrastylynge. Wrestling matches were the province of men and as such were considered inappropriate entertainment for unmarried women.
74 Ne git to no coke schetynge. B: fygntyng. F glosses this sport as "cock fighting" and notes that four dashes under schetynge indicate "an intension to erase" the word. The sport here, however, is not roosters fighting one another in a ring surrounded by spectators (see MED sheting ger. [b]). Rather, it is a sport requiring the shooting of the rooster with an arrow. Other MSS readings clarify: Go thou noght to wraxling, no scheting ate cok.
75 strumpet. B: strmpet.
83 every. B: ever.
99 Bounde thei be that giftys take. There is implicit obligation in the receiving of gifts against which the author warns. It is similar to feudal obligation when the status of the giver is higher than that of the recipient.
105 ff. After line 106 there is a drawing of a fish (pike?) extending the width of the leaf and marking the bottom of the folio. The poem continues at the top of the next folio.
110 werkys. B: werky.
113 ydellschype. B: ydellschy.
116 when. B: whe.
130 mené. B: men. There is a significant difference implied by the emendation. The household servants (mené) over which the daughter is expected to rule are made up of both men and women. This MS omits a mother's responsibility to beat her children as expressed in La:
And if thei children been rebel, & wole not them lowe,In general the Bodleian (Ashmole) text is more gentle in its attitudes toward child-rearing.
If ony of hem mys dooth, nouther banne hem ne blowe,
But take a smert rodde, & bete hem on arowe
Til thei crei mercy, & be of her gilt aknowe. (Lines 201-04)
148 courne. This term refers not to the plant with ears native to North America, but rather is the word for grain. F notes that in the Lambeth MS 853, the basis for the Babees Book, the word is "time" as it is in the manuscripts printed in E and H:
And yf thin nede beo gret, and thin time streit.There is an alteration in meaning between the terms grain and time, suggesting on the one hand that the time to make bread is when the grain is ready to harvest while on the other, the time to make bread is when there is need for it.
And yif thi nede be grette, and thi tyme streite.
154 For many handes make lyght werke. A proverbial expression that first appears in the Middle English romance Bevis of Hampton, where it is used to emphasize how even the giant, Ascopard, needs assistance from ordinary men in combat.
161 awes. B: awe.
171-74 And if it thus thee betyde. These lines are omitted in E and H. Interestingly, Rate (see note to line 209) omits a particularly striking quatrain on how a mother should discipline her children. See explanatory note for line 130.
183-84 For meydens, thei be lonely / And nothing syker therby. The bias suggesting that women, particularly young women, are phlegmatic hints at an underlying negative view of women in general. The passage may also provide further evidence for male authorship (see note to line 1).
199 Now I have taught thee, my dere doughter. As in The Wife of Bath's Prologue, the tradition of women passing on women's knowledge is carried out privately between mother and daughter in the domestic environment: "I bar hym on honde he hadde enchanted me - / My dame taughte me that soutiltee" (III[D]575-76).
204 thus seys the letter. Letter might mean "script," or "source," but the sense seems to be proverbial, though not cited in Whiting. F (p. 47), using La as his principle source, reads: Betere were a child vnbore / þan vntau3t of wijs lore, / mi leve child.
209 Amen, quod Rate. Rate is taken to be the name of the scribe. F reads Kate.
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Bibliography
How the Goode Wife Taught Hyr Doughter, Select Bibliography
Manuscripts
Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (SC 6922), fols. 7a-8b (c. 1500). [Base copy text for this edition.]
Emmanuel College Cambridge MS I. 428 (James 106), fols. 48b-52a (c. 1350).
Trinity College Cambridge MS 599 (R. 3.19), fols. 211a-213a (c. 1500).
Lambeth Palace Library MS 853, pp. 102-12 (c. 1430). [In stanzas with refrain.]
Huntington Library MS HM 128 (Ashburnham 130), fols. 217a-220a (c. 1450).
Early Printed Editions
Madden, Sir Frederick, ed. How the Goode Wif Thaught Hir Doughter. London: C. Whittington, 1838.
Stow, John. Certaine Worthy MS Poems of Great Antiquitie. London, 1597; rpt. 1812.
Editions
Coulton, G. G. Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1918; rpt. 1919, 1938, 1968.
Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. Queene Elizabethes Achademy: A Booke of Precedence, etc., with Essays on Early Italian and German Books of Courtesy. EETS e.s. 8. London: N. Trübner, 1869. Pp. 44-51.
---. The Babees Book, Aristotle's ABC, Urbanitatis, Stans Puer ad Mensam, The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, The Bokes of Nurture of Hugh Rhodes and John Russell, Wynkyn de Worde's Book of Kervynge, The Booke of Demeanor, The Boke of Curtasye, Seager's Schoole of Vertue, etc. etc. with some French and Latin Poems on Like Subjects and Some Forewards on Education in Early England. EETS o.s. 32. London: N. Trübner & Co., 1868. Rpt. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969. Pp. 36-47.
Hindley, Charles D., ed. The Old Book Collector's Miscellany. London: Reeves & Turner, 1871.
Mustanoja, Tauno, ed. The Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, The Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage, The Thewis of Gud Women. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Scuran, 1948.
Partridge, John, ed. The Hystorie of the Moste Noble Knight Plasidas and Other Rare Pieces. London: J. B. Nichols & Sons, 1873.
Modernizations
Rickert, Edith, ed. The Babees Book: Medieval Manners for the Young Now First Done into Modern English from the Texts of Dr. F. J. Furnivall. London: The Ballantyne Press, 1908. Rpt. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923. Pp. 31-42. [A modernized version.]
Walsh, James J., ed. A Golden Treasury of Medieval Literature. Boston: The Stratford Co., 1930.
Related Studies
Ashley, Kathleen M. "Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct." In The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality. Ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. New York: Methuen, 1987. Pp. 25-38.
Ashley, Kathleen M., and Robert L. A. Clark, eds. Medieval Conduct. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Bornstein, Diane. Mirrors of Courtesy. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975.
---. "As Meek as a Maid: A Historical Perspective on Language for Women in Courtesy Books from the Middle Ages to Seventeen Magazine." In Women's Language and Style. Ed. Douglas Butturff and Edmund L. Epstein. Akron: L & S Books, 1978. Pp. 132-38.
---. "Women's Public and Private Space in Some Medieval Courtesy Books." Centerpoint: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (1980), 68-74.
Hanawalt, Barbara A. Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Nicholls, Jonathan. The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain Poet. Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985.
Sponsler, Claire. Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in Late Medieval England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. [See especially ch. 3: "Conduct Books and Good Governance." Pp. 50-74.]
Stiller, Nikki. Eve's Orphans: Mothers and Daughters in Medieval English Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.
How the Goode Wife Taught Hyr Doughter, Select Bibliography
Manuscripts
Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61 (SC 6922), fols. 7a-8b (c. 1500). [Base copy text for this edition.]
Emmanuel College Cambridge MS I. 428 (James 106), fols. 48b-52a (c. 1350).
Trinity College Cambridge MS 599 (R. 3.19), fols. 211a-213a (c. 1500).
Lambeth Palace Library MS 853, pp. 102-12 (c. 1430). [In stanzas with refrain.]
Huntington Library MS HM 128 (Ashburnham 130), fols. 217a-220a (c. 1450).
Early Printed Editions
Madden, Sir Frederick, ed. How the Goode Wif Thaught Hir Doughter. London: C. Whittington, 1838.
Stow, John. Certaine Worthy MS Poems of Great Antiquitie. London, 1597; rpt. 1812.
Editions
Coulton, G. G. Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1918; rpt. 1919, 1938, 1968.
Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. Queene Elizabethes Achademy: A Booke of Precedence, etc., with Essays on Early Italian and German Books of Courtesy. EETS e.s. 8. London: N. Trübner, 1869. Pp. 44-51.
---. The Babees Book, Aristotle's ABC, Urbanitatis, Stans Puer ad Mensam, The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, The Bokes of Nurture of Hugh Rhodes and John Russell, Wynkyn de Worde's Book of Kervynge, The Booke of Demeanor, The Boke of Curtasye, Seager's Schoole of Vertue, etc. etc. with some French and Latin Poems on Like Subjects and Some Forewards on Education in Early England. EETS o.s. 32. London: N. Trübner & Co., 1868. Rpt. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969. Pp. 36-47.
Hindley, Charles D., ed. The Old Book Collector's Miscellany. London: Reeves & Turner, 1871.
Mustanoja, Tauno, ed. The Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, The Good Wyfe Wold a Pylgremage, The Thewis of Gud Women. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Scuran, 1948.
Partridge, John, ed. The Hystorie of the Moste Noble Knight Plasidas and Other Rare Pieces. London: J. B. Nichols & Sons, 1873.
Modernizations
Rickert, Edith, ed. The Babees Book: Medieval Manners for the Young Now First Done into Modern English from the Texts of Dr. F. J. Furnivall. London: The Ballantyne Press, 1908. Rpt. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923. Pp. 31-42. [A modernized version.]
Walsh, James J., ed. A Golden Treasury of Medieval Literature. Boston: The Stratford Co., 1930.
Related Studies
Ashley, Kathleen M. "Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct." In The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality. Ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. New York: Methuen, 1987. Pp. 25-38.
Ashley, Kathleen M., and Robert L. A. Clark, eds. Medieval Conduct. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Bornstein, Diane. Mirrors of Courtesy. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975.
---. "As Meek as a Maid: A Historical Perspective on Language for Women in Courtesy Books from the Middle Ages to Seventeen Magazine." In Women's Language and Style. Ed. Douglas Butturff and Edmund L. Epstein. Akron: L & S Books, 1978. Pp. 132-38.
---. "Women's Public and Private Space in Some Medieval Courtesy Books." Centerpoint: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (1980), 68-74.
Hanawalt, Barbara A. Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Nicholls, Jonathan. The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain Poet. Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985.
Sponsler, Claire. Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in Late Medieval England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. [See especially ch. 3: "Conduct Books and Good Governance." Pp. 50-74.]
Stiller, Nikki. Eve's Orphans: Mothers and Daughters in Medieval English Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.