The Cultural Otherness of Custance as a Foreign Woman in the Man of Law's Tale

Comparing Chaucer's representation of Custance in the Man of Law's Tale with Trevet's and Gower's, this article explores how Chaucer highlights the cultural otherness of Custance as a foreign woman in England. Drawing upon historical documents, it also examines how Custance as the cultural Other can be associated with real, historical foreign women in late-fourteenth-century England, and how aggression and xenophobia toward Custance reflect Chaucer's own fourteenth-century English society, where people also were xenophobic toward foreign women. Chaucer shows sympathy both with them and with Custance, and implicitly critiques the problematic attitude of his contemporaries toward foreign women in England.