Wife-Swapping in Medieval Literature

"Wife-Swapping in Medieval Literature," This article responds to a recent claim by Felicity Riddy that the "gentilesse" exhibited by Arveragus and Aurelius in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale is inaccessible to women, since it is class-based and gender-based, and that Dorigen's sexuality is "property which the men propose to pass backwards and forwards between them in order to establish their status." Assuming that the background for this analysis lies in modern work on the exchange of women as a means of creating homosocial bonds between men, it surveys the numerous medieval narratives which deal with the exchange of a woman from one man to another. In all these narratives, women are erased, marginalized, or degraded in the interest of male friendship or moral solidarity. The Franklin's Tale forms a striking contrast to this medieval tradition: it is the marriage between Arveragus and Dorigen, not male friendship, that is the important relationship, and it is Dorigen's "trouthe," not her husband's, which is of paramount importance.