On Servant Women, Rape Culture, and Endurance

Abstract

ABSTRACT This response to Euan Roger and Sebastian Sobecki’s discovery of two new King’s Bench documents proposes two new directions for Chaucerian feminist scholarship. First, it argues for the importance of focusing on the servant women who populate Chaucer’s texts, analyzing the obligations that are placed on them and the conditions they are expected to endure. Second, it suggests that scholars use the rich multiple meanings of the capacious Middle English verb endure as a set of ethical charges for approaching structural attitudes toward rape and consent in Chaucer’s work.