SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
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36<br />
in the most extreme sense. When Constance alone is left alive, the “olde fend, this<br />
Sarazine,” (II. 705) ordered her daughter-in-law thrown in a ship, unmanned by “vitailed”<br />
for five years so that the wind could drive the ship where it would, upon the “wawes<br />
wilde” (II. 709-13). Through Providence Constance 12 survives and is washed upon the<br />
shore of Northumberland. King Allee falls in love with and marries her, and they have a<br />
son, Morris. This second king’s mother, also motivated by “thwarted incestuous desire”<br />
(Donavin 57) for her son, plots to get rid of Constance. <strong>The</strong> mothers of both of<br />
Constance’s husbands, notes Donavin, must be “widows in order for their sons to have<br />
succeeded to power in their kingdoms, and both appear possessive of their son’s sexuality<br />
in the absence of the father” (46). <strong>The</strong> second mother-in-law also manipulates events so<br />
that Constance is once again set upon the wave along with Morris.<br />
Here, Constance demonstrates her kynde nature. In despair, she lies on the deck<br />
of the ship until she realizes that if she dies her infant son will starve to death, and she<br />
rises to find miraculous provision. <strong>The</strong> incestuous parent, Constance’s first mother-in-<br />
law the Sultaness, murdered her child in contrast to Constance who nourishes her son<br />
with her own body. After three years the ship comes ashore in Spain and the wicked man<br />
who found her became intent on raping her. Providence intervened, caused the man to<br />
12 <strong>The</strong> plot of the castaway queen has been identified by Otto Rank, Marijane Osborn, and others as being<br />
“traceable back to the beginnings of our era” (Osborn x). <strong>The</strong> Middle English tale Emare; Chaucer’s Man<br />
of Law’s Tale, an analog to Gower’s tale of Constance; La Belle Helen; La Manekine; Le Bon Florence of<br />
Rome; Vita Offae Primi; and Apollonius of Tyre are only part of the group of stories sometimes grouped<br />
under the label of ‘Constance’ tales because they share the plot of a lone woman cast upon the sea. A<br />
subgroup of these involves the mutilation of the queen, often by the cutting off of her hand or hands.<br />
Archibald notes that there may be an “enigmatic” link between incest and mutilation (Flight 262); such<br />
mutilation is a physical division within the body of the woman.