The Importance Of Sexual Assault In The Reeve's Tale

“Agayn my los, I will have esement”:

Reclaiming Agency After a Fungibility-sanctioned Sexual Assault in The Reeve’s Tale

The miller’s daughter Malyne falls victim to the patriarchy’s denial of her personage, both through her father’s relegation of her as property and Cambridge law student Aleyn’s sexual reduction of her as a commodity. The latter denies her a chance to consent during his assault of her, as though she is an inanimate object that he may use how he pleases. As a woman, she is her father’s property under medieval law rather than a person of her own accord, meaning that a man does not need to gain her permission to engage with her but rather that of her father. However, as Aleyn wishes to exact revenge upon her father, this fungibility further allows him to consider his violation of her not as an atrocity against another human being but a crime against her father’s property (Barnett 6). Knowing her father’s theft instigated her assault, Malyne is willing to further the clerks’

Though ignorant about who is really her sexual participant, Symkin’s wife can tell that this encounter is different: “Withinne a while this John the clerk up leep,/ And on this goode wyf he leith on soore./ So myrie a fit ne hadde she nat ful yoore” (4228-30). Therefore, the sanguine wife takes advantage of this exceptional opportunity to actually enjoy sex, possibly for the very first time. However, just because she seems to have gained pleasure from the incident does not erase the coerced nature of their affair, nor does it disprove that it was a sexual assault. It still constitutes as a rape act against the wife because she engages with the act under false pretenses regarding the instigator’s identity, having been coerced to cater to a stranger’s desire without her