SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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