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

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Chaucer’s Man of Law, as we have noted, primly implies in the Prologue that since
Gower not only tells the “abominable” tale of the incestuous Canace but also treats her
sympathetically, he is perhaps less disapprobatory than he should be. Gower’s version
is a story of mutual affection rather than force, as the siblings have been raised in close
quarters:
Be daie bothe and ek be nyhte,
Whil thei be yonge, of comun wone
In chambre thei togedre wone,
(III.148-50)
The two have no complicity in the way they were raised, and for this there is evidence of
their innocence. In the innocence of youth, they have not yet learned self-restraint or self-
control:
Whan thei were in a privé place,
Cupide bad hem ferst to kesse,
. . .
Nature tok hem into lore
And tawht hem so, that overmore
Sche hath hem in such wise daunted,
That thei were, as who seith, enchaunted
(III.159-78)
Canace and her brother Machaire grow older and approach sexual awakening, “whan
kynde assaileth the corage” (153). Sexual attraction between young man and young
woman is an instinctive, untaught reaction, ordained by Nature; because Canace and
Machaire are constantly in the company of each other, and because they reach the age of
sexual awakening, attraction and physical desire are the natural consequences. Genius’s