This essay purports to examine the relationship between fathers and daughters represented in the English romances in the later middle ages. While father has long been the focus of research heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and feminism, the role of daughter or the relationship between father and daughter has been almost entirely neglected. The paucity of criticism is partly caused by the fact that it is hard to find romances featuring the theme of father and daughter. Another reason for the paucity is found in the ambiguous nature of the position of a daughter. As women were categorized as the fourth estate, and lay women were defined according to their sexually defined role as wife and widow, daughters who did not fit into either were considered as temporary residents who were supposed to be married and leave soon. A daughter was a being on the border. The Constance-Emare saga is one of the few examples in which father and daughter are foregrounded as protagonists. Father’s incestuous desire, falsely accused queens, being cast away in a rudderless boat, repetition of home-exile pattern, reunion of daughter with father, and of wife with husband are common motifs in the saga. These common features reveal the almost exclusive control of father over daughter especially in the matters of marriage or daughter’s sexuality. They also register the “politics of lineage” involved in marriage, The recurring incest motif ironically marks out the patriarchal need to control a daughter’s sexuality so as to be “properly” exchanged and contained for the maintenance of social order. Popular romances in the fifteenth century, especially Gawain romances, explicitly demonstrate the ownership of father over daughter. In both Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle and the Carle of Carlisle, father bids his daughter to sleep with Gawain and without any hesitation she obeys. She is expected to perform her role as his property to strengthen the male solidarity extending father’s political and territorial power. Her body should be protected and kept intact as father’s important asset which is available whenever needed. Her sexuality belongs to father as that of wife does to husband. In the theatrical setting of the performance of the rule of courtesy, the exchange of daughter’s sexuality is encouraged and conducted to enhance male solidarity, while it is severely condemned when derailed from the designated circuit under the father’s rule as is shown in the Jeaste of Sir Gawain. Daughters in the later middle ages were doubly marginalized. They were marginalized as a woman in a society, and in their family they were again expelled to the border because they were considered as a temporary being to be exchanged sooner or later. Seen in the frame of father and daughter, English romances in the later middle ages bring to the light the meaning of the narrative strategies taken advantage of for the justification and enhancement of patriarchal ideology.

Key words

Father, daughter, patriarchy, courtesy, Constance, Emare, Gawain, romance, feminism