SOURCE: Edwards, A. S. G. “Lydgate's Attitudes to Women.” English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 51, no. 5 (October 1970): 436-37.

In the following essay, Edwards contends that Lydgate was not an anti-feminist, as suggested by the critic Alain Renoir, and says that some of the attitudes in his work reflect the views of his audience and not the poet himself.

A. Renoir has suggested that Lydgate's attitude to women varies according to the nature of his audience. He finds three distinct attitudes:

• 1) The attitude of the courtly audience: Women are wonderful.
• 2) The attitude of the clergy: Women are abominable.
• 3) The attitude that must have been his own: Women are like men; each one must be judged according to her own merit.¹

Renoir's views have gone unchallenged and he has felt able to re-state them recently.² But the assumption that underlies his approach seems open to question. The...