Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Janina Ramírez

The Knight’s Tale’ is the first full story in the Canterbury Tales, and describes how Emelye was captured along with her sister Queen Hippolyta when Theseus laid siege to Scythia, home of the powerful Amazon women. She is taken to Athens, where she becomes the object of desire for two knights being held captive in a tower. To this end, she is idealised and objectified, but in many ways Emelye contradicts expectations of women in romance. First, the ‘Amazon’ women of Scythia were military-trained, and said to be able to ride horses, wield weapons and fight as equals to men.12 Second, Emelye expresses her desire to remain dedicated to the goddess of the hunt, Diana: ‘I Desire to be a maiden all my life, / Nor never would I be no lover nor wife.’ She tells the goddess that she prefers hunting and woodcraft to marriage and childbirth.