The Exchange Of Women Theory Under Levi Strauss's Alliance Theory

The miller’s daughter Malyne falls victim to the patriarchy’s denial of her personage, both through her father’s and law student Aleyn’s relegation of her as property. The latter denies her a chance to consent during the assault, as though she is an inanimate object that he may use how he pleases. As a woman under medieval law, she is her father’s property rather than a person of her own accord, meaning that a suitor does not need her permission but rather that of her owner. However, as Aleyn wishes to exact revenge upon her father, this fungibility allows him to consider his violation of her not as an atrocity against another human being but a crime against her father’s property (Barnett 6). Knowing her father’s theft instigated her assault, Malyne is willing to further the clerks’ revenge upon him to requite his treatment of her as property and, on a much broader scale, counter the patriarchal hegemony that put her virginity up as collateral in the first place.

Medieval law places women under the possession of either their father or husband. Upon marrying, the father of the bride and the prospective groom proceed with a transactional shift of ownership, known as the exchange of women theory under Levi Strauss’s alliance theory. The convergence of both these theories rests on the concept that women are merely objects that move between male ownership once, the dowry being one’s numerical value on the marriage market and entirely dependent on the girl’s virtue. Consequently,