Kellie Robertson, The Laborer's Two Bodies: Labor and the "Work" of the Text in Medieval Britain, 1350-1500

NB: The below is a book review I wrote in a seminar on Robertson's most excellent monograph. 

Robertson, Kellie. The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the “Work” of the Text in Medieval Britain, 1350-1500. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

            In the Laborer’s Two Bodies, Kellie Robertson establishes the ways in which labor identities were represented, controlled, and subverted in Britain from 1350-1500. By discussing the rising issues of labor in the backdrop of a post-plague England, Robertson is able to evaluate the tension of labor between the three estates in addition to the various methods each used to either repress the labor force or defend their own work. In the process, Robertson evaluates a series of documents that represent various stages of this struggle, including the Legend of Good Women, Piers Plowman, Mankind, and the Paston letters. Additionally, Robertson’s writing consistently lends itself to rhetorical clarity. More than refreshing, however, this emphasis on lucidity is quite necessary due to her complex arguments, simultaneously utilizing neo-Marxist, Foucauldian, feminist, semiotic, and New Historicist approaches. The appearance of these arguments together can provide a daunting task for the reader, yet Robertson effectively introduces each element at the most effective juncture. In her introduction, Robertson presents a construction of the laborer’s body as idealized, punished, and read as a symbol itself, and it is this approach which ties the chapters together. In place of a central, formal argument for the book as a whole, the laborer’s body is a common topic at the heart of each chapter. This approach is its primary strength, allowing Robertson to discuss a wide range of labor issues in post-plague Britain and clarifying the complex issues around material and immaterial labor.

            In chapter one, Robertson’s focus is on the specifics of the labor statutes and their enforcement. While discussing the initial statutes’ attempt to control the labor force, Robertson contends that the laborer was now split into two bodies: one the more real, naturalized version repressed by the judicial process and the other the ideal theological model of a hard working peasant. In regards to the judicial body, Robertson argues that the move to public displays of punishment made that body a text to be read; “authorities wanted most of all to make labor (good or bad) a visible quantity, something to be read off the body” (16). The theological model attempted to further repress laborers by imposing an image of what they should aspire to be: content with their state. A prime example of this is found in St. Walston, whose hagiography is added upon to “emphasize the necessity of keeping one’s labor obligations” (35). The most compelling aspect of Robertson’s argument is the impact this dynamic had upon poets, especially Langland who “attempts to define the utility of his intellectual work in terms borrowed from this everyday world of material transactions” (45). This chapter serves to set up her construct of the immaterial versus the material and provides the historical backing of the labor statutes that runs through the rest of her text.

            Robertson’s intent in the second chapter is to both complicate the argument that the years Chaucer spent as a justice of the peace in Kent were a political respite and to show that this forced Chaucer to have direct interaction with the labor statutes, his duty being to enforce them. Additionally, Robertson discusses the precarious political environment Chaucer was involved in and how this increased scrutiny on the judiciaries as well as laborers placed more pressure on the poet to defend his own work. This is made all the more pertinent when one considers the most intriguing change to labor laws up to this point: that one could be tried not simply for action but for intent as well. Robertson contends that this in particular placed Chaucer in a tricky situation; “if the poet cannot vindicate his labor, it is in part because intention, and hence, identity cannot be adequately textualized” (64). Taking this into consideration, Robertson conflates the defense of women in the Legend of Good Women with “a defense of the poet’s own work, particularly since neither defense quite convinces” (64). This chapter not only provides greater insight into Chaucer’s political dealings but grants further understanding of the pressures placed upon the poet in an environment where work was so heavily questioned.  

            In her third chapter, Robertson deals with the use of the term comyn prouffit, tying it into her overall concept by discussing “the material history of this purportedly immaterial concept” (79).  Robertson documents how this term moves from legal terminology to Christian theology, being implemented as ideology to prevent laborers from taking advantage of the post-plague labor market. Robertson suggests that the initial use of the term was intended to reinforce the immaterial concept of medieval social hierarchy. The term, however, is quickly appropriated by rebels in their attacks against the labor laws, who use the term to suggest that a loosening of restrictions would be in the society’s best interest. As Robertson states, “the peasants did indeed believe that the master’s tools could dismantle the master’s house” (92). The common profit was further appropriated by heretics and then merchants, only retired from this cycle when it is supplanted by the idea of the commonwealth in the late fifteenth century. The need of the Tudor government to abandon the common profit as the predominant ideology in support of the hierarchy suggests an attempt to adopt a less fluid concept, one not as easily turned against those it is intended to entrench.

            The fourth chapter is the most divergent yet is equally as enlightening to the discussion of material versus immaterial labor. This chapter’s focus is on the analysis of two contradictory bodies in the gentry housewife: “the contradictions between a legal ideology that conflated the roles of gentry women and servants over and against the lived experiences that gave the female gentry significant power over both people and things” (120). The previous three chapters acted in a progressive manner, tracking the changes in the labor statutes and the resultant fallout in addition to the book’s larger discussion of material verses immaterial bodies. This chapter diverges from the trend, focusing less on the labor statutes and more on the gendered dynamic of household labor. Robertson’s arguments in this chapter are perhaps some of the most interesting in the book, utilizing Foucault and feminist theory in her analysis of the Paston letters to show how the gentry housewife possessed authority while simultaneously showing submission to her husband. This chapter displays Robertson’s ability to construct a coherent, multifaceted argument which grants a larger view of labor throughout 15^th century England.

            Robertson’s fifth chapter reveals another interesting facet of the issue of labor, specifically the manner in which a dissident voice of the peasantry can by subtly packed into an otherwise innocuous form. Reading the historical context of East Anglia’s unrest over the 1446 labor statutes in Mankind, Robertson contends that the play contains a series of subtle subversions of the judicial and theological constructs designed to encourage complacence among laborers. Mercy’s advice to John superficially appears to counter the improper actions promoted by Mischief, but “by giving a social body to Mercy’s spiritual labor, the vice points out the literal physical labor that makes ecclesiastical discourse on allegorical labor possible” (157). In effect, Mischief actually undermines the repentance supposed to be evinced in the audience, subverting the normal theological order. The historical backdrop Robertson provides is the still changing labor laws, which now redefine vagrancy to further discourage the travel of laborers and even gives local authorities the right to impress unemployed workers into contracts against their will. Robertson goes on to discuss the play’s method of subverting the legal language most often used against laborers; “if Mercy accuses [English] of being too much in the world, the vices accuse his language of being too far from it” (180). Here again Robertson brings in the binary of the material versus the immaterial, displaying the inadequacy of the latter. By showing how Mankind is both influenced by and offers resistance to the 1446 labor statutes, Robertson reveals another voice of resistance from the third estate, a subtle tactic the student of medieval literature would do well to pay attention to. Effectively, this pushback complicates Mankind and brings closer scrutiny to how the morality play can operate as a vehicle for social dissidence.

            Robertson’s book facilitates a greater understanding of the complexities of labor issues in late medieval England, bringing to the forefront not just the historical implications but how these issues influenced the literature of this period. This book is of especial value to the student of medieval literature as it informs the impact of the post-plague labor crisis across British society and the subsequent affect this had upon texts of this period. The additional pressure placed upon the poet in this age, when all labor was under new scrutiny, sheds new light on the forces behind later medieval texts. Robertson’s complex, multifaceted arguments in The Laborer’s Two Bodies are worthwhile for the greater understanding of the implications and fallout of the labor statutes in post-plague England, not only adding historical context to the reading of the texts produced in this period but demonstrating how economic issues directly impacted British society, judicial proceedings, and literature.