Aurelius

Aurelius is a young, virtuous, wealthy, and well-regarded squire whose love for Dorigen sets the Breton tale in motion. Named explicitly as a servant of Venus, he has loved her for more than two years, yet she remains unaware of his devotion. His pursuit creates the story’s central conflict between private desire and the obligations created by marriage, promises, and generosity.

Identity and Social Position

Aurelius is introduced as a “lusty squire,” a young man associated with courtly love and service to Venus. The narrator emphasizes that he is both rich and wise, and that others love and esteem him. His social identity therefore combines material resources, education or judgment, and the polished role of a courtly admirer. He is not presented as a desperate outsider but as a respected man whose position gives his desire considerable force.

The larger pilgrimage portrait places Aurelius’s world beside a crowded social spectrum. The narrator pauses to describe the pilgrims and their circumstances, including the perfectly gentle Knight, the well-equipped but plainly dressed forest attendant, the Prioress, several prosperous tradesmen, the Wife of Bath, and the group that includes the Miller, Reeve, Summoner, Pardoner, Manciple, and the narrator himself. Against this social background, Aurelius’s wealth and reputation distinguish him from merely comic or occupational figures, while his title of squire marks him as connected to the ideals of chivalry without possessing the full status of a knight.

Love and the Impossible Demand

Aurelius’s love is intense and prolonged rather than momentary. He has loved Dorigen above all others for longer than two years, and the duration of his devotion gives it the shape of sustained courtly service. Yet the relationship is radically unequal in knowledge: Aurelius knows and suffers from his love, while Dorigen does not even know that he is devoted to her. This asymmetry makes his passion both earnest and potentially coercive.

When Aurelius encounters Dorigen in the town, the hidden lover enters the visible action. His desire eventually becomes attached to a condition that Dorigen cannot realistically fulfill. He seeks a promise connected with the removal of the Breton rocks, turning love into a bargain whose terms threaten to make marriage, fidelity, and personal freedom collide. The demand gives his private longing a public moral dimension: Dorigen’s words become a debt, while Aurelius’s claim exposes the danger of treating a promise as an instrument of possession.

Conflict with Dorigen and Arveragus

Aurelius’s immediate rival is not simply another lover but Dorigen’s husband, Arveragus. Dorigen’s marriage is founded on a compact in which the spouses are joined through mutual love while preserving the dignity and authority of each. Aurelius’s pursuit presses against that arrangement from outside. His desire asks Dorigen to choose between the literal force of her promise and the fidelity owed within her marriage.

The conflict is therefore not resolved by Aurelius winning a conventional contest. Dorigen’s distress reveals that the issue is larger than romantic competition: an apparently voluntary promise can become morally oppressive when one party uses it to compel another. Aurelius’s role in this structure is initially that of the lover who converts longing into a claim, but the narrative does not leave him fixed there.

Release and Transformation

A decisive reversal occurs when Aurelius releases Dorigen. He states that he would rather suffer woe throughout his life than divide the love between Dorigen and her husband. He returns to her every oath and vow she has made to him, formally restoring the promises to her and ending his power over her. This action does not erase his suffering; it makes the renunciation meaningful because he acts while still emotionally invested.

The release changes the value at stake from possession to freedom. Aurelius begins as the man who wants the fulfillment of a promise for his own benefit. He ends the immediate conflict by refusing to make Dorigen’s words a weapon against her marriage. His generosity also establishes a chain of reciprocal acts: once Aurelius relinquishes his claim, the story can turn toward the question of whether another person will answer that generosity with generosity of his own.

Suffering and Narrative Significance

Aurelius’s renunciation carries a material cost. The narrator says that he is left forlorn by his expense and that he curses the time of his birth. His famous pledge has not merely caused emotional pain; it has consumed resources and left him facing the consequences of the bargain he made. The contrast between his wealth and his despair prevents the release from appearing effortless or sentimental.

His importance lies in the way the tale redirects a plot of frustrated love into an ethical test. Aurelius is first shaped by the conventions of courtly desire, in which persistent service and intense feeling seem to authorize a claim upon the beloved. His final act exposes the limits of that logic. By returning Dorigen’s vows, he recognizes that love cannot be made honorable through compulsion, and the story uses his reversal to examine marriage, promises, suffering, and the difficult practice of making a virtue of necessity.