The literature of courtship does not suggest that a plain "no" would have persuaded Aurelius to stop importuning Dorigen; indeed, as Kaske recognizes, refusal is itself scripted into courtship as a first stage of feminine responsiveness….Dorigen's task of removing the rocks, like her direct refusal, has a place in paradigms of courtship: it parallels the resistant lady's demand that her suitor perform extraordinary deeds in order to win her love. [The plots of many other romances] illustrate that extraordinary demands, even when motivated by distaste, no more deflect courtship than do outright refusals; instead, both feminine strategies are productive of plots centered on the striving lover…

Dorigen's words to Aurelius comment on the constrained situation of women in the literature of courtship. First, that Dorigen finds herself ventriloquizing encouragement as she attempts resistance reveals that there is no vocabulary of refusal in this generic context. Both the lady's resistance to a first declaration of love and her extravagant demands might well be signs of acquiescence. Even Dorigen's references to her husband...are consonant with Aurelius's version of his courtship as a competitive confrontation with Arveragus, a relation between men. The only way for Dorigen to communicate refusal to Aurelius would be to relocate herself altogether outside of sexual circulation, and the many stories she later recalls can only imagine that outside as death.

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The tale's events contradict the Franklin's assertion. This union does not eliminate the problem of "maistrie" by having each spouse obey the other in all things. Rather, Dorigen obeys Arveragus as if his will were unalterable necessity: she complains to God about the rocks rather than to Arveragus for going away, and she follows her husband's judgment in surrendering to Aurelius even though her exempla compare the surrender to rape and murder…..An enormous difference separates the assertion that "Love wol nat been constreyned by maistrye" and Arveragus's threat to kill his wife if she ever reveals that she followed his order to submit to Aurelius. However we gloss that difference, and many glosses more desperate than compelling are on record, it demonstrates that the Franklin's interpretive comment on the love of Dorigen and Arveragus is not consonant with the plot of his Breton lay.

(from Susan Crane, Gender and Romance in Ch’s Canterbury Tales, 63, 65, 108)