ethius exactly what the root of his problem is at the beginning of this section. “You are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune,” she tells him (p.54). This is because he has forgotten the true nature of Fortune. Once he comes to an understanding of Fortune and how she works as an instrument of God, he will be healed of his sickness of depression. Boethius then moves the conversation to a face to face discussion with Fortune. B.L. Jefferson, in his book Chaucer and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, claims that “Boethius was the first to visualize Fortune in this most personal way” (p. 49). Boethius’s discussion about fortune makes three different points. Firstly, that change is the very nature of Fortune. This mutability is pointed out by Lady Philosophy, “Change is her normal behavior, her true nature…You have discovered the changing faces of the random goddess,” she tells Boethius (Consolation, p. 55). No man can stop her wheel from turning; it goes against Fortune’s very nature to do so. She can turn her face away from a man as quickly as she turns it to him. Jefferson characterizes the argument in this way, “Absolutely without sympathy, [Fortune] cares no more for one man than another” (50). Next comes the defense of Fortune by herself. Her argument is simple: I have only taken back what was mine in the first place. “Inconstancy is my very essence,” she says, “it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top. Yes, rise up on my wheel if you like, but don’t count it an injury when by the same token you begin to fall, as the rules of the game will require” (Consolation, p. 57). Boethius has no grounds for his complaints because everything he has ever had was given to him by For...
