In 1926, Walter Clyde Curry argued that the Pardoner had a dark secret that was revealed in the well-known description of the pilgrim from the General Prologue. Curry argued that the physiognomy of the Pardoner as described by Chaucer indicated that the Pardoner was “most unfortunate in his birth. He carries upon his body and has stamped on his mind and character the marks of what is known to medieval physiognomists as a eunuchus ex nativitate. Carolyn Dinshaw, for instance, returns to Curry's thesis about the eunuchry of the Pardoner, but also notes that eunuchry and other physical and sexual conditions (including homosexuality) “were conflated in the Middle Ages.” The result is a radical instability in the description of the Pardoner in the General Prologue.