In the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women there are two significant narrative motifs. The one involves the poetic service of the Flower, and includes the praise of Ideal Woman under the figure of the daisy, and the poet's vision of an all but perfect woman from the mythological past. He is initially ignorant of this lady's name but finally comes to recognise her true identity. The second motif involves the God of Love's accusation against Chaucer and is made up of the charge that the poet had written poetry which defames women, his defence by the mysterious Daisy Queen, and the imposition of his penance, a new poem in which he will recant his former sins. Both the recognition motif and the accusation motif are common in the works of fourteenth-century French poets. For example, Machaut's Jugement dou Roy de Navarre has both an accusation and a recognition scene, and is also a recantation poem.

The Good Woman is thus represented in the Prologue to the Legend under two major literary figures, the marguerite of contemporary French poetry, and as a classical story the poet has read about in his old books. In the F Prologue there is an additional element: the sense that, when Chaucer praises the daisy, he is honouring a particular lady, and that, when he has his vision of a lady dressed like a daisy, he at first believes it is this same lady, who is the subject of his balade Hyd Absolon, where she is praised for virtues which outshine those of the heroines of the past.