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The Wife of Bath's Tale — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Tale

In the days of King Arthur, the land was full of mischievous elves and fairies. (These days it is not so: women nowadays have to fear only the attentions of roving friars.) In that olden time, one of Arthur's knights while traveling alone encounters a woman and rapes her by force. The knight is arrested and condemned to death, but Queen Guinevere and her ladies intercede on his behalf, and he is turned over to Guinevere for punishment instead. The Queen tells the knight that he may save his own life if he can discover, in a year and a day, what it is that women most desire.

Everywhere the knight goes, he asks the opinion of those he meets; but he never gets the same answer twice. Some say women desire riches; or sexual pleasure; or a variety of husbands; or to be flattered; or to be free; or to be confided in. (The wife of Midas was confided in, but in the end she could not keep his secret. This story's conclusion, says the Wife, may be found in Ovid.)

The year having passed fruitlessly, the knight turns homeward in sorrow. At the edge of the woods he sees twenty-four maidens dancing and singing, but when he approaches they disappear as if by magic, leaving only the ugliest old woman anyone could imagine. She asks his trouble, and the knight explains that he seeks to know what women most desire. She whispers to him the answer, but only after extracting from him the promise to grant her the first favor she should ask him in the future. Arriving at the court, he gives the old hag's answer:

That is, women most desire sovereignty over their husbands and lovers. This is unanimously agreed to be true by the women of the court, who, accordingly, free the knight.

The hag then calls on the knight, before all the court, to grant her favor: his hand in marriage. Aghast, he begs her to choose another favor; but she is firm, and he keeps his word. There is no wedding feast. That night, the knight tosses and turns and will not embrace the hag. She asks the reason. He gives three: that she is loathsome, and old, and low-born. She tells him that all this could be amended, if only he were pleasant toward her. Concerning her low birth, she quotes "the wise poete of Florence," Dante, who writes that virtue and nobility do not rise along the branches of the family tree but rather descend by God's grace upon the leaves (Conv. IV.20; Purg. VII). She urges him to read Seneca, Boethius, and Valerius, in all of whom he will find "that he is gentil that dooth gentil dedis," regardless of birth. Concerning her poverty, she reminds him that Jesus Christ chose to be poor; and that

Concerning her old age, she reminds him that one should be courteous to one's elders. Concerning her ugliness, she assures him that for that reason he needn't fear becoming a cuckold; yet she will always satisfy his appetites.

Finally, she asks him which he would prefer: an old and ugly wife who is true and humble, or a beautiful young wife with all the risks to his reputation that such a wife might entail. The knight replies that he will express no opinion; she should choose the better option according to her own pleasure and honor. "Then I have got mastery of you?" she inquires; he agrees. She then promises him both beauty and fidelity; casting up the curtain, he finds that she has become beautiful. He kisses her a thousand times; she promises to obey him in everything; and they live their lives in perfect joy.

The Wife of Bath ends her tale with a prayer that all women be blessed with meek, young, vigorous husbands and the grace to outlive them; and that all ungovernable husbands and skinflints be cursed with short lives and pestilence.

Feminist critique

The Wife of Bath's Prologue simultaneously enumerates and critiques the long tradition of misogyny in ancient and medieval literature. As Helen Cooper notes, the Wife of Bath's "materials are part of the vast medieval stock of antifeminism", giving St. Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum, which was "written to refute the proposition put forward by one Jovinianus that virginity and marriage were of equal worth,” as one of many examples.

Jane Chance (1995) suggests that the Wife of Bath's Prologue, depicting a self-assured and realistic (rather than allegorical) woman, might have been written as a self-imposed "poetic penance" for Chaucer's "shameful" depiction of Criseyde in Troilus and Criseyde, which he himself acknowledged in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women.

Ruth Evans, in Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature (1995), postulates that the Wife of Bath embodies the ideology of "sexual economics" and suffers the "psychological effects of economic necessity, specifically on sexual mores." The Wife of Bath is described as a woman in the trade of textiles, she is neither upper-class or lower, strictly a middle-class woman living independently off her own profit. The Wife of Bath sees the economics of marriage as a profitable business endeavor, based solely on supply and demand: she sells her body in marriage, and in return she is given money in the form of titles and inheritance. She is both the broker and the commodity in this arrangement.

The Wife of Bath's first marriage occurred at the age of twelve, which highlights the lack of control that girls and women had over their own bodies in medieval Europe, as children were often bartered, in marriage, to increase family status. By choosing her next husbands and subsequently "selling herself," she regains some semblance of control and ownership over her body, and the profit is solely hers to keep.

The simple fact that she is a widow who has remarried more than once radically defies medieval conventions. Further evidence of this can be found through her observation: "For hadde God commanded maydenhede, / Thanne hadde he dampned weddyng with the dede." She refutes Jerome's proposition, concerning virginity and marriage, by noting that God would have condemned marriage and procreation if He had commanded virginity. Her decision to include God as a defence for her lustful appetites is significant, as it shows how well-read she is. By the same token, her interpretations of Scripture, such as Paul on marriage, are tailored to suit her own purposes.

While Chaucer's Wife of Bath is clearly familiar with the many ancient and medieval views on proper female behavior, she also boldly questions their validity. Her repeated acts of remarriage, for instance, are an example of how she mocks "clerical teaching concerning the remarriage of widows." Furthermore, she adds, "a rich widow was considered to be a match equal to, or more desirable than, a match with a virgin of property," illustrating this point by elaborating at length concerning her ability to remarry four times and to attract a much younger man.

While she gleefully confesses to the many ways in which she falls short of conventional ideals for women, she also points out that it is men who constructed those ideals in the first place.

Behaviour in marriage

Both Mary Carruthers and Cooper reflect on the way that Chaucer's Wife of Bath does not behave as society dictates, in any of her marriages. Through her nonconformity to the expectations of her role as a wife, the audience is shown what proper behaviour, in marriage, should be like. Carruthers' essay outlines the existence of deportment books, the purpose of which was to teach women how to be model wives. Carruthers notes how the Wife's behaviour in the first of her marriages "is almost everything the deportment-book writers say it should not be." For example, she lies to her old husbands about them getting drunk and saying some regrettable things. Yet Carruthers does note that the Wife does do a decent job of upholding her husbands' public honour. Moreover, deportment books taught women that "the husband deserves control of the wife, because he controls the estate"; it is clear that the Wife is the one who controls certain aspects of her husband's behaviour in her various marriages.

Cooper also notes that behaviour in marriage is a theme that emerges in the Wife of Bath's Prologue; neither the Wife nor her husbands conform to any conventional ideals of marriage. Cooper observes that the Wife's fifth husband, in particular, "cannot be taken as any principle of correct Christian marriage". In a remarkable passage, the Wife describes her relationship with husband no. 5 (Jankyn) as follows:

Based on this passage, Jankyn fails to exhibit behaviour conventionally expected within a marriage. This can, perhaps, be attributed to his young age and lack of experience in relationships, as he does change at the end, as does the Wife of Bath. Thus, through both the Wife's and her fifth and favorite husband's failure to conform to expected behaviour in marriage, the poem exposes the complexity of the institution of marriage and of relationships, more broadly.

But the passage has been interpreted differently. Elaine Hansen writes that this passage suggests that

male violence is not just offset by good sex but male violence

and female pain are mutually constitutive elements of female desire. [. . .] The message seems to

be clear here: whatever sexual pleasure the Wife may enjoy, sober or not, has a considerable

element of what we might identify as masochism. The Wife is apparently a woman who enjoys

being beaten up by her young husband.

Other authors go farther, suggesting that Chaucer intends for us to view the Wife as a pathological, even sociopathic, character.

Harriet Muus argues instead that the mate preferences attributed by Chaucer to the Wife are quite normal: "Chaucer in this passage presents a beautifully concise and accurate précis of a typical (heterosexual) woman’s psychology of (intersexual) attraction." Muus points to studies that document women's preference for men with aggressive or dominating personalities, and suggests that the Wife, far from being a masochist, is saying "The delights of partnering with a ‘bad boy’ like Jankyn are sufficient to compensate for the bad times, even the times when he is physically abusive to me." Muus argues in addition that these preferences, assuming they have remained constant over time, could have been recognized by any careful observer, including Chaucer. Thus, she argues, "Chaucer’s insights into female psychology were at least as astute as those of

his modern critics."

Sex and Lollardy

While sexuality is a dominant theme in The Wife of Bath's Prologue, it is less obvious that her sexual behaviour can be associated with Lollardy. Critics such as Helen Cooper and Carolyn Dinshaw point to the link between sex and Lollardy. Both describe the Wife's knowledge and use of Scripture, in her justification of her sexual behaviour. When she states that "God bad us for to wexe and multiplye", she appears to suggest that there is nothing wrong with sexual lust, because God wants humans to procreate. The Wife's "emphatic determination to recuperate sexual activity, within a Christian context, and on the authority of the Bible [on a number of occasions throughout the text] echoes one of the points made in the Lollard Twelve Conclusions of 1395". The very fact that she remarries, after the death of her first husband, could be viewed as Chaucer's characterisation of the Wife as a supporter of Lollardy, if not necessarily a Lollard, herself, since Lollards advocated the remarriage of widows.

Author Alastair Minnis makes the assertion that the Wife of Bath is not a Lollard, at all, but was educated by her late husband, Jankyn, an Oxford-educated clerk, who translated and read aloud anti-feminist texts. Jankyn gave her knowledge far beyond what was available to women of her status, which explains how she can hold her own, when justifying her sexual behavior to the Canterbury group. Further, Minnis explains that "being caught in possession of a woman's body, so to speak, was an offense, in itself, carrying the penalty of a life-sentence", showing a perception that in medieval Europe, women could not hold priestly duties on the basis of their sex and no matter how flawless her moral status was, her body would always bar her from the ability to preach the word of God. Minnis goes on to say that "it might well be concluded that it was better to be a secret sinner than a woman," as a sinful man could always change his behavior and repent, but a woman could not change her sex.

The Wife of Bath's Tale

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Synopsis

Prologue

Tale

Themes

Feminist critique

Behaviour in marriage

Female sovereignty

Economics of love

Sex and Lollardy

Femininity

The Queen's Law

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The Wife of Bath's Tale across IJR