Chaucer's Wife of Bath: Feminism for the Ages

For centuries, literary critics have debated Geoffrey Chaucer's sexual politics within Canterbury Tales. Perhaps the most debatable of his characters is the head-strong, sexually motivated Wife of Bath. The Wife speaks as both a feminist and a misogynist, promoting the characteristics of her nature while simultaneously denouncing them. While Chaucer's story was likely interpreted as comedic by his Medieval audience, 21st century gender analysts seek to understand the author's true intent. As a modern woman, I find Chaucer's voice liberating for women of his era, and conclude that his satire was fueled by a desire to undermine the misogynistic tone of the world in which he lived. Chaucer was aware of the historical patriarchal constraints on women, and also of another sort of woman who was emerging thanks to the Roman Catholic Church's emphasis on the importance of marriage. Some women were making a career out of wifehood – a vice the Wife of Bath has no qualms bragging about. My analysis will consist of two main components: historical/societal context and the gendered language of the prose. I seek to prove Chaucer a feminist based upon his contradictory tale.

Life for the common Medieval women was challenging. Blamed for the Fall of Man, she was destined to suffer. She was the property of her husband and no more than a vessel for transmitting seed from one generation of males to the next. Judith Bennet claims that “Medieval people thought of conjugality as a hierarchy headed by a husband who not only controlled his wife's financial assets and public behavior, but also freely enforced his will through physical violence” (qtd. Butler). In fact, occasional violence was acceptable and expected in marriage. While Benedictine orders recommending marriage over sexual deviance protected many single women from rape and premarital assault, it confined others to a life of male domination and silence. Many women married for financial security and to have some level of political power through their husbands. Also, a married woman was considered a better-governed woman, thus she could satisfy her community by fulfilling a Christian duty (Nelson).

Despite the brutal conditions women were often exposed to in their marriages, many women fought to hold onto their unions even when their husbands desired an annulment. Although the church gave husbands divine power over their wives, the courts still somewhat upheld marriages as an equal union. Women seeking separation from their husbands could successfully walk away with half of the couple's assets. Because women discovered this ally, they began taking advantage of their husbands just as they had been taken advantage of for years. Women found a loophole through which they could claim cruelty, unfaithfulness or impotence of their husbands, and the courts would reward them for their suffering (Butler). Chaucer's Wife of Bath is one woman who is proud to have taken advantage of several husbands. She has learned how to “work the system” in a manner that equates wifehood to a career. Reigning in one husband after another with sex as her greatest asset, she takes pride in dominating the men who are legally permitted to dominate her.

In her Prologue, the Wife discusses at great length her experience as a wife while (often improperly) citing both ancient Biblical and misogynistic texts as they relate to the institution of marriage. She is familiar with the church's arguments against women and seeks to counter them, rejecting the masculine tradition of womanhood as something created by bitter, impotent old men. She presents her own “glossed” versions of the texts, mimicking previous exegetes who interpreted scripture for their own personal benefit. Indeed, much of the Wife's rhetoric serves to dispute that which is written in the misogynistic book her fifth husband, Jankyn, carries around with him. This “book of wicked wives,” called Valerie and Theofraste, contained stories of the most deceitful wives in history: Eve, who brought all of mankind into sin by eating the apple in the Garden of Eden; Delilah, who betrayed Samson; Clytemnestra, who murdered Agamemnon, and others (Chaucer, 328-329). When she finally tears pages from Jankyn's book and punches him in the face, she is repaid with a blow to the head that leaves her deaf in one ear. Her hearing loss is caused, ironically, by her one silent action, her attempt to destroy the written tradition that has constructed her. As Elaine Tuttle Hansen remarks, “The Wife's mutilation serves as a climactic symbol of the simultaneously dumbing and deafening effect of the dominant discourse and the social structure it enforces.”

The Wife attempts to use literature to argue against the male dominance she is subject to, but (as evidenced by her failure to maintain her train of thought as well as her incorrect citations) she fails to bring a clear, feminist argument to the table. She continually affirms the misogynist rhetoric she debates. This is because the voice of the tale is unmistakably masculine, a product of the male author's pen and also of a world where language for women hardly existed. Writing by women was rare in Chaucer's era, and he had to create a language to use for his Wife. It is to be expected that her language should be as masculine as the Miller's, because her words are being constructed by a man. Chaucer's weakness – that he is not female – haunts him as he is touted as a misogynist for his creation of the head-strong Wife of Bath. It is the Wife, after all, who asks, “Who painted the lion?” This is a reminder to the reader that this tale was not created by a woman, after all, and that she is constructed in a masculine world with masculine language whether she likes it or not. At best, her voice serves as a parody of man, both challenging and emulating male authority. Since feminist historians and literary critics are faced with the problem of women's absence in written tradition, they often turn to the Wife as a rare instance of woman as agent, speaker and reader (Hansen). The Wife, although a fictional character who's reality is completely debatable, offers a rare glimpse into Medieval domestic life. Chaucer attempts to bring the history of womens' experiences to the table with the creation of one character who both embraces and rejects the amenities of her gender. While he may desire to portray the Wife as a rightly independent being, he fails to escape the prison of masculine language in which she is constructed. Instead, he ushers in a “feminine monstrosity who is the product of the patriarchal authority she ineffectively and only superficially rebels against” (Hansen).

Much of the rhetoric that the Wife both references and debates stems from ancient anti-feminist works by philosophers such as Aristotle, Galen and St. Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle assumed that male domination was the rule in all natural species. Galen determined that women were ruled by cold and wet qualities, while men were ruled by the hot and the dry. Since heat is nature's primary instrument, he concluded that “within mankind the man is more perfect than the woman.” Aquinas argued that “the power of rational discernment is by nature stronger in man” than in woman, who is “by nature of lower capacity and quality than man." The Wife embodies all of the stock traits which anti-feminist authors and preachers such as Robert Rypon, William Lichfield, John Bromyard and Nicholas Bozon habitually ascribed to women: their lustfulness and nagging, their vanity, their garrulousness and their disobedience (Rigby). It must be noted that all of these attributes are seen as specifically female characteristics, meaning that all women are eventually judged by their gender, not their individual nature.

Through the Wife, Chaucer questions the misogynistic beliefs of the society in which he lives. She argues that she should be permitted to marry as many husbands as she chooses, because God permitted Solomon to have seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (Chaucer, 312). In the Old Testament, God does allow Solomon and others to take multiple wives, but it was for the purpose of reproduction and filling the earth. The Wife takes the advice, “Be fruitful and multiply” to heart. Tropologically, this statement meant that people should multiply their virtues; allegorically, it meant that they should multiply the congregation of those faithful to God. The Wife's interpretation is literal, and she uses it to justify her career as a wife (Rigby). She also says that, while she knows Jesus only approves of marrying once, her dear apostle (to whom she has paid her indulgences) forgives her and recommends she remarry again rather than “burn within” (Chaucer, 312). She sarcastically takes the church official's word over God's because it allows her to sustain herself. As a married woman, she has financial security and sexual control over her husband. The Wife refers to Saint Paul's prescription of “marital debt” between husband and wife eight times throughout her Prologue. She relies heavily on the fact that she can control her husband with her sex. This is also why she praises those who are capable of remaining chaste, but denounces the thought of herself doing so. She uses the metaphor of the need for wooden vessels as well as golden and silver vessels in a lord's household (Chaucer, 314). In other words, impure women can serve God in other ways; not all women are to be virgins. After all, she argues, without sex there would be no virgins in the first place.

Above all, as her Tale exhibits, the Wife desires complete sovereignty over her husband. She claims that since man is the most reasonable of the two sexes, he also must be most suffrable. This relates to Biblical tradition which claims that since Eve was so easily tempted to eat the apple, she must be the most unreasonable of the sexes. However, a closer look at an Anglo-Saxon version of Genesis proves that reason had little to do with Eve's decision to stray from God's word. In “Genesis A” of the Junius XI manuscript, the devil tempts Eve into coercing Adam into eating from the Tree of Life by saying, “Thou mayest rule the heart of Adam” (Killings). Eve ultimately gives in to the devil because she desires to have complete sovereignty over her husband, just as the Wife of Bath desires. Because holy scripture calls for a man to have dominion over his wife, woman is bound to desire equality at some point or another.

Chaucer's tale is a satire on the oldest story told: the Fall of Man wrought by woman's weakness. However, woman deserves pity when one realizes she is only weak because she desires to reign in her husband's heart just as he reigns in her's. Furthermore, the Fall prescribed eternal suffering for women, a tradition that Christians have perpetuated since. Even when medical techniques were discovered in the 19th century to relieve the pain of suffering of women from childbearing, many Christian clergy were reluctant to support the efforts (Cullinan). Scripture makes it very clear that the pains of childbirth and subjugation of women unto men are both punishments for sin, period. However, as Chaucer's Pardoner claims, sin came to earth through a single man (Rigby). Chaucer recognizes that Eve is not alone in her sin, and that Adam, too, is responsible.

Chaucer shows that the goodness of feminine nature is contained even in the anti-feminist account of women. He superimposes the Wife's own point of view over a tradition of misogyny, proving that not even the history of anti-feminist ideas can destroy personal experience. His audience likely interpreted the Prologue and Tale as highly comedic, as the Wife substantiates accusations of garrulity, lust and disobedience while simultaneously refuting them. According to S.H. Rigby, “It is regrettable to have to go through the Wife of Bath's arguments in order to show why, in Medieval terms, they are inadequate, but the number of scholars who now believe that we are supposed to find the Wife's case convincing requires us to perform this task.” Chaucer was highly aware of the patriarchal constraints upon Medieval women. His piece should be read as a feminist work that was well ahead of its time. After all, it is not uncommon for Chaucer to be referred to as the father of modern literature.

References

Butler, Sara. “Runaway Wives: Husband Desertion in Medieval England.” Journal of Social History 40.2 (2006): 337-359.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.” Canterbury Tales. New York: Covici Friede Inc., 1934. 311-344.

Cullinan, Colleen Carpenter. “In Pain and Sorrow: Childbirth, Incarnation, and the Suffering of Women.” Cross Currents 58.1 (2008): 95-107.

Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. "The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15.4 (1988): 399-416.

Killings, Douglas B., ed. “Genesis A.” Codex Junius XI. Project Gutenberg, 1996.

Nelson, Janet L. “Gender, Memory and Social Power.” Gender and History 12.3 (2000) 722-735.

Rigby, S. H. “Misogynist versus Feminist Chaucer.” Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender. Manchester University Press, 1996. 116-163. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 56. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. 116-163. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Ohio University. 28 Oct. 2009 .

Treharne, Elaine. “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer's Wife of Bath.” Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts. Ed. Elaine Treharne Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002. 93-115. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 58. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 93-115. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Ohio University. 28 Oct. 2009 .