In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the wife, or Alison, discusses matrimony, virginity, and sovereignty. In the prologue, she refers several times to the control that women should have over their men, a definite feminist idea. Alison feels that she should not be controlled or told what to do by anyone, especially by her husbands. She exhibits a very feminist attitude by stating what a husband should say to his wife.
“Thou sholdest seye, wyf, go wher thee liste;
Taak youre disport, I wol nat leve no talys.
I knowe yow for a trewe wyf, dame alys”(318-320).
In this statement one can gather that Alison believes her husband should allow her to do anything she wants and trust her in every way. Yet men believed differently as is evident in the text, “The Goodman of Paris,” a letter written to the Goodman’s new and much younger wife of age fifteen. In the letter the Goodman lists many things that she can and cannot do. The third rule in his list tells his wife,
“to understand that if that shall be your husband shall forbid you to do anything, whether he forbid you in jest or in earnest or whether it be concerning small matters or great, you must watch that you do not in any manner that which he has forbidden” (Goodman).
Up until very recently women had very few personal rights. Goodman wanted his young wife to learn very early that she is to be completely submissive to him and that she is to do everything to make sure that he and any future husband she may have is satisfied. Alison defies this belief in every way.
In telling about her five husbands, Alison states, “I shal seye sooth, tho housbandes that I hadde, / As thre of hem were goode, and two were bade” (195-196). The three “goode” men were “riche” and “olde.” But Alison confesses that she would deny them sex and use manipulation to get their money from them. She also confesses to using guilt and jealousy against them to get her way. She prides herself on having, by skill, gained control over them. She even went so far as to say that if ever her husbands grew angry she would tell them to imitate the well-known patience of the biblical character Job. She tells them, “Ye sholde been al pacient and meke, /And han a sweete spiced conscience, / Sith ye so preche of jobes pacience” (435-437).
Alison vaguely depicted her first three husbands and her dominance over them, but she becomes more elaborate with her fourth and especially her fifth husband. She cheated on her fourth husband with her fifth husband and justifies this action by stating she was jealous of his infidelity and wanted to pay him back. Soon after he died she married Jankin, her fifth husband and according to her, the most challenging of the five and also the most abusive. Alison admits to marrying him for love yet he was also half her age the younger. She gave him all the property she had gathered from the previous four but was irritated because he never let her have her way. He would also provoke her by reading her stories of evil women from a book of misogynist works. She retaliates one day by ripping three pages out of the book and he beats her for this act. Alison feigns death and when Jankin tries to revive her she struck him again and in doing so, “he yaf me al the bridel in myn hond, / to han the governance of hous and lond, / and of his tonge, and of his hond also,/ and made hym brenne his book anon right tho”(813-816). In feigning death she gained back the “whip hand” and her control over her husband.
In doing this and telling her story, according to biblical law and popular belief in the medieval times, Alison was sinning in her actions. According to the Goodman,
“It is the command of God that wives should be subject to their husbands as their lords, for the husband is the head of the wife even as our Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the Church. Thus it followeth that even as the Church is subject and obedient to the commandments, great and small, of Jesus Christ, as to her head, even so wives ought to be subject to their husbands as to their head and obey them and all their commandments great and small…” (Goodman).
Women were expected to be submissive and obey their husbands at all times and Alison disobeyed this law throughout each of her marriages.
The subject matter of the Wife of Bath’s Tale is, therefore, not so much about feminine equality in marriage, but the struggles for power between herself and her husbands. She does not look for an equal relationship with any of her husbands, but a relationship in which she has complete control over him. Alison even insinuates that it is only this kind of marriage that true happiness can be found. When Jankin beat her and tormented her with the stories, she used guilt against him to regain control of the relationship. This transfer of authority led to Alison’s first blissful relationship. With her becoming the governing partner in their relationship, Alison did not find it required to fight with her husband or manipulate him for what she wanted. Therefore, the Wife of Bath is not only one of the first feminists in literature, but also a woman who dared to defy the expectations that were placed upon women.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale.” Canterbury Tales. 3
Mar. 2003. Fordham University.
Power, Eileen. “The Goodman of Paris.” Medieval Sourcebook. 3 Mar. 2003.
Fordam University.