The Wife continues her prologue as she speaks about how Virginity is glorified by the church, but is not required of women. The Wife of Bath believes that our bodies are given to us to use, let the saints be satisfied with that, because she will not try to be like them. The wife says this for appearance only, inside she despises virginity, but she attempts to hide this disapproval. The Wife believes that wives should rule their husbands, and enforces this with the story of her own life. She also spoke of how she schemed with her fifth husband, and made him completely submissive to her will.
Resultantly, The confessions of such a woman with an open desire for sex, and who flouted chastity had a shocking effect on the Clerk, who practiced the celibate life. The way that the Wife subdued her fifth husband would specifically annoy the Clerk, as the fifth husband was also a Clerk of Oxford. “The Clerk’s Tale” is an indirect response to the Wife of Bath who stated that women desire complete control over their husbands and lovers. The Clerk puts expresses a completely opposite view when he illustrates the sketch of a completely submissive woman.
A completely submissive woman however, is not what the Wife of Bath seen as an ideal; she was a woman far ahead of her time. In the Wife’s culture there were many ideas and customs which dictated extremely submissive, lives for women. The Wife of Bath, contradicts many of these unfair customs and asserts her own overbearing assessment of the roles of women in society and in relationships. “However, while apparently attempting to assert female dominance over men, the effect the Wife desires is to bring men and women to a more balanced level of power”. The Wife of Bath begins to speak about what is wrong with the current society. While reading this some people may interpret it as a woman complaining because everything isn’t perfect in her life. However, she states several intellectual examples of how her society treats women unfairly. Most proximately, how she does not accept that doctrine that a window must not marry again. She states that double standards for women and men occur too often. The wife explains that the teachings of Christ tell her, "That by the same ensample taughte he me / That I ne sholde wedded be but ones" (12-13). Pointing out that many holy men have had more than one wife she states “I woot wel Abraham was an holy man/And Jacob eek, as fer as evere I can, / And eech of hem hadde wives mo than two,/And many another holy man also” (55-58). In this approach, the wife addresses and dismisses the reasoning for looking down on women who have been married more than once. She shows that they are comparable in morals to men who have also had more than one spouse. Subsequently arousing the question why it is acceptable for men to have as many wives as they like.
In conclusion, the stories of The Canterbury Tales must be regarded as an interrelated set, as “The Clerks Tale” would not exist without “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”. The clerk tells his tale as a rebuttal to the Wife of Bath's story, each tale has an opposing view about which sex is more dominant than the other. The Wife of Bath is a woman who speaks her mind without being afraid of her reputation, which was very uncommon during this time. Her belief about the fair treatment of women which was also a new perspective to people of that time. The Wife had many disagreements with the order of her society. Her whole attitude is that of scornful, though good-humoured, portrayal of what the Church teaches in that regard. The Clerk and the Wife can be seen as opposites from the very beginning but are none the less essential to each other and the book as a whole.
Works Cited
Blake, Johnathon. Anthology of Middle English Literature 2 Nov. 2004.
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Cawley, A, . The Canterbury Tales. London: Orion Publishing Group. 1958.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Clerk’s Tale." Cawley. 176.
---. "The Wife Of Bath’s Prologue." Cawley. 225.
