How Does Chaucer Present The Wife Of Bath As A Woman Of Her Time?
How Does Chaucer Present The Wife Of Bath As A Woman Of Her Time?
Women were very much perceived as second-class citizens in the fourteenth century, they were rarely educated and had little status in society. As the Wife of Bath's Prologue is spoken by woman of exceeding experience with husbands, with strong opinions on how married life should be conducted, but is written by a man it is natural to look at how Chaucer presents the Wife Of Bath. This is especially so as many of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales condemn themselves out of their own mouth. Are we to agree with the views that the Wife of Bath puts forward so strongly, or does Chaucer present her as a caricature of every negative quality women are traditionally guilty of?
A great deal of the Wife's Prologue is spent in her narration of the tirades that she subjected her first three husbands to, largely a list of accusations made by anti-feminists of women, and the Wife's spirited responses. Indeed, the Wife's speech and behaviour, as well as her account of her history, appear to support the accusations of lechery and destructiveness made by anti-feminists. It appears that Chaucer is being ironic, in having the Wife defend herself against accusations, which her speech and behaviour prove.
Chaucer's presentation of the Wife is not an effort to make us judge the degree of her sin. It is not moralistic: it is simply a presentation of an interesting character and her exciting escapades. With her forceful domestic idiom and colourful language, the Wife forces us to become involved in the fight for mastery between her and her husbands, even if we do not fully agree with her. Her prowling of the streets is understandable when we hear her description of her husbands as "bacon", or old meat -- her destruction of Jankyn's book is justified by ...
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Chaucer's presentation of the Wife is not an effort to make us judge the degree of her sin. It is not moralistic: it is simply a presentation of an interesting character and her exciting escapades. With her forceful domestic idiom and colourful language, the Wife forces us to become involved in the fight for mastery between her and her husbands, even if we do not fully agree with her. Her prowling of the streets is understandable when we hear her description of her husbands as "bacon", or old meat -- her destruction of Jankyn's book is justified by her lengthy descriptions of Jankyn's book, as well as the briefer moments of his attempts to discipline her. While the Wife's character may invite attack from anti-feminists, the tone of Chaucer's narrative does not invite moralizing.
The Wife is sex-crazed, unscrupulous and destructive - all of men's worst suspicions of women united in one character. It seems to follow that Chaucer's aim in presenting a character with such negative qualities that she approaches caricature, is to show how dangerous such women can be, and to warn men against marrying; among the pilgrims, the Pardoner takes this warning before our eyes. Chaucer presents the Wife of Bath as wanting control over her husbands as wanting their 'maistrie'. Chaucer also writes that woman 'wol ben at oure large'. By doing this The Wife Of Bath exemplifies many of the negative characteristics attributed to women in the fourteenth century. Women wanting to be in control of everything including their husbands.
The language that Chaucer has her speak is not that of right and wrong, it is that of total amorality and self-service. The Wife does not pretend to better behaviour, nor does she accuse anyone else of sinning. The Wife's contradictions are so staggering and frequent: confusing bigamy with remarriage, using God's commandment to "go forth and multiply" although she is childless, and especially, her frank admission that in previous showdowns with her old husbands 'al was false' that she accused them of.
Chaucer the Wife of Bath as an appealing and convincing character. Chaucer's presentation of the Wife is not an effort to make us judge the degree of her sin. It is not moralistic: it is simply a presentation of an interesting character and her exciting escapades. With her forceful domestic idiom and colourful language, the Wife forces us to become involved in the fight for mastery between her and her husbands, even if we do not fully agree with her. While it is clear that the Wife is on the side of fellow females, in a logical sense the Wife's arguments are not particularly effective against the anti-feminists' view that women are as vain as cats, as sex-crazed as spaniels, and as destructive as 'wilde fyr'.
Chaucer explores the idea of the economic necessity by asking 'who peyntede the leon' In her prologue, the Wife of Bath refers to the Aesopian fable of the painting of the lion: the lion complains of a picture showing a man killing a lion and suggests that if a lion had painted it the result would have been different. Just so, says Alison, if women told tales of marital woe to match those of the authorities represented in Jankyn's book, they would show 'of men more wikkednesse'
The moral of the fable expresses an aspect of that general concern with the relationship of 'auctoritee' to 'experience' that she announces in the first sentence of her prologue. Alison has often been characterized as attempting to do away with authority altogether, as setting up a heterodox doctrine of marriage based on female supremacy to replace the traditional medieval view, sanctioned by the church fathers and by common law, that wives should be humble, obedient, and submissive to their husbands in all things. But the Wife's understanding of the uses of "auctoritee" is more complex than this analysis allows.
Clearly, Chaucer does want us to think about the Wife of Bath as an intriguing character. Her forcefulness is unusual, as are her non-ideal feminine qualities of lechery and unscrupulousness; that is why Chaucer writes about her. The Wife of Bath is, however, a psychological study of a powerful, sexual woman and a speculation on what such a woman's life might be like. It is clearly one that intrigued Chaucer, as can be seen from the length of the prologue, which dwarfs all the others by comparison. Chaucer's aim in writing this prologue appears to have been the presentation of a character so strong; she approached a force of nature, rather than an attack on women and their conduct in married life.
Rachel Seager. The Wife Of Bath's Prologue. March 2002
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