In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, while more serious and moral in tone than its prologue, is in many ways a continuation of its prologue, the story and the way it is told being dominated by it. personality, attitudes and beliefs. The most obvious connecting link is the common theme: women’s sovereignty in marriage. In her prologue, The Wife describes how she has dedicated much of her life to living up to her unwavering resolve:
A house that I will have, that I do not want,
Which will be both my diversion and my servitude (154-5)
She uses her story to extend this idea from being a personal preference and a maxim to be followed by ‘every woman who is wys’ (524) to a universal truth. The knight in her story is tasked with finding:
What do women want most? (905)
When she gives her answer to a women’s high court, headed by the queen, there is no disagreement at all:
Women want to have sovereignty
both about his house and about his love,
And for being in maistrie he upstairs. (1038-40)
In all the court there was no wyf, ne maide,
Ne widwe, that contrary to what he said, (1043-4)
The fact that the knight’s life is in the hands of the queen and not the king is itself a sign that the tale is the product of The Wife’s imagination. King Arthur has sentenced the knight to death, according to the law of the land, and yet, in response to the pleas of the queen and other women,
. . . yaf he to the queen, all at her will,
Let’s see if she wanted to save it or spill it (897-8)
Thus even the King of England is subject to his wife.
The Wife uses her short story as a vehicle for her own points of view, often leaving the short story altogether and resuming the self-centered theme and colloquial style of her prologue. She lists all the alternative answers the gentleman received to her question, the list includes everything that, in her prologue, she has shown to require both from a marriage and from a ‘sovereign’.
Sum Seyde women loved wealth more,
Sum seyde honor, sum seyde beauty
Suma Rich Matrix, Suma Seyden Lust Abedde,
And often to be wife and wife. (925-8)
. . .
And sum seyen we love more
To be free, and to do the right thing as it weighs us down, (935-6)
Her inclusion of herself with ‘we’ and the unusual inclusion of ‘frequently to be widwe and wedde’ make it clear that this is The Wife’s own interpolation, beyond the requirements of the tale.
The Wife deviates from her tale after the first half dozen lines to air her views on another subject close to her heart, ‘limitours and othere hooly brothers’ (866). Her complaints against the church are many. The church’s solemnly repressive attitude toward sex and most other forms of enjoyment conflicts sharply with her robust hedonism. In the prologue she exclaims
Oh, oh, that all love was sin! (614)
The church was also responsible for the spread of anti-feminist literature and attitudes, and here The Wife, an arch-eminist, is in direct conflict.
Well, trust well, it’s impossible
That any employee will speak well of wives, (688-9)
If we go back to the character in the story of The Disgusting Woman from The Woman, we find some differences between her and The Woman, and some similarities. The main characteristic they have in common is the desire to dominate their husbands. There is also a marked similarity in their tactics to achieve this goal. Both make their husbands suffer and both use the persuasive techniques of argumentation. Both also turn to the authorities in support of their arguments; The Wife of the Bible, Ovid and many others, and The Filthy Lady of Dante and Seneca.
Just as, in the prologue, The Wife presents the husband’s alleged complaints against her, blaming him and shooting down his arguments one by one, so the Filthy Lady presents the gentleman’s objections.
You are so disgusting, and so old too,
And then come from such a long guy (1100-1)
He adds the lack of being poor, not even mentioned by the gentleman, and by pseudologic he presents the faults as virtues. Both women manage to win the submission of their partners for the same reason: the husbands are so frustrated and exasperated that they give in to get some peace.
The main difference in the approach of the two wives is that, while The Wife argues almost entirely on personal grounds, The Filthy Lady argues on the more objective and self-righteous grounds of living up to the claim of “Nobility”, whose true source was a much discussed topic in the middle ages. On one level, we can assume that Chaucer has introduced this theme for the edification of his audience, but it is also likely that The Wife included this serious theme to fulfill The Host’s original request in The General Prologue to,
Tales of the best phrase and most solaas (800).
In her prologue, The Wife proves to be an intelligent woman who is good at dissimulation. At her fourth husband’s funeral, for example, she plays the grieving widow, so she could certainly represent the serious tone needed for the Foul Lady’s “Noblesse” argument. Casting herself in the role of The Loathly Lady also serves The Wife’s purpose of championing the cause of women, in that subjugating a knight and proving him to be ignoble would be a greater achievement than subjugation in life. real of his first three elders, weak. , husbands, and it is achieved by a more acceptable means than her deceitful childish attack on Jankin. In this way, and in The Loathly Lady’s final transformation into a beautiful young woman, the story can be seen as a wish fulfillment by The Wife.
Thus, the story of The Wife is more than appropriate for the prologue; it is essential that we get to know the character of The Wife through her prologue before we can make full sense of the story.
Bibliography
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Prologue and Tale of the Wife of Bath. Ed. James Winny. Cambridge University Press. 1965.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. James Winny. Cambridge University Press. 1965.
