By Women, About Women, For Women

Victoria Draper

The Wife of Bath’s Tale is best suited for the Wife of Bath because it aligns with the themes in her prologue that argue yielding to matriarchal power develops a fair marriage.

In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, The Wife takes on all vices decided by men and accepts them with pride. The Wife enjoys recounting all her past husbands and the power she had over them: “I have the power during al my lif / Upon his propre body, and nat he” (lines 158-159). She laughs at all the trouble she gave the men in her life; tricking them into giving her their wealth and land: “I governed hem so wel after my lawe” (line 219). The Wife was aware of the power of her sexual appeal and made use of it: “In wifhode wol I use myn instrument / As freely as my Makere hat it sent” (lines 149-150).

The Wife refers to her body as an instrument and allows herself to be subject to male desire and viewed as an object, for her own gain: “And lat us wives hote barly breed— / And yet with barly breed, Mark telle can, / Oure Lord Jesu refesshed many a man” (lines 144-146). The Wife takes advantage of the masculine hegemony of her time by embracing the image they hold of women. And by her being so aware of her status in this binary gender hierarchy, she maintains power over men who fall victim to her by their own sexual desire.

The Wife makes it very clear in her prologue that women are deceitful creatures:

“For half so boldely can ther no man / Swere and lie as a woman can” (lines 227-228). And again: “Deceite, weeping, spinning God have yive / To wommen kindely whil they may live” (lines 401-402). She makes a point to inform her readers when she was being deceitful, multiple times throughout her recount of past husbands, but, because of her previous claim to possessing such deceitful nature, there allows the possibility of her deceiving her audience, even in times where she is “admitting” to a lie. This claim to being deceitful takes away her trustworthiness as a narrator and turns her entire prologue into question, as her audience can never be certain when she is being honest. One can take a broad stance in assuming she uses deceit in her narrative to both make her audience uneasy, and to demonstrate the depth of a woman’s character by use of hypocrisy and inconsistencies that humanizes her and counters her image of being a sexual object.

The Wife primarily establishes this power though the act of storytelling. She uses her power of speech to dominate the space with her voice, and she makes sure to take up as much time as she desires, despite the several interruptions she gets from men—trying to rush her or simply tale away her audience. “Now wol I die: I may no lenger speke” (line 810); though this line was said to Jakob after he strikes her down, this line also speaks to the livelihood of women without voice; a woman is as good as dead if she cannot speak, and the little power she has in both her private and public life, she must dominate to maintain.

The Wife is aware of this power of voice in contrast with the written mode of sharing “truth” through scripture. Men of Chaucer’s time undoubtedly dominated the production and consumption of literature, which stood as a way for men to establish dominance over women by use of holy text—the most absolute and divine reference to power. In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, she says:

14 April 2020

Who paintede the leoun, tel me who?

By God, if wommen hadden writen stories,

As clerkes han within hir oratories,

They wolde han writen of men more wikkednesse

Than al the merk of Adam may redresse. (lines 692-696)

The citing of religious text in The Wife’s Prologue (as well as the religious properties of her Tale) prove she recognizes this higher power and uses it—like men and clerks do—to justify her statements, whether the verses be properly used.

This text, written and respected by men as a mode to establish power, is taken and used freely by The Wife to establish power in women. She uses it to excuse the socially unacceptable behavior that is being free and loose with sexual relations, by asking men: where in the Bible does God command virginity? (lines 61-62).

Women have a power to be feared, an almost divine power that is demonstrated by the queen in her tale, through sparing the knight’s life—forcing him to go on a pilgrimage that leads to his enlightenment.

The Wife uses scripture, like men, to prove her point and make herself credible to her predominantly male audience and uses storytelling to maintain her power, which is why, her tale being a fairy tale—a conventional form of storytelling among common and rich folk, alike—is perfectly appropriate to the themes of the Prologue involving the verbal exchange of wisdom.

The Shipman’s Tale has a harsh, realistic take regarding exchange and a woman’s sexuality as currency: “This faire wif accorded with daun John / That for thise hundred frankes he sholde al night / Have hire in his armes bolt upright” (lines 314-316).

It’s about women owning their sexuality and profiting off of it—using it as their economy—not dissimilar to objectifying women and their sexuality in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, but the Wife of Bath takes it a step further in obtaining dominance through her sexuality. So, The Shipman’s Tale, narrating the exchange of sex for money to buy pretty clothes, doesn’t match the themes present in the Prologue, regarding women’s sovereignty over their husbands (men).

There again follows themes of deceit, when the merchant’s wife in The Shipman’s Tale claims her husband is the worste (line 161), when later, there are only descriptions of him being an honest worker, who doesn’t waste time on gambling away his money when he is away on business (lines 300-304), and who refers kindly to his “deere wif” (line 241).

The merchant’s wife uses sexual favors as a form of currency that, in the end, erases all dept, both from her husband and the monk. This tale illustrates sexual favors from women as the highest form of currency.

And while this tale follows the themes of woman having power in marriage by use of sex, the merchant’s wife was rewarded for being unfaithful and that does not align with themes in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue of the sanctity in marriage.

The Wife of Bath idealizes being true and faithful in marriage, evident in both the Prologue and Tale, where they both end in a devoted union:

The Prologue ends with The Wife of Bath stating she was “trewe and so was he to me” (line 825). And in the Tale, the old woman gets “masitrye,” (line 1236) over the knight before becoming both fair and trewe, “And she obeyed him in everything / That mighte do him plesance or liking” (lines 1255-1256).

“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” fits the Prologue better than the Shipman’s Tale because it shows how the passage of verbal knowledge (female power) is higher than scripture (male power). And though she still does reference biblical values to help her argument, it was the verbal exchange between women that enlightened the knight.

The journey the knight goes on to find what women most desiren (line 905), teaches him that this answer varies among women, but all agree on the desire of sovereinetee “over hir housbonde as hir love, / And for to been in maistrye him above” (lines 1038-1040).

The Wife of Bath also tells a tale of transaction—like The Shipman’s Tale—and although there are cruel elements to her story like rape (line 888), its ends like a fairy tale with both parties finding happiness in marriage.

The Wife uses rape to demonstrate the struggles of a woman’s power in a man’s society, and offers a step towards balancing that scale with discussions of power that benefit both parties greatly, even challenging it with the confrontation of rape by the King wanting to resort to violence, but yielding to the Queen’s decision to teach (lines 893-898).

The goal of The Wife of Bath’s Tale is not only to allow women equal power over men, but to demonstrate the strengths they hold higher than men. When the women spare the knight’s life for alterative justice in educating and enlightening the ignorant, it ends with another woman’s happy marriage, mirroring equal exchange.

Works Cited

Fairfield University

Dr. Robert Epstein

EN 0311: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The Norton Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, edited by David Lawton, W. W. Norton & Company, 2020, p. 183-210.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Shipman’s Tale.” The Norton Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, edited by David Lawton, W. W. Norton & Company, 2020, p. 358-368.