More comments on the Wife of Bath's Prologue

The initial part of the Wife of Bath's prologue, which contains general remarks on marriage and
sexuality, is primarily a parody of St. Jerome's writings which were being used as celibacy/anti-
marriage propaganda by the church at the time. In a rather sexist and sarcastic manner, Jerome's
writings satirize Christian theologians who tolerate marriage: For instance, he says that if you allow
sin once (i.e., second marriage), there is no difference in allowing it for seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth
times. Also, he “humorously” asserts that women are burden to men in marriage, so it is best that
men stay away from them (he had multiple mistresses). These are problematic claims even for the
medieval church, and it contains deliberate misappropriation of the Bible, but it was the best the
church had at the time for their anti-marriage campaign.

For instance, the Samaritan woman from John's gospel that the Wife of Bath relates to is a direct
example of Jerome's deliberate misinterpretation: In the story, the Samaritan woman got married
five times before, and lives with a man to whom she is not married. When Jesus sees her, he barely
states this fact (that she has had five husbands but the sixth man is not his husband), and she
recognizes him as a prophet. The short conversation is not judgmental, it is not even about marriage
per se. However, Jerome misinterprets this passage as if she was married but her marriage was
rejected/shamed by Jesus because God forbids multiple marriages. This is the absurdity that the
Wife of Bath refers when she recounts this story and claims that she does not know what Jesus may
have meant by saying “you had five husbands and the sixth man is not your husband”; because
Jerome's misreading obfuscates the clear meaning of the passage – later on, she says she has heard
of Jerome but knows very little of him, even though she is in a subtle contention with his
misogynistic doctrine.

While doing so, notice how the she calls Jerome's bluff: She does admit, for instance, that there is
no difference between getting married twice or ten times, the only difference is that she does not
consider it “sin,” and she brings forth her own “misappropriation of the Bible” to prove her point.
Also, she confesses that she “deliberately” becomes a burden to her husbands – but from her
perspective, it is men's fault, and has nothing to do with intrinsic tendencies of women, of which
men are completely ignorant.

However, we should also note that she has no “authority” to turn a Saint's doctrine upside down as
she does. This is why I cannot sufficiently emphasize the importance of her opening statement,
which I must quote in its original language: “Experience, though noon auctoritee / Were in this
world, were right y-nough to me / To speke...” That is to say, “if there was no authority in this
world, experience would be enough for me to speak.” “Speke” of what? “...of wo that is in
mariage.”

The Wife of Bath, however, knows that there is authority. It is men's authority, both in religion and
marriage. It is authority which delineates the scope of your experience. It is authority, in other
words, which tells you what you can experience, or what you can speak of. Authority defines
nobility, gender, public and private language/behavior, and so on. Your experience is strictly
determined by pre-established patriarchal authority. The Wife of Bath's entire prologue and tale is
about challenging this dichotomy between authority and experience. According to her, it should be
the other way around: Experience should determine who has the authority. Experience needs to be
free of the restrictions of gender and religion. Authority in a society should be derived from
experience; the person who has the most experience in a field should be the authority, authority
should not be based on your sex and nobility status, which you cannot change and do not determine
who you really are as a person.

The Wife of Bath, in short, decides to speak as if there is “no authority in this world”, for a moment,
and acts as if she is entitled to authority because she has the experience. She will assume the role of
saints and religious authorities on the issues she decides to speak of, because she has more
experience than them.

She applies this logic equally to textual authority as well (i.e., the Bible); interpretation is
necessarily determined by subjective experience. How you interpret this very text, for instance, will
largely depend on your experience. This is also the case with scholars of hermeneutics, exegetes of
religious scriptures, even though they claim to be objective. Such claim to objective truth, of course,
derives its power from these scholars' authority. According to The Wife of Bath this is charlatanry;
she is as subjective as scholars, her claims are as valid as Jerome's. What she lacks is authority
because she is neither a man nor a nun (whom she considers to have acquired the masculine
gender). The primacy of experience above authority is the most important dichotomy of her section
– and we should note that women's writing has always been rooted in female experience, such is the
case of feminist theory which cannot be separated from practice (unlike most other theories). This is
not to declare Chaucer a feminist; The Wife of Bath hits the nail on the head with her discovery of
“experience” which is the most important thing for a woman and the most powerful weapon to
subvert patriarchal authority.

The issue at hand is therefore serious, but keep in mind that this is a work of comedy. She is more
humorous than serious, and the opening section of her prologue is pretty much like Cardi B's WAP
song. It really is, take a look into the original version; she spits rhymes, speaks exclusively about
the female body and celebrates sexual pleasure. This is still troublesome for many male academics,
the things they tend to compare her with would surprise you: Donald B. Sands, for instance, in his
1978 essay “The Non-Comic, Non-Tragic Wife: Chaucer's Dame Alys as Sociopath,” compares her
to the serial killer Charles Manson. Among all characters in entire history of literature, the Wife has
probably received the most unprofessional attacks, believe me when I say my WAP comparison is
much more professional than most.

Remember, in this case, what I said about the doctrine of the church in relation to truth and
storytelling: You have to convey the truth as you are telling the story. For this reason you can only
rewrite stories of past, but not an “original” fiction about here-and-now. This is why Chaucer claims
to be “objective” in all he narrates, and all other men in Canterbury Tales also claim to be truthful
about themselves as well as the tales they tell. Only the Wife of Bath admits that she is speaking
within the boundaries of fantasy: “Authority” still exists and her assumption that it has momentarily
disappeared is a “fantasy”. She keeps reminding her listeners of this fact:

If that I speke after my fantasye,

As taketh not a-grief of that I seye;
For myn entente nis but for to pleye. (190-192)

She is also the only one who is aware that the tale she narrates is a fantasy (“old tales” used to be
thought to contain objective truth, and all other pilgrims stick to this logic except for her) – I will
get back to this as I write on her tale itself.

Also keep in mind that as a lady who follows Jerome's logic as she parodies him, the Wife of Bath
is still a woman: She could not repudiate marriage while having multiple extramarital affairs, and
manage to thrive in society like Jerome could. She was sold into marriage at the age of 12, and soon
accepted that marriage is an economic institution: She hates marriage for this very reason. This
paradox informs the tension of her prologue: She is a businesswoman, and primarily because she
has also used marriage as an economic institution that she has turned into a pragmatic, successful
businesswoman. Chaucer's choice of her industry is significant here (even though this is pre-
industrial era): She does not stay at home sewing/weaving fabrics as a housewife, she runs a textile
company – that is an early example of using an “everyday” character as an equivalent of
mythological figures. In Greek mythology, the Fates are associated with textiles (they control the
fabric of life). It also shows the rise of middle class women in the 14th century; it is not a fantasy,
businesswomen did exist.

Secondly, it is also important to mention that it was the medieval church that defined marriage in
strictly economic terms. The concept of “marital debt” was constructed in this era; there are long
discussions concerning “the lack” of women (phallus) that their husbands need to fill by “lending”
it to them – a rhetoric strictly founded on the act of penetration; you would perhaps agree with me
that only men would assign this much of significance to penetration when it comes to sexual
intimacy between partners. Here lies the subversion of the Wife here: She does not “enjoy” sex
when it is a matter of “debt,” she does not feel that her husbands can pay their “marital debt” by
their phallus because she finds no joy in it, whereas she can pay her “debt” via her body because
that is all her husbands care about. Therefore, she turns the concept of “debt” into what it really
should be: A simple monetary exchange. The only commodity with which her husbands can pay
their “debt” is money, not their phallus. Only then she “feyned appetyt” (feigns appetite, fakes
orgasm) (line 417). Men in this exchange want to see a projection of themselves in women, and she
gives them in return of money – and women are also supposed to protect their husband's “honor” as
a result of this exchange, she also does that. Even though her confessions reveal that she was not
always a faithful wife, she still emerged in the system as a respectable lady and her husbands' names
were not blemished. Once again, she calls the church's bluff in defining marriage as an economic
institution and takes it to its logical end. As a medieval woman, this is how she can thrive.

However, as I said, she hates this institution, which is a “woe”. Paradoxically, she manages to use
this oppressive institution to obtain her economic independence, and it is only after she does so she
becomes “free”. That is, not until her final two marriages. Her section famously answers the
question “what do women desire” as “sovereignty,” but it is not merely the urge to dominate the
household, or the desire to feel in control as much as men do in power-relations. Sovereignty is
strictly related to economic independence in her section, and she is not sovereign until she is
financially independent. Only then “love” becomes possible for her: For the first time in her life,
she freely gives her wealth to a man (Jankyn), not as marital debt but as an act of generosity. She is
clearly in search of love not reduced to economic terms, but experience has also taught her that it is
merely a fantasy. Still, she does not listen to her gut feeling, she makes a mistake by getting married
to Jankyn, and she literally becomes deaf as a result.

Jankyn represents the reversal of her experience-authority dialectic back to its original order, which
is catastrophic. He is a poor young college drop-out, quite like Nicholas in “The Miller's Tale,”
though he stays not with a family but with the Wife's “gossip,” who is also called Alison. Normally,
if experience was the determining factor of authority, as the Wife of Bath suggests it should be,
Jankyn would be her apprentice in marriage, and he would learn from her experiences. However, he
acts exactly like a medieval husband, assuming authority just because he is a man. Even more
ironically, he tries to learn about women from books written by men, despite the fact that he has an
experienced wife, a real woman he should try to get to know. Of course, he cannot run the house, or
her company, because he is inexperienced. And as soon as the Wife of Bath loses economic
independence again, her love perishes. She starts to see him as an annoying nuisance. Her fantasy is
over, and it is not until she forces him to hand the economic authority back to her that she feels
happy with him again. Notice that it is not enough that Jankyn cease his ridiculous sexist attitude;
he must also give up his attempt at governing the house and business. Tragically, this leaves
permanent damage in her body and puts the marriage back into economic terms.
The Wife of Bath's Tale
In many aspects, the tale she narrates reflects Alison's life and psychology, and in many aspects it
differs from her – this is primarily because the Wife of Bath seems to be the only character in
Canterbury Tales who is aware of the difference between reality and fantasy, who knows the
function of and need for fantasy as a coping mechanism and social criticism (this already goes
against the church's doctrine, and makes her a more radical voice than other men who claim to be
objective). Right at the start of her tale, there are certain “fantastic” elements, and it goes beyond
her open declaration that “fayerye, the elf-queen, with hir Ioly companye” belong to an age of
fantasy because of “the grete charitee and prayeres of limitours and othere holy freres” who
endanger all that is feminine (858-881). The “fantasy” elements of the story goes against the “facts”
of Arthurian legends:

1. The knight in the story has no name. We are familiar with women characters without a
name, but this is unheard of in Arthurian legends.
2. The knight is a rapist. This may be a well-known but not spoken fact about real knights, but
this is unthinkable in chivalric literature.
3. In the story, the girl's accusation is taken seriously, even though the knight rapes her when
they were “allone,” no witness was around (885), and he is not the type of knight who would
confess such an act. Accepting a woman's statement as “evidence” over a respected/noble
man is quite a “fantasy,” not only by medieval standards but even in today's de facto legal
enforcements in most countries.
4. Queen Guinevere has the final say in serious decisions such as death penalty. Again, this is a
fantasy in the context of Arthurian legends.
5. Considering an alternative to corporal punishment (death, torture, etc.) is also a fantasy in
this context: Notice the “quests” of knights in chivalric romance are not supposed to be so
closely affiliated with punishment.

It is a mistake to think that the Queen “pardons” the knight. The implication of the quest is that the
knight is likely to die at the end, it is initially supposed to be a mere delay of the punishment; he is
going to die, but listen to all women in the world before he dies. This is because the question is
complicated: For the Wife of Bath, men are simple creatures and their desires can be categorized
easily. However, there is no easy answer to “what women desire.” Such is the trick of the entire
section of the Wife of Bath and her allusions to “gossip”: Public discourse belong to men, while
women's discourse is supposed to be kept private in a trivialized and gossip form. The Wife of Bath
claims to reveal “the truth” about women and turn “womanly gossip” into public discourse.
However, she only reveals the problems of men and the truth about them rather than telling much
about women. At the end, we only get the claim that all women desire sovereignty, but that is only a
step: Only after women acquire their sovereignty will they have the room to figure out what they
individually desire – until then, the question is unanswerable, at least from the perspective of
patriarchy.

You should also keep in mind that the Queen constructs this riddle (i.e., what do women desire?) as
an antithesis to the problem of rape. It may seem irrelevant at first, but the logic of Alison here is
quite remarkable: It is not sexual desire that causes rape per se; it is men's ignorance of women,
their refusal to listen to them, their obsession of power, in short, it is misogyny and patriarchy that
render rape possible. It is a symptom of a social disease that lies deeper than the act of rape itself:
Killing the symptom will not cure the disease, it can only relieve the pain temporarily. The cure lies
in breaking the patriarchal man firstly by changing his mentality and then stripping him off his
power. That is to say, if men learn to stop being obsessed with power, they will not have any reason
to feel insecure and hide their insecurities by sexual assaults and other violent offenses. This is only
possible through purifying oneself of misogynistic ideas and conceding the authority to women.
Paradoxically, such a symbolic emasculation of men and the simultaneous empowerment of women
is also the key to men's ultimate liberation and happiness, according to the Wife of Bath.

The character that parallels the Wife of Bath in this story is obviously the loathly lady, the old wise
woman (as I mentioned in previous weeks, tales usually include a character that their narrators
associate with themselves). The loathly lady is a well-known type in medieval literature, but the
Wife of Bath's version includes several revisions to the type as well: First of all, she does not offer
us a detailed description of the old lady's looks. Think of Morgan le Fay's depiction in Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight: From her face to her hands, from her neck to her buttocks there was a long
description of her “ugliness” from male gaze. The Wife of Bath only says that this lady was old and
ugly, then completely ignores her looks (according to some scholars, this apparent neglect reflects
her own anxiety about getting old and ugly but I see it as a deliberate challenge to the stereotype).
Secondly, in typical loathly lady stories, the lady is cursed, and she is in need of a knight to save her
from the curse. In Alison's version, the lady is not cursed at all; she uses self-inflicted magic – it can
be even claimed that the knight's initial perspective is cursed and he needs the lady to lift the
curtain.

The most significant section of the tale is the bed scene of the lady and the knight, and here the lady
(as well as her solution) differs from the Wife of Bath's character, to the extent that the lady's
statements are more idealistic than Alison. In the first part of her sermon (delivered against the
knight's objection to the consummation of their marriage on the basis of nobility), the lady functions
as Alison's mouthpiece: It is not hard to imagine that Alison herself would find the notion of
nobility based on blood heritage meaningless and absurd – the contention that the familial lineage
should not matter at all is quite a radical idea for English society, not only in the 14th century but
even now. However, the lady in that passage mimics the language of what we call “deportment
books,” books which were published to educate young women (specifically upper class and literate
girls) on how to behave in marriage. The message of those books is always the same: It does not
matter who you are, what your background is; as long as you stay virtuous (in marriage, as a
woman), you are considered “noble.” The lady repeats the same argument to the knight, only the
genders are reversed: The wise, old teacher is a woman, the young marriage prospect is a man.

She makes this point more prominent when she talks about age (as the knight does not want her
because she is old): She reminds him that men are only respected in society due to their old age, it
becomes a means of prestige. Women, however, are strictly related to fertility and lose what little
power their sexuality may confer them. They have no place in society for who they are as people,
unlike men. This is a fact which her sermon challenges, but the Wife of Bath cannot change this
with magical sleight of hand like the old lady. The same applies to the loathly lady's remarks on
wealth and poverty: She celebrates poverty and the merit in remaining virtuous in the face of
poverty. Likewise, she questions financial inheritance and the futility of inherited wealth as a sign
of social status, which needs to be based on ethical values rather than wealth. As a woman with a
lower class background who has accumulated wealth and considers herself a virtuous (and even
noble) woman, the Wife of Bath would agree with this point of view; however, she is realistic
enough to realize that class difference is indeed a thing in marriages. Far from resolving the
conflict, it in fact creates one, as her experience shows. This is why the idealistic tone of the lady's
sermon and the ending of the tale serve as irony which the Wife of Bath's male listeners do not quite
understand. It would be also a mistake to interpret the ending as “rewarding” to the knight, in the
sense that he seemingly goes unpunished and gets what he wants at the end. Quite the contrary, the
Wife of Bath considers the ending more rewarding to the loathly lady than anyone else involved.
The knight literally listens to all women in the world, he still does not understand them, he is not
even entirely transformed when he finds out that the answer he had been supposed to find was
“sovereignty”; his consent is literally crushed under the lady's tyranny, he does experience what it
feels like to be forced into something he does not want. Furthermore, he learns that in the lady's
“regime” he is not noble at all (that nobility is about virtues and not heritage; as a rapist, he can
never be a noble), he learns that beauty is a social construct, he learns what it really means to
consent to women's sovereignty. Upon closer look, the ending is more ambiguous than it looks: the
lady asks the knight if he would rather have an old and loyal, or a young and cheating wife. The
expected answer is the former, but when the knight finally proves that he understands what it means
to let women take the charge and answers that it is more proper that she decides, she chooses the
latter option. It is not that the knight got the best of two worlds (that he has a young and loyal wife).
The mystery still remains: The knight cannot ever know if she really is loyal. Just like the answer
“sovereignty” is not a real answer as to what women really desire, the ending of the story offers the
knight an illusive form of happiness – the bride's “submission” merely means that she had high sex
drive and let the knight satisfy his own fantasies in bed; it does not imply meekness as a wife at all.
She does acquire the ultimate key to unconstrained experience which secures her authority over
him.

One could even argue that at the end it is not that magic transforms the lady but that it had been the
knight's blurred/blind vision that clouded his perception all along, and the curtain of his sexist bias
is lifted at the end. Even if we take the ending literally as magic, the case is not less striking: It is
the lady's her own making that lifts the curtain and spells the magic after the knight's “surrender,” it
is not the knight's “kiss” or touch that lifts the “curse” off her. This is quite symbolic: The Wife of
Bath believes that if women are sovereign, that is, if they are free of social constraints such as
beauty (defined by patriarchal ideologies), age and wealth, then they will feel beautiful, sexually
liberated and wealthy in the sense of material and spiritual satisfaction. The precondition of this is
to erase the mentality which produces rape, violence, and corporeal punishment. According to the
Wife of Bath, this is also a great opportunity for men to be transformed and feel happy beyond the
chains of masculinity which also delineate the behavior of men.

However, the Wife of Bath knows that this is a fantasy; it needs magic as a gesture of wish-
fulfillment, because such transformation is hard enough even on a symbolic and singular level, let
alone a social-scale change. This is why she ends her tale with a curse. All other tales, as expected,
end with an evocation to God, a prayer. She subverts this connection, by wishing that men who
insists on “governing” their wives should have short lives, and men who insist on remaining
financial masters of the family should soon receive God's earthly punishment:

And thus they live, un-to hir lyves ende,

In parfit Ioye; and Iesu Crist us sende
Housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe a-bedde,
And grace toverbyde hem that we wedde.
And eek I preye Iesu shorte hir lyves
That wol nat be governed by hir wyves;
And olde and angry nigardes of dispence,
God sende hem sone verray pestilence.

These statements would not be funny to a man of the medieval period (it is not funny to many
modern male readers, either); God's “pestilence” in the form of plague was still a source of fear and
a real danger, life was already shorter than today. Her male audience certainly does not laugh, and
the friar is quick to suggest we let authorities (“lette auctoritees,” line 1276) and universities and
scholars (to scoles of clergye, 1277) speak of these matters. Still, the Wife of Bath certainly has fun
telling her own life story and her own tale, in a style that I earlier described as Juvenalean satire, a
harsh criticism which will not be found funny by the group that is being criticized. In this context,
while we read Canterbury Tales, we should ask ourselves if the text invites us to laugh at certain
characters or laugh with them. “The Wife's” factual and fictional stories certainly have tragic
elements in the struggles she has had in real life and the questions she raises in her fantasy, and she
is certainly one of the characters we are invited to laugh with despite all odds, in this momentary
space she creates in the realm which is otherwise dominated by men. Alison in “The Miller's Tale”
is also a character we are invited to laugh with, the reader can definitely imagine her giggle at the
follies of men around her, just as the Miller joins her laughter as a narrator who ridicules all the men
involved (The Reeve then stands up and ridicules the Miller, who becomes the subject of laughter,
but in the Reeve's tale there is nothing that disproves the moral of the Miller's story which
celebrates Alison's sexual power). Likewise, in “The Friar's Tale,” we are supposed to laugh with
the Friar at the Summoner, but the Summoner's response neutralizes the equation, as it allows us to
laugh with the Summoner at the Friar; as a result, they both end up being ridiculed. Sometimes, as
in the case of the Pardoner who confesses that he is a terrible fraud, characters expose themselves as
a result of intoxication, and they turn themselves into a spectacle to laugh at. These strategies allow
Chaucer to have characters criticize one another and sometimes themselves, while he maintains the
tone of “objectivity as much as he can”; in doing so, he is absolutely aware of the fact that the
church's doctrine on objectivity and truth is absurd, and if he is to depict himself as a realistic
everyman of the medieval era, he must also give a picture of himself who subjectively has the
biases and beliefs of his era. His tone, therefore, is always tricky and ambiguous; and he becomes a
subject of ridicule himself during the journey. Such is not the case for any “Alisons.” We need not
even care about what beliefs historical Chaucer had in this matter, unless it sheds light upon our
understanding of the text, as in the case of his philosophical interest in Boethius and its influence on
“The Knight's Tale.” What we should focus on is the fact that most religious and masculine voices
are encountered with harsh criticism in the text, whereas feminine voices determine the final limit
of language, outside of masculine verbal competition (which is the basis of the work); men either
have to ignore it, or are rendered speechless by it.

However, how “feminine” can a voice be if it is constructed by a man? Is there anything essential
about femininity in relation to female body? Is there anything essential about gendered bodies? If
the Wife of Bath is correct, do we not need female experience to even imagine a voice as feminine?
Is Chaucer working on an impossible ground then, in his attempt at representing the unrepresentable
from the position of patriarchal discourse? Would your experience/interpretation of this text change
if you did not know about the writer's gender? I will leave these questions to you, some answers
may be already obvious to you, some will never be, even after years of reading on gender. However,
these is one question I would like you to ponder upon, and please submit your answer to the
following question as your next assignment: How do the bed scenes of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight and “The Wife of Bath's Tale” compare? The Wife of Bath's tale, as I mentioned above,
subverts Arthurian legends on many levels, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is Arthurian
romance. You can comment on all aspects of the Wife of Bath's tale in relation to Arthurian legends
but I want you to specifically focus on bed scenes, which are quite comparable. How do gender
roles play out in these stories? What are the similarities or differences? Also compare the structures
of each scene, and the messages of the stories. Can the bed scene of the Wife of Bath's tale be
considered as antithesis to Sir Gawain's bed scenes?

The comparison is not a stretch; Chaucer's story would recall Sir Gawain in medieval minds too. In
the 15th century, they even adapted the Wife of Bath's taleinto a poem called “The Wedding of Sir
Gawain and Dame Ragnelle” (The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell). Of course, the
adapted version omits all the subversive elements of the Wife of Bath's version: Sir Gawain is not a
rapist, the old hag is cursed as expected, her appearance is minutely described, she needs a knight to
lift her curse by marrying her, and Sir Gawain does not need an ego-shattering sermon to stick to his
promise, etc. This is despite the fact that this re-writing of the Wife of Bath's tale is a very early
form of “comedy of manners,” a genre which did not officially exist until the 17th century. Comedy
of manners satirizes the theatrical nature of social conventions, the difficulty with which the
members of a specific social group have to follow what is expected of them. It strips bare the fact
that the aristocratic order is not intrinsic to the members of each class, and that it is not “natural”
(what a shocker). That is to say, the writer of “The Wedding of Sir Gawain” seems to be much more
open-minded than the writer of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but still, changes to the Wife of
Bath's version were obviously made by a male hand/mind in the latter version. In comparing the bed
scenes of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and “The Wife of Bath's Tale,” also let me know what
you would change in the Wife of Bath's version. As a final note, drop a few remarks on young
Alison from “The Miller's Tale.” Thank you.