Dinaz Wadia
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” from The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), the narrator Alisoun’s unique portrayal of literature archetypes expresses and challenges social expectations of power and morality. The Wife of Bath’s character has received much critical interpretation and has been considered a voice for feminism by many audiences, including in analyses by Susan Carter and Stewart Justman. These interpretations often focus on the Wife’s subversion of gender roles and dynamics within her tale, particularly those expressed through the hag character (Carter 329). Furthermore, these interpretations focus on Alisoun’s desire to maintain sovereignty over men, essentially challenging the overbearing patriarchy present within the story, as seen in the tale’s inclusion of matriarchal power (Justman 345). However, Alisoun’s use of gender dynamics instead serves to impart an even more expansive criticism of society, not only applicable to one gender. She demonstrates that power is transcendent, always changing and questionably valid. Alisoun’s narrative is an extension of her perspective on the attributes of gentillesse and sovereignty introduced in her tale’s prologue.[1] In her tale, she expresses these opinions through the choice of setting, representation of legislation and court, and characterization of the Knight. The use of paradigms in the tale displays Alisoun’s cynicism toward nobility and inherent power, additionally focusing on how birthright does not determine virtue.
The prologue to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is lengthy, and it reveals Alisoun’s nature and directly informs the themes within the tale. In her introduction, Alisoun describes her five marriages. Alisoun’s first marriage at age twelve introduces her as a character shaped by her unions, as they encompass the majority of her life experience (Carruthers 216). She is even identified as such by her nickname, “Wife of Bath.” Alisoun’s knowledge about marriage also demonstrates her experience with the medieval legal system: “Though court appearances are never explicitly mentioned, Alisoun’s business ventures and numerous dowers identify her with legal activities and evoke the prospect that she has witnessed the pleading procedure” (Houser). Due to Alisoun’s experiences within the legal setting, she can speak with authority and garners attention with her ability to debate with efficacy, an attribute observable within the structure of her tale, as well as in her criticism of clerical authority. The prologue is much longer than her tale, but the tale continues to express these opinions regarding gentillesse and sovereignty and establishes her stance on social power based on her experiences with patriarchal authority. The tale may be seen as the solidification of her critiques of virtue and sovereignty as influenced by the nature of her relationships to men, which the prologue illustrates as volatile and inconsistent.
It is important to briefly consider the nature of Alisoun’s various marriages, as her tale manifests her experiences and the opinions gained from them. These five unions are described as difficult and cruel at times, often including torture caused by her hands:
But sith I hadde hem hoolly in myn hond,
And sith they hadde me yeven all hir lond,
What sholde I taken keep hem for to plese,
But it were for my profit and myn ese? (ll. 211-14)
As the prologue continues, she focuses on her most recent and volatile marriage to Janekyn:
He nolde suffre nothing of my list.
By God, he smoot me ones on the list
For that I rente out of his book a leef,
That of the strook myn ere wex al deef? (ll. 633-36)
The upper hand that Alisoun struggles to obtain (and retain) is illustrated by her relationships, most notably that with Janekyn. One may gain from the prologue that the inherent nature of the union involves some levels of power struggle between husband and wife, either from a legal standpoint or that of combating lifestyles and relationship preferences. Yet, her viewpoints regarding sovereignty, learned from the nature of her relationships to men, are manipulative and inconsistent. Alisoun’s behavior in her own marriages serves to depict the instability of power within the institution of marriage while simultaneously upsetting the social norms of Chaucer’s time.
Alisoun seemingly makes intentional choices regarding the structure of her tale that further her observations on the nature of sovereignty. She does this primarily through the choice of the tale’s setting, England during early medieval and mythological times: “In th’olde dayes of the King Arthour, / Of which that Britons speken greet honour…” (ll. 857-58). Alisoun is aware of King Arthur’s notability within the culture and assumes her audience’s knowledge of this in their subsequent interpretation of the tale. King Arthur is often associated with a time of nobility and chivalry, with knights among the highest social rankings. The primary character of the play is a knight, a title that tends to be associated with positive internal qualities and high social status.
Consistent with Alisoun’s actions, the Knight does not meet the expectations of nobility that her audience might have expected, further supporting her viewpoint that virtue is not inherent of title. The Knight is instead introduced to the audience as a rapist, invalidating any perception of goodness: “In ‘The Wife of Bath ‘s Tale’ their counterpart is, in stark contrast, a rapist disgracing the order of knighthood; this doubtless represents a reversal of character from source and prototype” (Puhvel 291). As Martin Puhvel notes, Alisoun establishes this attribution of “honour” only to illustrate violence against women, thereby subverting the archetype that she hopes is familiar to her audience. To further solidify the corrupt and sinful characterization of the Knight, Alisoun includes the description of his victim’s virginity, signifying a purity that has been violated by force. (This purity has been established in the Wife’s prologue through the biblical significance of virginity, as Alisoun relates the opinions of St. Paul: “This al and som: he heeld virginitee / Moore parfit than wedding in freletee” [1l .91-92]).[2] The Knight exercises his power over his victim in a way that invalidates this part of her identity and trivializes its significance in religious context. The rape establishes the forceful nature of sovereignty and maintains the idea that sovereignty is something that can be both taken or given away.
When the Knight is introduced, it is assumed that he holds sovereignty due to his title, particularly as a member of King Arthur’s “hous” (l. 883) However, he quickly loses this power after the rape and, significantly, remains nameless throughout, which leaves him lacking in individual identity and notability. The Wife also reminds the audience of her control over the narrative in this characterization; her description lacks acknowledgment of a social expectation, as she pegs him “a lusty bacheler” (1. 883). The Knight displays an absence of internal virtue, and there is no attempt to humanize him: “He remains nameless throughout the tale, but his particular brand of ‘lustiness’ is quickly demonstrated; returning from the wholesome knightly pastime of hawking, he commits the distinctly unknightly and unwholesome act of rape of a country maid he chances to meet” (Puhvel 291). This dehumanizing characterization of the Knight is purposeful and necessary in expressing Alisoun’s desired social critiques. His title is invalidated by his sinful actions, devaluing the prestige associated with being a “Knight” and thereby making the title just as secondary as his name. The Knight’s character represents Alisoun’s challenge of accepted presumptions that equate power and social status with virtue and honor.
Alisoun’s tale comments on virtue as applicable to social justice and morality, illustrated in her depiction of the Knight’s punishment. After Alisoun establishes the Knight’s reprehensible character, she revokes his otherwise assumed power through the punishment that he is served. During the time that the Wife’s tale is set, it would be unlikely for a knight to appear in court because of rape charges or allegations: “In Arthurian romance the violation of a country girl by a knight, while a serious breach of the code of chivalry, hardly constitutes a capital offense; indeed, sometimes knights get away with it scot-free” (Puhvel 292). Despite the social perspectives of the punishments (or lack thereof) that a rapist might receive during this specific time, the tale establishes Alisoun’s intolerance of sexual violence. The Knight uses his power in a brutal fashion, establishing that power and gentillesse are not indicative of each other and that it is dangerous to assume that they are. Also implausibly for Arthurian times, he faces death as a punishment for rape: “That dampned was this knight for to be deed / By cours of lawe, and sholde han lost his heed” (l. 891-92). Alisoun, consistent in her narrative thus far, disregards expectations and carries the tale forward through the Knight’s punishment.
The court’s punishment strips the Knight of the established sovereignty he abuses when he commits the crime of rape. Though the Knight is not killed, his punishment is a mission through which he must learn to yield his sovereignty and understand the mandatory respect due to all women: “I grante thee lyf, if thou canst tellen me / What thing is it that wommen most desyren” (ll. 904-05). The declaration of his punishment also establishes a matriarchal court that renders King Arthur’s authority irrelevant in the tale; the power the Knight initially held over the woman is metaphorically reclaimed by the collective sovereignty of the court: “Til he his lyf him graunted in the place, / And yaf him to the quene al at hir wille” (ll. 896-97) Though the brutality of rape seems to require a similar brutality in its punishment, the court’s decision to save the Knight displays the compatibility of gentillesse and sovereignty. Importantly, the court does not yield its power while acting with mercy; Alisoun demonstrates that two concepts can be effectively compatible in making judgments. In the punishment Alisoun creates for the Knight, she shows that virtues are not inherent of title or rank. Instead, she depicts her belief of virtue’s learnable nature, that there exists the ability to develop an understanding of gentillesse and sovereignty. Even a rapist knight is not beyond the cultivation of honorable morality.
Aside from the Knight, Alisoun’s tale makes use of another archetype to promote her worldview—the hag—who is connected to several characters, specifically the Irish Sovranty Hag (Carter 330 ff.). The hag’s role in the tale follows the same basic movements that are observed in other representations of this character. The hag represents freedom from the structures of social expectations, signified by the wilderness in which she exists, a lack of recognition of gender expectations, and semi-divine abilities. When hags are depicted in literature (and lore), they often exist to impart some moral truth upon a king or knight in exchange for sexual engagement, and the Wife’s tale follows these general guidelines in her own depiction of the hag (Carter 329). The hag is a perfect vehicle to impart the Wife’s message, as she has access to power and gentleness, and she disregards traditional gender dynamics, much like Alisoun. However, the hag’s representation in the tale deviates from the archetype, as the hag engages with marriage as a form of payment leading to a more extended form of control rather than temporary sexual control. The Wife manipulates the depiction of the hag archetype to focus on the idea of control as significant to her narrative: “The combination of godlike control over a mortal man and prolonged enforced intimacy reformats the significance of the stock characterization of the Irish Sovranty Hag” (Sylvester 253). As noted by Ruth Sylvester, the hag is given greater sovereignty, certainly over the Knight, which allows Alisoun to further subvert gender and sexual dynamics first established through his rape.
The hag additionally serves as a mouthpiece for Alisoun’s views of society and virtue, allowing these critiques to be more impactful and meaningful in a storytelling setting. The customization of archetypes to fit the demands of Alisoun’s intended message demonstrates her overarching ability to maintain control over narrative. Alisoun establishes her own moral ideology through the hag, which is observed in lengthy speeches she imparts upon the Knight about sovereignty and virtue, directly connecting to her prologue. The hag’s speech regarding gentillesse is fueled by Alisoun’s own perspectives on virtue: “Yet may they nat biquethe, for no thing, / To noon of us hir vertuous living / That made hem gentil men y-called be” (ll. 1121-23). The hag voices Alisoun’s own opinions on the futility of assigning virtue based on an individual’s birthright. The speech may seem to be ironic to the audience, as the wife does not appear to be concerned with gentillesse and virtue: “By God, in erthe I was his purgatorie, […] For God it woot, he sat ful ofte and song […] In many wyse how sore I him twiste” (ll. 489; 90; 94).
However, the prologue’s inclusion of the cruelty that Alisoun enacted upon her husbands does not at all invalidate the message she hopes to convey. The Wife is depicted to be many things, including manipulative, immoral, and sometimes greedy, but nonetheless she is aware of her own shortcomings: “The Wife freely admits her frailty and moral ugliness, joins in applauding those more perfect than herself, and greedily exploits the concessions of the [Church] Fathers [regarding remarriage]” (Justman 348). Alisoun’s ability to admit to her own imperfections gives the hag’s speech its impact, as it seems to stem from honest self-criticism and observations about the nature of virtue in a societal context. The tale’s subversion of the virtue and power dynamic, hag over knight, makes this speech more poignant. The hag imparting moral righteousness to the Knight furthers indicates that social status has no relationship to virtue.
Within the hag’s lecture to the Knight, she establishes that gentillesse is not determined by wealth, social status, or family: “Thy gentillesse cometh fro God allone. / Thanne comth oure verray gentillesse of grace: / It was nothing biquethe us with oure place” (ll. 1162-64). The inclusion of this speech clarifies the choice of the Knight’s punishment, as it serves as a moral teaching that the hag establishes as the only means by which virtue is to be attained. The Knight is born into a title of honor but displays he has none by his act of rape. His understanding of mastery is the first step in transformation, as he must forfeit his illusion of sovereignty due to his gender and social status.
As the tale draws to a close, the Knight is presented with a decision, whether he prefers the hag as a wife to be fair and unfaithful or ugly and faithful. This decision challenges the authenticity of the Knight’s transformation (gained through his yearlong punishment) and serves as a test of Alisoun’s belief that virtue is learnable. The Knight submits his mastery over the hags’ appearance into her hands, and she thereafter choses to be faithful and fair to the Knight. Some critics believe the hag loses some of her mastery over the Knight in allowing him to choose her final form—even if he allowed her to decide in the end (Eckert 378). Instead, the hag’s decision to be faithful and fair is another expression of the idea Alisoun hopes to convey: power can stem from many different internal and external attributes, and it cannot be determined simply by social class or gender. Additionally, Alisoun places the Knight in a relationship where he will remain submissive, and the idea of sexuality as a form of control recurs, though differently than the rape in the beginning: “All this is, of course, part of the process of ‘taming’ this somewhat brutish young man […] bringing him full circle from enforcer of one woman to domestic underling of another” (Puhvel 294). Although the hag now is fair and faithful, she still retains a sense of divinity and power over the Knight due to her ability to shift shapes and because he is indebted to her for saving his life.
The hag retains her sovereignty in this new form of beauty and faithfulness, indicating both can be used as a means of mastery. As Louise O. Fradenburg notes, “Social realities persuade us that they are real, that they are all there is, by distinguishing themselves from lost, absent pleasures, from a fantastic past” (217). This concept of power’s transient nature is expressed both in the tale and prologue. Just as Alisoun struggled to maintain sovereignty in her marriages, the Knight struggles to retain his. This emphasis on the volatility of power and its validity displays that no one is exempt from its effects, neither knight nor seamstress. As such, the Wife does not invest in the idea of power stability. Her representation of the various ways one attains power also shows that it can be taken away just as easily, bringing the reader to question what makes any power valid.
Alisoun’s incorporation of archetypes within her narrative serves to break the reader’s expectations of the archetypes’ internal virtues in order to comment on the legitimacy of power. Though the tale may be interpreted as an establishment of Alisoun’s desire to hold sovereignty over her husbands, it is instead an illustration of her idea that power does not recognize gender, social status, or class. Within the hag’s mastery over the Knight, there is disregard for traditional gender roles and social roles, and one can understand that Alisoun views power as a transient concept, independent of birthright.
Works Cited
Carruthers, Mary. “The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions.” PMLA, vol. 94, no. 2, 1979, pp. 209–222. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/461886.
Carter, Susan. “Coupling the Beastly Bride and the Hunter Hunted: What Lies behind Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale.’” The Chaucer Review, vol. 37, no. 4, 2003, pp. 329–345. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25096219.
Eckert, Ken. “Chaucer’s Boece and Rhetorical Process in the Wife of Bath’s Bedside Questio.”
Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, vol. 33, no. 4, 2015, pp. 377–392. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26378003.
Fradenburg, Louise O. “‘Fulfild of Fairye’: The Social Meaning of Fantasy in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath, edited by Peter G Beidler, Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996, pp. 205–220.
Houser, Richard McCormick. “Alisoun Takes Exception: Medieval Legal Pleading and the Wife of Bath.” The Chaucer Review, vol. 48, no. 1, 2013, pp. 66–90. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/chaucerrev.48.1.0066.
Justman, Stewart. “Trade as Pudendum: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.” The Chaucer Review, vol. 28, no. 4, 1994, pp. 344–352. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25095858.
Kolve, V. A., and Glending Olson, editors. The Canterbury Tales: Seventeen Tales and the General Prologue: by Geoffrey Chaucer. Norton Critical Edition, 3rd ed., Norton, 2018.
Puhvel, Martin. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale: Mirror of Her Mind.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen,vol. 100, no. 3, 1999, pp. 291–300. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43346205.
Sylvester, Ruth. “Shifting Traditions; Chaucer’s Narrative Accomplishment in the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’ Considered in the Context of the Shift from Oral Tradition to Literate Print Tradition.” vol. 71, no. 3, 2014, pp. 248-257. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24761906.
[1] The Oxford English Dictionary, “gentilesse.” “The fact or condition of being of gentle birth or rank. Also: courtesy, graciousness, or refinement, esp. as considered to be qualities associated with people of gentle birth or rank; an instance of this,” 1. a.
[2] Oxford English Dictionary, “frailty.” “Moral weakness; instability of mind; liability to err or yield to temptation,” 2. a.