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The Wife of Bath

“A good WIF was ther of biside BATHE,” (I, 445). From the very first line in her

introduction, Alison is defined as a wife, and most importantly, a “good wife”.

Everything about her is exaggerated, from the number of husbands she had, “Housbondes

at chirche dore she hadde fyve,” (I, 460), to the times she travelled to Jerusalem, “And

thries hadde she been at Jerusalem;” (I, 463), and finally to her physical appearance, “A

foot-mantel aboute hir hipes large,” (I, 472). Her greatest talents are cloth-making and

knowing the remedies of love. Varied adjectives such as “deef”, “wrooth”, “fair” face,

“worthy”, “gap-toothed”, and “large” hips define her.

All of these descriptions make Alison appear more as a real woman. She is not flawless

and most of the adjectives used lead the reader to thinking of a typical woman of the

Middle Ages. Her actions in church, “In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon / That to the

offrynge bifore hire sholde goon; / And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she, / That she

was out of alle charitee.” (I, 449-52), reflect the behavior of a boisterous woman, but

when “In felaweshipe wel koude she laughe and carpe.” (I, 472), demonstrating she is a

very likable company.

In the lines from the General Prologue about Alison, two facts attract attention the most:

her five husbands and her habit of going on pilgrimages. Alison afforded the luxury of

going alone on
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pilgrimages due to her properties and possessions from her commercially valuable skills,

thus providing her the means to travel, be it domestically or internationally. Yet the main

reason Alison had five husbands is simply because she enjoyed the company of men.

Chaucer goes further and makes allusions about her other possible company, “Withouten

oother compaignye in youthe,” (I, 461). In any case, this is merely a sketch of the

magnanimous dimensions of her character portrait which are to follow.

The Wife’s Prologue is divided into “three parts: a discussion of marriage and virginity, a

description of the Wife’s methods of dealing with her first three husbands, and narratives

of her relationship to her fourth and fifth” (Phillips, 2000, p. 91). In this regard, the Wife

is given subjectivity. Her guide are experiences rather than authority, “EXPERIENCE,

tough noon auctoritee / Were in this world, is right ynogh for me / To speke of wo that is

mariage;” (III, 1-3), and she comments on her past, her actions and feelings, her beliefs

and the rules of society which she belongs to and everyone adheres. Essentially, Alison

does two things in her Prologue: she gives an account of her love life and defends it. Her

defense is mainly made by criticizing the medieval patriarchal society she lives in,

provided her experiences as a wife, her traveling, her profession as a cloth-maker and her

experiences with trading and different social classes.

While it has been debated throughout the years and although not of specific concern for

this work, it is interesting to see how many authors and readers have wondered, says

Rigby (2000), if the text is feminist or anti-feminist, for the Wife’s tale may seem a
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defense of women’s rights and, at the same time, she embodies most of the medieval

women’s qualities of which medieval anti-feminist authors would brand as inappropriate

and manipulative. Moreover, this author makes a distinction between scholars who “have

been divided into two irreconcilable camps” (2000, p. 133). The first group, Rigby goes

on, is that of “those critics who argue that Chaucer intends us to take seriously the Wife’s

defense of women against their clerical detractors.” The second one consists of those

critics who think that there is no such thing as the feminist interpretation of Chaucer for

us to agree or disagree with when feminist critics themselves have seen the Wife as an

example both of Chaucer’s sympathy with women and of his complicity with the

misogynist culture of his day (p. 134).

This second group of critics claim that Chaucer meant the Wife’s story to be judged by

his readers taking into account the expected attitudes women in medieval culture should

obey to. Nevertheless, this dispute leads to the issue of who is really speaking
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in the Wife’s Prologue, being quite clear for Rigby “that Alison is the mouthpiece of

Chaucer’s own views” (2000, p. 134).

The first part of her Prologue, speaks about marriage and virginity. In her arguments for

why a woman has as many rights as a man in using her sexual organs as she pleases

during marriage, she appeals to holy scriptures and attacks the Church’s teachings on

virginity. She admits that “Virginitee is greet perfeccion,” (III, 105) but implying the

opposite, “In swich estaat as God hath cleped us / I wol persevere; I am nat precius. / In

wyfhod I wol use myn instrument / As frely as my Makere hath it sent.” (III, 147-50).

Here, we find contradictions and different stereotypes in one character. In line III 203,

she states that she has no interest in sex, whereas in lines III 408-17, Alison admits that

she did consent to it with her first three husbands only to get money from them.

Furthermore, in III 485 she guarantees of having been faithful to her husbands but in III

622-26 she exults that she always follows her indiscriminate “appetit”.

What follows is her narration of her five husbands. “The thre were goode men, and riche,

and olde;” (III, 197), says Alison about her first three husbands over whom she

established domination, especially by demanding from them more activity in bed than

they could manage. The fourth was quite the opposite; a hard-drinking adulterer. She was

still young when she met him and witty enough to return the jealousy by making him

believe she had other lovers.

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Eventually all of them die. Her fifth husband, Jankyn, who she met at her fourth

husband’s funeral, was twenty and Alison forty when they married. He was a violent man

who often beat her but made amends through his skills in bed. With their union, the battle

of sexes emerges into the open (Stone, 1989). Jankyn was a studied man who possessed

mainly anti-feminist literature extracted from the classics and the Church Fathers. As he

read aloud from his collection, Alison could not stand to such offensive portrayals of

women and “Al sodeynly thre leves have I plyght / Out of his book, right as he radde, and

eke / I with my fest so took hym on the cheke / Than in oure fyr he fil backward adoun.”

(III, 790-93). In view of this, he attacked and hit her, consequently making her partly

deaf. Laying on the ground, she pretended to be dead and such was Jankyn’s remorse that

he promised never to hit her again and burned his book. In this way, Alison gains power

over her fifth husband and they both swear to be truthful to one another.

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue shows us Alison’s animosity against masculine tyranny, her

delight in prevailing over it, her unease of inevitable old age, and her bliss in reminiscing

the joys of happy love. All these aspects make her Prologue “a memorable poetry of

human, and especially feminine, life” (Stone, 1989, p. 88).

The Wife of Bath is, without question, a privileged medieval woman with enough

resources to travel the world and, at the same time, maintaining five husbands. But her

extravagancy does not end here. She is a wife and a woman who does not fear men and

the society’s thinking, especially since she is clever enough to justify her actions by
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quoting and counterattacking with valid arguments the sayings found in the Bible and

made by the Church and its representatives. However, it is most unlikely that there could

ever have existed a woman, and especially a wife, such as her in her society who would

express her revolutionary thoughts so freely. The Wife of Bath is a character which

presents many embellishments and though she does depict wives in Middle Ages, most

certainly she does not represent all of them as most wives were to be obedient to their

husbands and not the other way around.

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The Wife of Bath is probably Chaucer’s most intricate and complex character. Admitting

she represents a medieval wife, she is a wife who partly disobeys the rules of medieval

society. Her voice expresses all the disadvantages women are presented with by men’s

hands. It is at first hard to believe that Chaucer, a medieval man, created such a complex

character with such outrageous opinions for the era. By doing this he not only

demonstrates his ability of creating diverse characters even if not compatible with his

own believes, but also his exceptional and even feminist thinking uncommon for a

medieval man. Nevertheless, while it is relatively impossible to know his truly intentions,

it is highly safe to affirm that Chaucer expressed his own thoughts about women’s

position in society through Alison with the guarantee of having an excuse in the eyes of

his contemporaries if ever asked if those were truly his beliefs; he could always blame a

fictional character for such daring statements.

Many other female characters appear as part of the tales, such as a hen and a lady falcon.

Fables are just fables, but always based on human behavior. If considered as human

beings, the hen and lady falcon’s nature do correspond to that of medieval women. One is

a wife, despite that fact that she is less submissive to her husband, and the other is a

woman abandoned by her lover and full of despair. Such women are trapped and

restrained, in one way or another, by male authorities, thus credible.

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The Canterbury Tales are a nourishment of one’s curiosity. When the Tales were

introduced to me, my interest in fourteen century literature heightened and awakened a

hunger of exploring and appreciating its content. While every facet of this book is of an

extreme relevance, the issue of women captivated my undivided attention. Knowing

through literature how such women lived and witnessing their battle with subjugation,

gave me a unique perspective, admiration and a desire of acting against this still existing

domination of women who suffer alike indignities all over the world.

Chaucer, a man belonging to the patriarchal medieval society, had a familiarity with the

women’s role in his society which allowed him to experiment with the feminine voice.

Researchers approached different angles of his works since its publishing, and still, in the

twenty-first century, scholars find new interpretations about his writings and characters

when scrutinized. I believe The Canterbury Tales deserve further detailed examination to

reveal other singular understandings of the Middle Ages.

(From Women in The Canterbury Tales: the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, the Second Nun,
a hen and a lady falcon, by Alina Mihaela Paduraru)

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