CHAUCER’s Wife of Bath, Alisoun, is perhaps his
most original and memorable creation. Her prologue
and tale form a pivotal point in the CANTERBURY
TALES, inspiring responses in The CLERK’S
TALE and The MERCHANT’S TALE, and imitation in
The PARDONER’S TALE. That the character and her
tale were well known in the circle of Chaucer’s immediate
audience is clear from the passing reference
to the Wife in Chaucer’s lyric “Envoy to
Bukton” (1396). In the Wife of Bath, Chaucer creates
an outspoken and independent woman who
embodies all of the antifeminist stereotypes of medieval
theologians even as she attempts to refute
them through her powerful rhetoric.
In the prologue, Chaucer has combined a variety
of sources, most important, St. JEROME’s argument
for virginity in Adversus Jovinianum, which
Alisoun opposes vigorously and JEAN DE MEUN’s
section of the ROMAN DE LA ROSE, particularly the
section in which La Vieille, the old woman, describes
her life and the wiles of women, which seems
to have been the model for Alisoun’s confession.
The Wife’s prologue is a spirited vindication of her
way of life—that is, of marriage and sexuality, in
the face of the misogynist commonplaces of medieval
clerics. She presents her defense somewhat in
the form of a scholastic argument that might occur
among clerics, citing experience and authority to
support her defense of her own life.
Alisoun reveals that she has had five husbands,
the first when she was only 12 years old. She also
makes it clear that she would welcome a sixth. From
authority she argues that Christ never specified how
many times a woman could marry, and that while
St. Paul preferred virginity he did not condemn
marriage. Paul also said that the husband and wife
owed one another the “marriage debt” (that is, sexual
pleasure), and Alisoun makes it clear that she is
more than willing to both pay and collect that debt.
For her argument from experience, Alisoun describes
her marriages. She claims that three of her
husbands were good and two were bad. The
“good” husbands were her first three—all old men
whom she lumps together without distinction.
They were “good” because she could easily manipulate
them, and could control and ultimately inherit
their wealth. Her fourth husband, however,
was younger and not so easily controlled, and had
a mistress as well.Alisoun claims to have made him
jealous by feigning unfaithfulness. In any case she
was already interested in a young clerk named
Jankyn before her fourth husband died, and she
mentions how during the funeral, she couldn’t
keep her eyes off Jankyn’s attractive legs as he acted
as pallbearer for husband number four.
Alisoun married Jankyn for love, and admits
that even though he beat her, she still loved him
best. She describes how he would read to her daily
from a “Book ofWicked Wives” until she could no
longer stand it and tore a page from the book. In
response Jankyn gave her a blow on the side of the
head from which she is still deaf in one ear. She
pretended to be dying until Jankyn begged her forgiveness
and gave over to her the “sovereignty” in
the marriage. After that, Alisoun claims, the marriage
was happy and the two were true and faithful
to one another.
Alisoun moves into her tale, which is a short
Arthurian romance concerning a young knight
and an old hag. Its source seems to be in the folklore
motif of the “loathly lady.” Analogues of the
tale may be found in John GOWER’s “Tale of Florent”
from his CONFESSIO AMANTIS, and in the later
15th-century romance The WEDDYNG OF SYR
GAWEN. But Chaucer shapes the tale to serve as a
kind of psychological wish-fulfillment for Alisoun.
In the tale a young Knight of Arthur’s court
rapes a maiden, and is condemned to death by the
King. The Queen intervenes and convinces the
King that the ladies of the court should judge the
Knight. She gives the Knight a reprieve and imposes
a quest on him: He must return to court in a year
and a day with an answer to the question,“What do
women most desire?” If he fails to answer the question
satisfactorily, he will die. The Knight wanders
about, finding no definitive answer until, on his
way back to court, he meets an old hag who says she
will give him the answer if he will grant her whatever
she asks. The Knight agrees, and returns to
court with the hag. He answers the Queen that
what women desire most is sovereignty in marriage.
The ladies of the court all agree that the
Knight has saved his life, and the old hag demands
her reward. In return for saving his life, she demands
that she become the young Knight’s bride.
Reluctantly the Knight marries her.When he
turns from her in disgust on their wedding night,
the hag asks him what is bothering him.He replies
that she is old and ugly, and of low birth. She takes
each of these points and refutes it by rational argument.
She then offers the Knight a choice: He can
have her old and ugly but be assured of her virtue
and faithfulness, or he can have her young and
beautiful and take his chances on her chastity. Unable
to choose between her two means of making
him miserable, the Knight leaves the choice up to
the hag.When she asks whether this means he has
granted her sovereignty, he answers in the affirmative.
In response she turns into the most beautiful
woman he has ever seen, and promises she will
be faithful as well, and the two live in marital bliss
from that moment on.
Thus the tale is, for the Wife, a wish-fulfillment
fantasy in which she not only gains mastery over a
young husband, but also regains her own youth
and beauty. The tale illustrates what Alisoun believes
is the chief point of her prologue: that a
happy marriage is one in which the woman has
“sovereignty.” But a careful reader might notice
that, in fact, both Alisoun’s prologue and tale illustrate
that a happy marriage actually occurs when
there is mutual love, respect, and kindness.
The Wife of Bath has been the subject of more
critical commentary than any other figure in the
Chaucer canon. Much attention has been paid to
the character of Alisoun—whether she is sympathetic
or monstrous, whether she is a character at
all in the modern sense. Feminist critics have
looked closely at her and at Chaucer and speculated
about whether she provides a truly female
perspective and about Chaucer’s own attitude toward
women. Others have seen her tale as beginning
a “marriage debate” that includes the tales of
the Merchant, Clerk, and FRANKLIN. Most would
agree that in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer most
clearly finds a perfect fit between tale and teller.
Bibliography
Beidler, Peter G., ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Wife of
Bath”: Complete Authoritative Text with Biographical
and Historical Contexts, Critical History and
Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives.
Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism.
Boston: Bedford-St.Martin’s, 1996.
Beidler, Peter G., and Elizabeth M. Biebel, eds.
Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale: An Annotated
Bibliography, 1900 to 1995. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1998.
Carruthers,Mary J. “The Wife of Bath and the Painting
of Lions,” PMLA 94 (1979): 209–222.
Delaney, Sheila. “Strategies of Silence in the Wife of
Bath’s Recital,” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 49–69.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics.Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
Fleming, John V. “Sacred and Secular Exegesis in the
Wyf of Bath’s Tale.” In Retelling Tales: Essays in
Honor of Russell Peck, edited by Thomas Hahn and
Alan Lupack, 73–90.Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.:
Brewer, 1997.
Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. Chaucer and the Fictions of
Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992.
Leicester, H.Marshall. “The Wife of Bath as Chaucerian
Subject.” In Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings
1,1984, edited by Paul Strohm and
Thomas J. Heffernan, 201–210. Knoxville, Tenn.:
New Chaucer Society, 1985.
Robertson,D.W., Jr.“ ‘And for My Land Thus Hastow
Mordred Me?’: Land Tenure, the Cloth Industry,
and the Wife of Bath,” Chaucer Review 14 (1980):
403–420.
Wood, Chauncey. “The Wife of Bath and ‘Speche
Daungerous.’ ” In Chaucer and Language: Essays
in Honour of Douglas Wurtele, edited by Robert
Myles and David Williams, 33–43, 191–192.Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.