The Wife of Bath: Chaucers Discourse on the Interrelationships of the Genders - Research Paper Example

The Wife of Bath: Chaucer’s Dis on the Interrelationships of the Genders The medieval concepts of love and of the relationships of men and women were first defined by a male dominated concept of society, but then defined by the idea that in love, men were fools and women held the keys to unlocking the truth in relationships. While on the one had marriage was often a construct of economics, based upon the value of a woman in regard to the land, wealth, and power of her family, on the other hand a strong sense of romantic love had emerged through a literary discourse on the topic. In Chaucer’s, The Wife of Bath, a discussion about marriage, relationships and love is made in such a way to represent and uphold the misogynist point of view of the time, while developing a discussion about the nature of the heterosexual relationship through the concept of power. The Wife of Bath can be viewed as a folk tale, the common element of the loathly lady personified by the narrator of this story. She is not a woman of desire, nor does she represent the ideals of romance, but her tale is told through her point of view on the relationship that evolves between a man and a woman. Some of the themes that are suggested in the story, according to Biedler and Biebel, are the importance of pleasure, the healing power of love, and the need for a code of conduct for husbands (21). The code of conduct for husbands is in line with the way in which those from the medieval period, at least in terms of literary context, defined the righteousness of their lives. Behaviors were defined by codes and lists of laws that were built upon social convention, aside from the legal system of laws. Who a person was could be seen through the code of behavior that was adopted. In looking at the prologue to The Wife of Bath, one sees a woman who is defining her life through reflections on her past. She sees through the lens of experience, rather than through the illusions that are created within a marriage during the time it is experienced. Having gone through a series of marriages, she has learned to navigate the tenets of social tradition in order to find herself in control of her own personage. Pearsall states that “Her prologue derives from the medieval convention of the allegorical ‘confession’ and employs the materials of traditional clerical anti-feminism” (116). The discourse develops into a discussion about the fears that men have of women, that they live in a state of prejudice, spite and envy that is the underlying cause for their imposed dominance. The narrator, Allysin, discusses her marriages, first through her virginity, then through the sequential gains of her power and independence (Pearsall 116). Through discussing the way in which she has worked her husbands by exploiting their weaknesses and in seducing them from their holdings and placing them within her power, she is describing the very thing that men fear most; that women will take what they have earned through some ‘magical’ power they have to make a man want to hand everything over to them. While this is very modern way of addressing the fears of men, the way in which it is addressed through Chaucer exemplifies the fears as valid, thus upholding the beliefs of the medieval period. As stated, the narrator is an example of the loathly woman, thus her rise to power and independence is characterized as the affect of unethical and dishonest behavior. While she does nothing but make the best of her circumstances so that her marriages turn to advantage in the end, she is portrayed as someone who has not lived true to love, but you has turned her relationships into a matter of commerce. Through the tenets of chivalry and the codes of love, she is a betrayer and is revealed as such through the recitation of her ways with her husbands. She is not seen as an honorable nor intelligent woman, but one who is manipulative and conniving. Her wealth and independence was not won through honest handling of her life, but through a design that was dishonorable. The tale that Allysin tells begins with the disempowerment of a women through the thoughtless way in which rape is defined. The crime of rape is treated with a cavalier approach, its importance not being centered on the victim, but on the way in which the knight is constructed within the framework of the crime. According to Menuge, legal and clerical notations on the crime of rape from the time period often read more like soft pornography, almost designed to titillate the reader rather to report a crime of violence. In England the crime of rape was rarely punished, and if it was it was lightly punished, rather than seriously considered as separate from sex and love (127). In the Chaucer tale of The Wife of Bath, the ‘punishment’ for having committed rape was to be given love and sex. Therefore, at this time it can be seen that the division between rape and sex, and more importantly the separation between rape and an association of love is not part of the discourse. The knight who is accused of rape is interceded for, not by men, but by women who represent moral integrity. He is sent on his quest to discover what women want by women, rather than by men. In essence, Chaucer has written that the knight deserved to hear ‘Oh no no no, that won’t due at all. You just don’t understand women if you think that you can be loved by taking a women’s virginity by force’. This discounts the loss of the woman’s virginity, the pain and terror that she might have experienced, and the overall value that the woman who was raped has within the social context. She is immaterial to the events that Chaucer is trying to explain, and her loss is not of value, either to society or to the story. This dismissal of her importance is clearly part of the misogynistic discourse of the period. The consequence to having had her virginity taken from her by force is of no matter to the events that structure the rest of the story. The case of rape was made a felony post twelfth century, thus was considered more important in the context of law by the time that Chaucer wrote his tales in the fourteenth century. However, it clearly reveals that while legal law stated one concept of rap, the social construct had quite another. While the law did allowed for rape to be considered seriously and it was one of two offenses that could be brought to the court by women (the other being concerning the taking of the life of her husband), the way in which it is treated through literary examples shows that it is not greatly considered as a significant crime (Menuge 128). In discounting the importance of the crime, Chaucer effectually diminishes its importance as a point of suffering for women. As the law barely recognized any degree of validity of the position of women where law is concerned, this story also effectively disempowers the female victim of her position within the context of the crime. In creating the narrator, Allysin, as a ‘loathly woman’, and in disempowering the victim of the rape for the importance of her position, Chaucer has specifically created a framework for how he sees women in the context of society. He has diminished the character of a woman of means by characterizing her as manipulative and unethical and diminished the victim of a violent assault as immaterial to the rest of the story. The story is about the journey of the knight and how he learns about how special it is to give a woman the choice over her own life. However, the message is also clear that it is a gift he has the power to give, rather than a right she holds within her own social position within society. In the medieval structure of society, freedoms of choice, thought, or from violence was a gift bestowed through the whim or beliefs of a man, not through the right of individuated position that women held within society. The gender story that is created through The Wife of Bath is one that is defined, not by what occurs, but in how it is framed by the way in which the characters are developed and through the way in which power is distributed. In the end, the old hag tells the knight that he has a choice. She does not tell him that there is a choice or that she has a choice, only that he has a choice, thus he is in control of the power within the situation. He is shown that in giving her the power to choose over her own life that he will be rewarded, but that is not the same as saying that the old woman has the power. He is rewarded for choosing wisely. In that vein, there is a message about the relationships between men and women. The message that is conveyed is that in trying to control a woman, a man is going to lose an aspect that he desires that she might have given him if he had not asserted his authority over her autonomy. The message, however, is not one of feminism but of the wise use of domination. The tenets of male dominated society are in no way challenged in the tale of The Wife of Bath. The viewpoint that women were the property and objects of marriage, rather than subjects within their own lives, is not taken to task within this story. The moral of the story is that women will behave when they are held within a soft cage rather than a hard one. However, a cage is still a cage. It must be noted that the king does sentence the knight to death initially after the complaint of the woman is brought before him. This does suggest that the crime of rape does hold some importance and the legal definitions are recognized by Chaucer through the admittance of the penalty that should have been levied against the knight. However, in having women come to the defense of the knight, this argument is put to rest and it is then continued through as an understanding of the nature of how rape is viewed. As well, in presenting the story through a woman who has been emancipated from the control of men, one might see some aspects of the idea that it is a tale of allowing women to have their freedom. However, because of the characterization of the narrator, the concepts of feminism cannot be seen for having true validity. The nature of the way in which rape is written about in the tale suggests that it was all a misunderstanding by the knight in how to treat women through a courtly concept of romance and love. Sauer and Bloom suggest that through more than one tale written by Chaucer the idea of rape is associated with love and sex. ‘Reluctance’ is not seen the same as saying no and the state of being hesitant to have sex means that it is within the prerogative of the male characters to decide whether or not to take the negative response of a woman seriously. This lack of control over her own body is typical of how rape has been framed throughout history. Consider the many ways in which a woman is blamed for her own rape, through her clothing choices, her vocation choices, or her decision to walk down a street at a certain time of day. While the physical capacity to deny man entry to her body is not in question, it has more often than not been framed as her moral wavering that has opened her up to being subjected to the crime. In this way, Chaucer continues the misogynist discourse on the nature of the relationships of men and women. In choosing to represent the narrator of this story as a ’loathly wife’, he frames his feelings about the social position of the female gender through characterizing a woman that no one would respect, despite her power. Her ’unethical’ acquisition of power automatically alleviates her from any position as one to look up to as an example of how to be a good woman. When Chaucer then discounts the penalty of rape through the intercession of the queen and other women, he dismisses the importance of the claims that the victim has made and the significance of impact that it has upon her life. In the end, it is not the freedom of the knight that is in question, but the freedom that he allows his new wife. In giving her the freedom to look and behave as she chooses, she is set free to give to him what he desires most, however, this is not the same as her right to these freedoms. The Wife of Bath upholds the misogyny of its time. Works Cited. Beidler, Peter G., and Elizabeth M. Biebel. 1998. Chaucer's Wife of Bath's prologue and tale: an annotated bibliography, 1900 to 1995. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Menuge, Noel James. 2003. Medieval women and the law. Woodbridge: Boydell Press Pearsall, Derek Albert. 1999. Chaucer to Spenser: an anthology. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers. Sauer, Michelle M., and Harold Bloom. 2010. Bloom's how to write about Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism. Read More