Sovereignty and Misogyny in Chaucers: The Wife of Baths Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer - Term Paper Example

15 February Sovereignty and Misogyny in Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” The Wife is not corrupt, she simply exercisessovereignty. Several scholars have explored various feminist readings of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales. On the one hand, a feminist interpretation views Alison and her female protagonist (hag/wyf) as a criticism of misogynistic beliefs (Rigby 134). On the other hand, another feminist reading is that by yielding to the knight in the end, the Wife embodies and reinforces female stereotypes (Rigby 134). This paper discusses and criticizes four scholarly articles that studied this tale. Their views are similar, where they take a feminist perspective of the work by considering sexuality in textuality. They agree that the Wife and her characters are open to diverse, sometimes opposing analyses, but they differ in what the tale is all about from Chaucer’s perspective. Rigby argues that “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a joke on misogyny without necessarily questioning it because the Wife is the opposite of a moral woman; Carter believes too that Chaucer does not want to attack misogyny, and instead, he wants to play with gender reconfigurations; Thomas argues that sovereignty means self-control of one’s desires, something that the knight never learned, while Tigges interprets that the knight becomes aware, at the very least, that sovereignty means not treating women as sexual objects. Stephen Rigby supports the view that “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is not a defense of women against misogyny, but a satire on a woman’s depraved values and behaviors. Rigby uses Christine de Pizan’s views on women to evaluate the morality of the Wife. In the book, City of Ladies, de Pizan maintains that God made men and women to “serve Him in different ways” (29 qtd. in Rigby 138). She thinks that women are equal to men, but they must remain faithful to the traditional roles that they do best. Rigby states that “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is far from teaching feminist ideals, because it merely toys with the idea of women’s sovereignty. A sovereign woman, however, is not as immoral as the Wife, whom Rigby describes as shallow and sexually wanton. Rigby explains that Chaucer’s account of the Wife’s fine clothing, predominantly her extreme head-dresses that were composed of delicately-textured covers and her wimple with a broad hat is meant to portray her as overdressed, where such way of dressing up was connected to dissolute women (Rigby 141). He depicts the tradition of priests, who rebuke fine clothing and ostentatious headgears because they are devil’s traps (141). Rigby asserts that because the Wife is immoral, she cannot be the possible role model for women. He explains that Chaucer is being satirical of women’s so-called sovereignty that is used to justify immorality: “Chaucer’s comedy does not detract from his underlying moral message but rather, in satirically deriding human folly and vice and drawing attention to the gap between the ideal and the supposed state of the world…is itself the vehicle for expressing that morality” (154). Chaucer tells her story because she is the voice of debauched women. Rigby argues that Chaucer may not originally intend to oppose misogyny, but instead, he uses complex textuality to expose and criticize an immoral woman’s sovereign sexuality. Susan Carter believes that though Chaucer, being Catholic, may not be the voice of the Wife of Bath, he still opens the minds of his readers to the relationship between the textuality of his work and sexuality. She explores the motif of the loathly ladies in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” where she argues that the shape-shifting ability of the old woman serves as the process of contesting uneven heterosexual relations in medieval times. Carter illustrates binary gender themes, where the division between man and woman emerges in the distinction between court/forest. The wilderness and the dancing fairies represent female identity that opposes masculine domination: “Evidence that the loathly lady is humbly related to a set of goddesses…is available in the settings in which she is found, in the hunting motif ubiquitous to her tales and in her quasidivine control” (Carter 330). The old lady becomes the hunter, which strips the knight of his hunting role. In addition, the textuality of the tale signifies the rise of woman’s sovereignty. Carter argues that Chaucer restrains the motif, when the Knight rides from the river. Instead of hunting, he does something else. The detachment from the usual meaning of hunting results to the contest between male and female desires. When the knight rapes a young maiden, he becomes a sexual predator. By putting him in a quest for a woman’s greatest desire, Chaucer turns him into a “sexual victim” too (Carter 330). Carter explains that another example of the subjectivity and agency of the Wife is in her critical perception of knights and maidens. In most cases, maidens are “rescued or raped,” but the old woman changes the woman’s position into someone who does the oppression and re-education (Carter 330). She becomes the hunter and source of moral authority. One more argument of Carter is that similar to Rigby, she does not believe that Chaucer intended to say that misogyny is immoral per se, but that the reconstruction of gender roles is “possible” (340). In doing so, Chaucer invites his readers to mull over the possibilities of reconfiguring conventional gender norms and relations. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is not a feminist advocacy, but merely a depiction of a sexuality-turned-upside-down world. Susanne Sara Thomas focuses on the learning of the knight, where she argues that sovereignty means self-control of one’s desires, something that the knight never learns because the Wife preserves it for herself. Thomas says that sovereignty means self-control, not just lording over others, like what the knight did to the maiden he raped. Thomas studies the relationships between words and their context and asserts that sovereignty is: “the ability to define, and thus control, one’s own desires” (89). The Wife says that to be a virtuous woman is to live away from sin, which puts it “in every person’s grasp and making it essentially a matter of self-government” (Thomas 89). The old woman becomes an expert in governing her desires, as well as manipulating others. Thomas explains that the hag controls the meaning of sovereignty itself, hinging it on the concept of being desirable (90). The opposite of sovereignty is allowing others to define it (Thomas 90). The old woman does this for the knight at the tale’s conclusion, where the knight allows his wife to make the decision: “Cheseth youreself which may be most plesaunce” (Chaucer 1238). For Thomas, this means that the knight “proves incapable of defining his own desires. Hence, the knight ultimately never learns the meaning of the word he seeks, nor does he acquire the power it signifies” (90). Self-government is not something that the knight learns. Moreover, Thomas contends that the knight does not understand reality because he preserves illusions about it. She says: “Certainly, his submission to the wyf is not a submission to reality because it is fairly obvious that she is an illusion” (91). The power she gives or shares with the knight is uncertain, for she does not provide a complete meaning of sovereignty. Finally, the ending is not anti-feminist because the beautiful lady conditionally yields to her husband. Thomas presents a different interpretation: “…we can posit that if the ‘bath of blisse’ is merely a momentary reaction, the bride’s obedience, and his apparent sovereignty, may be potentially short-lived also” (92). The happy ending is the ending that the Wife wants, one where she remains in control of the story and in relation, her own life too. Wim Tigges does not agree with Thomas that the knight did not learn anything from the old woman because by thinking about what women desire the most, he realizes that rape infringes on women’s sovereignty. Tigges explains that rape is such a heinous crime that the court’s women wanted the knight to not merely die because of his crime, but to be transformed because of it. Essentially, they want a “moral improvement” of the “courtly society” (Tigges 97). Thinking about this question raises his awareness that his desires are not more important than what women desire. In addition, Tigges explores that the Wife is not only teaching the knight a lesson, but also her companions and society in general. He explains that the first tales before “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” had a “masculine” voice, thereby preparing the public for the uniqueness and intents of a woman’s voice (Tigges 97). The woman’s voice becomes crisper because of the masculine stories before it. Finally, the knight may not have learned the full meaning of sovereignty, but his journey makes him think about his attitudes and behaviors toward women. Tigges asserts that the knight “learns something about women” (101)- to not rape them, but to protect and honor their wishes. This lesson may not be world-changing, but it changes one man and this is enough for the Wife. Rigby and Carter both think that Chaucer did not write “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to attack misogyny, where Rigby talks about Chaucer wanting to be funny, since the Wife is evidently immoral, while Carter argues that reconfiguring gender norms is the main purpose of Chaucer. Thomas and Tigges focus on sovereignty and its diverse definitions. Thomas defines sovereignty as self-control of desires, while for Tigges, it is about mastering one’s values. Thomas thinks that the knight did not learn what sovereignty is, but Tigges believes that at least, he learns how to treat women better. I believe that Rigby and Carter are right because we have to consider Chaucer’s background and the times. He may not be advocating feminist values at all, but merely toying with the idea of female sovereignty as any writer of his times would. I do not agree with Thomas though because the knight allowed his wife to make the decision, thereby showing that he respects her sovereignty. Tigges might be more correct because no one changes overnight. For me, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” may not have fully countered gender stereotypes for some of these critics, but I believe differently. The Wife may be immoral because she is materialistic and outwardly religious, but she possesses sovereignty. She illustrates that sovereignty is full control over her sexuality and identity. The beautiful maiden surrenders to the knight under her own terms. She dictates what their future as husband and wife would look like, when she made a firm decision about her identity. She embodies modern-day sovereignty, where women autonomously construct their personhood and destiny without regrets and feelings of inferiority. The Wife is not simply morally corrupt; she is a complex sovereign wanton woman, and what makes her more sovereign is that she simply does not care what others think of her. The more society imposes its morality on her, the more she raises her eyes and brandishes her sophisticated headgears. Society can talk to her bedeviled hat for all she cares. The Wife is the Wife, and she will never allow anyone to change her. If this is not autonomy, what is? Works Cited Carter, Susan. “Coupling The Beastly Bride and the Hunter Hunted: What Lies Behind Chaucer's ‘Wife Of Bath's Tale.’” Chaucer Review 37.4 (2003): 329-345. Project Muse. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath's Tale.” The Norton Anthology English Literature. Vol. 1. 9th ed. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2012. 282-310. Print. Rigby, Stephen Henry. “The Wife of Bath, Christine De Pizan, and the Medieval Case for Women.” Chaucer Review 35.2 (2000): 133-165. Project Muse. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. Thomas, Susanne Sara. “The Problem of Defining ‘Sovereynetee’ in the ‘Wife of Bath's Tale.’” Chaucer Review 41.1 (2006): 87-97. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. Tigges, Wim. “‘Lat the Womman Telle Hire Tale’: A Reading of ‘The Wife of Bath's Tale.’” English Studies 73.2 (1992): 97-103. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. Read More