The Wife of Bath’s Tale

Prologue

Contention: The Pardoner mocks the wife

“I was about to take a wife…There’ll be no wife for me this year”

This is in response to the Wife’s mentioning her desire for a sixth husband

Prologue continued

Shows that not all members of the group get along

Underscores Chaucer’s admiration for the Wife by the Pardoner’s opposition

The Tale

Theme: marriageTheme: “What women want”Character: Chivalry (the knight)Comments on the general

treatment women received from other men, especially their husbands

Background

Religion is set up to “fall”Friars have displaced spirits in

lines 31-56Women had been ravaged by

spirits, but the wife suggests that friars are even worse

Scathing commentary on the “morality” of the friars

Background

Chivalry is set up to “fall”59: “There was a knight who

was a lusty liver.”64: “By very force took her

maidenhead”These examples are directly

contrary to the values espoused by chivalry

Irony

The knight was to be beheaded, but Fate intervenes: the queen

The knight is saved by the queen and her court

His next task is Herculean: discover “what women most desire” in a year

What Women want

HonorJollity and

pleasureGorgeous clothesFun in bedTo be oft

widowed and remarried

Pampered and flattered

The variety of answers suggests that there is no answer

Suggests that women are impossible to please

Midas’ Wife

Line 119-120: “…vicious we may be within/ We like to be thought wise and void of sin.”

Women have an image to keep up

Pertains to men only—women know their true natures among themselves

Midas’ Wife

Vicious: though Midas “loved her best,” his wife’s vicious nature superceded her own love

Of Midas’ ears transforming: “she thought she would have died keeping this secret bottled up inside”

Wife must gossip

The Secret’s Out

The Midas story prefaces the secret to what women want

The knight finds fairies who disappear, leaving an old hag

Note that fairies are mentioned favorably

Secret

The hag gets the knight’s promise to give her whatever she asks in exchange for the difference

“And then she crooned her gospel in his ear”

Crooned suggests intimacy; gospel means truth

Secret Revealed

A woman wants the self-same sovereignty/ Over her husband as over her lover,/ And master him: he must not be above her.”

Women want equality in the relationship

The Bargain Met

The old hag takes he knight to be her husband

This is the woman in “sovereignty”

This is ironic for the knight, who ravaged a maiden at the beginning of the tale

The Bargain Met

Line 248: “He takes his ancient wife to bed”

At this point, the old woman teaches the knight “chivalry”

The Arguments

Line 276-277:OldUglyPoorLow-bred

These are the Knight’s reasons for not loving his wife

They reinforce his character as not chivalrous

Rebuttal: Low-bred

Lines 285-293The hag says that the idea of

noble birth guaranteeing “gentility”

The hag claims that deeds make a nobleman (gentleman)

Rebuttal: Poverty

355Hag mentions that God

approves of povertyThis appeals to Chaucer’s

audience, who would have been familiar with this Christian concept

Rebuttal: Poverty

Claims that poverty is not shameful—indulgence and avarice are

The poor are not missing what counts: being happy

Rebuttal: Old and Ugly

The hag claims that these two attributes ensure that she is chaste

The old hag will still satisfy the knight’s “worldly appetites”

Submission

The knight finally submitsHe has a “loyal, true, and

humble wifeAt the time of submission,

he finds his wife young and beautiful

‘The Moral to the Story’

“cut short the lives of those who won’t be governed by their wives”

Request by the Wife for all husbands

The wife displays her real world intelligence