Within the book domination and marriage are closely linked as well as the interrelated themes of marriage and sexuality. There was a hierarchy, which placed virgins at the top, then widows who did not remarry, and then married people at the bottom. It was felt that God must love virgins most and that married people came a very poor third in his affections, allowing the church to promote the importance of purity and virginity, “virginitee is greet perfeccion.
The Wife of Bath spends the first section of her prologue defending the married state and the other two thirds describing it. The Wife of Bath took advantage of how the medieval church was willing to permit sex within marriage, and manipulated what the church was trying to convey into her own understanding, authorizing her to be able to have sex with many men as long as she married them beforehand. The Wife of Bath opens with a direct statement about her views on marriage, which she sees as full of “woe”.
She insists that her view is well grounded in her experience of five marriages, rather than on any traditional written authority. The number of times that she might be legitimately married becomes the focus of her attack on authority as she questions the conclusions that might be drawn from examples taken from both the New Testament (the Wedding at Cana, the Samaritan Woman at the Well, the epistles of St Paul) and the Old Testament (King Solomon, Lamech, Abraham and Jacob) and manipulates the morals of the parables with her own interpretation which obviously backs up her claims .
She takes up St Paul’s counsel on virginity seeing a welcome opportunity for exercising “oure owene jugement” (our own judgment); she uses a device of logic, “the reductio ad absurdum” to demonstrate that, if followed to its logical conclusion, the demand for universal virginity leads to an absurdity a if the prized virtue of virginity was demanded of everyone, there would ultimately be no virginity to prize.
She views marriage as a transaction and sees herself as the person who will gain the most as she gets the wealth, and belongings of the “rich and old” men she married, who will strategically die short after their marriage, widowing her with good money. She is able to exploits them so that she can behave as she wishes, gaining her with full control over the man and the marriage.
The Wife of Bath also forces her husbands to work extra hard in the bedroom, exhorting them to satisfy her, as well as straining them so their lives will be short lived. She is quite horrible to them, causing and creating great desperation to try and please her, which then in turn keeps them interested. She behaves this way due to her misandrious and independent personality providing her with all the dominance. She is a “wise woman” in the sense that she doesn’t have to make an effort as she has them in the palm of her hand.
She’s an exceptional woman in all senses, being capable to defy the gender expectations, which in turn makes her a very intriguing character due to how she also cannot be tied down, as she is a free spirit. By treating the husbands how they would generally treat the wives, she is establishing power over them. The Wife of Bath is a modern woman, she doesn’t allow to have her life controlled by men, she has the power of her own life; 700 to 800 years ago it was remarkable that she even had these points and had the independence to assert this amount of dominance.
Chaucer is going completely counter the stereotypical ideals men would have of women, she is a challenging, difficult woman who speaks boldly and likes to speak her mind, however she literally never gets to the point and doesn’t stop speaking, so almost immediately Chaucer gives in to the stereotypes and just amplifying them as well as suppressing them, in this confusing way at portraying how even though she is like all the other women in aspects, she is also very rare due to her controlling, sovereign demeanor.
Husbands have a lack of trust in their wives as they think that when they leave their wives can go out being promiscuous and unfaithful, even though that’s what most likely women like the Wife of Bath would be doing, most loyal wives would never commit such acts of infidelity. Men are hypocritical in the way that they preach and treat their wives, and she realizes this and so calls out the hypocrisy of men; they look at the neighbors wife, and whisper to the maid, however whenever the wife has a male friend, it is disastrous for the husband.
Drunken mouse” by bitterly belittling him, she’s challenging the behavior of husbands and torments them for their double standards; they want women in specific ways but are not prepared to deal with the consequences of that. Women are encapsulated due to the fears of the husbands who believe if their wife is attractive they will be ensiled by them, this strips the wives of all their freedom and liberty. She knows the background and has had first hand “experience” of the “woe” and difficulties of marriage, “to speke of wo that is in mariage”, so therefore in hers and the people’s eyes she is wise on the thematics of love and passion.
She was married at the age of twelve, “sith I twelve yeer was of age”, married life is all she knows and understands therefore making her an expert in the marriage field. She continuously critises the bible as it illustrates how Jesus only ever attended one wedding in the “Cane of Galilee”, so therefore his followers should only be married once, “that sith that Crist ne wente nevere but onis to wedding”, and this was the typical attitude towards marriage at the time, which the Wife of Bath (being the proto-feminist that she is) rebels against this ideology, ignoring the norms of her society and continued marrying as she pleased.
’Thou hast yhad five housboundes’, quod he, ‘and that ilke man that now hath thee is noght thyn housbaonde’”, according to the church, religiously her marriages are not legitimate, however what the church is specifically complaining about is that her fifth husband is illegitimate because they claim it to be, which she then questions to as why they have an increased prejudice towards her fifth husband and not the past ones.
This leads onto her rightful statement that men impose their expectations of marriage and use the bible as proof of their oppression, and women do not have a say in this; “men may devine and glosen”, men enforce restrictions on women, they decide everything. “God bad us for to wexe and multiple”, she is taking God’s message literally, selecting only what she wants to understand (linking back to how she’s “somdel deef”).
I kan nat seyn”, shows her ignorance, she critises Jesus whilst thinking very highly of herself, and if she doesn’t agree with what Jesus preaches, she does not believe in his guidance and therefore takes her own course of action. No one has actually defined the number of times you can remarry, “upon this nombre diffinicioun”, the church is controlling the people and the rules they must follow to appease the high religious leaders, as religious authority steals all the power.
It actually doesn’t say in the bible the amount of times you can marry, “but of no nombre mencion made he, of bigamie, or of octogamie,” so the question she imposes is why does the church shun those who marry more than once? It is because the religious figures in the church are men, and men have all the authority and are only capable of selective understanding, and interpret situations to how they desire.
“As wolde God it were leveful unto me to be refreshed half so ofte as he! she is commenting on how it is acceptable for men to have many partners, nevertheless it is frowned upon for women, this unfair hypocrisy reveals to how sexist the attitudes towards women’s relationships were. “Oh shrewed Lameth and his bigamie? ” she is educated in her scriptures, and is self aware and alert enough to use those scriptures to her advantage by providing her own dogmatic interpretation, “I woot wel Abraham was an hooly man,” all those men in the scriptures can get away with infidelity and multiple marriages, yet women cannot.
This is due to how the church is judging instead of God, the church controls the bodies of God’s followers and therefore controls their human nature as they seemingly are supposed to embody the spirit of God, therefore have all the power of the people, “but conseilling is no comandement. He putte it in oure owene juggement,” the scriptures are there for moral guidelines, however the Wife of Bath believes that as people, women should have their free will and own judgments, she is challenging authorities around how marriage is constrained by their expectations and rules.
“Virginitee, thane wherof sholde it growe? she is satirical of this claim that the perfect people are virgins, as in order to create more of these desired virgins, they must have sex, she is manipulating the words of the bible to support her ideals. She is enjoying the pleasures of life, she doesn’t want to conform to the male paradigms and prospects, “but there as God lust give it of his might”, she chose a different lifestyle as she doesn’t like the unfair expectations that are thrust upon her just because she was born a girl, she doesn’t appreciate others preaching and judging her for her modern life choices.
St. Paul states that being single and a virgin are the ideal, purest state as they are strong enough not to give into primal urges, however the Wife of Bath then proceeds to counter his implement by declaring that virgins do not understand the pleasures of sex therefore chastity for life is for only a chosen few and should not be oppressed on others that don’t want to follow, “Poul dorste nat comanden.
The sexual imagery of “for peril is bothe fyr and tow t’assemble”, illustrates how man and women can be dangerous together as their basic desire and primal design can cause great pandemonium and upheaval, therefore sort of supporting St. Paul’s theory that marriage and passion are dangerous, yet the Wife of Bath is stating that what is the point of living if you can’t enjoy yourself.
