Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale
The Wife of Bath begins the prologue to her tale by
boasting of her experience in marriage. She has already married five men, and
she ignores the idea that this is a reproach to Christian principles. She is
adhering only to the principle of being fruitful and multiply. She cites the
case of King Solomon, who had multiple wives, and tells that she welcomes the
opportunity for her sixth husband. She also points out that Jesus never lays
down a law about virginity. Then she decides to speak about each of her
husbands. Three were good and two were young men. The good ones were kind, rich
and old. She would withhold sex from them to get the riches they might offer
her. She would use guilt and jealousy against them, along with other
manipulative techniques. The fourth husband she married was young. He was a
reveller and had a mistress as well as a wife. He was a match for the Wife of
Bath, sharing some similar qualities, but he soon died. The fifth husband was
the cruellest to her, since once he struck her so hard on the ear that she lost
hearing, because she tore a page from one of his books. He would cite examples
that indicated a wife should be submissive, as describes the passage she tore
from the book. She complains that the stories that denigrate women are written
by monks who have no experience with them, and that the stories would be
different if women wrote them. After Jankin struck her, she appeared dead, but
when she revived he was so penitent that he ceded all authority in the marriage
to her. From that point onward she was kind to him, for he had given her what
she truly wanted.
The
Wife of Bath is the most fully realized character in the Canterbury Tales.
Headstrong, boisterous and opinionated, she wages a struggle against the
denigration of women and the taboos against female sexuality. She issues a
number of rebuttals against strict religious claims for chastity and monogamy,
using Biblical examples to show that the Bible does not condemn all expressions
of sexuality, even outside of marriage. She claims that the reason for the bias
against women is due to the lack of experience and contact with women of those
who write the text. It is this antipathy to intellectual arguments against
femininity that causes her to tear the pages from Jankin's book.
The
Wife of Bath's crusade opens the prologue to modern interpretations that
reconfigure the Wife of Bath as a feminist icon, but she is no unabashed modern
heroine. She is manipulative, using her sexuality as a weapon against her
husbands in order to shame them into providing for her. She can be a harridan
and a harpy, accusing her husbands of ingratitude and withholding sex to
extract gifts. In the Wife's boasts of these strategies, she indicates that
they were a necessity; she has been afforded so few benefits that she must use
her sexuality to gain a dominance over her husbands. The Wife of Bath is in a
very precarious situation, because she's in danger of losing her place in
society.
The
Wife of Bath uses a language of commerce throughout her tale in reference to
marriage. Her manipulations can be seen as an economic shrewdness. She
recognizes marriage for what it is and brings that quality to the fore. The
theme of the Wife of Bath's Tale is thus not female equality in marriage, but
rather the power struggles between husband and wife. She doesn't seek an equal
partnership with a husband, but a situation in which she has control over her
spouse. The Wife of Bath indicates that it's only in a marriage where the wife
has control over her husband. When Jankin attempted to exert control over her
and struck her down, she reasserted her control over him through guilt.
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