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Unit 11: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-III

The knight sighed sorely, and thought, but finally told his wife to choose herself whichever option Notes
would bring most honor to the two of them. “Thanne have I gete of yow maistrie” (In that case, I’ve
got mastery over you) she said – and the knight agreed that she had. The lothly lady asked him to
kiss her and “cast up the curtyn” (lift up the curtain) to look on her face–she had transformed into a
young and beautiful woman. They lived happily ever after: and, the Wife concludes, let Christ
grant all women submissive husbands who sexually satisfy their wives, and let Christ kill all men
who will not be governed by their wives.

Analysis

The Wife of Bath is one of Chaucer’s most enduring characters, and rightly, one of the most famous
of any of the Canterbury pilgrims. Her voice is extremely distinctive–loud, self-promoting, extremely
aggressive – and her lengthy prologue silences the Pardoner and the Friar (who is then parodied at
the start of the Tale) for daring to interrupt her. One of the key issues for interpreting the Wife’s tale
historically has been the relationship between prologue and tale: some critics have found in the
Wife’s fairy-tale ending a wistful, saddened dreaminess from an elderly woman whose hopes for a
sixth husband might turn out to be futile. Other critics have treated the tale as a matter of “maistrie”
and control, arguing that the Wife’s tale, starting as it does with a rape (a man physically dominating
a woman), is deeply ambiguous at its close about precisely whose desire is being fulfilled. Surely
there is little point in the woman having the maistrie if all she is to do with it is to please her
husband?
Yet it seems to me that the Wife’s tale and prologue can be treated as one lengthy monologue, and
it is the voice we attribute that monologue too which proves impossible to precisely define. The
Wife’s tale inherits the issue of the woman as literary text (Constance, in the Man of Law’s tale, was
“pale”, like paper waiting to be written on, and used as an exchangeable currency by the merchants
and– perhaps–by the Man of Law) and develops it.
Text and the interpretation of text is absolutely central to the Wife of Bath’s Tale. The General
Prologue describes her as being swathed in textile, and, of course, “textere”, the Latin verb meaning
“to weave” is the key to a close relationship between “cloth” and “text” in the Middle Ages. For the
Wife, as well as being excellent at spinning a tale, is also excellent at spinning cloth – and is
surrounded, problematically in text in just the way the Prologue has her covered in cloth. When, at
the very end of her tale, the lothly lady implores her husband to “cast up the curtyn” and see her as
she really is, she highlights one of the key problems in the tale: it is very difficult to ascertain precisely
where fiction stops and reality begins.
The Wife claims to represent female voices–and her tale consists of a set of women representing
each other. The raped maiden is represented by the queen, who in turn is represented by the lothly
lady, who in turn becomes a beautiful lady: the image which precedes her appearance is,
appropriately, twenty four ladies apparently vanishing into one. The Wife speaks on behalf of women
everywhere: and against the male clerks who have written the antifeminist literature that Jankin
reads in his book of wikked wyves.
It is odd then, that the Wife, who claims to stand for “experience”, spends much of her prologue
dealing with written “authority”, glossing the Bible in precisely the manner she criticizes the clerks
for doing. The Wife is against text, but expert in text; against clerks, but particularly clerical; and, of
course, venomous about anti-feminist literature, but also made up of anti-feminist literature. When
the Wife throws Jankin’s book in the fire, she is in fact burning her own sources which constitute a
bizarre act of literary self-orphanage. It is as if she burns her own birth certificate.

Self Assessment

Short Answer Type Questions:
6. At what age was the wife of bath first married?
7. What ongoing argument begins in this prologue?

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