Essay on "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer"

Essay 3 pages (1137 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Chaucer's Wife of Bath & Husbands

How the Wife of Bath Controls Her Husbands

With a lustful bent in her constitution, the Wife of Bath presents herself in Canterbury Tales in the form of autobiographical confession. In the long prologue, which functions as a character sketch of a cunning and profligate woman, we learn of her past experience of marriage, her sexual frustration, and her licentious tendencies. Never ashamed to be outspoken, she complains about the failure of her husbands to attend to their proper obligations as men: "Now wherewith sholde he make his payement if he ne used his sely instrument?" (Chaucer, 131-132). She wishes that her husbands paid "their debts" more often, for she is sensually ravenous. "In wyfhode I wol use myn instrument as frely as my Markere hath it sent" (149-50). Her nature takes her outside her marriages to engage in affairs with lovers she cannot resist. Her story shows that she was adept at and motivated by dominating her first three husbands.

Her priority in marriage was mastery of power. Bluntly, she describes herself as the scourge of marriage. This indicates her willingness to pursue any means necessary to secure control from her "debtors and thralls." And there is no doubt she did: "I governed hem so wel after my lawe that ech of hem ful blissful was and fawe to bringe me gaye things fro the fayre" (219-21). The Wife wants to master her rich old husbands. This includes controlling wealth, but goes beyond it to bodily power and sex: "I have the power during al my lyf upon his proper body, and noght he" (156-57). If we want to look specifically at how the Wife of Bath controls her first three husbands, we must pay attention to her rhetoric in lines 195-452.

One way she exerts power over the husband is by tormenting him with language. In 215-16, she says, "I sette hem so a-werke, by my fey, that many a night they songen 'weilawey'." She claims to be the "whippe" (175) and to "chidde hem spitously" (223). She makes life intolerable for the man by self-assertive language, enough to cow him into submission. She offends him with slurs. The whole Prologue is peppered with her brash invective. She is conscious of its advantageous effect for control. She is the "wilde fyr" that "the more it brenneth, the more it hath desyr to consume every thing that brent wol be" (373-75). Yet more subtly she can also use cunning as a strategy for dominance. For example, she uses pleasantness in contrast to spite to trick her husband into thinking she's mad (231-32). It works because she withholds affection from him simultaneously unless he does as she wills. He must serve her to win her affections.

Deceit is part of her control repertoire. Her morality tells her that lying (along with spinning) is prudent for a wife (223, 401). Presumably this is because she finds occasion to wander around at night seeking lovers, crafting the excuse that she is spying on the man when in fact it is to pursue her own mirthful encounters. "I swoor that al my walkinge out by nighte was for t'espye wenches that he dighte" (397-98). This endears her to her husband, for it makes it seem (falsely) as though she has real affection. The point here is that lying is used to manipulate the husband.

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