In this essay, I exemplified my ability to translate old English, something almost incomprehensible to the average reader, into something digestible for modern-day readers, as well as my ability to lay out complex ideas in an organized and easy-to-follow format. One of the best facets of my English degree was learning and practicing how to write about modern-day issues in a way that will connect with the audience.
Through academic research and close analysis of Chaucer’s text, I analyzed The Wife of Bath and its connections to modern-day feminism and concluded that we can look to The Wife of Bath as a feminist that existed within the constraints of the patriarchy, and discussed how we can analyze her character with the goal to move forward in modern-day feminism.
The Wife of Bath: Escaping the Inescapable Male Gaze
By Shelby Reed
The Wife of Bath’s prologue is widely studied as a feminist text in which the wife proclaims her sovereignty and describes how she obtained it by gaining control over men through her body. Throughout her life, she has gone through five marriages and has learned how to manipulate men into complete emotional and financial submission by using her sexual power. The irony of what we might initially view as a feminist lies in the fact that Chaucer has constructed her out of medieval anti-feminist stereotypes that characterize women as greedy cheaters that prey on men, can’t keep secrets, and steal all your money. The wife’s 5th husband even reads to her out of The Book of Bad Wives which details this exact anti-feminist prototype. The Wife of Bath cannot figuratively or literally escape the anti-feminist rhetoric from which she is composed. Although manipulating men through sex and promiscuity may give her a sense of control in the patriarchy she is trying to reject, she still cannot escape the male gaze — the anti-feminist beliefs about women and the objectification of her body — that perpetuates society. It is through these same negative stereotypes that the wife gains her so-called “sovereignty,” but she never truly escapes the patriarchal male gaze, becoming a representation of the modern struggle of women in society today.
Anne McTaggart expresses a similar sentiment when she writes that the tale “centers on a wonderfully fruitful paradox: she claims for women and for herself the right to “maistrie” and “sovereynetee” in marriage, but she does so by articulating the discourse imparted to her by the “auctoritee” of anti-feminism” (McTaggart 41). One way in which the wife of bath is viewed as a feminist is because she shamelessly talks about her sexual desire the same way in which men do, seemingly making her an equal. In her prologue, she says
“He is to greet a nigard that wil werne 6
A man to lighte a candel at his lanterne;
He shal han never the lasse light, pardee!
Have thow inogh, thee thar nat pleine thee” (Lines 333-336).
She is explaining that like a flame, sex can be shared over and over again without it losing its fire or its meaning. Again, she is emphasizing one of her main “feminist” traits – that she loves sex and isn’t afraid to be vocal about it, despite this traditionally being a quality that only men can possess without ridicule. However, this same sentiment reinforces the medieval misogynist stereotype that women are excessively lustful and will inevitably cheat on you because they want to have sex with multiple men and possess no self-control. When speaking about sex and power, she says
“An housbonde I wol have, I wol nat lette, Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral, And have his tribulacioun withal
Upon his flessh, wyl that I am his wif
I have the power during al my lif
Upon his propre body, and nat he” (Lines 154-159).
Here, she is alluding to the idea that in a marriage, a woman owes a man sex because she is his wife, but instead calls her husband a debtor, claiming that he owes her sex. Because he is her debtor, she says she has power over his body for all her life. Here, she is reversing a common anti-feminist belief within marriage, that marriage constitutes ownership over a woman’s body, and says that instead, she owns her husband’s body. Again, she is reinforcing the stereotype that women are endlessly lustful, but she is also reaching the same ends that anti-feminism attempts to reach — sex between husband and wife as being transactional and dutiful instead of reciprocal. It is only through utilizing her body and its sexuality that she can obtain any kind of power over her husband.
Susanne Sara Thomas discusses the problem of defining sovereignty in the wife’s tale, asks how it can “be defined adequately...in matters of love?” and refers to the American dictionary’s definition of sovereignty, which is defined as “complete independence and self-government.” Thomas claims that this raises the question of “what form of sovereignty the wyf desires: the form of sovereignty expressed by exerting power over a subject, or the sovereignty manifested by independence and self-control?” (Thomas 87 and 89). Again, this relates to the wife’s desire for sovereignty within a patriarchy. Does she want to exercise power over men or does she want to be completely free from the patriarchy altogether? An argument could be made that the latter is impossible when still in a marriage, or even sexually involved with, a man. The wife believes that “we loven best – for to be free and do right as us lest, - and that no man repreve us of oure vice,” meaning that her idea of sovereignty is women being able to be free and do as they please without men reproving them (Lines 935-37). However, her idea of sovereignty is also dependent on being sexually promiscuous without judgement from men, and she claims that she gains power by utilizing her body as a good contingent on how much its worth to the men around her. Her strength comes from this sexual manipulation, and while this is a certain kind of sovereignty as Thomas suggests — power over men — it isn’t sovereignty outside of the confines of sexism. The wife is not independent and self-controlled but is dependent on men’s opinions for what she claims is her sovereignty. Full sovereignty in the context of women within the patriarchy would be full freedom from the male gaze, but the wife can only possess sovereignty within the confines of the male perception of her body and its worth.
This idea of conforming to the male gaze permeates the wife’s prologue and its sentiments. In a study conducted with women concerning the male gaze, Ewa Glapka claimed that “their critique of [the patriarchy’s] aesthetic form has not “produced an equally forceful rejection of normalized corporeity” (Glapka 88). Although the women are aware of the sexualization and objectification of their bodies, they do not push back against this objectification with equal force. Similarly, although feminism does “promote intellectual understanding of cultural messages and modify beliefs, women’s awareness did not translate into changed personal feelings about beauty and their appearance” (Glapka 88). Women still place so much of their inherent value on the value of their bodies and appearances, which are always determined by men. We see that the wife is heavily concerned with her sexuality and her appearance, particularly her body, and utilizing these to seek power over men. This power she seeks cannot be achieved unless her physical appearance is deemed acceptable by men. She says
“But age, allas, that al wole envenime,
Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith.
Lat go, farewell; the devel go therwith!
The flour is goon; there is namoore to telle.
The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle” (Lines 474-478).
Here, she is claiming that age has poisoned her beauty and vigor, and compares herself to flour, meaning that other flour was more desirable but now she must work with selling bran. There is no mention of her personality, her intellect, or even her emotional interactions with men. Rather, her focus is completely on her body, the same way the male gaze completely focuses on the body. She is acutely aware of this male gaze within the patriarchy and the damage it causes, but like Glapka says, she is not forcefully rejecting it but rather succumbing to the idea that her body is her worth and old age will take this worth away from her. The wife’s awareness of objectification does not change her feelings surrounding her body outside of acknowledging that the only positive way she can utilize it is by sexually manipulating men. Her awareness of sexism does not equate to an equally forceful rejection but rather a succumbing to the male gaze and instead trying to utilize her body within that gaze.
Carolyn Dinshaw agrees that the wife is attempting to rebel within the confines of the patriarchy and calls her performance “affirmative and adversative” (Dinshaw 116). The wife is attempting to advert the patriarchal set-up — women can love sex just as much as men, women can hold power over men, and women can pursue monetary gain at the expense of men — but it is just as affirmative of the patriarchy as it as adversative, since these adversities are only achieved through affirming the patriarchy that she is trying to escape. She claims that the wife “mimics patriarchal discourse not in order to ‘thwart’ it altogether, to subvert it entirely, but to reform it, to keep it in place while making it accommodate female desire” (Dinshaw 116). She argues that the wife seems to be one of Chuacer’s favorite characters because
“through her he is able to reform and still to participate in patriarchal discourse; he recuperates the feminine within the solid structure of that discourse. This is a male fantasy, of course. And when we consider that such desire for the reform – not the overturning – of patriarchy is represented as a woman’s desire, it is even more apparent that this is a masculine dream” (Dinshaw 116-117).
True female sovereignty cannot exist within the patriarchy, and while the wife does utilize the patriarchy to fulfill as much of her own desire as possible, it is never full freedom because it is always obtained through the male gaze. Again, we know that the wife was composed by Chaucer from extremely recognizable anti-feminist texts. She argues that the perception of women is so terrible because it is men, like Chaucer, who are writing about them, and if women were able to write, they would be condemning men for all of the evil things they do. However, when the wife does condemn men for their evil doings, she is condemning them for the same things she is doing. She glosses through anti-feminist texts, or herself as a text, and chooses what supports her own narrative, once again utilizing the patriarchy and the inescapable anti-feminist beliefs about her. Chaucer purposefully constructs her from The Book of Bad Wives, making it impossible for her to escape herself and her body, which is literally composed of the male gaze. The wife’s feminism is a feminism that, like Dinshaw points out, appeals to men. True female sovereignty would exist outside of the patriarchy and its imposed beliefs, but Chaucer makes this impossible, figuratively and literally, for the wife.
This paradox that the wife represents is important because it is the same struggle that women face in modern times. As Diane Ponterotto points out, “women have been traditionally confined...to the silenced margins of sociality, to the powerless outskirts of politicality” while their bodies remain “intensely visible,” creating the paradox of “the simultaneous disappearance and over-exposure of the body in culture” (Ponterotto 134). Chaucer is acutely aware of this paradox when he writes the wife, and she expresses this overexposure and objectification placed on her body when she says “for if I wolde selle my bele chose, I koude walke as fressh as is a rose” (Lines 447-448). Here, bele chose refers to a “pretty thing,” or her vagina. She is very aware that her worth is contingent on the exposure of her body and even brags about what it would be worth if she were to sell it on the market. She feels that this is the only way she can escape the margins she has been confined to — the margins that Chaucer confines her to when he composes her out anti- feminist texts — by being vocal about the overexposure of her body and what it is worth to the men around her. Ponterotto agrees that even in today’s world “the emancipatory conquests of women have been accompanied by persistent insistence on the physical attractiveness of the female body” and points out the Gapka studied addressed earlier in this essay (Ponterotto 141). The female individuality that feminism, and the wife, seeks to accomplish is overshadowed by women’s efforts to conform to a body standard that is continually enforced by the male gaze. True liberation is a rejection of this gaze and the value placed on the female body and instead an embracing of the equality that women inherently possess. The wife instead embraces this gaze in an attempt to gain some kind of control in the patriarchy that she is literally written into.
The Wife of Bath will continue to be an important feminist text and brings about important questions about the liberation of women that we are still grappling with today. By studying her character, we learn about the restrictions of the patriarchy around us and how women can attempt to liberate themselves from the world that men have created and the misogynistic ideals that they actively perpetuate. While the wife found her own way to exercise power within the confines of male objectification, she still had to work within the sexist ideals that continue to oppress women today. By studying her, we can notice these patterns within society today and within ourselves, and work to combat them. True female liberation is a complete rejection of the sexist ideals that oppress us and an embracement of what sovereignty means outside of the standards and approval of men.