Marriage in the Canterbury Tales

Marriage in the Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have long been respected as the embodiment of popular sentiment toward love and marriage in the Middle Ages. In these tales, Chaucer repeatedly addresses two main issues concerning marriage: male vs. female sovereignty in marriage and the place of sex in marriage.

Whether positive or negative, nearly all of the tales express some sort of sentiment toward marriage. One of the most blatantly expressive is that of the Wife of Bath. In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, she is quick to describe herself as an authority on marriage due to her plethora of marriages. Through these experiences, she has learned how to provide for herself and establish her independence during a time when women had a relatively insignificant place in society. Unfortunately, she is only able to earn this place through sexual bargaining and use of her body as an instrument of control with her husbands.

The Wife of Bath is an example of what the medieval church believed a “wicked woman” to be and she is proud of it. From the very beginning, her speech has undertones of conflict with the patriarchal society. Because the statements that the Wife of Bath attributes to her husbands were taken from a variety of satires published in Chaucer’s time, which half-comically portrayed women as unfaithful, superficial, evil creatures always out to undermine their husbands, feminist critics have often been fond of

portraying the Wife as one of the first feminist characters in literature (Sparknotes.com).

This interpretation would hold up quite well if it were not for the fact that the Wife of Bath herself conforms to a many of the misogynist and misogamist stereotypes. She contradicts herself by flaunting that she is an independent woman who uses men to satisfy her own sexual needs whenever she wants, but also admits to using her own body as a means to gain money and power over her husbands. She also contradicts herself when presenting herself as a cold and calculating wife that is capable of sexually manipulating any man. It soon becomes obvious that the only man she ever loved was Jankyn, the husband that treated her worst and proved least controllable. Despite their contradictions, all of these ideas about women were used by men to support a hierarchy in which men dominated women (Singnet.com).

In the Wife of Bath’s Tale, she tells the story of a knight who rapes a woman and is then rewarded at the end anyway. Based on the type of person that the Wife is described as being, we are led to believe that the tale is actually an example of authority. The knight is told the answer to the question of what women most want and then simply repeats it to the queen, after which he is pardoned. He then gives his wife the choice to choose what

kind of wife she wants to be and once again is rewarded with a beautiful AND faithful wife.

This gift of “maistrye” is not unlike when King Arthur gives his queen the final say on the knight’s punishment. However, in Arthur’s case, his queen ends up cheating on him with one of his knights. This just leads one to question whether or not “maistrye” really is all that women desire in a marriage.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale mirrors her own situation in that they are both examples of how a good marriage results when the woman gains mastery over her husband. This is demonstrated in the Wife’s marriage to Jankyn where he angrily hit her across the head with a book and caused her to lose hearing in one ear. After this, she made it a point to repeatedly cause him to feel guilty about it. The guilt overwhelmed him to the point that they never fought again and she in turn became faithful and respectful toward him thereafter.

The Wife yet again proves herself to be a contradictory character when the reader further analyzes one of her arguments in the defense of marriage. She claims that “God bade for us to wexe and multiplye” (Wife of Bath’s Prologue, line 28) and that her many marriages are validated because they produce children. However, the Wife never makes mention of any children that have resulted from any of her marriages. It is even believed that the last two lines of the general prologue hint to that she is capable of performing abortions (Sparknotes.com).

Another tale that expresses a distinct sentiment regarding marriage is that of the Miller. In the Miller’s Tale, the Miller sets up a parody of the Knight’s Tale by telling a story with the same basic premise of love and courting. The Miller basically