Viturlegt verðmætamat
Verðmætamat fólks er eins misjafnt og mannfólkið er margt. Ytri hlutir eins og föt, hýbýli, titlar og próf eru allir góðra gjalda verðir ef þeir blinda ekki mat okkar á viturlegum verðmætum. Innri hlutir eins og einlægni, hreinleikur, tillitssemi, umburðarlyndi, mannúð og kærleikur eru líka mikilvægir eiginleikar. Auðvitað er best ef allt þetta gæti farið saman og unnið hvað með öðru að sálarró og friði í lífi hvers og eins. Best er að vera trúr maka, börnum og samferðafólki. Auk þess er nauðsynlegt að vera heiðarlegur í öllum þeim störfum sem lífið réttir að manni. Góð viðleitni er að reyna að efla og styrkja það besta í sjálfum sér og öðrum. Hver og einn verður að lokum að horfast í augu við sjálfan sig og afleiðingar af breytni sinni og viðhorfum til lífsins. Alls staðar eru möguleikar og tækifæri sem leita þarf að, síðan hlúa að og efla trú á að séu happadrjúg, kærleikshvetjandi og mannbætandi fyrir okkar innri mann ekki síður en það sem í fljótu bragði glepur og tengist frekar ytri verðmætum, því þau sem slík breyta svo litlu í innri líðan okkar. Við kaupum ekki sálarró eða innri gleði, fyrir slíku þarf að vinna innan frá. Þeirri vinnu fylgja fórnir, af því að það sem hendir okkur í mannlegum samskiptum og aðstæðum, hentar okkur ekki alltaf, sérstaklega ef það er neikvætt eða ósanngjarnt að okkar mati. Þá finnst okku lítið réttlæti í tilverunni og fátt til að gleðjast yfir og við eiga agalega bágt. Sálarró fæst til dæmis með því að skoða eigin veikleika, vinna úr þeim og gera erfiðar aðstæður auðveldar sér og sigrast á þeim. Það fæst ekkert án fyrirhafnar og allra síst breytt og betri viðhorf eða aðstæður. Lykillinn að innri frið er jákvæð hugsun, viturlegt verðmætamat og vissan um að hver er sinnar gæfu smiður.
jrk
The Wife of Bath:
A Female Stereotype or Proto-Feminist?
Nína Rúna Kvaran
November 2005
Introduction
There is an abundance of literature that examines the relationship between men and women. That precious thing, which is the chord that connects the sexes, has been a matter of debate and discussion for a very long time. Literary evidence of that in Western history can be traced all the way back to the Bible and much further than that in more ancient civilisations. In the last century or so, the traditional gender roles have been systematically demolished by feminist activity and re-invention of the roles of the two sexes is in constant creation. Hopefully most might agree that this is a good thing because of the obvious and inevitable emancipation it has brought to womankind, that has traditionally been marked as the weaker link in the chain that connects the genders in all social context, whether it be economical, political, legal, or anything else. Others note that the battle between the sexes is far from settled and that women’s liberation has more than not complicated the situation enormously by demolishing the traditional order of the gender-roles and leaving a confusing gap that neither sex can understand. Whether this is true or not will not be debated further here, but a very important point of issue is the part women themselves have played in maintaining their subordinate position in society. Many, if not most, women did indeed accept the patriarchy of Western societies as a normal part of life and many women were outraged when the first women’s emancipation movements started allowing their voices to be heard. This idea of a subordinate element undermining its own possibility of getting to a higher position in society is a very interesting notion and is directly connected to the main topic of this essay. In the following, I will seek to examine Geoffrey Chaucer’s character “The Wife of Bath” from his Canterbury Tales, with the idea in mind to investigate whether or not she is a female stereotype or a proto-feminist and if seen as a stereotype, what part does she herself as a person play in manifesting women in a negative light.
The Wife’s Use of Language and Speech
There are numerous ways in which one can approach the Wife in context to how she possibly undermines her own authority in her Prologue. One of those is to look at not what she says, but rather how she says it. Her speech alone can give many clues that can be interpreted in various ways with this approach in mind. It is a known fact, which probably applies to most successful writers, that Chaucer was a ferocious reader and was naturally influenced by the material he read. Perhaps unfortunately for his female characters, many of the writings of that day and age were not exactly flattering for women and this is mentioned in Charles Muscatine’s essay “The Wife of Bath and Gautier’s La Veuve” from his book Medieval Literature, Style and Culture:
Chaucer, of course, was also a great reader, and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is as learned as it is dramatic. A good deal of its contents are clearly derived from identifiable works that Chaucer read. These have been well studied; we probably have as good an account as we shall ever have of the antifeminist documents that were in his library as he wrote. (Muscatine 172)
With this in mind it is amazing to read through the text of the Prologue and see how Chaucer has the Wife speak. It is difficult to deny that he does give her a very stereotypical female voice in regards to speech. She is very indiscreet, loses her track on various occasions, and the whole tone of her Prologue is very gossipy. Elaine Treharne who wrote the essay “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer’s Wife of Bath”, published in the book Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts, makes an excellent case as she examines the Wife from a linguistic point of view. She feels that although Chaucer can be celebrated for trying to “emulate aspects of a woman’s language” (Treharne 96), he does base his creation of the Wife’s speech on stereotypical ideas of how a woman speaks.
When looking at the Prologue itself, finding evidence of the Wife’s stereotypical female traits of speech is not a particular challenge. One very common and negative stereotypical view of women is that they are unable to hold their tongues. Chaucer most certainly applies this to the Wife who shamelessly exposes her husbands’ darkest secrets to other women, both her niece and her best friend. Even if this infuriates her husband she seems not to be able to restrain herself, and even seems to like going door to door, looking for gossip:
With my gossib, dwelling in oure town God have hir soule!—hir name was Alisoun; She knew myn herte and eek my privetee Bet than oure parish preest, as mote I thee. To hire biwrayed I my conseil al, For hadde myn housbonde pissed on a wal Or doon a thing that sholde han cost hi lif, To hire, and to another worthy wif, And to my nece which I loved weel, I wolde han told his conseil everydeel; (Chaucer 229)
She does not seem to be bothered in the least in gossiping about her husband even if he becomes furious and deeply embarrassed when he discovers her indiscretions. This portrayal of the Wife does confirm her as a stereotypical female that cannot hold her tongue or be trusted at all.
In her essay, Treharne continues to find examples of this and she dives into the discussion of the difference between male and female speech, which according to her is a recognized fact among linguistics. She mentions how modern day views of male and female speech having slight differences without one being superior to the other, are relatively recent in linguistic history. There are various authors that wrote on this difference before, with the emphasis of proofing the female speech as the more inferior of the two. As she discusses language and gender, Treharne makes an example of linguist Otto Jespersen, who in 1922 published a book on linguistics in which there is a chapter devoted to women’s speech. One of his claims is that women are more prone than men to losing their track and being distracted when speaking, mainly because of their inability to think properly through what they are going to say. Chauvinist (and hardly scientific) views of this sort must clearly have influenced Chaucer, since he in fact has the Wife lose her thread a number of times during the Prologue. One of those instances is when she is recalling how her mother taught her how to manipulate men into thinking they had charmed her and she goes off track: “But now sire—lat me see, wha shal I sayn? Aha, by God, I have my tale again” (Chaucer 229). Treharne makes a comparison of Chaucer’s creation to Jespersen’s folk linguistic views and comes to the conclusion that:
Chaucer is able to manipulate stereotypical facets of women’s language usage through his creation, and he, to a significant extent, pre-empts in a literary framework what Jespersen would go on to write within a linguistic structure some five hundred and more years later.” (Treharne 105-106)
What is furthermore of interest in discussion of the Wife’s speech is the notion of whether she is undermining the authoritative tone of her own speech by the way she presents it. When looking solely at the Wife’s Prologue it becomes clear that it is rich in intelligence, humour, and wit. Besides that, the Wife uses substantial numbers of Biblical and other quotes that suggest that she is far from being an ignorant woman. It is questionable how deeply the “feminine” traits of her speech affect her audience/readers, especially in regards to how many of them might even notice her linguistic differences in comparison the male pilgrims of Canterbury Tales. But Treharne seems determined in interpreting her speech style as a fault rather than anything else as she phrases it: “Chaucer’s mimicry of the stereotypical features of a woman’s speech, then, renders the content of that speech less authoritative, more subjective and less effective than it might otherwise have been” (Treharne 110). But if one looks away from how she speaks and examines what she is saying, there is no doubt that Chaucer on numerous occasions has her utter statements on women in general that are obvious and tired clichés. An example is when she discusses her fifth husband whom she thinks she might have loved the most even though he physically abused her. Her following descriptions on how women always want what they cannot have and vice versa do reinforce her (as other women) as a stereotype:
We wommen han, if that I shal nat lie, In this matter a quainte fantasye: Waite what thing we may nat lightly have, Thereafter wol we crye al day and crave; Forbede us thing, and that desiren we; Preesse on us faste, and thane wol we flee. (Chaucer 228)
Another example is when she talks about the way in which she manipulated her husbands using her “feminine” traits such as lying, faking tears, and fabricating false accusations, with great success: “Deceit, weeping, spinning God hath yive To wommen kindely whil they may live” (Chaucer 225).
The Husbands and Wife in View of Gender Roles
As was mentioned in the introduction, the battle between the sexes has a long and seemingly never-ending history. Obviously, this is more than true in context of the Wife who has been married five times and conducted herself in a way that is in many regards very unlike her female gender role would suggest she should. In the very beginning of her Prologue, she starts explaining her viewpoint on marriage and is obviously aware of the social stigma of having married so many times. Her apologia on the matter is long and filled with Biblical quotes to support her case. She sees it as entirely unfair that she should be judged for having had so many husbands since no lesser people than Abraham and Jacob had more than two wives. She also feels that the notion of celibacy is highly over-rated and only meant for the few who want to lead a “perfect” life, herself thankfully not belonging to that group. It soon becomes blatantly clear that she is by no means a wife that plays the typical gender role of a female. In fact, she breaks the traditional, patriarchal mould several times in regards to gender roles. There are of course many references to her “un-ladylike” qualities as being lusty and very sexually minded. She does not have any problems with openly discussing genitals and the pleasure derived from the use of those, even if her audience is filled with males. She is quite opinionated on matters of love, sex, and marriage, and sees it of the utmost importance that she takes advantage of the bonuses of marriage as long as she can. It is perhaps here that we come to the main thrust of her argument, as is also revealed in her Tale: that being that what women really want is to dominate men; a notion that in itself is a contradiction of the traditional gender roles. The Wife most certainly dominates her husbands and seems to be quite proud of it, as she gives her advice freely to those who listen. What is remarkable about her is her apparent awareness of the injustice that women had to suffer in marriage and how she uses this fact as a tool of correction on her poor husbands. Her main mission as a wife is to reverse the traditional gender roles and this she does by blaming her husbands individually for all the cruelties husbands all over have committed towards their wives. She recites an entire list of male chauvinist views on wives and puts it forward in such a way, that her husbands must succumb to her will, distraught with guilt, even if they are not guilty of but a fraction of her accusations: “Whoso that first to mille comth first grint. I plained first; so was oure were stint. They were ful glade to excusen hem ful blive Of things of which they nevere agilte her live” (Chaucer 225).
She furthermore states that she told one of her husbands that he was not going to get away with controlling both her body and property; a statement that in itself can be seen as an attack on patriarchal views of the time and age. Her insistence on women wanting to be free: “We love no man that taketh keep or charge Wher that we goon: we wol been at oure large” (Chaucer 224) is another very feminist viewpoint she expresses and not in accordance to the rules of gender roles which required male domination.
It is very clear that the Wife dominates her husbands easily. Even the fifth one, the Oxford scholar whose favourite pastime it seems to have been to lecture her on the evils of women, using a cherished book as evidence, has in the end to succumb to her domination, giving her full control over money and property they share. As has been mentioned, her Tale is but a reinforcement of the theme of the Prologue: that women’s only real wish is to dominate men and that if men only would submit, life would be better for all.
The Evil Woman
The notion of the evil and the beautiful as a lethal combination has influenced Western patriarchal society for centuries and is rooted in the fact that even in societies where women have been literally robbed of every human right, both by the law and moral ethics, men still have to face the fact that without women, they can not exist. For the human race to continue to survive the relationship between men and women has to continue and nature has provided women with desirability that attracts men. In that desirability lies the sexual power that women hold over men and has unfortunately sometimes been their doom.
In regards to the Wife of Bath, she certainly does not at first glance seem to be evil. Her Prologue likely presents no more evilness to the modern reader than any other piece of literature or art that displays sexually active and independent thinking women in leading roles. But considering the time and age Chaucer lived in, one can only assume that the Wife’s confessions would have been seen as scandalous to say the least to many people who considered themselves of high moral standards. The Wife quite shamelessly reveals her enthusiasm for sex and romantic affairs, although she does so within the framework of marriage. It is no wonder that many critics have seen her as a proto-feminist. Her liberal ideas of sexuality are directly against every image that traditional Christian ideology has created of the virtuous and ideal woman. The Wife is far from being obedient, submissive, or silent. As a matter of fact, she is eerily close to what was by many considered an evil woman.
Western history of female evil goes a long way back, as the Biblical story of the independent Lilith demonstrates. Her fate[1] shows the very basis of patriarchal society’s view of how the ideal woman must be: obedient and submissive; everything else is unacceptable. Women have always had to bend to the will of the masculine element and patriarchal societies have used certain methods to ensure that the female force is kept under control. For one, the rules of marriage were such that women were literally seen as a piece of property rather than people and for centuries it was seen as perfectly normal for women to be subjected to domestic violence and even marital rape.
Some have seen the witch-craze that is such a famously cruel part of our Western history as a rather genderized form of persecutions, since so many of its victims were female.[2] This hunting of witches lasted for three centuries, from around the 14th century and well into the 17th century, although there are variations to be found between countries. Interestingly, outside of a few peripheral countries such as Iceland, it is estimated that around three quarters of the accused and executed in Europe were women. Steven Katz,[3] in his book The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol.1, even calls it a case of “genderized mass murder” (Katz 503). There is no wonder that women easily became targets in the witch-hunts when even the theological view of them was extremely negative. They were the perfect scapegoats for all of society’s defects and problems. In 1485-1486, the Catholic inquisition authorities published the Malleus maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, in which the evil of woman is clearly specified and had to have evoked extreme hatred towards women by those who read it and took it seriously. The piece inarguably claims that there is no evil like “the wickedness of women”. Katz quotes this book where it goes into the details of the very physical aspect of women, whose bodies both tempt men and give magical life:
What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan – they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation. (Katz 438-439)
Obviously, the Malleus maleficarum is published almost a century after Chaucer’s death, but it does nevertheless demonstrate a horribly negative view of women that was perhaps not much better in Chaucer’s time. Therefore, the Wife is in the religious and moral context of the times, not simply a proto-feminist, but an abomination of every virtue the ideal woman should have and stand for. Her blatant descriptions of lust and desire, as well as her insistence on dominating every aspect of her husbands’ lives, must have been shocking and appalling for many a reader. An example of this is when she openly confesses to lying about dreaming of her husband the entire night and how she manipulates him into believing her: “And eek I saide I mette of him al night: He wolde han slain me as I lay upright, And al my bed was ful of verray blood…” (Chaucer 229).
Although she is likeable because of her humour and openness, it cannot be denied that the Wife is rather cruel as she shows no remorse in having blatantly, manipulated, dominated, and told lies to her husbands at her every convenience. So likable or not, she can hardly be seen as a particularly kind person and although modern views of her would unlikely be as harsh as those of old might have been, there is no denying that she is at least rather immoral if not slightly evil. The question is whether she would be judged in the same way had she been a man? The important issue here is that she is a woman, and is according to her own descriptions, not unattractive at all. The notion of feminine beauty and evil going together is directly related to views such as are displayed in the Malleus maleficarum on how the sexuality of women, the way they can naturally represent a temptation to men (even if they are not deliberately trying to do so), is proof of their inherent evilness. If seen from that point of view, the Wife, who is certainly not hiding the fact that she takes advantage of her sexual attractiveness to get her own way, can be seen as super-evil. But should modern readers look at this as evidence of her being a proto-feminist or simply another example of a stereotypical display of a woman? In this case there seems to be a rather thin line that separates the two.
Conclusion
If turning back to the original question as to whether the “Wife of Bath” is a female stereotype or a proto-feminist, there seem to be evidence of both. She is on various occasions presented as a very negatively stereotypical woman, being a nag, a gossiper, sexually manipulative and so on. As Treharne accurately points out, the Wife’s speech furthermore undermines her authoritative tones as a narrator and renders her as an active participant in her own representation of a female stereotype, rooting her even deeper in a traditional female gender role from at least a linguistic viewpoint. But even if there is truth in what Treharne says about the Wife somewhat undermining her own voice, I cannot agree that the “feminine” speech Chaucer renders her is so strong as to destroy completely the actual contents of her Prologue and Tale. No matter if she is a stereotypical female storyteller, the actions she takes in her life regarding men and marriage, and her general attitudes towards gender roles, are highly feminist and even so exaggerated that some might consider her not only a proto-feminist but also a female chauvinist. She does not seem to be very preoccupied with women having equal rights to men but more so that women simply should dominate men as a general rule and then all would be right with the world. Whether she is a stereotype or a proto-feminist therefore greatly depends on how one chooses to interpret her character. The attitude of the reader makes all the difference in the interpretative process. A feminist reader might see the Wife as a proto-feminist; a dominating Diva that does not take orders from any man but quite the opposite and therefore worthy of admiration. A chauvinist reader might see her as the ultimate evidence of how wicked and vile women are, and how dangerous they can become if not kept under strict masculine control. Ultimately, Chaucer alone knows what his real intentions were with this character but I think that most could agree that no matter how the Wife of Bath is interpreted from a genderized point of view, her humour and wit certainly render her Prologue and Tale with a very entertaining quality.
Bibliography
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “From The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and
Tale”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition, The
Major Authors. M.H. Abrams, ed. New York and London, W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc, 2001. 173-276.
Jones, Adam. Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today. Available online 15 Apr. 2005. http://www.gendercide. org/case_witchhunts.html
Muscatine, Charles. “The Wife of Bath and Gautier’s La Veuve”. Medieval
Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays By Charles Muscatine. Ed. Charles
Muscatine. Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 1999. 171-175. Treharne, Elaine. “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer’s Wife of Bath”. Writing
Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle
English Texts. Ed. Elaine Treharne. Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2002. 93-
115.
[1] Lilith was Adam’s first wife, cast out of Paradise and replaced by a more submissive Eve.
[2] The following overview is mostly based upon Adam Jones’s article “Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today”. Available online April 15th 2005 at http://www.gendercide. org/case_witchhunts.html
[3] The information on Steven Katz is taken from the web page: http://www.gendercide.org/case_witchhunts.html
Verðmætamat fólks er eins misjafnt og mannfólkið er margt. Ytri hlutir eins og föt, hýbýli, titlar og próf eru allir góðra gjalda verðir ef þeir blinda ekki mat okkar á viturlegum verðmætum. Innri hlutir eins og einlægni, hreinleikur, tillitssemi, umburðarlyndi, mannúð og kærleikur eru líka mikilvægir eiginleikar. Auðvitað er best ef allt þetta gæti farið saman og unnið hvað með öðru að sálarró og friði í lífi hvers og eins. Best er að vera trúr maka, börnum og samferðafólki. Auk þess er nauðsynlegt að vera heiðarlegur í öllum þeim störfum sem lífið réttir að manni. Góð viðleitni er að reyna að efla og styrkja það besta í sjálfum sér og öðrum. Hver og einn verður að lokum að horfast í augu við sjálfan sig og afleiðingar af breytni sinni og viðhorfum til lífsins. Alls staðar eru möguleikar og tækifæri sem leita þarf að, síðan hlúa að og efla trú á að séu happadrjúg, kærleikshvetjandi og mannbætandi fyrir okkar innri mann ekki síður en það sem í fljótu bragði glepur og tengist frekar ytri verðmætum, því þau sem slík breyta svo litlu í innri líðan okkar. Við kaupum ekki sálarró eða innri gleði, fyrir slíku þarf að vinna innan frá. Þeirri vinnu fylgja fórnir, af því að það sem hendir okkur í mannlegum samskiptum og aðstæðum, hentar okkur ekki alltaf, sérstaklega ef það er neikvætt eða ósanngjarnt að okkar mati. Þá finnst okku lítið réttlæti í tilverunni og fátt til að gleðjast yfir og við eiga agalega bágt. Sálarró fæst til dæmis með því að skoða eigin veikleika, vinna úr þeim og gera erfiðar aðstæður auðveldar sér og sigrast á þeim. Það fæst ekkert án fyrirhafnar og allra síst breytt og betri viðhorf eða aðstæður. Lykillinn að innri frið er jákvæð hugsun, viturlegt verðmætamat og vissan um að hver er sinnar gæfu smiður.
jrk
The Wife of Bath:
A Female Stereotype or Proto-Feminist?
Nína Rúna Kvaran
November 2005
Introduction
There is an abundance of literature that examines the relationship between men and women. That precious thing, which is the chord that connects the sexes, has been a matter of debate and discussion for a very long time. Literary evidence of that in Western history can be traced all the way back to the Bible and much further than that in more ancient civilisations. In the last century or so, the traditional gender roles have been systematically demolished by feminist activity and re-invention of the roles of the two sexes is in constant creation. Hopefully most might agree that this is a good thing because of the obvious and inevitable emancipation it has brought to womankind, that has traditionally been marked as the weaker link in the chain that connects the genders in all social context, whether it be economical, political, legal, or anything else. Others note that the battle between the sexes is far from settled and that women’s liberation has more than not complicated the situation enormously by demolishing the traditional order of the gender-roles and leaving a confusing gap that neither sex can understand. Whether this is true or not will not be debated further here, but a very important point of issue is the part women themselves have played in maintaining their subordinate position in society. Many, if not most, women did indeed accept the patriarchy of Western societies as a normal part of life and many women were outraged when the first women’s emancipation movements started allowing their voices to be heard. This idea of a subordinate element undermining its own possibility of getting to a higher position in society is a very interesting notion and is directly connected to the main topic of this essay. In the following, I will seek to examine Geoffrey Chaucer’s character “The Wife of Bath” from his Canterbury Tales, with the idea in mind to investigate whether or not she is a female stereotype or a proto-feminist and if seen as a stereotype, what part does she herself as a person play in manifesting women in a negative light.
The Wife’s Use of Language and Speech
There are numerous ways in which one can approach the Wife in context to how she possibly undermines her own authority in her Prologue. One of those is to look at not what she says, but rather how she says it. Her speech alone can give many clues that can be interpreted in various ways with this approach in mind. It is a known fact, which probably applies to most successful writers, that Chaucer was a ferocious reader and was naturally influenced by the material he read. Perhaps unfortunately for his female characters, many of the writings of that day and age were not exactly flattering for women and this is mentioned in Charles Muscatine’s essay “The Wife of Bath and Gautier’s La Veuve” from his book Medieval Literature, Style and Culture:
Chaucer, of course, was also a great reader, and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is as learned as it is dramatic. A good deal of its contents are clearly derived from identifiable works that Chaucer read. These have been well studied; we probably have as good an account as we shall ever have of the antifeminist documents that were in his library as he wrote. (Muscatine 172)
With this in mind it is amazing to read through the text of the Prologue and see how Chaucer has the Wife speak. It is difficult to deny that he does give her a very stereotypical female voice in regards to speech. She is very indiscreet, loses her track on various occasions, and the whole tone of her Prologue is very gossipy. Elaine Treharne who wrote the essay “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer’s Wife of Bath”, published in the book Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts, makes an excellent case as she examines the Wife from a linguistic point of view. She feels that although Chaucer can be celebrated for trying to “emulate aspects of a woman’s language” (Treharne 96), he does base his creation of the Wife’s speech on stereotypical ideas of how a woman speaks.
When looking at the Prologue itself, finding evidence of the Wife’s stereotypical female traits of speech is not a particular challenge. One very common and negative stereotypical view of women is that they are unable to hold their tongues. Chaucer most certainly applies this to the Wife who shamelessly exposes her husbands’ darkest secrets to other women, both her niece and her best friend. Even if this infuriates her husband she seems not to be able to restrain herself, and even seems to like going door to door, looking for gossip:
With my gossib, dwelling in oure town God have hir soule!—hir name was Alisoun; She knew myn herte and eek my privetee Bet than oure parish preest, as mote I thee. To hire biwrayed I my conseil al, For hadde myn housbonde pissed on a wal Or doon a thing that sholde han cost hi lif, To hire, and to another worthy wif, And to my nece which I loved weel, I wolde han told his conseil everydeel; (Chaucer 229)
She does not seem to be bothered in the least in gossiping about her husband even if he becomes furious and deeply embarrassed when he discovers her indiscretions. This portrayal of the Wife does confirm her as a stereotypical female that cannot hold her tongue or be trusted at all.
In her essay, Treharne continues to find examples of this and she dives into the discussion of the difference between male and female speech, which according to her is a recognized fact among linguistics. She mentions how modern day views of male and female speech having slight differences without one being superior to the other, are relatively recent in linguistic history. There are various authors that wrote on this difference before, with the emphasis of proofing the female speech as the more inferior of the two. As she discusses language and gender, Treharne makes an example of linguist Otto Jespersen, who in 1922 published a book on linguistics in which there is a chapter devoted to women’s speech. One of his claims is that women are more prone than men to losing their track and being distracted when speaking, mainly because of their inability to think properly through what they are going to say. Chauvinist (and hardly scientific) views of this sort must clearly have influenced Chaucer, since he in fact has the Wife lose her thread a number of times during the Prologue. One of those instances is when she is recalling how her mother taught her how to manipulate men into thinking they had charmed her and she goes off track: “But now sire—lat me see, wha shal I sayn? Aha, by God, I have my tale again” (Chaucer 229). Treharne makes a comparison of Chaucer’s creation to Jespersen’s folk linguistic views and comes to the conclusion that:
Chaucer is able to manipulate stereotypical facets of women’s language usage through his creation, and he, to a significant extent, pre-empts in a literary framework what Jespersen would go on to write within a linguistic structure some five hundred and more years later.” (Treharne 105-106)
What is furthermore of interest in discussion of the Wife’s speech is the notion of whether she is undermining the authoritative tone of her own speech by the way she presents it. When looking solely at the Wife’s Prologue it becomes clear that it is rich in intelligence, humour, and wit. Besides that, the Wife uses substantial numbers of Biblical and other quotes that suggest that she is far from being an ignorant woman. It is questionable how deeply the “feminine” traits of her speech affect her audience/readers, especially in regards to how many of them might even notice her linguistic differences in comparison the male pilgrims of Canterbury Tales. But Treharne seems determined in interpreting her speech style as a fault rather than anything else as she phrases it: “Chaucer’s mimicry of the stereotypical features of a woman’s speech, then, renders the content of that speech less authoritative, more subjective and less effective than it might otherwise have been” (Treharne 110). But if one looks away from how she speaks and examines what she is saying, there is no doubt that Chaucer on numerous occasions has her utter statements on women in general that are obvious and tired clichés. An example is when she discusses her fifth husband whom she thinks she might have loved the most even though he physically abused her. Her following descriptions on how women always want what they cannot have and vice versa do reinforce her (as other women) as a stereotype:
We wommen han, if that I shal nat lie, In this matter a quainte fantasye: Waite what thing we may nat lightly have, Thereafter wol we crye al day and crave; Forbede us thing, and that desiren we; Preesse on us faste, and thane wol we flee. (Chaucer 228)
Another example is when she talks about the way in which she manipulated her husbands using her “feminine” traits such as lying, faking tears, and fabricating false accusations, with great success: “Deceit, weeping, spinning God hath yive To wommen kindely whil they may live” (Chaucer 225).
The Husbands and Wife in View of Gender Roles
As was mentioned in the introduction, the battle between the sexes has a long and seemingly never-ending history. Obviously, this is more than true in context of the Wife who has been married five times and conducted herself in a way that is in many regards very unlike her female gender role would suggest she should. In the very beginning of her Prologue, she starts explaining her viewpoint on marriage and is obviously aware of the social stigma of having married so many times. Her apologia on the matter is long and filled with Biblical quotes to support her case. She sees it as entirely unfair that she should be judged for having had so many husbands since no lesser people than Abraham and Jacob had more than two wives. She also feels that the notion of celibacy is highly over-rated and only meant for the few who want to lead a “perfect” life, herself thankfully not belonging to that group. It soon becomes blatantly clear that she is by no means a wife that plays the typical gender role of a female. In fact, she breaks the traditional, patriarchal mould several times in regards to gender roles. There are of course many references to her “un-ladylike” qualities as being lusty and very sexually minded. She does not have any problems with openly discussing genitals and the pleasure derived from the use of those, even if her audience is filled with males. She is quite opinionated on matters of love, sex, and marriage, and sees it of the utmost importance that she takes advantage of the bonuses of marriage as long as she can. It is perhaps here that we come to the main thrust of her argument, as is also revealed in her Tale: that being that what women really want is to dominate men; a notion that in itself is a contradiction of the traditional gender roles. The Wife most certainly dominates her husbands and seems to be quite proud of it, as she gives her advice freely to those who listen. What is remarkable about her is her apparent awareness of the injustice that women had to suffer in marriage and how she uses this fact as a tool of correction on her poor husbands. Her main mission as a wife is to reverse the traditional gender roles and this she does by blaming her husbands individually for all the cruelties husbands all over have committed towards their wives. She recites an entire list of male chauvinist views on wives and puts it forward in such a way, that her husbands must succumb to her will, distraught with guilt, even if they are not guilty of but a fraction of her accusations: “Whoso that first to mille comth first grint. I plained first; so was oure were stint. They were ful glade to excusen hem ful blive Of things of which they nevere agilte her live” (Chaucer 225).
She furthermore states that she told one of her husbands that he was not going to get away with controlling both her body and property; a statement that in itself can be seen as an attack on patriarchal views of the time and age. Her insistence on women wanting to be free: “We love no man that taketh keep or charge Wher that we goon: we wol been at oure large” (Chaucer 224) is another very feminist viewpoint she expresses and not in accordance to the rules of gender roles which required male domination.
It is very clear that the Wife dominates her husbands easily. Even the fifth one, the Oxford scholar whose favourite pastime it seems to have been to lecture her on the evils of women, using a cherished book as evidence, has in the end to succumb to her domination, giving her full control over money and property they share. As has been mentioned, her Tale is but a reinforcement of the theme of the Prologue: that women’s only real wish is to dominate men and that if men only would submit, life would be better for all.
The Evil Woman
The notion of the evil and the beautiful as a lethal combination has influenced Western patriarchal society for centuries and is rooted in the fact that even in societies where women have been literally robbed of every human right, both by the law and moral ethics, men still have to face the fact that without women, they can not exist. For the human race to continue to survive the relationship between men and women has to continue and nature has provided women with desirability that attracts men. In that desirability lies the sexual power that women hold over men and has unfortunately sometimes been their doom.
In regards to the Wife of Bath, she certainly does not at first glance seem to be evil. Her Prologue likely presents no more evilness to the modern reader than any other piece of literature or art that displays sexually active and independent thinking women in leading roles. But considering the time and age Chaucer lived in, one can only assume that the Wife’s confessions would have been seen as scandalous to say the least to many people who considered themselves of high moral standards. The Wife quite shamelessly reveals her enthusiasm for sex and romantic affairs, although she does so within the framework of marriage. It is no wonder that many critics have seen her as a proto-feminist. Her liberal ideas of sexuality are directly against every image that traditional Christian ideology has created of the virtuous and ideal woman. The Wife is far from being obedient, submissive, or silent. As a matter of fact, she is eerily close to what was by many considered an evil woman.
Western history of female evil goes a long way back, as the Biblical story of the independent Lilith demonstrates. Her fate[1] shows the very basis of patriarchal society’s view of how the ideal woman must be: obedient and submissive; everything else is unacceptable. Women have always had to bend to the will of the masculine element and patriarchal societies have used certain methods to ensure that the female force is kept under control. For one, the rules of marriage were such that women were literally seen as a piece of property rather than people and for centuries it was seen as perfectly normal for women to be subjected to domestic violence and even marital rape.
Some have seen the witch-craze that is such a famously cruel part of our Western history as a rather genderized form of persecutions, since so many of its victims were female.[2] This hunting of witches lasted for three centuries, from around the 14th century and well into the 17th century, although there are variations to be found between countries. Interestingly, outside of a few peripheral countries such as Iceland, it is estimated that around three quarters of the accused and executed in Europe were women. Steven Katz,[3] in his book The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol.1, even calls it a case of “genderized mass murder” (Katz 503). There is no wonder that women easily became targets in the witch-hunts when even the theological view of them was extremely negative. They were the perfect scapegoats for all of society’s defects and problems. In 1485-1486, the Catholic inquisition authorities published the Malleus maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, in which the evil of woman is clearly specified and had to have evoked extreme hatred towards women by those who read it and took it seriously. The piece inarguably claims that there is no evil like “the wickedness of women”. Katz quotes this book where it goes into the details of the very physical aspect of women, whose bodies both tempt men and give magical life:
What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan – they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation. (Katz 438-439)
Obviously, the Malleus maleficarum is published almost a century after Chaucer’s death, but it does nevertheless demonstrate a horribly negative view of women that was perhaps not much better in Chaucer’s time. Therefore, the Wife is in the religious and moral context of the times, not simply a proto-feminist, but an abomination of every virtue the ideal woman should have and stand for. Her blatant descriptions of lust and desire, as well as her insistence on dominating every aspect of her husbands’ lives, must have been shocking and appalling for many a reader. An example of this is when she openly confesses to lying about dreaming of her husband the entire night and how she manipulates him into believing her: “And eek I saide I mette of him al night: He wolde han slain me as I lay upright, And al my bed was ful of verray blood…” (Chaucer 229).
Although she is likeable because of her humour and openness, it cannot be denied that the Wife is rather cruel as she shows no remorse in having blatantly, manipulated, dominated, and told lies to her husbands at her every convenience. So likable or not, she can hardly be seen as a particularly kind person and although modern views of her would unlikely be as harsh as those of old might have been, there is no denying that she is at least rather immoral if not slightly evil. The question is whether she would be judged in the same way had she been a man? The important issue here is that she is a woman, and is according to her own descriptions, not unattractive at all. The notion of feminine beauty and evil going together is directly related to views such as are displayed in the Malleus maleficarum on how the sexuality of women, the way they can naturally represent a temptation to men (even if they are not deliberately trying to do so), is proof of their inherent evilness. If seen from that point of view, the Wife, who is certainly not hiding the fact that she takes advantage of her sexual attractiveness to get her own way, can be seen as super-evil. But should modern readers look at this as evidence of her being a proto-feminist or simply another example of a stereotypical display of a woman? In this case there seems to be a rather thin line that separates the two.
Conclusion
If turning back to the original question as to whether the “Wife of Bath” is a female stereotype or a proto-feminist, there seem to be evidence of both. She is on various occasions presented as a very negatively stereotypical woman, being a nag, a gossiper, sexually manipulative and so on. As Treharne accurately points out, the Wife’s speech furthermore undermines her authoritative tones as a narrator and renders her as an active participant in her own representation of a female stereotype, rooting her even deeper in a traditional female gender role from at least a linguistic viewpoint. But even if there is truth in what Treharne says about the Wife somewhat undermining her own voice, I cannot agree that the “feminine” speech Chaucer renders her is so strong as to destroy completely the actual contents of her Prologue and Tale. No matter if she is a stereotypical female storyteller, the actions she takes in her life regarding men and marriage, and her general attitudes towards gender roles, are highly feminist and even so exaggerated that some might consider her not only a proto-feminist but also a female chauvinist. She does not seem to be very preoccupied with women having equal rights to men but more so that women simply should dominate men as a general rule and then all would be right with the world. Whether she is a stereotype or a proto-feminist therefore greatly depends on how one chooses to interpret her character. The attitude of the reader makes all the difference in the interpretative process. A feminist reader might see the Wife as a proto-feminist; a dominating Diva that does not take orders from any man but quite the opposite and therefore worthy of admiration. A chauvinist reader might see her as the ultimate evidence of how wicked and vile women are, and how dangerous they can become if not kept under strict masculine control. Ultimately, Chaucer alone knows what his real intentions were with this character but I think that most could agree that no matter how the Wife of Bath is interpreted from a genderized point of view, her humour and wit certainly render her Prologue and Tale with a very entertaining quality.
Bibliography
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “From The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and
Tale”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition, The
Major Authors. M.H. Abrams, ed. New York and London, W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc, 2001. 173-276.
Jones, Adam. Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today. Available online 15 Apr. 2005. http://www.gendercide. org/case_witchhunts.html
Muscatine, Charles. “The Wife of Bath and Gautier’s La Veuve”. Medieval
Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays By Charles Muscatine. Ed. Charles
Muscatine. Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 1999. 171-175. Treharne, Elaine. “The Stereotype Confirmed? Chaucer’s Wife of Bath”. Writing
Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle
English Texts. Ed. Elaine Treharne. Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2002. 93-
115.
[1] Lilith was Adam’s first wife, cast out of Paradise and replaced by a more submissive Eve.
[2] The following overview is mostly based upon Adam Jones’s article “Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today”. Available online April 15th 2005 at http://www.gendercide. org/case_witchhunts.html
[3] The information on Steven Katz is taken from the web page: http://www.gendercide.org/case_witchhunts.html
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