Upon an amblere esily she sat,
Ywympled wel, and on hir heed an hat
As brood as is a bokeler or a targe;
A foot-mantel aboute hir hipes large,
And on hir feet a paire of spores sharpe.
(For a full view of the page on which this portrait appears in the Ellesmere Manuscript click here)
The Wife of Bath's Prologue is in the genre of
what one might call the "apologia," an explanation (and defense) of
one's occupation and life -- in her case, marriage (weaving being a
minor part of her life, at least insofar as it is presented here).
Like the Pardoner and the Canon's Yeoman (to whose prologues this
should be compared), Alisoun explains the tricks of her trade and
defends a life style that might be shocking if it were not presented
with such energy and (in her case, good humor). To some extent, the prologue belongs in the
tradition of the "old bawd," best known in English literature in the
character of Juliet's nurse in Romeo and
Juliet. Alisoun is by no means an old
bawd, but her character owes something to that tradition, so rich in
advice for would-be wicked wives, which began with Ovid's Dipsas, the
old bawd in his Amores
The Bawd Dipsas, Amores (Bk. I, viii).
The best known descendent of Ovid's Dipsas is La
Vielle ("the Duenna"), the old bawd in The
Romance of the Rose (not in the part
translated into Middle English; see the notes to the Wife of Bath's
Prologue in The Riverside
Chaucer for details of "borrowings"). The
Duenna's long speech should be read in its entirety, to catch the
spirit of her character, which differs in a variety of ways from that
of the Wife of Bath: Most of the anti-feminist material in the Wife of
Bath's Prologue comes from Jankyn's "Book of Wicked Wives," which he
thinks is hilariously funny and which infuriates her. The longest
entry in Jankyn's Book is from St. Jerome's Treatise
Adversus Joviniamum, "Against
Jovinianus", a vitriolic attack on one Jovinianus, of whom nothing is
known beyond what Jerome tells us in his book. Jovinianus maintained, among other doctrines that
Jerome found damnable, that a virgin is no better than a wife in the
sight of God and that fasting is no better than a thankful partaking
of nourishment (and hence earned himself a later reputation as a
glutton and devotee of pleasure -- see Summoner's Tale, line
1929). It was Jerome's attack on marriage and the
anti-matrimonial attack in Theophrastus' Golden Book of Marriage, which
Jerome quotes, that most incensed the Wife of Bath; see the following
selections from Against
Jovinianus: Chastity Among
Pagan Women These texts and others (see the notes in
The Riverside Chaucer)
show some of the traditions on which Chaucer drew to
create the Wife of Bath, but none of them account for the zest,
merriment, and complexity of one of Chaucer's most fascinating
characters.
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale have elicited much in the
way of critical commentary. The recommended text, The Wyf of Bath,
ed. Peter G. Biedler, provides a convenient introduction to several modern
approaches to this fascinating character. See also
(Students reading this text for the first time may find an
interlinear translation helpful).
[Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, has been
married five times and is ready for another husband: Christ never
specified how many times a woman should marry. Virginity is fine but
wives are not condemned; the Apostle said that my husband would be my
debtor, and I have power over his body.
Three of my husbands were good and two bad. The
first three were old and rich and I picked them clean. One of my old
husbands, emboldened with drink, would come home and preach against
women; but I got the better of him.
My fourth husband was young and he had a
mistress. I pretended to be unfaithful and made him burn in his own
grease. I already had my eye on young Jankin, pall-bearer for my
fourth, and he became my fifth and favorite husband. He beat me. Once
when he was reading aloud from his Book of Wicked Wives, I tore a
page from his book, and he knocked me down (so hard I am still deaf
from it). I pretended to be dying, and when he leaned over to ask
forgiveness, I knocked him into the fireplace. We made up, and he
gave me full sovereignty in marriage; thereafter I was kind and
faithful, and we lived in bliss.]
Theophrastus' "Golden
Book of Marriage"
Why Men Should Not
Marry
Lee Patterson,
"For the Wyves love of Bathe": Feminine Rhetoric and Poetic
Resolution in the Roman de la Rose and the Canterbury
Tales,"
Speculum, Vol. 58, No. 3. (Jul., 1983),
pp. 656-695 (available on JSTOR for those who have access to it,
usually by means of a library subscription).
For a bibliography of critical and scholarly works on the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale (and the "marriage group") click here.
Back to Geoffrey Chaucer Page | (Or use your browser's back button to return to the previous page.)