A liberated woman

Richard West

The Women's Movement has not yet, as far as I know, studied the Tale of the Wife of Bath, by Geoffrey Chaucer, which is a pity, for it has much to say about women in general, and in particular that subject of rape that so engrosses feminists in the United States and therefore in England; not a day passes without the installation of some new rape centre or the production of new sociological evidence of the nastiness of men. Even in France, as Jeffrey Bernard remarked last week, a man has been sentenced to eight years in prison for raping his own wife.

The Tale of the Wife of Bath starts off with a rape; but the actual tale is preceded by a Prologue, or a preamble, in which the good Woman tells the Canterbury Pilgrims about her life and, in particular, about her five husbands. Her language is racy and frank; so much so that even a 1964 edition has cut several lines on the grounds of obscenity. Our ancestors were not so prudish, and I shall therefore quote from the slightly modernised text of the Everyman Canterbury Tales, first issued in 1908. The 'translation' prepared for Penguin by Nevill Coghill seems to me too bland. The Wife of Bath has taken to heart the Words of St Paul that 'Bet is to be weddid than to brynne'. Christ, who was perfect, told us to give all we had to the poor but, and here is the point:

He spak to (t)hem that wolde live parfytly, But, lordyngs, by your leve, that am not I; wol bystowe the flour of mine age In the actes and in the fruytes of marriage.

Since the Wife of Bath says nothing about her children, if any, we hear much more of the acts than of the fruits of marriage; indeed these acts take up most of the tale.

• Of her husbands, three were good and two were bad; and two were good, rich and old, whom she bowed to her will by shrewishness and by forcing them to their marital duty:

As help me God, I laugh when that I thinke,

How piteously at night I made (t)he1n swinke. By a mixture of scolding and loving, of chiding and 'speaking fair', the Wife of Bath turned these elderly men into cowed creatures, eager to win her favour by bringing her lgaye things fro the faire'. She herself found no sensual pleasure but used her body to her material good:

As by continual murmur or chidying, Namly on bedde, hadden they mischaunce, Ther wolde I chide and do hem no pleasaunce; I wold no longer in the bed abyde, If that I felt his arm over my syde, Til he hadde maad his ransoun unto me, Than would I suffre him doon his nicete.

Her fourth and penultimate husband was a reveller; that is to say he kept a paramour, and the Wife of Bath looked back to the marriage with jealous anger, and also regret for bodily pleasure lost. She had been young and lusty, and even today she felt the revival of passion, especially when drink had inflamed her:

And after wyn, on Venus most 1 thinke; For al-so siker as cold engendrith hayl.

A likorous mouth most have a licorous tail. (The Penguin Chaucer misses the pun between `likorous' and licorous', or liquorous' and 'lecherous'. It uses 'lecherous' for both.) Her fourth husband died when the Wife of Bath returned from one of her pilgrim ages to the Holy Land; (people travelled far in the 14th century.) Even during the funeral, she ogled the Oxford graduate Jankin, or Johnny, who soon would become her fifth: As help me God, whan that 1 saugh him go After the beere, me thought he had a paire Of legges and of feet so clene and faire, That all my heart I yaf unto his hold. He was, I trowe, twenty winter old, And I was fourty,if I schal say the sothe, But yet 1 always had a coltis tothe.

She wedded Jankyn and gave him her land and rent, and lived to repent it when he beat her:

By God, he smot me oones with his fist, For I rent oones out of his book a let,

That of that strok myn eere wax all deef. There was no hostel then for a battered wife of Bath; and indeed she admits that the pain was dispelled by the pleasure her fifth husband gave her: But in our bed he was so freisch and gay. And therwithal so wet he could me glose, When that he would have my bele chose, That, though he hadde me bete on every boon, He couthe wynne my love right anoon.

Her fifth husband, this Oxford clerk, delighted in reading a scurrilous book on the infamy of the female sex through the ages: of Eve, Venus, Delilah, Exantipa (the wife of Socrates,— she 'caste pisse upon his heed:), Clytemnestra and Lucia.

This fifth husband spoke ill of women: He sayd a womman cast hir schame away, When sche cast off hir smok; and furthermo, A fair womman, but sche be chast also. Is like a gold ring in a sow's nose.

It was here that the Wife of Bath tore three leaves from her husband's book and was given the punch on the ear that rendered her deaf—and garrulous in the way of some deaf people.

Chaucer foresaw and tried to forestall the objection that all these rude things about women were written by men. The Wife of Bath is allowed to say:

By God, if women hadde written stories As clerkes have withinne her oratories, They wold have write of men more wickidnes,

Than all the mark of Adam may redres. And when at last she gets ready to tell her story (`This is a long preambel of a tale', the Friar says), the Wife of Bath chooses to tell of a knight in King Arthur's time,

That on a day came rydyng fro the river; And happed, al alone as she was born, He saw a mayde walking him byforn, Of which mayden anon, with foule dede, By verray fors bireft hir maydenhed.

And here one must say that rape was a crime of which Chaucer had knowledge. In May 1380, he was given a formal release from all charges of rape (Latin raptus) which had been brought against him by one Cecilia Chaumpaigne. Many admirers of Chaucer, like G.K. Chesterton for example, have tried to suggest that the 'rape' may have meant only abduction, perhaps on behalf of a relative, and perhaps in the course of a legal dispute over dowry. However, a modern opinion by P.R. Watts in the Law Quarterly Review (October 1947) inclines to the view that Chaucer's offence was indeed rape, violent us concubitus, with which Chaucer was charged by Cecilia; we do not know if the charge was true, however.

The maiden in the Wife of Bath's Tale did not withdraw the charge against her seducer. The knight would have lost his head but for the intercession of the Queen. She gave him a year's grace from the block, provided he found the answer to her question: I graunte thy lif, if thou canst telle me, What thing is it that women most desiren . . . Understandably, this was a question to which the knight heard many and diverse answers. At last, when the year was nearly up, and the knight was heading home to his execution, he met an old hag whom we, the readers, immediately recognise as a witch. She will answer the Queen's question provided the knight swears to fulfil her wish. They return to the palace where the knight proclaims to the Queen and her ladies-in-waiting: Women desiren tip have soverayntee As wel over their housband as over their love, And for to be in maystry him above.

All the ladies agree that the knight has found the right answer. His life is saved but, as we the readers have guessed, the old crone now claims him as husband and partner in bed. Either he can accept her, old and foul, till the day of her death, or wed a young and beautiful but unfaithful girl. The knight groans and accepts her wishes, whereupon the old woman becomes a beautiful girl. The Wife of Bath ends: Jhesu crist us sende Housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe on bedde, And grace to overcome them that we wedde. And eke I pray to Jhesus shorten their lyves, That wil nought be governed after their wyves.