Chaucer and Women

The tale of The Wife of Bath is complex. A story of trying to figure out what women want is going to be a story that will end with a unsatisfying end. The part of the story that i want to focus on is the end. The Knight and his wife have my full attention. the wife just breaks the situation down to him and tells him basically that he doesn't live up to what he is suppose to be. he keeps screaming how she is ugly and all he wants is a beautiful wife. now he can have a beautiful wife but that wife would never do what his current wife is doing. She spoke her peace and gave her husband a reality check. You're suppose to be a Knight, the best of the best and all you worried about is the way your wife looks.  with the language i read it as, if you want to leave then leave i will be fine. i didn't get the sense of her begging him to stay.  I would think that a wife in this time would have took the verbal abuse and tried to please him in any way. I love this tale because it reminds me of the women in my life. To me Chaucer is not criticizing the women in the time period but how others see women. All they want is freedom and have fun. i slightly agree with this because all they do is clean, work in the house and tend to their husbands and children. I am glad he put this into the story, because he focuses on how men think and he put the female in a positive light.

Control vs. Empowerment

Okay, so during the Wife of Bath's Tale, I was curious as to whether the storyline would turn into a story of empowerment or a story of control. I'm still on the fence as to whether the story is empowering, but I know now that it's a story of control. The Wife of Bath paints this tale almost like an expose on what women want. The knight, who we can all agree is a pretty crappy human being, rapes a woman and is sentenced to death, and has his life put in the hands of this old, unattractive woman. This is definitely an interesting shift in power since the story begins with the knight raping someone because he was "so overcome with his sense of lust." The knight is in the old woman's debt after she reveals that what women want is control. At this point in the story, I was enticed by this seemingly universal truth that what women want most is to control their spouses, and wondered how that would translate to the knight being in debt to the old woman. Obviously, at this point in the story,  I dislike the knight and am alright with the old woman. She helped save the knight's life, but she did it as a power move. She's cunning, smart, and opportunistic, but I was curious as to where that would lead.
I was pretty disappointed with the ending, from the standpoint I approached it. While it (sort of) reinforced the universal truth and made the knight a slave to an old woman for a couple hours, the knight gets off the hook completely.

 Granted, he gets what he wants by allowing the old woman to make her own decision, but he acts from a position of apathy rather than a position of relinquishing power. He has two options left, and the ultimatum the woman gives him is hell either way (for him). While the woman (at this point, his wife) gets to choose what to do, there doesn't seem to be a lot of empowerment going on. The message this story sends is "give your wife what she wants and your marriage will be happy," which sounds alright for the beginning of the tale, but fails to pull through the end retaining the same meaning. Perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, but I think the Wife of Bath's Tale isn't as empowering as it seems.

Ah, "love".

So when reading this tale about the Knight who utterly *ucked up and was sentenced to death before a random act of pity upon his life kept him alive and inevitably got him a beautiful wife and a happy life, I realized that I cannot even accidentally say the incorrect answer in my math class without the judgment from everyone around me with the expectation to leave the room immediately in shame and disgrace to my entire family's blood line. BUT THIS GUY, gets it all after raping some random girl just because he was horny. But hey that's none of my business.

            Now that I have that rant out of the way, what I truly do not understand is how this tale can possibly end with the ending that because she was beautiful, that all of a sudden it is possible to live a long, blissful life in love with someone that you had to marry because all they did was do you a favor. Granted, that favor saved the Knight's life, but that is besides the point. Also, not to mention that he is setting himself up for a life of bossy wifedom given that he knows the answer to the question; women want to control their husbands!

We know she will be loyal and beautiful and whatever, but she is still some random woman with magic powers, how does this always seem to work out with love in literature?

"I don't wanna", "But I saved your life!"

                I'm not quite sure what I am trying to get through in this post other than my own complaints about how the "punishment" never fits the crime. As far as this tale goes in my own eyes there was nothing really to learn from it other than the other tales we have read, such as Beowulf. We learned much about consequences and other types of self meaning because what Beowulf did always had reasoning and a deeper purpose in what the reader was supposed to evaluate in their own terms. I have had several months since the last time I read this tale under Dr. MB's instruction, and I can now understand that this tale in my eyes had nothing for us to take from as far as a life lesson though, other than for a man it would simply be easier to let the woman take complete control of your life, because then they will love you. Why don't we just hand over the man-card now?? The Knight did.

What a Girl Wants

Okay, so I have been really scared of writing these blog posts because everybody gets to see them and what if I make a mistake or write something dumb, but I am trying to become more comfortable with it.

So with that said, this is what I thought of the Wife of Bath’s Tale. I don’t think that in life, most women, there may be some who do, want to have dominance over anyone. I took dominance to mean complete control over something or someone. When thinking about this, I narrowed in on how relationships have changed over time and why sovereignty might have been more important back then.

Nowadays, I don’t think that what women want most is sovereignty in their relationship. I think that is because the dynamic of relationships have changed. An example of how relationships have changed is shown in the television show I Love Lucy, where Ricky Ricardo is still the dominant partner; he is the head of the household and he makes all of the decisions. Lucy has to ask him for permission to do and buy things. Back when this poem was written, women were given to their husbands along with all of their money and wealth. It was as if they were property and had to listen and serve their husbands until that happy day when their husband died. Now, I see relationships as more of an equal partnership, where everyone comes with what they have and what they have is shared in the relationship. I have a friend whose mother is a stay at home mom and her father works for the government. They share all of the household responsibilities. By household responsibilities, I don’t just mean the cooking and cleaning, I also mean the finances and taking care and maintaining the family.  They split the effort because they have determined that they are both equals and want to share the work that goes into having a family. Back in the times of the Canterbury Tales, women needed sovereignty from their husbands because it was the only way that they could get a say in the relationship.

I also don’t think that being widowed is seen as a good thing or a thing to look forward to anymore. I could be wrong, but I don’t know of anybody who is waiting for the day that their husband will die. I know that back then, women wanted their husbands to die so that they could acquire all of the money and property and have sovereignty.

A universal question....

What do women want? I don’t think there has ever been more of a loaded question. There could easily be a list of complied answers, based off of what women feel are the most important. I feel as though the Wife of Bath is a woman who feels she needs certain things from her multiple husbands. She was a woman that wasn’t apprehensive about what she wanted.

Since I previously mentioned a list, I wanted to compile one of my own, based off of what I believe women today might want.

Respect: Being shown through actions is on of the most effective ways to show women respect. Women don’t need to be agreed with all the time, a differing is welcomed, but noting our opinions as some valuable contributions, can speak volumes. I don’t think the Wife of Bath gained a lot of respect from her husbands.

Communication: This may be another cliché thing to have on a list, but it’s one of the most important. Today, we have many ways to communicate with one another. Talking to each other, face to face without any distractions might actually be hard for those of use who lead busy lives. Without this crucial aspect, how can a relationship really exist? This is one aspect that I feel WoB didn’t struggle with too much.

Consistency: This will last on the list. Not because it isn’t important, but it was relevant with the WoB as it is today. Although constant doesn’t have to be boring and repetitive. It means women are aware that you will give us the support we need, emotionally and usually finically. WoB was definitely consistent in one aspect, and that was that she loves to be married. In her case, it was to have someone to sleep with. But, I digress.

Is there a universal answer to the question, What do women want? In my opinion, there is answer is no. That being said, I think women can agree upon a few key expectations. We can be quite confusing, especially when we have to make major life decisions. Marrying someone, for example.

Prologue vs. Tale

Reading the Wife of Bath's Prologue was a rather arduous task. I was not expecting it to be so long! I opened up the book thinking "Oh, it is a prologue, 3-4 pages max, no big deal". Then I actually started reading. By the fifth page I was like "huh, a little longer than expected, but hopefully not too much longer". Then, by the eighth page, I was flipping through the book to figure out when exactly the actual tale began. About twenty pages later, I found the headline indicating that the prologue was finished and the tale was starting. I was kind of like:

It was not that the prologue was bad. On the contrary, I actually really enjoyed reading it, but reading Middle English can be incredibly time consuming and it took awhile. Naturally, when it came time to read the actual tale, I was expecting something way longer than the prologue. I was actually quite confused when I discovered that it was much shorter. Cue another cute cat meme:

I do not know, I guess it is because I am used to the prologue being a lot shorter than the actual story, but Chaucer kind of threw me for a loop there. Looking back on it now, I am actually quite glad that he did it. I really enjoy the Wife of Bath. I think she is a very unique character and has a lot of interesting things to say. By listening to her prologue, which was completely about her life, I feel like I got to know her a lot better. I really wish my high school let us read her tale. I always knew, even then, that I liked her, but I enjoy her even more now after hearing more about her life.

I know there is some debate over Chaucer's opinion of the Wife of Bath. I think, given that he dedicated so much time to telling her story, that he almost would of had to. I do not really write creatively, but when I had to for school I could never write about a character I did not like. Chaucer spent so much time making sure the audience really knows this character. Granted, it could have been because he enjoyed poking fun at her, but why put so much effort into a character that people could not learn anything from? Furthermore, given that he made her prologue (the portion that was about her life) so much longer than her tale, I think it puts a lot more emphasis on her personal story. I think Chaucer really wanted people to pay attention to her personal story. While the tale was nice, I really did enjoy the prologue so much more. Given how much shorter it is, the tale seems almost like a side note, not the actually point. I don't know, this is just my opinion.