Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath
Confronting Anti-feminist Stereotypes Through Digressions
Feb 25, 2009
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" versus "The Tale of Florent"
Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is one of the most memorable of the stories in The Canterbury Tales. What makes this tale stand out is the narrator’s many digressions, without which her tale would be little more than the dry bones of a strange Arthurian romance. Her tale’s storyline is much like that of John Gower’s “The Tale of Florent,” a story that centers around a knight’s discovery of women’s ultimate desire.
Despite their similar plots, however, the two tales are vastly different. One of the most significant ways Chaucer adapts Gower’s tale is by allowing the Wife of Bath to develop into a well-defined and unique narrator. Her personality and convictions shine most strongly in her digressions, none of which echo passages from “The Tale of Florent.” By allowing the Wife of Bath to digress into the untrue story of Ovid’s King Midas, Chaucer adapts Gower’s story to create a narrator who unabashedly confronts anti-feminist stereotypes.
"The Tale of Florent" : An Underdeveloped Tale
Terse and to-the-point, Gower’s “The Tale of Florent” is a tale-within-a-tale of a young knight’s quest to save his own life. In this story, the young knight, Florent, must embark upon a life-saving expedition to discover what women most strongly desire. After keeping his oath to marry the loathsome lady who supplies the answer to this question, Florent is invited to choose whether he would have her become beautiful during the day or night. Unable to decide, he offers his bride sovereignty and leaves the decision to her. As a result, the spell cast upon her by her evil stepmother is broken, and Florent’s wife remains his beautiful, young beloved forever. Very little character development is seen in this tale, which is presented in a matter-of-fact, donnish manner, and readers find it difficult to relate to the tale’s narrator.
The Fiesty Personality of Chaucer's Wife of Bath
Neither uninteresting nor hesitant to reveal her inner life, the narrator of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” has little in common with Genius, who narrates "The Tale of Florent." Although the plot of her is quite similar to that of “The Tale of Florent,” many aspects of her work are markedly different. As in Gower’s tale, Alison of Bath’s story centers around a young knight’s discovery that women most desire sovereignty over their husbands. Her tale’s knight, just like Florent, must marry a wretched old woman who transforms into a beautiful maiden after he has granted her mastery over him.
Though her storyline parallels greatly with that of Gower’s work, Alison enlivens her tale with animated, saucy, and unique character traits. Her strong beliefs and ideas about life emerge as her story unfolds, and nowhere do they appear more conspicuously than in her discursion about Ovid’s King Midas. Although upon an initial reading this digression seems to be little more than an old widow’s rambling, a closer examination of the passage and Alison’s motives in telling it prove that the story-within-a-story is clearly a response to anti-feminist opinions.
In the middle of her tale, Alison launches into the story of Midas and his wife. She tells her audience that Midas, having grown the ears of a donkey, was ashamed and did his best to hide them from others. His wife, however, knew his secret, and because no woman can keep a secret, Alison says, Midas’s wife flees to a river to confess the secret. This story’s conclusion, however, is kept from Alison’s audience; she instructs them that the story’s outcome can be discovered only when they read Ovid for themselves.
The conclusion of the Midas story is withheld not only from the pilgrims but from Chaucer’s readers as well. They, like the Wife’s audience, must explore Ovid’s Metamorphoses if they hope to learn the story’s outcome.
The Shrewdness of the Wife of Bath
Should they indeed read Ovid’s version, they would discover that the Alison’s account of the Midas tale is untrue. In Ovid’s work, Midas’ barber, not his wife, is the sole person who knows of Midas’ deformity; it is he who reveals the secret to a bunch of reeds. When the reeds that grew out of this secret-infested earth began to sing forth Midas’ secret, no one is to blame but the barber.
No mention of a barber is made in Alison’s account of this story. She chooses instead to paint the story’s only female as the blameworthy character. Chaucer’s allowing Alison to make this mistake is not to depict her as ignorant or unlearned. Instead, her erroneous story demonstrates her shrewdness and awareness about anti-feminist stereotypes in literature. By changing the wrong-doer to a female and then inviting the pilgrims to peruse Metamorphoses for themselves, Alison demonstrates her recognition that a character’s goodness or wickedness depends solely on the teller of the tale.
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