The
Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale is definitely not what I expected as the usual
feminine perspective, although, who is to say there was not a feminist ideology
at the time, just not documented? Today the phrase “pics or it didn’t happen”
is used to dare us to overshare personal experiences. I am used to living in a
world where you are defined by what you document – on the internet especially-
and how other perceive your evidence is how they perceive you. So perhaps The
Wife of Bath’s Tale is not as shocking as it seemed to me at first. It would be
cool if modern day technology took a break and we all went old school and we
bonded in person with the people near us. (Ok, I am done with ranting on story
telling.)
Now to answer another question: is there really a
universal thing that all women want? Yes… or they should… all women- every
person- deserves respect (whether they know they deserve it or not.) In the
Wife’s story, the woman wants respect to the point that even the guy allowing
her to have even just one moment of autonomy is so crucial that she is willing
to live the rest of her life as a loyal and obedient wife to this repenting rapist.
On one hand, I like that this guy is sentenced to go through the searching
process to learn “the err of his ways” before just executed, and it is pretty
rad that the knight is convicted by women in powerful positions for rape! (It seems
like a pretty advanced society and judicial system compared to modern day
assaults and rapes that go on without punishment. Just saying.)
The
Wife’s protagonist makes a good point about respecting women… but is this
really his punishment? To marry a beautiful and good woman? Somehow, I doubt
that he has had much internal growth between when he first met her to when they
get married. But that is beside the point.
The Wife is definitely reflecting her own perceptions onto
the protagonist of her story. Both her and her protagonist share a moment of
sovereignty over their husbands around the time when the prospect of death is
eminent. (Also, I am 99% sure that marrying an ugly woman does not guarantees
that she will be faithful to you!) There are so many parts of this story to
talk about, and I have ranted enough, so I’ll just end it here. J
I like the rant about storytelling. Maybe the prologue is the Wife of Bath's version of a Facebook relationship history. I don't think there is one universal thing all women want, which is one of my major problems with this story. Respecting women is great and all but some one want adventure while others want children while others want to be fabulously wealthy. Not every woman wants the same thing. And the story kind of missed the boat on that. Although I do agree she is reflecting on her own life in this story.
ReplyDeleteYou hit it right on. We do "[live] in a world where you are defined by what you document." While documentation is important and obviously a big deal today, what's more important is the significance of the actual thing being documented (the strive for female sovereignty.) We want to believe that there's no way this woman can be satisfied with that single moment of on the surface respect the knight shows, but taking into context Chaucer's era, it was probably a big deal considering now we know the meaning of how they used "sovereignty." I think yes, all women want mutual respect and sovereignty in the way Chaucer uses it, but of course there will always be infinite variations of what that means for each woman. We all know how these conversations with our girlfriends go... "Yeah but it's not even that he did that... it's the fact that in doing so, he..." and it never ends. So yes, some generalities are made in this tale, but I believe you're right in that it is a strive for feminism. And the fact that this queen sent out the knight on this journey, and that she had the final say in his fate, is in fact a demonstration of the success of that effort.
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