Anna Fitzgerald
Highly Recommended Department of English Undergraduate Awards (3rd Year)
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, female insurgency is inhibited by two patriarchal social structures: the construct of virginity and the marital contract. In the case of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, this limitation of subjectivity emerges as an enigmatic combination of proto-feminist traits contained by layers of internalised misogyny and sexist rhetoric. If juxtaposed with Griselda from The Clerk’s Tale and Virginia of The Physician’s Tale, two emblems of traditional feminine purity whose conformity to patriarchal doctrine is their literal undoing, it may seem unlikely that female agency can fully survive, or thrive, within the framework of medieval literature. Alisoun of The Miller’s Tale and May of The Merchant’s Tale contradict this pessimistic viewpoint, suggesting that women’s sexual autonomy is predicated on the expression of subversive, unbridled femininity. This disregard for convention in favour of the depiction of female pleasure may be attributed to the literary stylings of ‘milieu’ comedy. Meanwhile, The Reeve’s Tale and The Knights Tale operate as a dismemberment and fetishisation of the feminine bodily form respectively. However, although it is perhaps inadvisable to wholly investigate the autonomy of fictional medieval women according to modern feminist talking points, we should not discount the autonomous potential of Chaucer’s female characters, whilst recognising and deconstructing the social obstacles prohibiting their access to a state of absolute sovereign power.
The Wife interrogates her society’s obsession with female virginity, reminding us of medieval society’s highest authority, God, “whan he speketh of maydenhede, He seyde that precept therof hadde he noon” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 64-65), insisting that it is men that “conseille a womman to been oon, But conseillyng is no comandement” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 66-7). This textual distinction between Man and God is significant within the context of a culture that demands women serve their husbands as though they represent an almighty power in the domestic sphere yet demonises the “loore/ Of boldness’ attributed to women “woxen [into] a wyf” (The Physician’s Tale, 71). In this vein, we must consider the true value of female virginity in the Middle Ages, and its complex relationship with the concept of chastity. As I will discuss throughout this paper, the majority of male Chaucerian characters lust for women who are in possession of a “body chast”, as they prescribe to the philosophy that femininity “floured in virginitee” (The Physician’s Tale, 43-4). Some critics argue that to encompass chastity in its medieval form “is to transcend the corporeal, or in some profound sense to be rid of consciousness itself” (Bloch, 120), suggesting that a fully developed mind and body is unequipped to realize this goal. Therefore, it is unsurprising that The Physician’s Tale suggests that ideal womanhood is embodied by a “mayde of age twelve yeer…and tweye” (30), which, for reference, places the consummate woman two years older than the Wife of Bath and four years the junior of the miller’s wife upon their first marital experiences. Bloch also hypothesises that the “desire of a virgin is sufficient to make her no longer a virgin” (116), a theory which may be applicable to the courting process of those tales which revolve around heterosexual relationships. In The Reeve’s Tale, the moment we are introduced to Symkyn’s daughter, she is sexualised by the narrative, which depicts her as a “wenche thikke and wel ygrowen” (3973). This lecherous physical portrait separates the young woman into her bodily parts of “kamus nose and eyen greye as glas/ With buttokes brode and brestes rounde and hye” (The Reeve’s Tale, 3974-5), already violating the sovereignty of her person, albeit figuratively, through the misrepresentation and appropriation of her image. Similar eroticisation of the female body occurs in The Knight’s Tale where Palamon forces sexuality upon Emelye when “He cast his eye” (1077) upon her “fresshe” (1068) form, rendering her an object of male lust which compromises her status as a symbol of virginity. This defilement of perceived virtuosity is explicated by the “patristic totalizing scheme of desire” which denotes that “there can be no difference between the state of desiring and of being desired, a virgin is a woman who has never been desired by a man” (Bloch, 116). This vestal icon supposedly exhibits the model female traits of “humylitee and abstinence… attemperaunce and patience… With mesure eek of beryng and array” (The Physician’s Tale, 45-7). The tales’ textual framing suggests that such obeisant qualities are generally amiss in wives, who either “sikerly…hadde a likerous ye” (The Miller’s Tale, 3244) or “desiren have sovereynetee” (The Wife of Bath’s Tale, 1038) of self rather than submit to the objectification and subjugation of their femininity by male agents of their patriarchal social structure.
The innate misogyny of The Knights Tale may be attributed to the generic conventions of a “noble storie” (The Knight’s Tale, 3111) of the medieval variety. The tale is often associated with romance writings, a broad literary category technically defined as a “work in the vernacular” (Cooper, 63). However, such texts generally involve a specific set of characteristics, namely “narratives about high-born people set far away or long ago” whose “plots are concerned with love or chivalry” where “the vast majority have happy endings” (Cooper, 63) within the cultural context of the Middle Ages. In this tale especially, we notice many allusions to the value of conventional feminine beauty. The principal female object of male desire is identified as “fresshe Emelye the shene” (1068) indicating that her “bright” disposition is predicated on her untouched virginal status. The text transparently portrays the depersonalising power of the male gaze. When Palamoun “cast his eye upon Emelye” (1077), he is essentially disfiguring her literary representation, repeatedly reducing her complex female anatomy to the “fresshe beautee” (1118) of her maidenhood, whilst disregarding her personal agency in favour of catastrophising that “outher he wolde lese his lif/ Or win Emelye to be his wife” (1486). Crane argues that “one generic distinction of romance” involves positioning “women as objects of…sexual courtship, courtship as metaphorical combat, and the experience of love as integral to knightly identity” (80). Indeed, Emelye’s entire existence within the narrative functions purely to bolster the reputations of her competing “knight[s], a worthy and an able” (1241) suitors whilst simultaneously creating the conditions for their physical imperilment. The male protagonists’ experience with incarceration and exile are implied to symbolise weaponised femininity, as though “Venus sleeth [them] on that oother syde” (1332). This imagery of female sexual dominance may be a reference to Emelye’s Amazonian heritage and her former masculinised identity as a female warrior. However, we interpret that the “yonge suster Emelye” (871) of the Amazonian “queene Ypolita” (868) is disempowered by her status as a romantic interest, and that her supposed “lethal beauty replaces Amazonian prowess in battle rather than doubling it” (Crane, 81), limiting her narrative agency and fetishising her original identity. This mythological comparison is doubly significant due to Palamoun’s prior display of projectionism, relating Emelye, a human girl, to the “goddesse /Venus is it soothly” (1101-2), as it suggests that Emelye is an active participant in this Petrarchan love story, when the very structure of the romance requires her character’s total feminine subordination in order for the plot to function. Crane elicits that the tale presents a “contradiction between prowess and beauty in women” and that Emelye’s “beauty is so consonant with passivity” that the knights’ obsession with her countenance “diametrically reverses her status as Amazon” (81). This reading exposes The Knight’s Tale as an exercise in female subjugation where the generic conventions of medieval romance are stylistically weaponized to subdue feminine sovereignty. Therefore, it is truly Emelye who inhabits “this prisoun moote we endure” (1185), and her captivity is signified by her narrative confinement as a “fully demilitarized” (Crane, 81) object of a patriarchal social structure.
It is important to note that within the context of medieval literature in general, and The Canterbury Tales specifically, virginity is less a state of physical purity than it is an idealisation of feminine spirituality. Winthrop Wetherbee asserts that this cultural philosophy is inextricably intertwined with the era’s artistic output, and that the “exaltation of women is one of the commonest conventions of medieval poetry” (80), especially romances. As previously discussed, this “idealization of…human female figures is often fundamentally exploitative”, creating the social conditions for femininity to be “subjected to a standard of purity whose very rigidity expresses the fears that lurk beneath the veneer of reverence” (Wetherbee, 80). The Physician’s Tale exposes the period’s depersonalising perspective on female chastity, through its provision of the human embodiment of feminine virtuosity, “Virginia”, the daughter of “A knyght that called was Virginius/Fulfild of honour and of worthynesse” (The Physician’s Tale, 2-3). Similar to Griselda of The Clerk’s Tale, Virginia completely conforms to the social, political, and sexual restrictions placed on those who inhabit female bodies. She is described as a “mayde in excellent beautee/Aboven every wight that man may see” (7-8) who “ne lakked no condicioun/That is to preyse, as by discrecioun” (41-2), and that, most importantly, “body chast was she” (43). However, this “virtue does not profit her—if she were less an embodiment of virtue…there would be less reason to kill her” (Cooper, 249) when a “juge his eyen caste/ Upon this mayde, avysynge hym ful faste” (The Physician’s Tale, 123-4). This scene portrays a respected masculine authority determining that a “mayde shal be myn” (129), effectively ascertaining dominance over the personhood of a fourteen-year-old girl solely because she “floured in virginitee” (44). The situational context is reminiscent of the dynamic ascribed to Palamon and Emelye, however the generic conventions of this “cautionary exemplum” (Cooper, 248) require a female bodily sacrifice in its most extreme and literal form. Although her life force is physically extinguished when “Hir fader… Hir heed of smoot” (254), her status as a “gemme of chastitee, in pacience” (223) dissipates in the moment that Apius “falsly jugged” (The Physician’s Tale, 228) her virginal purity as an opportunity for a male invasion of a female space. Therefore, in accordance with Wetherbee’s suppositions, the tale’s consistent glorification of Virginia’s purity functions as a “veneer of reverence” (Wetherbee, 80). This societal facade masks the pervasive truth that unattainable feminine virtuosity is a masculine invention that patriarchal social structures weaponize against women for the sole benefit of men. The prospect of “maydens shamefastnesse” (The Physician’s Tale, 55) being reduced to “live in lechery” (206) produces such a moral conundrum for Virginius that his protective paternal instincts are compromised by the threat to his daughter’s reputation. Therefore, we surmise that Virginia, who’s entire identity and very forename is defined by the concept of virginity, “is dead…as a virgin, the minute she falls under Appius' gaze” (Bloch, 121). Furthermore, the cultural context of the tale implies that “the only good virgin… the only true virgin—is a dead virgin” (Bloch, 120), indicating that in The Canterbury Tales, phrases alluding to feminine purity inherently police and oppress female sexuality, and that virginity as a literary motif may be construed as a signifier of impending death. This gendered subjugation is directly delineated from the gendered generic conventions of morality tales, the majority of which contain antifeminist doctrine created with the sole intention of containing and subduing female sovereignty.
The Wife of Bath’s position as a character possessing a sovereign identity is facilitated, undermined, and ultimately defined by her participation in the institution of marriage, a ceremony which requires a symbolic submission from women, specifically within the medieval context of enforced gender roles that “assigned men to the public sphere, and women to the private” (Stoss, Abstract). This widespread female experience is decried by Alisoun as the “wo that is in mariage” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 3), the inherently female humiliation of sacrificing your very name and personal identity, reduced to a transactional object enhancing the status of male counterparts and paternal figures. The Wife of Bath represents a complex by-product of such an inhumane economic system, as she simultaneously both literally embodies and verbally disparages a concept that she occasionally merits epitomising should her marital status afford her financial, social, or political security. Chaucer’s command of colloquial dialogue imbues The Wife’s speech patterns with the informed authority of experience when she boastfully expounds that “Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 6) a possessive sentiment usually afforded to masculine subjects referencing female objects of desire. This casual declaration of feminine subjectivity through a masculine declaration of conquest confers that within the contextual constraints of medieval literature, female sexual emancipation is provincial on performed masculinity. Notably, Chaucer affords this character a forename, Alisoun, subtly alluding to the presence of a three-dimensional human within the archetype of the professional widow, whilst also forging a nominal link between her and the Miller’s wife, who shares her name. The connection between this Wife and her “gossib, dwellynge in oure toun… Hire name was Alisoun” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 529-30) suggests a friendship between her and the infidel wife of The Miller’s Tale, a plausible intertextual relationship considering their shared propensity for transgressive feminine behaviours. In line with the character’s eclecticism, Susan Crane describes the Wife as a “shape-shifting fairy” who consciously “deploy[s] the language and paradigms of conventional femininity” (55) in an effort to subvert the concept’s suppression and oppression of her enigmatic subjective self.
Whilst gender is a key theme explored in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the text also presents the complex intricacies of age-gap relationships, portraying how the interconnecting factors of seniority, sex and beauty contribute to the power and agency of an individual. The Wife, a “fourty” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 601) year old “faire, and riche…and wel bigon” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 606) woman is empowered by her experience and attractive physicality, as evinced by her husbands’ collective profession that she “hadde the beste quoniam myghte be” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 608). However, it is notable that she successfully weaponised her female sexuality against the patriarchy primarily in her youth, a time when women’s bodies are routinely policed but also commodified and fetishized. We may surmise that her objectification by the male gaze “sith I twelve yeer was of age” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 4) has left an insidious impact on her psyche, warping her worldview, and prompting her to perceive sexual exploitation as empowering sensuality. To an extent, The Wife’s self-image is comprised of the few distinctive characteristics afforded to feminine agents in the medieval period, and she unnervingly alternates between the contradicting identities of a “lusty oon” typical of a male fantasy, and the shrewish spouse of anti-feminist literary lore who “chidde…spitously” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 223). Whilst the Wife’s promiscuity may be perceived as sexually subversive, her sensuality does not threaten the patriarchal framework she inhabits, as these behaviours are mostly conducted within the marital bed, and therefore benefit the men she is contractually obliged to pleasure, despite her insistence that she retains “the power durynge al my lyf/ Upon his propre body, and noght he” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 158-9). The true precarious state of her bodily autonomy is exposed upon her marital union to Jankyn, who she attempts to transform into an object of her subjective female desire through sexualising his “paire/ Of legges and of feet so clene and faire” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 597-8). This effort backfires when he inherits “al the lond and fee” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 630) due to his social status as a male spouse and “smoot me ones on the lyst” (634) imposing his “twenty winters oold” (600) masculine physicality on her feminine body politic. We may elucidate that The Wife’s most successful act of transgression lies in her politicisation of domesticity through her combined use of verbosity and physicality, embodying the stereotype of the scold. Through this apparent conformity to demonised femininity, she reclaims her personal agency from her abusive husband, feigning grievous injury “in the floor I lay as I were deed” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 796) and emotionally manipulates Jankyn to “yaf me al the bridel in myn hond” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 813), effectively assuming authority over her person and that of her husband. Susan Crane interprets this narrative outcome as a relatively successful “resistance to her subordinate status” (95) as a feminine agent in a masculine environment. We may interpret that performed masculinity within the medieval domestic sphere secures female subjectivity and authority, and that shrewish wives pose the real threat to this patriarchal world order where “the "fully human ideal" is finally masculine”, contradicting the old adage that “traits marked feminine can…be integrated into masculine behaviour, but the current does not run in reverse” (Crane, 21). This oppositional reading is most notably corroborated within the text by the Wife’s reflection that “I hadde geten unto me, /By maistrie, al the soveraynetee” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 817-18) an emphatic statement of the Wife’s newly elevated status as a sovereign power within her own domestic sphere. This achievement of “soveraynetee” represents an impressive feat of self-actualisation within the cultural context of the Middle Ages.
The textual significance of Griselda from The Clerk’s Tale lies in her identity as a paragon of marital feminine virtue and therein, her oppositional characterization to that of The Wife of Bath. Within the innately misogynistic context of medieval literature, she represents the era’s consummate womanly ideal of “vertuous beautee” (The Clerk’s Tale, 211) because “povreliche yfostred up was she” (213) and “No likerous lust was thurgh hire herte yronne” (214). This lack of sexual or financial agency positions Griselda as a prime target for patriarchal manipulation, which eventually manifests in her new husband’s obsessive machinations intent on testing her loyalty. The theme of female submission to dominant masculinity is distinctive—within the wider context of The Canterbury Tales the concept appears integral to the composition of traditional heterosexual relationships— and Walter’s description of Griselda’s status within their union denotes her subordinate identity within her marital contract. Her prospective husband requires her to serve his needs, stating “be ye redy with good herte/ To al my lust, and that I frely may” (The Clerk’s Tale, 351-2), indicating that she perform the sexual duties of a wife despite his prior commendation of “the brest of hire virginitee” (The Clerk’s Tale, 219). This implies that female sexuality is only appropriate if policed and exploited by a masculine agent. Most sinisterly, he reserves the right to “do yow laughe or smerte” asserting an almost deity-like presence within their marriage and demoting her to a figure of matrimonial servitude “nevere ye to grucche it, nyght ne day” (The Clerk’s Tale, 353-4) regardless of abuses suffered within the arrangement. Derek Pearsall acknowledges these overtones of God-like authority, and states that “Walter’s presentation of Griselda to his people ‘This is my wyf,’ quod he, ‘that standeth heere’” resembles “God’s presentation of Jesus (‘This is my son…’)” (268), highlighting an intriguing connection between Griselda’s “wo that is in mariage” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 3) and the tribulations of Christ on the cross. This interpretation of Griselda as a predetermined figure of sufferance inherently limits her potential for autonomous action, as evinced by her tolerance of her parental alienation of her children. Her acquiescence to Walter’s abuse of power “with hertely obeisaunce”, reducing herself and her children to “Youre owene thyng; werketh after youre wille” which “Been youres al, and ye mowe save or spille” (The Clerk’s Tale, 503-4) confirm her characterization as a corporeal exemplum of fidelity rather than a three-dimensional fictional woman. Therefore, we must revisit the marriage proposal and its unbalanced power dynamics which reduce Griselda’s ability to realistically decline. Indeed, the Marquis utilises the innate pressures of a public scene and her financial instability to establish a dominant position in his marriage from the outset. Meanwhile, in a meta-textual sense, the Clerk exploits his female protagonist’s narrative and generic confinement for his own purpose, a luxury which this avatar of feminine medieval compliance is denied. Sarah Stanbury notes that the “centering of Griselda as public spectacle, and as the focal point of multiple levels of collective and private scrutiny, evokes… the paradigm…of a masculine gaze on a woman's body” (261), transfiguring the very body of the “povre creature” (The Clerk’s Tale) into a vessel for dominative masculine desire. This possession of the feminine body politic is an act of patriarchal control, and therefore inadvertently contests Walter’s own assertion that male “liberte…seelde tyme is founde in mariage” (The Clerk’s Tale, 145-6) as he unequivocally embodies the role of a sovereign power within his own, legitimising the stance that the marital contract is a “blisful yok/ Of soveraynetee, noght of servyse” for medieval men whilst operating as a gendered social prison for their female counterparts, should they commit to the subservient identity of an idealised wife.
Susan Crane contends that “the irregular treatment of women springs in part from their peculiar social definition which dictates that “men have assigned functions to perform”, whereas “women’s duties” solely “derive from and relate to their sexuality” (97). Therefore, we surmise that the actualisation of the feminine “desiren have sovereynetee” (The Wife of Bath’s Tale, 1038) in the 14th century is dependent on her investigation into the era’s politicisation of female sexual agency. Throughout The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer manipulates the generic sensibilities of his stories to illuminate underlying meaning and interwoven perspective. The misogynistic “auctoritee” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 1) espoused by Jankyn in The Wife’s elongated “confessio” (Cooper, 140) decries “wikked wyves” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 685) who desire autonomy afforded to masculine agents. His assertion that “Man shal nat suffre his wyf go roule aboute” (653) recalls the intertextual significance of observed femininity and the sexualised subtext involved when a man “cast his eye” (The Knight’s Tale, 1077) on a female body. However, the Wife resists the patriarchal attempt to contain her subjective femininity. She vocally confronts the medieval era’s culturally entrenched sexism, declaring that
it is an impossible
That any clerk wol speke good of wyves
But if it be of hooly seintes lyves
Ne of noon oother womman never the mo (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 688-91).
This succinct estimation of the unrealizable standards consigned to feminine behaviour addresses multiple obstacles faced by female characters in The Canterbury Tales as a whole. Firstly, the social and cultural paradox that demands the majority of feminine agents to partake in the marriage contract, which requires wives to fundamentally subordinate themselves to their husband, whilst simultaneously demonising said female participants. Secondly, the veneration of absolute feminine obedience and chastity through the idealisation of paragons of virtuosity such as Griselda and Virginia respectively, whose total submission to patriarchal morality doctrine cause them physical and emotional distress. Finally, the weaponization of both philosophies against the average medieval woman who is expected to consume and internalise this masculine depiction of supposed female deviance. Her speech encapsulates the theory that “Women’s statuses are…those of a virgin, nun, whore, maiden, wife, mother, and widow, replacing masculine functions on the social scene with the management of sexual status” (Crane, 97). Notably, although she is nominally referred to as ‘The Wife’ for the majority of the text, the elder Alisoun occupies all the aforementioned societal roles applicable to a person inhabiting a feminine body, with exception of mother and nun. As discussed in Chapter Two, ‘Housbondes at chirche dore [she] have had fyve’ (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 6) and she firmly rejects the sexual policing of her physical pleasure, intoning that she “wol nat kepe me chaast in al” (46) respects. This intentional consolidation of personhood proves the potential for female subversion and transgression within a conventional societal framework. Crucially, it is when Alisoun “made hym brenne his book” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 816) of antifeminist literary texts that she achieves true emancipation within her domestic sphere, communicating that a degree of overt rebellion is integral to quiet female resistance. This symbolically feminist act enables her to “geten unto me/ By maistrie, al the soveraynetee” (817-8) and therein, occupy a radically subjective feminine identity.
In direct contrast to the misogynistic didacticism of The Clerk’s Tale, The central theme of The Miller’s Tale revolves around the public conformity and private transgression of women in relation to the patriarchal construct of marriage. The issue of potential feminine resistance threatening traditional masculinity is textually interrogated as the gendered supposition of “Who hath no wyf, he is no cokewold” (The Miller’s Tale, 3152) is contradicted by the neutral logic that “An housbonde shal nat been inquisityf/ Of Goddes pryvetee, nor of his wyf” (The Miller’s Tale, 3163-4), a strikingly progressive sentiment within the context of the Chaucerian era, when autonomous female sexuality was viewed negatively. Thomas Hanks interprets that “Alisoun…joins the profane and the divine” in dedicating “hir ooth, by seint Thomas of Kent” (The Miller’s Tale, 3291) to Nicholas, her paramour, “thus calling upon the resident saint of Canterbury to witness her agreement to commit adultery” (Hanks, 10). Thus, she effectively manipulates medieval religious convention to theologically legitimise her subversive female actions, separating her transgression from that of the Wife due to the clandestine nature of the promiscuous union. This canonical association of the mystery of femininity with the divine body of Christ frames Alisoun as a subjective agent of activity rather than a passive object and implies that a woman’s body does not require masculine policing or containment, a perspective which is more reminiscent of the message of The Wife of Bath’ Prologue than that of Chaucer’s traditional romances. The tale’s sexual imagery, whilst undeniably provocative, does not objectify Alisoun, instead she is positioned as the conscious orchestrator of the fabliau plot, informing her true romantic partner to “‘Now hust, and thou shalt laughen al thy fille’” (The Miller’s Tale, 3722), confirming her dominant role within all her affairs with members of the opposite gender. Whilst her body is undeniably temporarily trapped within the male gaze through the description that “at the wyndow out she putte hir hole” (The Miller’s Tale, 3732), her characterisation as a subjective agent of action and intent allows her to retain sovereignty of her body politic, and when Absolon “with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers” (The Miller’s Tale, 3734), her personhood and physical form are not divorced or fragmented. We elicit that Chaucer’s allegorical comparisons of the character to a “hoord of apples” (The Miller’s Tale, 3267) is not merely a generic reduction of femininity to a consumptive object. Rather, we consider a “phenomenological reading of Alysoun's portrait that describes her elusive promise with particular clarity” which “directs perception sensuously to Alison, who, though not seen in her entirety, is nevertheless amply comprehended” (Woods, 177). Indeed, we may determine that female characters achieve self-actualization and exhibit personal agency more frequently within the generic conventions of comedy than romance or exemplum texts, perhaps due to an inbuilt suspension of audience belief and pre-conception.
Having considered medieval society’s reductive conceptualisation of subjective womanhood, we can assert with confidence that the elusive nature of female sovereignty in The Canterbury Tales is attributed to its textual insistence that “A fair womman, but she be chaast also/ Is lyk a gold ryng in a sowes nose” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 784-5) and narrative implications that “the only good virgin…is a dead virgin” (Bloch, 120). These conflicting messages convey the medieval female struggle to successfully inhabit and exhibit subjective personhood in isolation of their association with male counterparts. Characters such as The Wife, Alisoun of The Millers Tale and even May of The Merchant’s Tale partially succeed, to differing extents, at obtaining varying levels of agency within their respective personal lives. All three women seek fulfilment outside of one committed marital contract, and we note that the situational contexts of their liberation benefit from a sense of spatial liminality free of penetrative masculinity. In The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the titular character relishes the sexual and emotional gratification afforded by the “actes and in fruyt of mariage” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 114), but refuses “swich harneys” for the purpose of “usen hem in engendrure” (136-7). Therefore, she subtly rejects the patriarchal attempt to categorise her socially and politically in accordance with her sexual status, as she does not fulfil all the obligations of a wife, does not practise virginity or chastity, and possesses a rank in society that exceeds the position of a whore. Prior to her neutralisation of Jankyn’s dominative masculinity, she attains sovereignty when she “made my visitaciouns/ To vigilies and to processiouns/ To prechyng eek, and to thise pilgrimages” and has occasion to “wered upon my gaye scarlet gytes” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 555-9). This suggests that a subjective female experience is partially predicated on the freedom of individual social mobility denied her by her fifth husband as referenced previously in this paper. Meanwhile, the subjective potency of Alisoun is initially hampered by her elderly husband, who “heeld hire narwe in cage” (The Miller’s Tale, 3224), whilst May is ordered to “Heeld hire chambre” (The Merchant’s Tale, 1860) due to her husband’s primal attentions. Although neither woman is a vessel of chastity by any stretch of the imagination, their respective sovereignty is restricted by their “fresshe beautee and…age tendre” (The Merchant’s Tale, 1601), and, therein, a superficial proximity to virginity as a conceptual status in regard to their appearance. However, both women benefit from the shared generic conventions of fabliau-infused romance in their tales, which manifests in the sexual agency they acquire within the constraints of their marital status as extra-marital affairs. Where tales lack feminine ambiguity and instead engage in antifeminism or misogynistic exemplar, such as The Physician’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, and The Reeve’s Tale, female sovereignty is subjugated, and subjective womanhood is practically non-existent.
In conclusion, we surmise that in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, female sovereignty is, to a degree, contained and restricted by medieval literature’s pedestalization of feminine virtue and demonisation of female subversion. Therefore, The Reeve’s Tale, and its blatant engagement with the antifeminist themes typical of its genre, inherently undermines female sovereignty in favour of exploiting the female body through the rape motif. Crucially, this text portrays the sexual invasion of the feminine form by male agents, invalidating the medieval philosophy that women who conform to the patriarchal roles of virgin and wife receive social, political, or physical protection from malevolent masculinity. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue provides us with a proto feminist perspective on dominant femininity within the sphere of marriage. The Wife as a character emerges as a literary figure who attains a sovereign identity through the combined performance of masculine physicality and feminine guile, transgressions which are narratively enabled by the text’s thematic liminality and indefinable genre. Meanwhile, the exemplum texts; The Physician’s Tale and The Clerk’s Tale, present the suffering of a virgin and obedient wife respectively. This implies that the medieval morality doctrine is innately oppositional to female sovereignty, as both tales offer reductive, simplistic portraits of idealised female characters who participate in the subjugation of their own subjective personhood. Whilst in The Knight’s Tale, Emelye’s subjectivity is contained by the sensuality projected upon her person, Alisoun of The Miller’s Tale and May of The Merchant’s Tale assert sexual sovereignty through the pursuit of extra-marital affairs whilst simultaneously conforming to political and social subordination in the form of the marital contract. Thus, we elucidate that in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, despite the Wife’s engagement with masculinity, the pursuit of sovereign femininity is inextricably intertwined with the successful performance, and often pretence, of passivity.
Works Cited
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