We’re reading Chaucer in my English class right now and this article was posted in our blog and I have huge issues with it, as stated in my response to it below. Of course, we are debating about a fictional character written about 800 years ago and it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things but… maybe it does, actually. Maybe the Wife of Bath is one of the few characters we can actually claim for the history of women (because we haven’t been written about that much over the course of History.) See for yourself.
http://www.articlemyriad.com/feminist-analysis-prologue-wife-bath/2/
Firstly, thanks for sharing this article. There are so many different approaches to what I would call “feminism”, and though I call myself one, I don’t agree with this writer’s approach.
I think the Wife of Bath IS a feminist hero. The fact that she’s even talking in an age when women had virtually no voice outside of the household proves that she is one. The author argues that she cannot be held as a feminist hero because she uses the men in her life to her own gain. So let’s see here: in a time when women were completely unable to earn their own living or inherit it, this woman is smart enough to find the loopholes in the system and live contently. She makes her own life, rather than having men make it for her. The author condemns her for being manipulative – I’d just say she’s wicked intelligent. Also, the author points out that she’s using her sexuality to make these gains. The Wife of Bath lives in a time when a woman’s character is reduced to her vagina. It’s a fact. We lived to please men and make sons. Her only tool to make any kind of success in her world is her sexuality. She recognizes her power as a sexual woman and she uses it to make amazing gains.
Certain feminists hold that for women to be truly empowered, they have to detach themselves and not fall in love. Contrarily, the author of this article argues that the Wife of Bath is not a feminist icon because she detaches herself from sex (even though she does claim to be in love with one of her husbands.) Obviously there are many viewpoints on every issue, but my personal idea of an “empowered woman” is a woman who chooses whether she wants to manipulate men for sexual favours or to fall in love or to sleep with a bunch of guys or to have one partner for her whole life – the point being that SHE CHOOSES to do what she does.
The last paragraph in the article also bothers me. The author says that the Wife of Bath is not a feminist hero because she doesn’t try to make big, “revolutionary” changes to the lives of women. But that’s just the point: she can’t. For thousands of years, the home has been the only place that women actually have a bit of influence. In medieval England, certainly, it was the only arena where women could make a change. I think that for her cultural context, the Wife of Bath is doing a fucking amazing job of being an empowered woman. She’s choosing what she does and that’s what “women’s rights” or “feminism” is all about.
Was Chaucer a feminist? That term wasn’t even invented yet, so no, he wasn’t. But I think he did recognize that women’s voices are important as well, or else he wouldn’t have included the Wife of Bath character in his Tales.
Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On 