Canterbury Tales (Barron's Book Notes)

by Canterbury Tales (Barron's Book Notes) [lit]

  3. VOCATIONS

  Everyone's profession has an ironic meaning in this tale. Carpentry, John's profession, is put in to annoy the Reeve, but look at it also in a larger sense. Carpentry was Christ's profession. Also, the carpenter's guild in Chaucer's day put on the mystery (religious) play of Noah. Astrology is what allows Nicholas to pull one over on John. But it also was seen by some in the Middle Ages as a "wrong" science, since man's "privetee" and providence aren't supposed to replace God's, and astrology is a way to try to do so. Like Arcite he is the Knight's Tale, Nicholas is set apart from society; he is set apart by his dabbling in the occult.

  4. PROMISES

  As in the Knight's Tale, vows are made and broken, but the humor here is that half the time the people who make the promises don't intend to keep them. Alison is not the faithful wife. Nicholas promises a flood that never comes. The only promises that are kept are the wrongly intentioned ones, such as Alison and Nicholas' vow to cuckold John, Nicholas' promise to John that he will "save" his wife, and Alison's promise that she'll let Absalom kiss her.

  5. THE SACRED AND PROFANE

  We've already seen the interplay between the bawdy and the religious, but how are we to take it? Does the profanity cast doubt on the seriousness of the spiritual? Does the idea of a hidden moral mean we can't take the tale's raucousness at face value? You can accept either version, or make a case that Chaucer meant to fuse the two, with the lovers' longings and the love of God represented. After all, you can argue in this tale that both sex and religion are ways to reach outside of oneself, and both come in for their fair share of ridicule.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: PLOT

  Unique in the Canterbury Tales, the introduction to The Wife of Bath's Tale is longer than the tale itself. She describes her views on marriage in great detail, starting with the grief she's given all five of her husbands (and which she had a great time dishing out).

  Her purpose in marriage has been to gain the upper hand. Her first three husbands were old, rich, and willing to do what she said. She used harangues to get them on the defensive when they got suspicious of her stepping out, accusing them of looking at other women.

  Her fourth husband had a mistress, but Dame Alice (the Wife) made him fry in his own grease. She had him believe she was sleeping with another man (she wasn't) so he'd be jealous. But even before he died Alice started making eyes at a clerk, Jankin, while Husband #4 was in London during Lent. When the fourth husband died, Alice married the good-looking Jankin, twenty years her junior: the only one she married for love and the only one who treated her like dirt.

  He used to read to her from a book that told how women can't be trusted. She got so furious that she ripped the pages out, and he hit her so hard she went partially deaf. Thinking (or at least making him think) she was about to die, she made him swear to obey her every word. After that, they had a perfect marriage.

  Before the Wife begins her tale, the Friar butts in and the Summoner yells at him. (They are natural enemies because they both try to get money from people.) Because he has interrupted, the Wife starts her story with an attack on friars' lechery.

  Her tale, not surprisingly, exemplifies the same theme. A knight is sentenced to death for raping a woman, but the queen will allow him to live if he can answer one question: what do women want? He finds no two people who agree, until an old woman tells him women want mastery in marriage. Because she gives him the right answer, he must grant her request, which is that he marry her.

  He's horrified but has no choice. On their wedding night, she offers to stay ugly and faithful, or turn young and beautiful and perhaps unfaithful. Wisely, he leaves the choice up to her and promises her domination over him. So she becomes beautiful and faithful and they live happily. The Wife ends by praying God to send every woman a young, sexy, and obedient husband!

  DAME ALICE, the Wife herself, is her own main character. She gives us a vivid picture of herself. Obviously she loves to talk and pauses only when she's lost her place in her long ramble. She tells us (lines 609-616) that she was born when Venus and Mars were in conjunction with Taurus. According to this horoscope, Venus would make her beautiful, but Mars would make her heavy. The sweet voice bestowed by Venus becomes loud and raucous thanks to Mars' planetary influence. All in all, the planets make her charming, joyous, and boisterous.

  Some readers say Dame Alice is totally lifelike, others say she is larger than life. Some say she loves men, as they are obviously her life-long passion, while others contend she is carrying on a life-long war against them. You decide. Is she at fault for wanting dominion over her husbands? (Your answer should depend on what you see in the character, not on whether you're male or female.) Notice that she not only puts men down, she also satirizes women, pointing out that they can't keep their mouths shut and that she's right up there with the worst of them.

  Another question is how she feels about the life she's lived. When she stops to think of her vanished youth, you can see it as a real sadness over lost time, or as a shrug of her shoulders and a joyous desire to get on with the rest of her life. Either way, Chaucer doesn't praise or blame her, but lets her look forward to her sixth husband, whoever he may be.

  The KNIGHT in the tale is not well defined, because he's more of a receptacle for Dame Alice's teachings than a man in his own right. Because he rapes a woman (a virgin, at that) he's sentenced to death; but we don't hear a peep from him. In fact, the only time we see any emotion on his part is when he's upset: at discovering he has an impossible task to perform, at hearing that he has to marry the old hag, at having to sleep with her. The only time he is genuinely happy, in fact, is when the wife has total control over him (and has become young and faithful). This is the point Dame Alice wants to convey.

  The OLD WOMAN in the tale doesn't have a name, but she packs a powerful moral punch. When the knight complains in bed about having to sleep with a wife who is old, poor, and ugly, she delivers a strong and well-reasoned sermon about the nobility that comes from God, not from a bloodline. Finally she shows she will win his love by becoming both beautiful and faithful. Her intelligence and reasoned responses are as articulate as those of the Wife herself.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: INTRODUCTION

  Dame Alice tells us straight off that experience is the only authority she needs to tell of the problems of marriage. She proceeds, however, to use plenty of other authorities to support her idea that women should have control in marriage.

  NOTE: In the Middle Ages women had an exceptionally raw deal in marriage. Legally, they could do nothing without their husbands, in fact did not even exist other than as their husbands' property. Even sex could technically be performed only for procreation, not enjoyment (that was lust). Look at the effect this attitude has, not only on the way a medieval audience would view this tale, but the Miller's Tale as well. Women were responsible for any lust a man felt, because they were all considered temptresses.

  Immediately Dame Alice gets defensive about the number of husbands she's had, saying not even Christ himself defined how many husbands were too many.

  She first lets us know that virginity is nothing worth defending, since although St. Paul advises virginity, he doesn't command it; he leaves it up to each woman. There's no prize for virginity, she says in her own defense; besides, she cleverly asks, if everyone were a virgin, where would we get virgins?

  Everyone has a gift from God, and uses it as best he or she can. This is a defense for her own healthy sexual appetite that flies in the face of the prevailing attitude. This attitude is upside-down from an orthodox medieval viewpoint: rather than trying to understand men's (and women's) actions according to a divine plan, she deduces God's plan for the world according to earthly desires and needs. But, she says, God wouldn't have made sexual organs if not for pleasure. (You can still hear this same argument today.) At least she is willing to have sex, unlike other wives who are "daungerous" (cool and standoffish).

  Given the attitude of the time, is it
outrageous of her to want to have a husband who will be her debtor and slave and to have power over his body (lines 155-158)? After all, that's the legal power a husband can hold over her. She uses authors to support her case, but adds she's saying all this only to amuse the company.

  Believing that the best defense is a good offense, she teaches how to accuse husbands of being in the wrong to make them mind. All she wants to do, she pretends, is please them. At the same time, they're old, so why should they want her sex all to themselves when there's plenty to go around?

  NOTE: This is an ironic upset of the idea of mutual charity in marriage, and of the assumption that men and women of the same age should marry. This may be valid, as the three old husbands died trying to satisfy her.

  She thumbs her nose at the medieval wisdom that says a woman's love is like a fire--the more it burns the more it wants to burn. But without her false accusations against her former husbands, she'd be ruined--"Been spilt," a sexual allusion as it is with Nicholas in the Miller's Tale--if she didn't take the initiative. She sees marriage in a cold, practical light: first come, first served; and whoever can profit should do so, for everything in life is for sale. She doesn't have sexual feeling for the old husbands, but pretends to so she can get things from them. Is this a cruel and callous attitude or is Dame Alice getting her just deserts?

  Dame Alice's fourth husband, even though he was a lout (pulling off the very cheating tricks she accused the other husbands of), makes her think fondly of her lost youth. But the passing of time doesn't cause her to regret the good times she's had. Time has robbed her of her beauty, but "the devil with it" (line 476). Her resigned observation that "the flour is gone," meaning both "flour" and "flower," is ambiguous, showing her deep-rooted sense of the flesh and her sense of lost youth.

  She loved her last two husbands because they were cool toward her. There's no real change or growth in her more recent experience, but these husbands, especially the last, are more like her and so more successful as matches. They give her a dose of her own medicine, and even though she eventually gets control, she gets a good fight in the process.

  Jankin is the only husband we get a clear picture of, as well as the circumstances surrounding their meeting and wooing. It gives us a clue as to how she may have arranged her other marriages. (Like Nicholas, he is "hende," and she, like Alison, feels an instant sexual attraction.) We can feel Dame Alice's frustration after hearing of the tales of evil women that Jankin reads her, of the man who wants a cutting of the "blessed tree" on which a man's three wives hanged themselves and the proverbs that prove all wives are wicked.

  The ending is a happy one for her, for although she uses trickery, pretending she's about to die, she does get her "mastery," which means skill as well as superiority. In this success, has she reached beyond the instinctual knowledge she's depended on all these years? Her tale may indicate an answer.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THE TALE

  Dame Alice's nasty reference to "limiters" (friars who beg within certain limits) to get back at the Friar's comment on her big mouth, shows in what disrepute friars are viewed: a woman is safe, she says, since the friar will take only her honor. This is a nice lead-in to the main tale, where a knight does indeed take a young woman's honor.

  The knight sees women only as objects that he can take by force. But ironically his life then depends on the will of women.

  NOTE: As in the Knight's Tale, mercy is dependent on the goodness of women. Pity, whether between the sexes, ruler and subject, or God and man, is another form of love.

  Dame Alice jokes at her own expense about women who want to be free instead of listening to their husbands, and about women who, like Midas' wife (and like herself), can't keep their mouths shut.

  The knight learns that women want many things, but most of all they want dominion over their men, an assertion of identity just as men have. The old woman from whom he learns this is obviously enchanted, for the 24 dancing women in the forest disappear, and she knows, without being told, that he's been sent by the queen.

  The knight has more to learn after he's forced to marry the old woman. His idea of the natural order makes it abhorrent to think of marrying someone so old and below his station, but he is to be morally reeducated, appropriately, in bed.

  Her arguments--that "gentilesse" (nobility) comes from God, that poverty can be a blessing, and that ugliness keeps a woman faithful--are based on authorities like Christ and Dante. This shows a strong Christian basis for her position, a basis Jankin was missing when he quoted from his learned book. They make sense, but neither choice (faithful but ugly or beautiful and faithless) holds water against the strength of human nature. He has to choose between physical and spiritual love, and he chooses neither. Both choices involve dilemmas: possession without joy or independence with jealousy.

  By resigning himself, the knight shows true repentance and spiritual growth, and he is rewarded by getting the impossible, youth and fidelity. But first he has to relinquish control, a fact that echoes Dame Alice's own marriage to Jankin. The balance reached in the end is based on a harmony between sexuality and spiritual values, and even if Dame Alice doesn't have quite the same balance in her marriage, she at least has put her point across in a lively and convincing way.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: SOURCES

  Dame Alice's tale is a satire put in the form of a fairy tale. She is twisting an old folk tale that shows up in an Arthurian romance about Sir Gawain, one of Arthur's knights. In that story the choice is between a wife who is beautiful either by day or by night--a very different kind of choice from the one our knight is offered.

  The tale serves as an "exemplum," a moral tale that preachers used to show people how they should act. For similar reasons, her introduction, complete with authorities and logical arguments, is in the form of a university sermon so she can persuasively make her case for pleasurable sex that goes against medieval doctrine. Many of the antifeminist points are taken from St. Jerome, notably the image of woman's love burning like a fire and seeking more to burn. Of course, in Dame Alice's mouth the idea of putting sexual guilt on the woman sounds ridiculous.

  The Wife herself is based loosely on the Old Woman in the French Romance of the Rose, which Chaucer translated. Like Alice, the Old Woman has used love for sensual pleasure and gain, and defends the philosophy against courtly love or Scripture. But the source is more in the Old Woman's ideas than her person, since she's old and decrepit and Dame Alice still has plenty of years--and husbands--left to go.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: SETTING

  It's appropriate that Dame Alice would choose the mythical, misty time of King Arthur's Round Table for her tale. It's a time of chivalry and enchantment. By placing her tale beyond a specific time, in a place where the woman's love was the all-important factor in a knight's courtly conduct, she's making sure her audience will catch the importance of female superiority.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THEMES

  1. SEXUAL SUPERIORITY

  Some read the Wife of Bath's whole saga as one of sexual revenge, but consider the society she has to put up with. Restrictions on women were enormous in Chaucer's day, and Dame Alice wants to gain revenge inside marriage. Her feminism was perhaps not common, but protests like hers weren't unheard of either. She means to attack the guilt-ridden and sex-obsessed attitudes of her day by beating men at their own game.

  2. CELIBACY/VIRGINITY

  Although she quotes St. Paul on the sanctity of virginity, Dame Alice isn't ashamed of the fact that she wants no part of it. Her rambunctious sexuality is in itself a kind of religious devotion, since it glorifies God by making good use of the tools He gave her.

  3. AUTHORITY

  Dame Alice uses her obvious intelligence in defense of the carnal, but she also pulls in as many authorities on the subject as she can think of, both for her introduction and the old hag's speech. Many of her "quotations" from learned men are loose translations indeed, or outright misunderstandings,
for example when she freely translates St. Paul's teachings on chastity. Yet, as she begins by saying, her greatest authority is her own experience.

  4. CHOICE

  The knight must choose between appearances and satisfaction, between a good-looking wife or a faithful one. Dame Alice too makes it clear that she has chosen her five husbands, rather than them choosing her, though she's not particular. It all boils down to her idea of being in control of one's own life, which she identifies as superiority in marriage.

  5. KINDS OF LOVE

  Of course, the most important kind is sexual, but as the example of the queen shows, there is also the noble love called pity; the love, warring or peaceful, between husband and wife; and the love that Christ (whom Dame Alice likens to a woman because he was a virgin) has for humanity. The different kinds of love are intertwined for her because they are all part of the constantly changing facets of love that make up a marriage.

  ^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: POINT OF VIEW

  Dame Alice is loud and direct in supporting her point of view that sex is meant for pleasure and women are to carry the big stick in marriage. This lusty viewpoint gives us a clear idea of her attitudes and priorities.