What interests me most about the Pardoner’s Tale is the Pardoner’s blunt admission of his wrongdoings. Each of the tales that we have read thus far contains elements of moral corruption, but the Pardoner is the first teller to truly acknowledge the extent to which his lifestyle is sinful. His brutal honesty is made even more interesting by the fact that he preaches against greed, the vice that he most shamelessly embodies.
There are many different ways that the reader can interpret Chaucer’s decision to paint the Pardoner as a church official who openly defies god. I read the Tale as an ironic criticism of the Catholic church that uses the Pardoner as an allegorical representation of religious corruption. His deception of loyal churchgoers initially strikes the reader as the ultimate irreligious sin, for he is essentially fabricating, and thus corrupting, the relationship between god and his followers. However, the fact that he so boldly recognizes his misdoings almost cancels them out entirely, leaving the reader to consider who else may be at fault in the situation. Perhaps Chaucer uses the Pardoner’s artificial relics to criticize Christians who blindly obey the church without having an accurate perception of what they are truly devoting themselves to.
The undertones of religious commentary in the Pardoner’s Tale show yet again that Chaucer likely had contemporary views of the world that were far ahead of the times in which he lived.
Personally, I think that the Pardoner’s tale is hilarious. Here’s a guy that makes his living selling lies. He prays on people’s blind faith, and exploits them for all that they are worth. The Pardoner is a medieval conman. The “relics” that he sells to the faithful are mere counterfeits. He preaches against gluttony and covetousness, yet those are the very same vices that plague him. What I found to be even funnier, was that the Pardoner held no reservation in confessing to the entire pilgrimage what a fake he was. He is so plagued by the affliction of greed that he admits that he wouldn’t think twice about taking the every last penny from an old widow, allowing her children to starve.
The Pardoner then goes into his story about three young Flemish people who, in their search to find and kill death, happening upon a large quantity of gold. The young mens’ intentions immediately go to how they can procure the most for themselves, even if that means killing their friends. Eventually two of them conspire to kill the third, while the third plans on poisoning the other two. In the end, all three of them are conquered by Death, all because of their greed.
After the story, the Pardoner tries to sell the pilgrims his relics, even though he already admitted to them being fake. The Host then threatens to turn the Pardoner’s genitals into relics. That line has to be one of the most comedic, for me, in all of The Canterbury Tales.
I am fascinated by the construction of the Tale itself. The Pardoner tells us that he tells stories for a living, that he has packaged sermons with packaged lessons that he pulls out every time he visits a new town. He mentions that these stories are for “the lewed people”–the unlearned people (392). But here he is, telling one of these blanched and bleached and starched tales to the “gentils” (323). I get the feeling that like the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner’s Tale is less about the tale itself and more about the prologue (and epilogue) of the tale. The Pardoner begins by admitting that he is a hypocrytical and guiltless preacher, but still–quite sincerely–asks for money at the end of his telling. It is the Knight who steps into the resolve the quarrel between the Pardoner and the Host. I think this is one the most sincere reading of Chaucer’s thoughts about “estate” or “gentilesse.” He seems to care nothing for religion, and makes it clear that few educated people do. But in the end, it is the higher classes who step in, command, and take control. Secular gentilesse seems to be far more powerful in Chaucer’s world than any other force–even religion.
In The Pardoner’s Tale, I was most struck by the narrator’s blatant admittance to being a hypocrite, almost in a hyperbolic sense, throughout the entire tale. The most intense moment of hyperbole was when the Pardoner admits that he values his luxurious lifestyle—that results from his duping of “unlearned” people—so much so that he wouldn’t mind taking money from a poor widow with starving children at home. I was struck by the absurdity of that confession and found myself wondering who would ever admit to that? And is it even possible for a person to be as “evil” as the Pardoner claims to be? It was after this moment that I began to consider the interpretation that the Pardoner doesn’t just represent one rotten member of the church; instead he operates as a synecdoche for the entire institution of the church. Therefore, the portrayal of the Pardoner and his extremely explicit hypocrisy and immorality functions as a way for Chaucer to covertly imply that the church embodies all of these bad characteristics as well. If this tale is a commentary on the institution of the church then it is also conversely a commentary on the members of the church’s congregation, which is embodied the other pilgrims who start the tale off by asking for a moral story. It is important to keep in mind that what is being said in the tales is sometimes just as important as what is not being said; therefore, the absence of any interruptions during the Pardoner’s prologue holds meaning. We have seen the pilgrims interrupt the storyteller before, for example in the Miller’s tale, when they were displeased with the content of his fictitious tale, so we know they are capable of doing so. However, when the Pardoner recounts all the various ways in which he deceives other people in the one aspect of an individual’s life that all members of the pilgrimage would presumably agree is of the utmost importance: religion, there is no interjection or protest from the audience. At the end of the tale, we get a little bit of anger and push back from the Host when the Pardoner tries to get him to kiss the fake relic, but when the Knight intervenes, the Host easily “kiste” the Pardoner and there is no further dwelling on the Pardoner’s attempted deceit. Thus, Chaucer is also inherently critiquing the ignorance and silence of the members of the church’s congregation.
Similar to the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner admits his faults, both in his duty as a Pardoner and simply as an immoral human being, in the prologue before the tale even begins. Undoubtedly adding an immediate layer of depth, admitting to personal corruption makes the reader question the legitimacy of each word of the narrative. However, unlike the Wife of Bath, the same corrupt character we are introduced to in the prologue doesn’t change over the course of his narrative. We are not exposed to any self-conscious anxieties, or shifts in the characters morality, like we are with the Wife’s unease with her older age or her vulnerability with love. The Pardoner stays in character throughout the story, and does so even at the end when it seems superfluous to be. So why does the Pardoner ask the pilgrims to touch the relics even after he admitted them to be fake? By returning to his message in the prologue in this seemingly redundant question, it is clear that the Pardoner has some ulterior motive and additionally, perhaps, gives credit to his (or Chaucer’s) clever wit. Perhaps he is interested in analyzing the effectiveness of his thoroughly rehearsed story? Maybe he is intentionally committing sinful acts against his own name to benefit his audiences understanding of sin? Even though I cannot yet put my finger on the Pardoner’s intentions, his clever prologue and tale reveal that he is an educated man, a powerful speaker, and desires for his audience to gain more insight from his routinely rehearsed story than the obvious.
The first thing that struck me about the Pardoner’s prologue and tale is the disparity between his depiction in both the General Prologue and his own Prologue, and his way of trying to trick the pilgrims into buying indulgences. Chaucer’s narrator describes him as incredibly successful, saying, “Upon a day he gat him more moneye / Than that the person gat in monthes tweye” (l. 703-704). The Pardoner himself continues this portrayal in his own description of himself, when he describes how he tricks many ignorant people and makes a lot of money (l. 389-396). This does not seem to match with what actually happens in the company during and after the tale. At the end he tries to sell the Tavern Keeper indulgences, using his tale of morality and the horror of a potential broken neck on the ride (l. 936) to make his trick successful. Yet he is so obvious about how he goes about it that the Tavern Keeper berates him and the Knight is forced to step in and get the situation under control. He literally tells the company, “For myn entente is nat but for to winne, / And nothing for correcccioun of sinne” (l. 403-404). Therefore, they have no reason to trust him, knowing he does not care about getting ride of sin and only wants profit. There is an odd gulf between the Pardoner’s description and the reality of his practices.
One explanation for the disparity is the impressionability and ignorance of Chaucer’s narrator. The simple narrator seems like the kind of person who would buy indulgences from the shady Pardoner, and likely swallowed his boastings unquestioningly and regurgitated them in the General Prologue. Filtering the narrative through a naïve character allows Chaucer to be very critical of the Pardoner and the entire practice of selling indulgences. He uses a caricature of a pardoner to highlight the greed, venality, and hypocrisy of the profession. Chaucer softens the blow to the Pardoner somewhat with his narrator’s slight admiration for him, but is ultimately ruthless in how he dispatches the character from any sort of position of respect within the company. It is clear that, in Chaucer’s eyes, pardoners are people to be scorned and almost laughed at, rather than to be taken seriously.
Hmmm. The Pardoner’s Tale (and probably moreso his prologue) puzzles me. One would imagine that part of winning the contest must come from having the other travelers admire your character somewhat (the Knight has a big advantage because he already commands respect, and therefore so does his story), so it’s unclear to me what motivates the Pardoner to reveal his own hypocrisy so shamelessly. He states outright, at one point, how he makes money by practicing the sin against which he preaches “Thus I can preche agayn that same vyce/Which that I use, and that is avaryce.” (427-428). Again and again he drives home the point that he doesn’t preach for any pious reasons, that he cares not for the souls of those he “heals”, he simply wants to make money. Why talk about your worst qualities, BLASPHEMOUS qualities, on a pilgrimage nonetheless, especially in a company peopled with clergymen and other religious figures. Is this simply Chaucer releasing his disdain for religious figures, or is there a reason for the Pardoner’s “confession” within the realm of the journey itself?
Also interesting is that the Pardoner makes his money telling stories — his sermons are all the “olde stories long tyme agoon” that his “lewed” parishioners love. Interesting that the fellow who quite unabashedly describes his awful conduct should be, essentially, a professional storyteller. Maybe a tongue-in-cheek comment from Chaucer? I guess we might talk about it…
You get at some central questions here–the Pardoner’s open parading of (even boasting about) his own vices as a prologue to an allegedly ‘moral’ tale complicates our reception of the tale and makes us think about how the tale (as with the wife’s tale) is in a sense a re-framing of some of the occluded concerns of the prologue. The question of confession is very interesting..more tomorrow.
What jumps out to me about the Pardoner’s tale is the overt criticism of religion. In the Prologue it is appalling how open the Pardoner is about his deceitfulness and cunning in basically stealing money from people. I think that religion gets painted as a human construction inspired by fear in this section. The Pardoner’s tale itself, about the three revelers who end up killing one another, is not a tale of morality as the Pardoner suggests, but rather a tool that he tries to use to pull the same trick on the pilgrims as he does in his church. Chaucer’s shameless attacks on high ideals, whether it be knightly chivalry or religious sanctity, is truly thought-provoking. Consider also the Biblical stories that the Pardoner references in his tale. They are all stories that a non-religious person might read as Hedonistic or twisted. Take the story of Lot for example. According to the Bible, Jesus is a descendant of Lot through one of Lot’s daughters who seduced the drunken Lot. Samson, meanwhile, was given unnatural powers by god but has two major weaknesses, one of them being an attraction to untrustworthy women. These allusions, among others, invite the reader to further question the legitimacy of accepted religious beliefs, and the character of the Pardoner is what sets the wheels in motion. If the Pardoner were a moral character who collected money for the Church, his tale could be read with a focus on the characters and a morale could be drawn, i.e. don’t stab your allies in the back because you’ll end up poisoned on a pile of gold (obviously a stark simplification), but because of the Pardoner’s taste for trickery he, like the Wife of Bath before, becomes the main character in a tale that doesn’t even feature the speaker. By that I mean to say that we can draw conclusions about the speaker from the stories that they tell. And in this case, we can draw some conclusion from the character of the Pardoner of the questions that the author has regarding religion.
Good–I’d like to push the comparison between the wife and the Pardoner a bit further in class, because it’s an interesting one: they both parade their own vices, in a way, and in both cases, they are the central characters of the tales they tell. In both cases, I’d argue, something other than the apparent motive is at work. What is the status of a “moral thing” in the mouth of an avowedly immoral speaker?
The Pardoner’s Tale highlights the destructive and evil nature of greed. Ironically the Pardoner reveals his source of income comes from deceiving people with fake artifacts. The Pardoner explains his deception is driven by his greed to live a luxurious lifestyle of fine wine and bread. He openly states he preaches “of no-thing but for coveityse”(96). The theme of his sermons are always about “Radix malorum est cupiditas” (97). Why does he find it appropriate to preach about a problem that he struggles with? Why is the Pardoner so comfortable and open with his own hypocrisy?
The Pardoner goes on to tell his Tale. He tells the Tale as if he is giving a sermon as he references various religious text. On line 67 St.Paul is referenced and quotes from Matthew and Jeremiah can be found on line 171. The references are mentioned before the Pardoner can even develop his Tale. The reference to Matthew and Jeremiah informs the reader that God “forbad swering at al” (171). The unrelated religious teachings suggests that the Pardoner is giving a sermon for the pilgrims.
To further support the Pardoner delivers a sermon rather than a Tale, after the story of his take concludes the Pardoner says, “I have relikes and pardon in my male” (458). The Pardoner completes an essential part of his sermon by trying to trick the pilgrims into paying to use his relics. Why would the Pardoner even ask the pilgrims if they wanted to touch the relics after telling them they were fake?
Where does the Pardoner’s obsession with money derive?
very good questions. Why does the Pardoner reveal the nature of his deceit and trickery to the pilgrims only to try to trick them later on? Why does he parade his hypocrisy so openly? What is the nature of the “confession” that he makes in the prologue? Does covetousness really seem like the central issue to you?
I found that the Wife of Bath’s tale took on a character and meaning far different from the one she intended for it. From her perspective, the tale aims at demonstrating how a woman, ugly though she might be, can gain “maistrye” over a man by cunning and wile. We can consider the two women, the Wife of Bath and the “wyf” found “on the grene” (l.998) by the knight, as analogous characters: both are older women seeking “housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe abedde” (l.1259), both assert themselves as authorities on the mystery of love, and above all, both have a preoccupation with power and “sovereyntee / as wel over hir housbond as hir love” (l.1038-1039). We know that the Wife of Bath thought nothing of manipulating and deceiving her husbands in order to subjugate them as “[her] dettour and [her] thral” (l.155), keeping “the power duringe al my lyf / Upon his propre body, and noght he” (l.158-159). It would make sense, then, that she views the old hag’s speech on “gentillesse” as largely disingenuous and conniving–and celebrates that, secretly lauding it as a paradigm of brilliant and largely successful rhetoric.
But for us readers, and perhaps for Chaucer, the final interplay between the old “wyf” and the knight could just as easily take on a more positive meaning. If we operate under the assumption that the old woman’s intentions are genuine, her lengthy monologue detailing a standard “vertuous living” (l.1122) that traces back to Christ and operates independently of class or wealth addresses perfectly the character flaws of the knight–who is superficial and caught up in outward appearances. That she demands absolute loyalty and exacts “maestyre” from him does not necessarily make their relationship one sided, because she gives the same to him. She promises to be “bothe fair and good… also good and trewe / as ever was wyf, sin that the world was newe” (l.1241-1244). She has established a new standard of marriage, a more Christian one in which both wife and husband serve each other out of mutual respect and love. The Wife of Bath only sees one side of such a relationship–the servitude of the husband–but Chaucer makes sure that we, as readers, see both.
Good–yes, I also see the wife and the “old wyf” as versions of one another, and yet the speech on gentilesse doesn’t have the same satirical, bitter edge as the wife’s prologue; it seems a quite straight observation about the nature of true “gentleness.” Is the idea, though, that she is teaching this rapist knight a lesson that will change him? And what do we make of the fact that she does end up married to him in the end? Though it has a fairy tale quality, this ending doesn’t really inspire us with hope for their future.
The most unexpected part of the Wife of Bath’s tale for me is the long monologue about how birth does not determine character. The old woman who saves the knight lectures him for his disgust at her low origins, saying that being born into a noble family does not make someone more likely to have a good nature. Specifically, she says “If gentillesse were planted naturelly/ Unto a certeyn linage doun the lyne/…They mighte do no vileinye or vyce,” (p.128). I imagine this sentiment comes from the fact that Chaucer was the son of a merchant, though he eventually lived in the King’s household. Having experience in both worlds, Chaucer would have been in a prime position to make subtle critiques of the ideology surrounding the estate system. This speech is surprisingly modern to me, as was the prologue to the tale. It also remind me of the original audience of this collection, the other members of the court, and makes me wonder why Chaucer chose to add this monologue, and how the court took it.
Very good–this section on “gentilesse” is a famous set-piece from the tale, and certainly speaks to Chaucer’s abiding interest in class issues–having been dismissed for her “low caste” the wife proceeds to inform this rapist knight that simply having noble birth does not guarantee his possession of the prized quality of “gentilesse.” It’s an early example of bourgeois self-determination…
The conclusion to The Wife of Bath’s Tale made me wonder if the Knight truly had enough respect for the old woman to allow her to choose for herself, or if his reaction was just well-timed. In the latter case, his wife’s transformation, as well as his understanding of women, is just skin-deep: he knows what she wants to hear, so he says it, and she reacts by giving him the same type of superficial reward. In reading it this way, the Wife of Baths becomes more a cynic and more mistrusting of all men; thus, her plea at the end, “and Jesu Crist us sende / Housbandes meke, yonge, and fresshe abedde” is just a concession that no man has the ability to give a wife what she wants, so the best bet is to find someone meek with whom she can “fake it.”
My question then becomes, is the old woman’s choice to transform a reflection of true agency, granted to her by her husband? Or does she possess the agency all along, without his giving it to her? I think its important to note that at first, she hands the decision over to him- “Chese now oon of thise thinges tweye”- but it then becomes clear that she is testing him, which leads me to believe that she has always had control over the outcome. And if so, does that give her true authority as a female? Or is his concession to her symbolic of her power?
And furthermore, what then is the point of this tale? Is the Wife of Baths saying that the only way for a woman to gain power is to somehow trap her husband into giving it to her? Or is she advocating that women have the power all along, as a true feminist would?
Excellent! I hope we can ask all these questions again this morning! Yes, in particular, what does it mean that the wife offers the rapist/knight the choice between two anti-feminist views of women–old and faithful or beautiful and unfaithful–and then proceeds to reward him with a kind of male fantasy woman–a fairy tale ending.
I find myself disagreeing with Tom here that the female victim in this story was “ignored”. Indeed, she was not a major character, but I think her purpose was more to prove a point of man’s tendency, in the Wife of Bath’s view, to do horrible things. As she says in her Prologue on lines 693-96: “By God, if women hadde writen stories,/As clerks han withinne hir oratories,/They wolde han writen of men more wikkednesse/Than all the mark of Adam may redresse”. Speaking of Adam and Eve imagery, the rape scene in the Tale somewhat evokes some, as we have a nature setting and a man taking what he believes to be his, giving the woman “carnal knowledge” of a sort where there was once innocence and causing his downfall and possibly the entire downfall of Man. Men of high “estaat”, that is.
The strange thing about this story is that Knight is redeemed and also rewarded with his ideal woman. Whether this is due to the fact that the Wife of Bath truly believes that men can be redeemed for such horrible crimes or because she so badly wants to forgive a man that abused her is uncertain to me. I want to take a more optimistic view and say that the Wife of Bath intends to say that though men have done horrible things to women and denied them their rights, they still have a chance to be forgiven.
Of course, we can all easily point to the horrible things the Wife of Bath has done, but I think we need to realize that she did those things because of the horrible things that men did to her. I highly doubt that being married at 12 to a far older man and being forced to have a sexual relationship with him was something she chose. I think Chaucer wants us to see that the Wife of Bath, as a 12 year-old girl dealing with a much more powerful man, uses sex as her only real weapon. And because a woman’s status was determined entirely by her husband’s, the Wife of Bath continually must marry in order to live, since women of that time were not allowed to work or own property. And when she finally marries someone she chooses, she is abused by him to the point of disability. This Tale to me represents the Wife of Bath saying that men need to redeem themselves in the eyes of women and then they may get what they want, represented by the Knight’s “ideal woman”. But this ending is definitely something I want to work through further.
Excellent thoughts, Jerrica. I do agree that the wife is a multi-layered figure–Chaucer is certainly not _simply_ representing her in terms of anti-feminist cliches–there is a darker and more original story that is half-told–we’ll look today at parts of the prologue and tale that at least for me link the wife to the maiden–assuring that in fact she doesn’t disappear from the narrative.
When reading the Wife’s tale at first I thought that it was a very strong feminist story about women being more than they appear and beauty coming from within. I do believe that is true, however, the moral of this story that I was more inspired and affected was the transformation of the male protagonist from the beginning to the end of the story. The knight starts out being this disrespectful, awful rapist and ends up converting into a loving and doting husband. This transformation is gradual but consistent and I think says a lot about Chaucer’s outlook on women during the time he lived. He portrays the knights wife as this tolerant old woman who sits patiently after she tricked and begged this knight to marry her, waiting for him to become this great man…but was she really? Or did she simply have no choice but to marry any man she could and hope for it to work out in the best way possible? When reading this story written by a female character, the reader has to keep in mind it was still written by a man and that has a lot of influence over the tale itself. The women’s perspective is from the eyes of a man during this time and not from the viewpoint of a female. Chaucer seems to be portraying women as rather passive people who have a great deal of patience when it comes to being treated well by men, however, something tells me the situation for these women was different and perhaps they did not want to be as accepting of poor behavior as they were. Were men oblivious to the accommodating that women were doing or did they simply want to pretend that they were content with the dynamics between the genders at that time?
Good questions–you are right that the ventriloquism here complicates our sense of what is conveyed (chaucer speaking through his narrator speaking through the wife). The power dynamic is very unstable–on the one hand the old “wyf” is patient and long-suffering, and on the other hand she has tricked this man into marriage; on the one hand, she offers him a choice (beautiful or true) but then rewards him with a male fantasy–the perfect woman. Whose voice is heard in the end?
My reading of this tale was extremely similar to Tom’s. To me, this whole story is about the interchangeability of the narrator. Although the narrators in the first two tales we’ve read have been different, the Miller’s Tale and the Knight’s Tale are extremely similar to one another for many reasons. In this, the first tale with a radically different storyline and narrator, Chaucer chooses to tweak how these characters relate to one another. Clearly this is a female-dominated tale, but it seems to me that Chaucer is reaching a similar conclusion as he did in the first two tales we’ve read, but simply by taking a different path. As Tom pointed out, the real (female) victim in this tale is almost completely ignored by every character, but the fact that the narrator is a woman and that the queen is able to garner more power than we’ve previously seen does show some victory for the female character in Chaucer’s work.
Yet, the narrator is portrayed as a vile, selfish woman who embodies none of the qualities Chaucer puts out to be “positive” in the general prologue and first two tales. What is that saying about Chaucer, that the one woman whom he’s let take control of a tale is horrible? It’s also important to keep in mind the conclusion of the tale. The actual choice the knight makes seems rather unimportant, but what is important is that the Wife was able to break him down and had him powerless. Instead of Theseus conquering a fair maiden, it’s a cunning, nasty old woman finding a way to conquer a younger, unsuspecting man. Perhaps, in some backward way, this could actually be Chaucer allowing women to have the same power in his stories as some male figures. I’m still struggling to see what Chaucer is really doing with gender roles here, but this theme is certainly worth looking at, especially when considering the first two tales we’ve read.
You ask some terrific questions here, and I’ll want to return to them tomorrow. You are right that the end is crucial–why does chaucer have the old “wyf” offer the knight such an apparently conventional and anti-feminist choice (old, ugly and honest or beautiful and unfaithful), only to present him with a kind of male fantasy woman at the end? Why is the rapist/knight rewarded rather than punished? Are there elements of the wife’s story that mitigate or complicate her anti-feminist appearance? Elements even in this Arthurian story?
I would like to examine the lines 882-912 in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” because the events in this passage not only mirror tropes that we have seen in previous tales but also raise unexpected and disturbing questions about morality and punishment. The story begins in earnest when the “lusty bacheler”—a knightly figure—of King Arthur’s house rapes the fair maiden: “maugree hir heed, / By verrey force he rafte hire maydenheed” (887-8). Because the Wife of Bath is the narrator of this tale, and because we have come to understand as a voice for femininity, we would expect this event to set the stage for a tale about punishment of the bachelor and justice for the maiden.
And yet, despite the fact that “dampned was this knight for to be deed / By cours of lawe” (890-1), we find the queen and other ladies of the court crying and begging King Arthur for a say in the knight’s verdict. King Arthur yields to the queen’s will, which foreshadows the answer to the knight’s search for “what thing is it that women most desyren” (905), and suddenly, the women have the power in the narrative. We would expect women to direct the course of the plot in this tale, because it is the only one told by a woman narrator. However, we would not expect these same women (and consequently the Wife of Bath) to spare the knight, who at this point in the tale is a clear symbol for dominant masculine ideology. He deserves to be put to death, and the queen seemingly forgets or dismisses this fact.
I will argue that the queen takes this course of action not to gain power over the knight but rather to gain autonomy over her husband. Let us compare King Arthur to Theseus in “The Knight’s Tale.” Although Theseus repeatedly has a soft-spot for crying women and often modifies his course of action when they appear in the narrative, he remains firmly in control throughout the tale. Here, in a tale narrated by a woman, King Arthur not only succumbs to the crying women but also relinquishes his power completely to the queen, and does not appear for the rest of the story. Though the queen accomplishes something for women by gaining power over men in this story, I will assert that she negates this progress by saving a male figure who deserves death and completely ignoring the real victim of this episode—the maiden who was raped. This reflects a darker truth about the Wife of Bath; while on the surface it might appear as if she represents women and speaks for femininity, she in fact is only interested in power for herself.
This is excellent–very shrewd and very interesting. I want to engage fully with your argument in class tomorrow, but for now here are a couple of thoughts: what about the fact that the knight is sent on a quest to rehabilitate himself–to figure out what it is that “wommen most desyren”–to think for once about the desires of women rather than his own? Is it possible that Chaucer wants us to think not so much about the missing punishment but about the problem–the rapist’s failure to consider the other subjectivity? In terms of the wife’s power–why do you think she has the “old wyf” offer the knight such an anti-feminist choice at the end of her story?
March 8, 2015 at 4:36 pm
What interests me most about the Pardoner’s Tale is the Pardoner’s blunt admission of his wrongdoings. Each of the tales that we have read thus far contains elements of moral corruption, but the Pardoner is the first teller to truly acknowledge the extent to which his lifestyle is sinful. His brutal honesty is made even more interesting by the fact that he preaches against greed, the vice that he most shamelessly embodies.
There are many different ways that the reader can interpret Chaucer’s decision to paint the Pardoner as a church official who openly defies god. I read the Tale as an ironic criticism of the Catholic church that uses the Pardoner as an allegorical representation of religious corruption. His deception of loyal churchgoers initially strikes the reader as the ultimate irreligious sin, for he is essentially fabricating, and thus corrupting, the relationship between god and his followers. However, the fact that he so boldly recognizes his misdoings almost cancels them out entirely, leaving the reader to consider who else may be at fault in the situation. Perhaps Chaucer uses the Pardoner’s artificial relics to criticize Christians who blindly obey the church without having an accurate perception of what they are truly devoting themselves to.
The undertones of religious commentary in the Pardoner’s Tale show yet again that Chaucer likely had contemporary views of the world that were far ahead of the times in which he lived.
March 5, 2015 at 9:17 am
Personally, I think that the Pardoner’s tale is hilarious. Here’s a guy that makes his living selling lies. He prays on people’s blind faith, and exploits them for all that they are worth. The Pardoner is a medieval conman. The “relics” that he sells to the faithful are mere counterfeits. He preaches against gluttony and covetousness, yet those are the very same vices that plague him. What I found to be even funnier, was that the Pardoner held no reservation in confessing to the entire pilgrimage what a fake he was. He is so plagued by the affliction of greed that he admits that he wouldn’t think twice about taking the every last penny from an old widow, allowing her children to starve.
The Pardoner then goes into his story about three young Flemish people who, in their search to find and kill death, happening upon a large quantity of gold. The young mens’ intentions immediately go to how they can procure the most for themselves, even if that means killing their friends. Eventually two of them conspire to kill the third, while the third plans on poisoning the other two. In the end, all three of them are conquered by Death, all because of their greed.
After the story, the Pardoner tries to sell the pilgrims his relics, even though he already admitted to them being fake. The Host then threatens to turn the Pardoner’s genitals into relics. That line has to be one of the most comedic, for me, in all of The Canterbury Tales.
March 5, 2015 at 9:03 am
I am fascinated by the construction of the Tale itself. The Pardoner tells us that he tells stories for a living, that he has packaged sermons with packaged lessons that he pulls out every time he visits a new town. He mentions that these stories are for “the lewed people”–the unlearned people (392). But here he is, telling one of these blanched and bleached and starched tales to the “gentils” (323). I get the feeling that like the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner’s Tale is less about the tale itself and more about the prologue (and epilogue) of the tale. The Pardoner begins by admitting that he is a hypocrytical and guiltless preacher, but still–quite sincerely–asks for money at the end of his telling. It is the Knight who steps into the resolve the quarrel between the Pardoner and the Host. I think this is one the most sincere reading of Chaucer’s thoughts about “estate” or “gentilesse.” He seems to care nothing for religion, and makes it clear that few educated people do. But in the end, it is the higher classes who step in, command, and take control. Secular gentilesse seems to be far more powerful in Chaucer’s world than any other force–even religion.
March 5, 2015 at 12:44 am
In The Pardoner’s Tale, I was most struck by the narrator’s blatant admittance to being a hypocrite, almost in a hyperbolic sense, throughout the entire tale. The most intense moment of hyperbole was when the Pardoner admits that he values his luxurious lifestyle—that results from his duping of “unlearned” people—so much so that he wouldn’t mind taking money from a poor widow with starving children at home. I was struck by the absurdity of that confession and found myself wondering who would ever admit to that? And is it even possible for a person to be as “evil” as the Pardoner claims to be? It was after this moment that I began to consider the interpretation that the Pardoner doesn’t just represent one rotten member of the church; instead he operates as a synecdoche for the entire institution of the church. Therefore, the portrayal of the Pardoner and his extremely explicit hypocrisy and immorality functions as a way for Chaucer to covertly imply that the church embodies all of these bad characteristics as well. If this tale is a commentary on the institution of the church then it is also conversely a commentary on the members of the church’s congregation, which is embodied the other pilgrims who start the tale off by asking for a moral story. It is important to keep in mind that what is being said in the tales is sometimes just as important as what is not being said; therefore, the absence of any interruptions during the Pardoner’s prologue holds meaning. We have seen the pilgrims interrupt the storyteller before, for example in the Miller’s tale, when they were displeased with the content of his fictitious tale, so we know they are capable of doing so. However, when the Pardoner recounts all the various ways in which he deceives other people in the one aspect of an individual’s life that all members of the pilgrimage would presumably agree is of the utmost importance: religion, there is no interjection or protest from the audience. At the end of the tale, we get a little bit of anger and push back from the Host when the Pardoner tries to get him to kiss the fake relic, but when the Knight intervenes, the Host easily “kiste” the Pardoner and there is no further dwelling on the Pardoner’s attempted deceit. Thus, Chaucer is also inherently critiquing the ignorance and silence of the members of the church’s congregation.
March 4, 2015 at 10:12 pm
Similar to the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner admits his faults, both in his duty as a Pardoner and simply as an immoral human being, in the prologue before the tale even begins. Undoubtedly adding an immediate layer of depth, admitting to personal corruption makes the reader question the legitimacy of each word of the narrative. However, unlike the Wife of Bath, the same corrupt character we are introduced to in the prologue doesn’t change over the course of his narrative. We are not exposed to any self-conscious anxieties, or shifts in the characters morality, like we are with the Wife’s unease with her older age or her vulnerability with love. The Pardoner stays in character throughout the story, and does so even at the end when it seems superfluous to be. So why does the Pardoner ask the pilgrims to touch the relics even after he admitted them to be fake? By returning to his message in the prologue in this seemingly redundant question, it is clear that the Pardoner has some ulterior motive and additionally, perhaps, gives credit to his (or Chaucer’s) clever wit. Perhaps he is interested in analyzing the effectiveness of his thoroughly rehearsed story? Maybe he is intentionally committing sinful acts against his own name to benefit his audiences understanding of sin? Even though I cannot yet put my finger on the Pardoner’s intentions, his clever prologue and tale reveal that he is an educated man, a powerful speaker, and desires for his audience to gain more insight from his routinely rehearsed story than the obvious.
March 4, 2015 at 9:47 pm
The first thing that struck me about the Pardoner’s prologue and tale is the disparity between his depiction in both the General Prologue and his own Prologue, and his way of trying to trick the pilgrims into buying indulgences. Chaucer’s narrator describes him as incredibly successful, saying, “Upon a day he gat him more moneye / Than that the person gat in monthes tweye” (l. 703-704). The Pardoner himself continues this portrayal in his own description of himself, when he describes how he tricks many ignorant people and makes a lot of money (l. 389-396). This does not seem to match with what actually happens in the company during and after the tale. At the end he tries to sell the Tavern Keeper indulgences, using his tale of morality and the horror of a potential broken neck on the ride (l. 936) to make his trick successful. Yet he is so obvious about how he goes about it that the Tavern Keeper berates him and the Knight is forced to step in and get the situation under control. He literally tells the company, “For myn entente is nat but for to winne, / And nothing for correcccioun of sinne” (l. 403-404). Therefore, they have no reason to trust him, knowing he does not care about getting ride of sin and only wants profit. There is an odd gulf between the Pardoner’s description and the reality of his practices.
One explanation for the disparity is the impressionability and ignorance of Chaucer’s narrator. The simple narrator seems like the kind of person who would buy indulgences from the shady Pardoner, and likely swallowed his boastings unquestioningly and regurgitated them in the General Prologue. Filtering the narrative through a naïve character allows Chaucer to be very critical of the Pardoner and the entire practice of selling indulgences. He uses a caricature of a pardoner to highlight the greed, venality, and hypocrisy of the profession. Chaucer softens the blow to the Pardoner somewhat with his narrator’s slight admiration for him, but is ultimately ruthless in how he dispatches the character from any sort of position of respect within the company. It is clear that, in Chaucer’s eyes, pardoners are people to be scorned and almost laughed at, rather than to be taken seriously.
March 4, 2015 at 7:10 pm
Hmmm. The Pardoner’s Tale (and probably moreso his prologue) puzzles me. One would imagine that part of winning the contest must come from having the other travelers admire your character somewhat (the Knight has a big advantage because he already commands respect, and therefore so does his story), so it’s unclear to me what motivates the Pardoner to reveal his own hypocrisy so shamelessly. He states outright, at one point, how he makes money by practicing the sin against which he preaches “Thus I can preche agayn that same vyce/Which that I use, and that is avaryce.” (427-428). Again and again he drives home the point that he doesn’t preach for any pious reasons, that he cares not for the souls of those he “heals”, he simply wants to make money. Why talk about your worst qualities, BLASPHEMOUS qualities, on a pilgrimage nonetheless, especially in a company peopled with clergymen and other religious figures. Is this simply Chaucer releasing his disdain for religious figures, or is there a reason for the Pardoner’s “confession” within the realm of the journey itself?
Also interesting is that the Pardoner makes his money telling stories — his sermons are all the “olde stories long tyme agoon” that his “lewed” parishioners love. Interesting that the fellow who quite unabashedly describes his awful conduct should be, essentially, a professional storyteller. Maybe a tongue-in-cheek comment from Chaucer? I guess we might talk about it…
March 4, 2015 at 8:20 pm
You get at some central questions here–the Pardoner’s open parading of (even boasting about) his own vices as a prologue to an allegedly ‘moral’ tale complicates our reception of the tale and makes us think about how the tale (as with the wife’s tale) is in a sense a re-framing of some of the occluded concerns of the prologue. The question of confession is very interesting..more tomorrow.
March 4, 2015 at 4:29 pm
What jumps out to me about the Pardoner’s tale is the overt criticism of religion. In the Prologue it is appalling how open the Pardoner is about his deceitfulness and cunning in basically stealing money from people. I think that religion gets painted as a human construction inspired by fear in this section. The Pardoner’s tale itself, about the three revelers who end up killing one another, is not a tale of morality as the Pardoner suggests, but rather a tool that he tries to use to pull the same trick on the pilgrims as he does in his church. Chaucer’s shameless attacks on high ideals, whether it be knightly chivalry or religious sanctity, is truly thought-provoking. Consider also the Biblical stories that the Pardoner references in his tale. They are all stories that a non-religious person might read as Hedonistic or twisted. Take the story of Lot for example. According to the Bible, Jesus is a descendant of Lot through one of Lot’s daughters who seduced the drunken Lot. Samson, meanwhile, was given unnatural powers by god but has two major weaknesses, one of them being an attraction to untrustworthy women. These allusions, among others, invite the reader to further question the legitimacy of accepted religious beliefs, and the character of the Pardoner is what sets the wheels in motion. If the Pardoner were a moral character who collected money for the Church, his tale could be read with a focus on the characters and a morale could be drawn, i.e. don’t stab your allies in the back because you’ll end up poisoned on a pile of gold (obviously a stark simplification), but because of the Pardoner’s taste for trickery he, like the Wife of Bath before, becomes the main character in a tale that doesn’t even feature the speaker. By that I mean to say that we can draw conclusions about the speaker from the stories that they tell. And in this case, we can draw some conclusion from the character of the Pardoner of the questions that the author has regarding religion.
March 4, 2015 at 8:13 pm
Good–I’d like to push the comparison between the wife and the Pardoner a bit further in class, because it’s an interesting one: they both parade their own vices, in a way, and in both cases, they are the central characters of the tales they tell. In both cases, I’d argue, something other than the apparent motive is at work. What is the status of a “moral thing” in the mouth of an avowedly immoral speaker?
March 4, 2015 at 4:01 pm
The Pardoner’s Tale highlights the destructive and evil nature of greed. Ironically the Pardoner reveals his source of income comes from deceiving people with fake artifacts. The Pardoner explains his deception is driven by his greed to live a luxurious lifestyle of fine wine and bread. He openly states he preaches “of no-thing but for coveityse”(96). The theme of his sermons are always about “Radix malorum est cupiditas” (97). Why does he find it appropriate to preach about a problem that he struggles with? Why is the Pardoner so comfortable and open with his own hypocrisy?
The Pardoner goes on to tell his Tale. He tells the Tale as if he is giving a sermon as he references various religious text. On line 67 St.Paul is referenced and quotes from Matthew and Jeremiah can be found on line 171. The references are mentioned before the Pardoner can even develop his Tale. The reference to Matthew and Jeremiah informs the reader that God “forbad swering at al” (171). The unrelated religious teachings suggests that the Pardoner is giving a sermon for the pilgrims.
To further support the Pardoner delivers a sermon rather than a Tale, after the story of his take concludes the Pardoner says, “I have relikes and pardon in my male” (458). The Pardoner completes an essential part of his sermon by trying to trick the pilgrims into paying to use his relics. Why would the Pardoner even ask the pilgrims if they wanted to touch the relics after telling them they were fake?
Where does the Pardoner’s obsession with money derive?
March 4, 2015 at 8:10 pm
very good questions. Why does the Pardoner reveal the nature of his deceit and trickery to the pilgrims only to try to trick them later on? Why does he parade his hypocrisy so openly? What is the nature of the “confession” that he makes in the prologue? Does covetousness really seem like the central issue to you?
March 3, 2015 at 9:08 am
I found that the Wife of Bath’s tale took on a character and meaning far different from the one she intended for it. From her perspective, the tale aims at demonstrating how a woman, ugly though she might be, can gain “maistrye” over a man by cunning and wile. We can consider the two women, the Wife of Bath and the “wyf” found “on the grene” (l.998) by the knight, as analogous characters: both are older women seeking “housbondes meke, yonge, and fresshe abedde” (l.1259), both assert themselves as authorities on the mystery of love, and above all, both have a preoccupation with power and “sovereyntee / as wel over hir housbond as hir love” (l.1038-1039). We know that the Wife of Bath thought nothing of manipulating and deceiving her husbands in order to subjugate them as “[her] dettour and [her] thral” (l.155), keeping “the power duringe al my lyf / Upon his propre body, and noght he” (l.158-159). It would make sense, then, that she views the old hag’s speech on “gentillesse” as largely disingenuous and conniving–and celebrates that, secretly lauding it as a paradigm of brilliant and largely successful rhetoric.
But for us readers, and perhaps for Chaucer, the final interplay between the old “wyf” and the knight could just as easily take on a more positive meaning. If we operate under the assumption that the old woman’s intentions are genuine, her lengthy monologue detailing a standard “vertuous living” (l.1122) that traces back to Christ and operates independently of class or wealth addresses perfectly the character flaws of the knight–who is superficial and caught up in outward appearances. That she demands absolute loyalty and exacts “maestyre” from him does not necessarily make their relationship one sided, because she gives the same to him. She promises to be “bothe fair and good… also good and trewe / as ever was wyf, sin that the world was newe” (l.1241-1244). She has established a new standard of marriage, a more Christian one in which both wife and husband serve each other out of mutual respect and love. The Wife of Bath only sees one side of such a relationship–the servitude of the husband–but Chaucer makes sure that we, as readers, see both.
March 4, 2015 at 8:08 pm
Good–yes, I also see the wife and the “old wyf” as versions of one another, and yet the speech on gentilesse doesn’t have the same satirical, bitter edge as the wife’s prologue; it seems a quite straight observation about the nature of true “gentleness.” Is the idea, though, that she is teaching this rapist knight a lesson that will change him? And what do we make of the fact that she does end up married to him in the end? Though it has a fairy tale quality, this ending doesn’t really inspire us with hope for their future.
March 3, 2015 at 1:09 am
The most unexpected part of the Wife of Bath’s tale for me is the long monologue about how birth does not determine character. The old woman who saves the knight lectures him for his disgust at her low origins, saying that being born into a noble family does not make someone more likely to have a good nature. Specifically, she says “If gentillesse were planted naturelly/ Unto a certeyn linage doun the lyne/…They mighte do no vileinye or vyce,” (p.128). I imagine this sentiment comes from the fact that Chaucer was the son of a merchant, though he eventually lived in the King’s household. Having experience in both worlds, Chaucer would have been in a prime position to make subtle critiques of the ideology surrounding the estate system. This speech is surprisingly modern to me, as was the prologue to the tale. It also remind me of the original audience of this collection, the other members of the court, and makes me wonder why Chaucer chose to add this monologue, and how the court took it.
March 3, 2015 at 8:17 am
Very good–this section on “gentilesse” is a famous set-piece from the tale, and certainly speaks to Chaucer’s abiding interest in class issues–having been dismissed for her “low caste” the wife proceeds to inform this rapist knight that simply having noble birth does not guarantee his possession of the prized quality of “gentilesse.” It’s an early example of bourgeois self-determination…
March 3, 2015 at 12:01 am
The conclusion to The Wife of Bath’s Tale made me wonder if the Knight truly had enough respect for the old woman to allow her to choose for herself, or if his reaction was just well-timed. In the latter case, his wife’s transformation, as well as his understanding of women, is just skin-deep: he knows what she wants to hear, so he says it, and she reacts by giving him the same type of superficial reward. In reading it this way, the Wife of Baths becomes more a cynic and more mistrusting of all men; thus, her plea at the end, “and Jesu Crist us sende / Housbandes meke, yonge, and fresshe abedde” is just a concession that no man has the ability to give a wife what she wants, so the best bet is to find someone meek with whom she can “fake it.”
My question then becomes, is the old woman’s choice to transform a reflection of true agency, granted to her by her husband? Or does she possess the agency all along, without his giving it to her? I think its important to note that at first, she hands the decision over to him- “Chese now oon of thise thinges tweye”- but it then becomes clear that she is testing him, which leads me to believe that she has always had control over the outcome. And if so, does that give her true authority as a female? Or is his concession to her symbolic of her power?
And furthermore, what then is the point of this tale? Is the Wife of Baths saying that the only way for a woman to gain power is to somehow trap her husband into giving it to her? Or is she advocating that women have the power all along, as a true feminist would?
March 3, 2015 at 8:15 am
Excellent! I hope we can ask all these questions again this morning! Yes, in particular, what does it mean that the wife offers the rapist/knight the choice between two anti-feminist views of women–old and faithful or beautiful and unfaithful–and then proceeds to reward him with a kind of male fantasy woman–a fairy tale ending.
March 2, 2015 at 10:39 pm
I find myself disagreeing with Tom here that the female victim in this story was “ignored”. Indeed, she was not a major character, but I think her purpose was more to prove a point of man’s tendency, in the Wife of Bath’s view, to do horrible things. As she says in her Prologue on lines 693-96: “By God, if women hadde writen stories,/As clerks han withinne hir oratories,/They wolde han writen of men more wikkednesse/Than all the mark of Adam may redresse”. Speaking of Adam and Eve imagery, the rape scene in the Tale somewhat evokes some, as we have a nature setting and a man taking what he believes to be his, giving the woman “carnal knowledge” of a sort where there was once innocence and causing his downfall and possibly the entire downfall of Man. Men of high “estaat”, that is.
The strange thing about this story is that Knight is redeemed and also rewarded with his ideal woman. Whether this is due to the fact that the Wife of Bath truly believes that men can be redeemed for such horrible crimes or because she so badly wants to forgive a man that abused her is uncertain to me. I want to take a more optimistic view and say that the Wife of Bath intends to say that though men have done horrible things to women and denied them their rights, they still have a chance to be forgiven.
Of course, we can all easily point to the horrible things the Wife of Bath has done, but I think we need to realize that she did those things because of the horrible things that men did to her. I highly doubt that being married at 12 to a far older man and being forced to have a sexual relationship with him was something she chose. I think Chaucer wants us to see that the Wife of Bath, as a 12 year-old girl dealing with a much more powerful man, uses sex as her only real weapon. And because a woman’s status was determined entirely by her husband’s, the Wife of Bath continually must marry in order to live, since women of that time were not allowed to work or own property. And when she finally marries someone she chooses, she is abused by him to the point of disability. This Tale to me represents the Wife of Bath saying that men need to redeem themselves in the eyes of women and then they may get what they want, represented by the Knight’s “ideal woman”. But this ending is definitely something I want to work through further.
March 3, 2015 at 8:13 am
Excellent thoughts, Jerrica. I do agree that the wife is a multi-layered figure–Chaucer is certainly not _simply_ representing her in terms of anti-feminist cliches–there is a darker and more original story that is half-told–we’ll look today at parts of the prologue and tale that at least for me link the wife to the maiden–assuring that in fact she doesn’t disappear from the narrative.
March 2, 2015 at 9:45 pm
When reading the Wife’s tale at first I thought that it was a very strong feminist story about women being more than they appear and beauty coming from within. I do believe that is true, however, the moral of this story that I was more inspired and affected was the transformation of the male protagonist from the beginning to the end of the story. The knight starts out being this disrespectful, awful rapist and ends up converting into a loving and doting husband. This transformation is gradual but consistent and I think says a lot about Chaucer’s outlook on women during the time he lived. He portrays the knights wife as this tolerant old woman who sits patiently after she tricked and begged this knight to marry her, waiting for him to become this great man…but was she really? Or did she simply have no choice but to marry any man she could and hope for it to work out in the best way possible? When reading this story written by a female character, the reader has to keep in mind it was still written by a man and that has a lot of influence over the tale itself. The women’s perspective is from the eyes of a man during this time and not from the viewpoint of a female. Chaucer seems to be portraying women as rather passive people who have a great deal of patience when it comes to being treated well by men, however, something tells me the situation for these women was different and perhaps they did not want to be as accepting of poor behavior as they were. Were men oblivious to the accommodating that women were doing or did they simply want to pretend that they were content with the dynamics between the genders at that time?
March 2, 2015 at 9:50 pm
Good questions–you are right that the ventriloquism here complicates our sense of what is conveyed (chaucer speaking through his narrator speaking through the wife). The power dynamic is very unstable–on the one hand the old “wyf” is patient and long-suffering, and on the other hand she has tricked this man into marriage; on the one hand, she offers him a choice (beautiful or true) but then rewards him with a male fantasy–the perfect woman. Whose voice is heard in the end?
March 2, 2015 at 5:15 pm
My reading of this tale was extremely similar to Tom’s. To me, this whole story is about the interchangeability of the narrator. Although the narrators in the first two tales we’ve read have been different, the Miller’s Tale and the Knight’s Tale are extremely similar to one another for many reasons. In this, the first tale with a radically different storyline and narrator, Chaucer chooses to tweak how these characters relate to one another. Clearly this is a female-dominated tale, but it seems to me that Chaucer is reaching a similar conclusion as he did in the first two tales we’ve read, but simply by taking a different path. As Tom pointed out, the real (female) victim in this tale is almost completely ignored by every character, but the fact that the narrator is a woman and that the queen is able to garner more power than we’ve previously seen does show some victory for the female character in Chaucer’s work.
Yet, the narrator is portrayed as a vile, selfish woman who embodies none of the qualities Chaucer puts out to be “positive” in the general prologue and first two tales. What is that saying about Chaucer, that the one woman whom he’s let take control of a tale is horrible? It’s also important to keep in mind the conclusion of the tale. The actual choice the knight makes seems rather unimportant, but what is important is that the Wife was able to break him down and had him powerless. Instead of Theseus conquering a fair maiden, it’s a cunning, nasty old woman finding a way to conquer a younger, unsuspecting man. Perhaps, in some backward way, this could actually be Chaucer allowing women to have the same power in his stories as some male figures. I’m still struggling to see what Chaucer is really doing with gender roles here, but this theme is certainly worth looking at, especially when considering the first two tales we’ve read.
March 2, 2015 at 9:48 pm
You ask some terrific questions here, and I’ll want to return to them tomorrow. You are right that the end is crucial–why does chaucer have the old “wyf” offer the knight such an apparently conventional and anti-feminist choice (old, ugly and honest or beautiful and unfaithful), only to present him with a kind of male fantasy woman at the end? Why is the rapist/knight rewarded rather than punished? Are there elements of the wife’s story that mitigate or complicate her anti-feminist appearance? Elements even in this Arthurian story?
March 2, 2015 at 12:51 pm
I would like to examine the lines 882-912 in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” because the events in this passage not only mirror tropes that we have seen in previous tales but also raise unexpected and disturbing questions about morality and punishment. The story begins in earnest when the “lusty bacheler”—a knightly figure—of King Arthur’s house rapes the fair maiden: “maugree hir heed, / By verrey force he rafte hire maydenheed” (887-8). Because the Wife of Bath is the narrator of this tale, and because we have come to understand as a voice for femininity, we would expect this event to set the stage for a tale about punishment of the bachelor and justice for the maiden.
And yet, despite the fact that “dampned was this knight for to be deed / By cours of lawe” (890-1), we find the queen and other ladies of the court crying and begging King Arthur for a say in the knight’s verdict. King Arthur yields to the queen’s will, which foreshadows the answer to the knight’s search for “what thing is it that women most desyren” (905), and suddenly, the women have the power in the narrative. We would expect women to direct the course of the plot in this tale, because it is the only one told by a woman narrator. However, we would not expect these same women (and consequently the Wife of Bath) to spare the knight, who at this point in the tale is a clear symbol for dominant masculine ideology. He deserves to be put to death, and the queen seemingly forgets or dismisses this fact.
I will argue that the queen takes this course of action not to gain power over the knight but rather to gain autonomy over her husband. Let us compare King Arthur to Theseus in “The Knight’s Tale.” Although Theseus repeatedly has a soft-spot for crying women and often modifies his course of action when they appear in the narrative, he remains firmly in control throughout the tale. Here, in a tale narrated by a woman, King Arthur not only succumbs to the crying women but also relinquishes his power completely to the queen, and does not appear for the rest of the story. Though the queen accomplishes something for women by gaining power over men in this story, I will assert that she negates this progress by saving a male figure who deserves death and completely ignoring the real victim of this episode—the maiden who was raped. This reflects a darker truth about the Wife of Bath; while on the surface it might appear as if she represents women and speaks for femininity, she in fact is only interested in power for herself.
March 2, 2015 at 9:45 pm
This is excellent–very shrewd and very interesting. I want to engage fully with your argument in class tomorrow, but for now here are a couple of thoughts: what about the fact that the knight is sent on a quest to rehabilitate himself–to figure out what it is that “wommen most desyren”–to think for once about the desires of women rather than his own? Is it possible that Chaucer wants us to think not so much about the missing punishment but about the problem–the rapist’s failure to consider the other subjectivity? In terms of the wife’s power–why do you think she has the “old wyf” offer the knight such an anti-feminist choice at the end of her story?