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Study Notes: The Canterbury Tales
useful links:
Electronic
Canterbury Tales - a rich source of links to online texts and resources
Harvard University's superb explanatory
notes for the Canterbury Tales
The Pilgrims
MILITARY GENTRY:
Knight (landowning
nobleman)
Squire (his son and valet)
Knight's Yeoman (freeborn servant)
CLERICAL GENTRY
Prioress (head of an abbey [nunnery])
The Nun’s Priest (+ 2 more who don’t speak)
2nd Nun
Monk and Friar (both independent clergymen who supposedly minister to country people)
MERCHANTS/MIDDLE
CLASS:
Merchant (sells cloth)
Clerk (poor but learned divinity student)
Sergeant of Law (lawyer of high degree)
Franklin (landowner)
Artisans, traveling together: Haberdasher (hats), Carpenter, Weaver, Dyer,
Tapestry-Maker, Cook
Shipman (owns & sails a ship)
Physician (doctor of physic)
Wife of Bath (cloth-maker)
HONEST LABORERS:
Parson (poor priest) (set apart from clergy because he
makes his own living)
Plowman (Parson's brother)
CHURLS/SCOUNDRELS:
Miller (apparently cheats people who bring their wheat to
his mill to be ground)
Reeve (estate manager for landed gentry)
Manciple (business agent of lawyers in Inner Temple)
Summoner (process server for ecclesiastical court)
Pardoner (sells people holy objects and certificates that grant pardons for
their sins)
Harry Bailly, the Host at the Tabard Inn
Chaucer himself
Study Guide: The Wife of Bath’s prologue and Tale
Access the Harvard U. interlinear translation of The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale here:
The Wife of Bath is a character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – probably the most memorable character, given the length of her “Prologue,” in which she introduces herself to the rest of the Pilgrims to Canterbury. Here is the way Chaucer describes her in his introduction to the Tales (translated into modern English):
There was a
housewife come from Bath, or near,
Who- sad to say- was deaf in either ear.
At making cloth she had so great a bent
She bettered those of Ypres and even of Ghent.
In all the parish there was no goodwife
Should offering make before her, on my life;
And if one did, indeed, so wroth was she
It put her out of all her charity.
Her kerchiefs were of finest weave and ground;
I dare swear that they weighed a full ten pound
Which, of a Sunday, she wore on her head.
Her hose were of the choicest scarlet red,
Close gartered, and her shoes were soft and new.
Bold was her face, and fair, and red of hue.
She'd been respectable throughout her life,
With five churched husbands bringing joy and strife,
Not counting other company in youth;
But thereof there's no need to speak, in truth.
Three times she'd journeyed to Jerusalem;
And many a foreign stream she'd had to stem;
At Rome she'd been, and she'd been in Boulogne,
In Spain at Santiago, and at Cologne.
She could tell much of wandering by the way:
Gap-toothed was she, it is no lie to say.
Upon an ambler easily she sat,
Well wimpled, aye, and over all a hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe;
A rug was tucked around her buttocks large,
And on her feet a pair of sharpened spurs.
In company well could she laugh her slurs.
The remedies of love she knew, perchance,
For of that art she'd learned the old, old dance.
Along with the text of her prologue and tale translated into Modern English, I’m providing you with a summary of the Wife of Bath’s prologue, which in a way is more important than her Tale, because it gives us a portrait of what the medieval world imagined a woman would be like if she were given complete economic and social freedom. Notice that she is specifically concerned with challenging the mal de femmes tradition (remember Sir Gawain) as well as other church teachings that sought to control women sexually, morally, and socially.
Her tale is interesting for the way in which it uses the world of courtly love to present an alternative view of love – one from the women’s perspective. But remember, this is a male author’s version of a woman’s argument for her rights.
Summary of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (from SparkNotes: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/canterbury)
The Wife of Bath begins the Prologue to her tale by establishing her authority on marriage. She has been married five times, beginning at the tender age of 12. Of course, many people have criticized her, most on the scriptural basis that Christ went only once to the wedding at Cana. The Wife of Bath has her own views of Scripture and God's plan. "God bad us for to wexe [wax, increase] and multiplye," she says, "That gentil text kan I wel understonde" (ll. 28-29). After all, she has only had one husband at a time, while great Old Testament figures, like Abraham and Jacob, had many wives at once. She admits that many great Fathers of the Church have proclaimed the importance of virginity, like the Apostle Paul. But, she reasons, even if virginity is, someone must be procreating to make more virgins! Leave virginity to the perfect, she says, and let the rest of us use our gifts as best we may--and her gift, doubtless, is her sexual power. "In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument / As frely as my Makere hath it sent" (ll. 155-156). With her "instrument," she keeps control over the bodies of her husbands.
At this point, the Pardoner interrupts; he says he was planning to marry soon (this is meant to be a joke; Chaucer suspects he is either homosexual or a eunuch) and worries that his wife will control his body, as the Wife of Bath describes. The Wife of Bath tells him to have patience, to listen to the whole tale to see if it reveals the truth about marriage. Of her five husbands, three have been "good," and two have been "bad." The first three were good mostly because they were rich and old, she admits. She laughs to recall all the torment that she put these men through and recounts a typical conversation that she had with these older husbands. If he came home drunk one night, she would launch into a tirade ending with the proclamation, “Thou shalt not bothe . . . be maister of my body and of my good" (ll. 319-320). Claiming that every wife destroys her husband, she tells each man, only makes you look like a weak old fool. All of this, the Wife of Bath tells the rest of the pilgrims, was a pack of lies — her husbands never held these opinions, but she made these claims to give them grief: "O Lord! the peyne I dide hem and the wo, / Ful gilteless, by Goddes sweete pyne!"( ll. 390-391) Worse, she would tease them in bed, refusing them satisfaction until they promised her money. Proudly, she admits to using her tongue and her sexual powers to enact her husbands' total submission.
The Wife of Bath now moves on to describe her two "bad" husbands. Her fourth husband, whom she married when still young, was a reveler. Describing the dancing and singing they used to do, she becomes wistful as she remembers her wild youth: "Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote [good] / That I have had my world in my tyme" (ll. 478-479). However, this reminds her of how old she has become, and she quickly returns to her fourth husband.
She admits that she was his purgatory on Earth, always trying to make him jealous. He died while she was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Of her fifth husband, she has more to say. She loved him, but, this time, he was the one giving her grief. He was coy in bed and would not indulge her desires; this, she says, is what women want--to have something forbidden to them and, thus, desire it more. This husband was also different because she married him for love, not money--he was a clerk at Oxenford and, thus, poor, just like the Clerk here on the pilgrimage.
When she first met this fifth husband, Jankyn, she was still married to her fourth. It was at her fourth husband's funeral that she became attracted to him, noticing his legs as he carried the casket. He was only 20 and she 40, but she was always a lusty woman and thought she could handle his youth. But, she says, she came to regret this, because he would not suffer her abuse like the other husbands and gave some of his own abuse in return. He had a book, she recalls, called Valerie and Theofraste, a "book of wikked wyves" (ll. 691) containing the stories of the most deceitful wives in history. It began with Eve, who brought all mankind into sin by first taking the apple in the Garden of Eden; from there, it chronicles Delilah's betrayal of Samson, Clytaemnestra's murder of Agamemnon, and other famous stories. It concludes, "Bet is . . . thyn habitacioun [it would be better to live] . . . with a leon of a foul dragoun, / Than with a woman usynge for to chyde." (ll. 782-783) Jankyn would torment the Wife of Bath (who we now learn is named Alison) by reading out of this book at night.
One evening, out of frustration, she tears a page out of the book, and he repays her by striking her on the ear, which is now deaf. She falls down and pretends to be dead; he bends down to embrace her and apologize, but she smacks him in the head. They finally manage a truce, in which he hands over all his meager estate to her, and she acts kindly and loving toward him. At last, having chronicled all her marriages, the Wife of Bath prepares to tell her story, and the Friar laughs out loud, exclaiming, "This is a long preamble of a tale!"( ll. 837) The Summoner tells him to shut up, and they exchange some angry words; the Host quiets them down and allows the Wife of Bath to begin.
