The Virtues of Wifely Sovereignty in Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "The Miller's Tale
Both a woman's desire for sovereignty in marriage, as well as the moral and logical correctness of female supremacy in matrimony are two themes that pervade and define Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The following essay will explore within "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "the Miller's Tale" the notion of female sovereignty in marriage and its moral implications."The Wife of Bath's Tale" in most respects exemplifies the quintessential Arthurian Romance-it features as its protagonist a knight, it revolves around a specific quest that knight must undergo, and it features a milieu that alternates between a court of nobles and an enigmatic forest. Via its central characters; the rapist knight, the Queen of England, and the mysterious old wife, "The Wife of Bath's Tale" makes two fundamental assertions regarding a woman's sovereignty in marriage: first, that all women desire it, and second, that it is a necessary condition for a harmonious nuptial union. Not soon after the tale commences and the protagonist knight stands before the British high court in judgment after having heinously ravished a virgin maiden, the reader (or listener, as the tales were meant to be transmitted orally) encounters a prime example of a woman poss
/ And old and angry niggards of dispence,/God send them soon a very pestilence!" (Chaucer "Wife of Bath's Tale"). The King of England has judiciously granted sovereignty to his queen, thus it is she who is eventually charged with deciding the condemned knight's fate: "So long they prayed the king of his grace Till he his life him granted in the place, And gave him to the queen, all at her will To choose whether she would him save or spill" (Chaucer "The Wife of Bath's Tale). Only when the knight appropriately grants his wife sovereignty over the choice, and thus, over himself, does he receive what he truly desires-a harmonious marriage and a spouse both lovely and faithful. Ultimately, the wise queen sends the knight on a quest he must complete to her satisfaction if his life is to be spared-he must journey abroad and return in a year's time with the answer to the question: "What is it women most desire?" Just as the knight is about to deem his quest for an answer fruitless, he encounters in the forest an old woman who, in exchange for the knight's promise to grant her next request, bids him give the queen this answer: "Women desire to have the sovereignty/As well over their husbands as their love/And for to be in mast'ry above him" (Chaucer "The Wife of Bath's Tale"). Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale", a quintessential fabliau depicting "rather bourgeois characters involved in an often obscene plot narrated rather realistically" ("The Old Man and the Young Wife"), illustrates the manner in which a man attempting to hold sovereignty over his wife is eventually cuckolded and ridiculed, thus indirectly purporting the view that a woman should instead hold sway over her husband. The knight's exultation is short-lived however, for the "loathly lady" whose wisdom spared his life asks that, in repayment, he make her his wife. Predictably, the queen who currently exercises eminence over her husband in regard to the knight's destiny is pleased with the answer and grants the knight his freedom. John unwittingly believes Nicholas's preposterous prediction, unknowingly allows Nicholas to bed his wife, and ultimately becomes the laughingstock of the town once his neighbors learn of his gullibility. Because of his ineffectual efforts to hold dominion over his wife, "the silly jealous husband"'s worst fears come to fruition-"Hendy Nicholas" makes a cuckold of him by fashioning a creative falsehood involving a divine flood of biblical proportions. The convoluted and unapologetically bawdy tale makes frequent reference to old husband John's overbearing manner toward his young, alluring wife, Alison: "Jealous he was, and held her narr'w in cage" (Chaucer "The Miller's Tale. Declares Nicholas:"I have found in my astrology,/As I have looked in the moone bright,/That now on Monday next, at quarter night,/Shall fall a rain, and that so wild and wood,/That never half so great was Noe's flood" (Chaucer "The Miller's Tale"). Moralizes the narrator of "The Wife of Bath's Tale":"Husbandes meek and young, and fresh in bed,/And grace To overlive them that we wed. So blinded by his wife's physical appeal is John that he fails to notice both her attraction to young scholar Nicholas as well as would-be-suitor Absolon's blatant attempts to woo her. /And eke I pray Jesus to short their lives,/That will not be governed by their wives.
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Acceptance Essays
