Alisoun, the Woman behind the Wife of Bath:
When Fiction is as Complex as Reality
Arthur Lindley in his 1992 article “Vanysshed was this Daunce, He Nyste Where”: Alisoun’s Absence in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale states that she is a character constructed by a male author, and based on what other men have said, so she is absent in The Canterbury Tales. He proposes that enclosing the Wife of Bath into one category, such as feminist, misogynist, battered wife, etc., is the “fallacy of the single key” (2). Understanding that she is such a complex character, he points out the varied number of “keys.” But for Lindley these keys eventually lead to the fact that her character is not a real woman, and is not based on real women’s words. For him, she is non existent outside her own Prologue and Tale. I oppose this idea. Chaucer created a vivid interpretation of a woman in the Wife of Bath, and she is present outside her own Prologue and Tale.
The Wife of Bath’s complexity as a character is rooted in her independence and strength as a woman. Married five times, she knows how to deal with her husbands. It seems that she has made a career out of marrying. She is aware that as a woman her life is supposed to evolve around men, specifically her husband. Taught by her “dame” (line 576), Alisoun knows how to be the master of the house and of the marriage. For many, she is a proto-feminist, a woman who knows that her place is not below her husband’s place in a male ruled society during the Middle Ages. She scolds her husbands for not treating her well, demands a type of payment for having sex, and looks for “maistrie and sovereynetee.” But as her feminism may surface in her prologue, there are still parts of her speech and narrative that seem misogynist, or contradict her previous words. The best example of this is the ending of her Tale, where after gaining sovereignty in her own decisions and in the relationship, the old woman turns into a beautiful and young maid who “obeyed hym [the knight] in every thing / That myghte doon hym pleasance or likyng” (lines 1255-1256). Thus, Alisoun is complex. She is not either black or white, as any person is a mixture of shades of grey.
Her age is also a sign of her complexity. At the time of the pilgrimage to Canterbury, she is apparently over forty years of age. She is an experienced woman, who, as said before, knows how to handle a relationship in her favor. Most of her Prologue is a confession on her experience as a wife. She is telling her secret as if she is passing on her legacy. The Summoner is very interested to learn from her, not just because of what she knows about women, but also because she is a good user of words and situations. But as she gets older, her mind starts digressing. The Wife of Bath remembers young Alisoun “ful of ragerye, / Stibourn and strong, and joly as a pye” (lines 455-456) and then sighs for her old self. Age, for her, has become her enemy because it has “biraft my beautee and my pith” (line 475). Also, her narrative continuously goes back and forth, and she looses thread of her line of thought, especially when she talks about Jankyn. This point is evident in lines 585 and 586 when she realizes she lost the idea of her prologue and says “But now, sire, lat me se what I shal seyn. / A ha! By God, I have my tale ageyn.” The length of her prologue, which was also remarked by the Friar, is a sign that she does not want to stop, that she has so much to say, and that she could go on for even more.
Though the Wife of Bath seems like a head-strong woman who would not take no for an answer, and who is tougher than men, she is also the embodiment of charm, loveliness and gentleness. She is a wife by choice, a nurturer. The old woman in her tale mentions the words “gentillesse” and “gentil” at least twenty times when she is addressing the knight on their wedding night. The knight most certainly has not behaved with “gentillesse” with her and the first maid who he raped. But the old woman is kind enough to tell him what women really want. She wants to marry the knight even though he does not want to marry her and publicly humiliates her in front of the Queen. Nobility and goodness of the soul come from good actions, and it is not devoted solely to the rich. The Wife of Bath, speaking through the old woman’s voice in her tale, is making a point for her benefit. Just as Jankyn believed the stories about bad women in his book, many believed them so too. Alisoun proves her husband and the knight how women are also kind and good. Also, she experiences real love for the fist time with Jankyn, when they wandered on the fields with “trewely […] swich dalliance” (line 565). Of all her husbands, she loved Jankyn the best, for she married him not because of money but because she fancied him; he won her love. On the other hand, if her power of love is determined by her words, her power of hate is determined by her narrative. Her first three husbands she loved them well in the sense that they provided for her and she was in charge of the house and her life. Her fourth husband, she disliked him because he gave her the same fight she gave to him. She could not be the master of the house with her fourth husband and her feelings for him are strongly marked.
Probably a good way to point out Alisoun’s existence in the tales is the fact that she is a victim of domestic violence. The person she loves the most attacks her physically and mentally. Jankyn beats her so hard that she says she can feel the pain in her ribs until her dying day, and then he talks to her gently, or “gloss,” so she would forgive him and have sex with him. She acknowledges his violence when she says “for that he / Was of his love daungerous to me” (lines 513-514) because at the age of forty, a twenty year old man beats her “on every bon” (line 511). But what she hated the most from this relationship was his mental harassment. It is well known how Jankyn uses his book of “wicked wives” to torment Alisoun. Every night Jankyn would read out loud from his book and laugh and comment at the stories. How can any woman endure this mental violence? Alisoun married him for love, and she appears to be faithful and loving to him, and she even gives him all her properties. Jankyn repays her with sermons that do not apply to her. She has been the example of “gentillesse” with him, and he is behaving as the knight in her tale behaved with the maid at the beginning of the tale. She says “Who wolde wene, or who wolde suppose, / The wo that in myn herte was, and pyne?” (lines 786-787). Not standing any more abuse, she tears three pages from his book. Jankyn reacts, apparently as he had reacted before for other reasons, and hits her in the head. Alisoun falls to the ground, probably a little dizzied by the punch, and plans what she will say to him. She is an experienced woman, and even though it hurts her that her loved husband hits her, she sees a way to stop the abuse. She accuses him of wanting to murder her for her lands, which he already posses, and slaps him. From now on, Jankyn will “kneel” for her and she remains the master of her house and sovereignty.
Apart from finding Alisoun in her own complexity as a character, she is an omnipresent participant of other characters’ tales. The Miller tells a tale about a carpenter and his wife Alisoun. Having the same name could be a coincidence, but the Miller’s Alisoun and the Wife of Bath are similar. Both Alisouns marry an older man which they do not necessarily love. They prefer a young, handsome clerk, that is, Nicholas or Jankyn. Also, they both find in sex “revel and […] melodye” (line 3652). Both Alisouns are women who enjoy sex and transpire sexual powers. The Miller takes a long time describing her physical appearance and attire, especially parts of her anatomy that point out to her genitals. The Wife of Bath is described as being gap-toothed, a sign of lust, and she admits she like having sex. Just as the Miller’s Alisoun has an affaire with Nicholas, the Wife of Bath was seeing Jankyn before her fourth husband died. It is not known if the Miller spoke with the Wife of Bath before telling his tale, but it could be a plausible option.
Another point worth mentioning is that the Serjeant at the Law or the Man of Law’s Tale precedes the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. His story is about Custance, which seems taken from The Legend of Good Women. The Man of Law presents two sides of women. Custance is on one side as the good and passive wife who does not fight back her destiny. The Swodanesse and Donegild are situated on the other side as the evil and active women who murder and lie. The Man of Law’s Tale is an “either-or” type of story, where women are either good or bad. As a reaction, the Wife of Bath’s Tale is about real women who are not “either-or.” In her Prologue there are lust, love, hate, violence, and other emotions. The Wife of Bath acts but is not evil. She looks for her benefit in a time when her rights as a woman, and therefore as an individual, were practically non existent. Her Prologue is a response to the Man of Law’s Tale because she is saying “I am not like Custance but I am still a good wife, a real one.” The Wife of Bath demonstrates her presence by responding to another character’s tale.
The Clerk’s Tale has a small but important detail that was brought up by the Wife of Bath in her Prologue. A reading of the Clerk’s Tale presents a marquis, Walter, who wants to find out if his wife, Griselde, is true to him. Walter’s actions are similar to a phrase mentioned by the Wife of Bath in her Prologue when she says that people try horses, pots, basins, and clothes before they buy them, “But folk of wyves maken noon assay, / Til they be wedded” (lines 290-291). Walter is testing Griselde like he would have tried a new coat or a new horse, even though he already knew she was a good wife. The Wife of Bath’s influence as a sort of inspiration for Clerk’s Tale is strong. Finally, the Clerk addresses the Wife of Bath after he finishes his tale in a song that calls women not to behave entirely like Griselde, but to be more like the Wife. He appears to be flirting with the Wife, but apparently, he misunderstands the Wife’s message of “gentillesse” since the Wife was also a nice, gentil woman.
Returning to Arthur Lindley and his essay, he says “Alisoun is a lustrus naturae […] a woman born of man, conspicuously without mother or daughters, but with many fathers” (4) as one of his main points trying to dismiss the Wife of Bath’s existence. I tried to prove this point wrong by the previous analysis of her existence within her Prologue and inside other character’s tales. He states that Alisoun is “what men produce when they think about women” (4), but as I mentioned before, many ideas of women convey either goodness or evil. Women either are maids, virgins and almost saints, or are traitors and murderess. I think Chaucer conveyed in the Wife of Bath a vast amount of complexities, not entirely devoted to women, but also to men. Also, Lindley points out that since she is talking about previous texts written by men, she is presenting a table of contents instead of a speech. But copying what other authors said was valid for Chaucer’s time. If Lindley states that the Wife does not exist because she is using other people’s words, is saying that the rest of the characters do not exist as well, and that Chaucer is a mere scrivener. Finally, Lindley says “the character, having found her authors and found them not to her liking, tries to destroy them [by ripping the pages from Jankyn’s book]” (5). This statement contradicts his point of her non existence because he has just said that she acts by her own will. Chaucer made her react to Jankyn’s reading, which is understandable for any reader who is disturbed by the contents of Jankyn’s book. She is not feminist or misogynist; she is just human.
Lindley presents another point trying to eliminate Alisoun from the material world of fiction by saying that using humanism to defend the Wife would lead to three fallacies: “confusing her point with Chaucer’s; confusing her with womankind; and confusing her with a real person” (8). Point granted. But she is none of the above. She is a fictional character, a depiction of a woman in a given time and place. If people still read her Prologue and Tale since the 1400s it is because she has many important and interesting things to say. Lindley even implies that she is a fake because she travels alone and no one else in the company knows her, unlike the Guildsmen, who travel together, or the Miller, the Reeve and the Summoner, who know each other (8). But this point would also pertain the Clerk or the narrator. She is known as the Wife of Bath. Later, the readers find out her name. as I mentioned before she is a woman, not womankind. If you take away the name from where she comes from, she is just a wife, a widow, a woman. Lindley presents the Wife of Bath as a secretive woman trying to hide her “pryvetee” from the other pilgrims by speaking but not revealing, as “her life […] is a closed book, part of the point being, of course, that male authority cannot know the privetee of female experience” (10). Lindley goes back to the fact that she was “created” by men, but it is also valid to say that any fictitious character or real person is a partially open book; no one is a fully open book. People decide what to show and what to hide.
The Wife of Bath is Alisoun. She has a name. She is a fictitious character, but her complexity is so genuine, she resembles real women. Created by a man, Chaucer, she has become an emblem for women. Many call her feminist. Others think she is still governed by the patriarchal society. Others find in her a battered wife. Arthur Lindley proposes she is absent, non existent. On the contrary, her complexity points out her existence. She presents a little of everything. Her mind, her actions, her life and her words are valid in The Canterbury Tales and in the real world. Her presence is so powerful, she influences other characters in the Tales and in reality, and she is probably the most studied pilgrim in the Tales.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Lindley, Arthur. “‘Vanysshed was this Daunce, He Nyste Where’: Alisoun’s Absence in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” ELH 59.1 (Spring, 1992): 1-21
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