Hood College Chaucerians

from Tenor GIF Keyboard What good is a feud between two people that both suck for the same reason? As early as the General Prologue, Chaucer keys readers into the idea that friars and summoners are not always as kind as they should be or seem. In “The Friar’s Tale,” our (selfish and greedy) friar tells a tale about a selfish and greedy summoner who goes to Hell for refusing to repent. Why? Because he hates our summoner for competing with him on the pilgrimage and in reality. Both men extort people for money, but our friar implies with his tale that the difference between his extortions and the summoner’s extortions is that our friar (apparently) repents for his. I find that brilliantly satirical because, according to Christianity, our friar’s logic makes sense: as long as you accept God as your savior and repent for your sins, you’ve got a spot in Heaven. However, I find it clear that both the friar and the summoner’s extortions are still wrong, and if Hell exists,

Would you consider the Wife of Bath to be a feminist, despite the fact that one thing she advocates for in her prologue is putting marital control in the hands of wives?

What is the correlation between the Wife of Bath's Prologue and her tale? Would one be less impactful without the other?                                                                               The Ugly Duchess, Quentin Mastsys 1513

'Women desiren to have sovereintee As wel over hir housbonde as hir love And for to been in maistrye him above.' (1038-1040)

Having read and blogged about this woman before, I had a prior understanding on her liberal beliefs. 5 husbands sounds like a lot, but the Wife of Bath (Alison) is certain to justify herself and spends a lot of her introduction explaining and defending her choices, as well as delving into her marriages: good, bad, and ugly. She resents the idea that people accuse her of bigamy because her marriages are sequential and not simultaneous. I think Chaucer was probably making fun of the "gold-digger" or "black widow" tropes, but it doesn't quite work like that for me. To quote an idea I mentioned about the WoB in the aforementioned previous blog post, she gestures to the idea of not "following a rubric, and following her own path" which I still find empowering especially at a time where women weren't generally thinking like that/acting on it.

Do you think the knight gave the hag the answer he thought she wanted, or do you think his answer was honest? Since either reason leaves the the hag in a power role, does it even matter?

I have been waiting for the Wife of Bath and she’s here! Words cannot accurately express how much I love her. She’s one of those characters that has so much depth and it’s always so fascinating to read through all her layers to see how she became this bad-ass woman. Girlfriend is not afraid to break the mold and fit things towards her agenda. Taking Scripture and interpreting it so that she is absolved of marrying five times? That’s a bold move to just stomp on those double standards. Perhaps my favorite part after her little spiel about marriage is her actively talking about the crap women go through when tied to a man. She notes that men will often choose wives for a variety of vain reasons but then moan and gripe about her whether she’s rich, poor, ugly, pretty. Women can’t win in the world, but despite all the gender constraints on the Wife of Bath, she continues to do her thing and make the system work for her rather than against her. 

The Wife of Bath is my favorite character, without question. She’s an expert in all things relating to marriage and doesn’t care about authority, therefore, making her experiences far more worthwhile. In the time of Chaucer, women didn’t have many options when it comes to free will, so divorce was out of the question. But the Wife has been married five times, and I like how she takes the scripture of God and turns it around to benefit her. Nowhere in the bible can she find where it says women can’t be married more than once, so obviously, she’s the most reasonable human being in the Canterbury Tales. I also appreciate that the Wife is someone who has gone through a lot of hardships in her life, therefore losing her beauty, but she can live her life by her standards, and no one is going to diminish her happiness. 

I found it interesting that the Wife of Bath had so many biblical examples to defend her five marriages, which certainly would have made her story more appealing to the many clergy members on the pilgrimage. Although, scholarly, she favors experience. She takes a dominant role in her relationships and uses her sexuality to her advantage. I think it is also interesting that she mentions that the reason for sex is reproduction and argues it's importance in creating other virgins, but does not mention whether she has any children of her own. If she had any with her last husband, I assume they would have been disturbed when their parents got in a fist fight in the living room. I am also assuming she is def in one ear, as stated in the prologue, from the strike she took in the head from her husband that knocked her to the ground. It is impressive that she held her own against a grown man and defended what she believed in, especially considering the time it was written. She is a woman th