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Thuy Le Minh Nguyen
Professor Rice
Chaucer
21 November 2022
Is Sovereignty What the Wife Most Desires?
Setting a life goal is to give life a purpose to carry on.
Some would like to set their life goals as a list of want-tohave things or want-to-go places. Some others, by contrast,
might set their life goals as journeys of pursuing, and in that
case, the finish line tends to be no more the ultimate point.
Sometimes the goal is neither necessary to be achieved nor to
be specific, measurable, achievable, or even realistic. People
with goals as journeys do love their experiences during the
journey of pursuing more than literally reaching the finishing
line because they perceive that the moment that they reach
their goals, their journeys are over. The same case goes for
the Wife of Bath. Since the correct answer for “What thyng is
it that wommen moost desire” is sovereignty, many must believe
that sovereignty is what the Wife desires most in marriage. If
sovereignty is the goal in marriage, the Wife of Bath already
has got and achieved it since she was twelve. However, through
her fourth and especially fifth husband, and the knight in her
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tale, it seems like there is something else that the Wife wants
even more than sovereignty. When it comes to the topic of
marriage, the Wife of Bath desires the challenge of pursuing
unattainable goals.
In marriage, first of all, the Wife of Bath wishes to get
even to men. The main reason for why this goal is unattainable
is she demands gender equality in a patriarchal world. In her
sense, there are two things making her get even to men in
marriage. One is the number of spouse and two is no matter how
many spouses she may have, she still has people’s respect. To
prove that it is fine to have more than one marriage, the Wife
brings up a lot of great Old Testament figures like Abraham,
Jacob, and Solomon. She is not aware of the fact that all of her
examples are going against her thesis. The core problem here is
that they are men, and society permits them to have as many
wives or concubines as they desire. The Wife is in a debate that
she does not bear a single chance to win. Therefore, the more
examples she lists out, the weaker her thesis will be. Besides,
the Wife’s choice of competing to men in the number of spouses
also reveal some of her real thoughts of marriage. If there is
something about her background that she can bring up as a topic,
it must be her marriages. On the surface, it seems like the Wife
is proud of the number of her marriages; she is boasting about
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it. But is that what she really feels inside since boasting is
really a sign of insecurity (Burton 38)? Readers may want to
keep in mind a detail appeared in the beginning of her prologue:
“Experience, though noon auctoritee / Were in this world, were
right ynogh to me / To speke of wo that is in marriage;”
(Chaucer 1-3). From this point, is that what she is experiencing
so far in marriage is woe?
Receiving people’s respect, the second thing believed by
the Wife that it would bring her the power to get even with men,
is an unattainable goal as well. The Wife seems to know very
well how society sets its convention for women. She perceives
that at her time, virginity must be the ideal, “Lat hem be breed
of pured whete-seed, / And lat us wyves hoten barly-breed;”
(149-150). She knows that she is beneath that standard; she is
in a society where being wife is already inferior, let alone
being a wife of more than one man. The Wife must know well
enough where she is with her marital status, a wife of five
husbands, in a society idealizing virginity; she is violating
the current social standard for women. And as a person obsessing
about pursuing unattainable goals, she cannot help going against
that. And to go against the ideal, first, she has to confirm
again (and again) that she has no hard feelings for chastity and
virginity. Second, she is trying to prove but completely fails
that how people should not feel guilty for getting married as
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well as she herself will not care if people find marriage
subordinate to virginity. But it seems hard to believe every
word of the Wife of Bath or take them literally because this
woman has a contradictory and paradoxical personality. She is
over forty years old, but she still has a youthful energy. She
examines the woe of marriage, yet she is willing to embrace the
coming of sixth husband (Pratt 45). Besides her paradox, most
importantly, the value of marriage is not mentioned at all; what
she is declaring all the time is the pleasure of having sex. And
by that, her audiences get nothing for why they should marry.
How about the reason that one should get married is to have sex?
Too ridiculous even for a sex-addicted person like the Wife of
Bath. Besides, if she does have no hard feeling for virginity,
why does not she talk less about it and focus more on the
importance of marriage? In addition, if she does not mind
people’s opinions, why would she have so many lines on the topic
of virginity? The Wife starts to talk about this topic from line
68 where she asks for the evidence of God’s order toward the
virginity of women: “Or where comanded he virginitee?” After
that question, this topic keeps lasting for almost a hundred
lines. The Wife is turning from one point to another to prove
how she herself and maybe others should not feel ashamed of
getting married. She is preaching from the point that there is
no commandment for virginity to the necessity of marriage toward
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the birth of new virgins (77-78), to St. Paul's virginity which
she is going around for twenty lines (83-100), to her general
idea of virginity (101-120), to the purpose of the genitals
(121-140), to how a husband should pay his wife (141-168).
Although she has such a long speech in favor of marriage, it
does not help her gain respect from her audience at all because
she has already been out of topic all along.
Since the Wife cannot alter her marital status, she decides
to take it as her tool to achieve people’s respect. She sees
herself as a marital expert and also wants others to see her in
the same way. She is confident and eager to offer others her
marital advice. If being wife is a profession, then the Wife of
Bath, who started her career at the age of twelve, must be an
expert, and it makes sense to say that going through five
marriages are quite impressive. However, experiences can be
double-edged in the Wife of Bath case. Not similar to many other
life aspects, when it comes to marriage, people tend to
appreciate faithfulness and loyalty. And because of that,
consequently, people might wonder what kind of woman is she who
even cannot keep a single marriage last? They might see her as a
failure than an expert and think that listening to failure might
not be a good idea. After all, it is very common that when one
needs some marital advice, he or she may want to ask some from
people whose marriages seem to be happy and healthy, not from
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the one losing five relationships and now looking for number
six.
Her fourth and fifth husbands are also her unattainable
goals because the number four is a “revelour” who has “a
paramour” (459-460), and number five is a misogynist. In short,
they are unattainable because she cannot control them as the way
she does to her first three husbands; however, it needs a little
explanation of to what extent she gives up on them. It is
nothing wrong to simply state that the Wife of Bath has five
husbands; it is just a matter of fact. However, simplifying her
marriages into a number will waste a lot of chances to trace the
thread of the Wife's philosophy in marriage. Readers can see
that her marriages can be divided into two groups: commercial
match and non-commercial match or as the Wife says, “goode” and
“badde” (202). By saying that three are “goode,” she means that
they are old and submissive to her; and by saying that two are
“bade,” she means they are beyond her control, or to be more
suitable to the thesis of this article, they are unattainable
goals.
Let’s start with the fourth husband. He is the first
husband having some attention from the Wife although she only
spends only around fifty lines for him (Burton 35). Despite that
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shortage, this husband is a pivotal character to see through the
tendency of the Wife when it comes to choosing intimate partner.
As the first one that the Wife of Bath married for a noncommercial reason, the fourth husband must attain some unique
personality. It is hard to believe but that his unique
personality is that he is a reveler having a paramour. According
to the analysis “The Wife of Bath’s Fourth and Fifth Husbands
and Her Ideal Sixth: The Growth of a Marital Philosophy” by T.
L. Burton, the Wife is deeply attracted to her fourth husband
even though she never admits that (36) or even say any kind
words about him. However, it is logical to argue that the Wife
does has her affection for her fourth husband because readers
can see how much she is tortured when she learns that he has
someone else:” I seye, I hadde in herte greet despit / That he
of any oother had delit” (487-88). The fourth husband is
sketched as an unattainable goal when “it seems clear that part
of his attractiveness for the Wife lay precisely in his being
the sort of man who might have had lovers” (Burton 36). Her
relationship with him ends bitterly when she pays back for him
what he did to her by making him jealous to die: “That in his
owene grece I made hym frye / For angre and for verray jalousie”
(403-94). They torture each other until dead in their complex
love-hate relationship. The fourth husband is both dead in the
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physical way and in the Wife’s heart. She hates him so much that
to her, “It nys but wast to burye hym preciously,” (506).
The Wife is supposed to learn a lesson after the
catastrophic fourth marriage; paradoxically, she does not learn
anything at all and even marries a much worse one. “She marries
another man in the virile mold of her fourth husband, confessing
that she married him ‘for love’” (Burton 41). Jankyn is also the
first husband mentioned by name as “he is the first to elicit
direct mention of personal pleasure in lovemaking” (Murphy 216).
He is also a walking red flag; Jankyn is narcissistic,
misogynistic, manipulative, brutal, and emotional unavailable.
However, Jankyn can be seen as a perfect unattainable goal for
the Wife of Bath. He fits most of her desire of an ideal
husband, and he is the first and only one that the Wife
confesses that she married “for love” (532).
The Wife of Bath is aware of the real reason why she
marries him “for love” as well: “I trowe I loved hym beste, for
that he / Was of his love daungerous to me” (519-520). So up to
this point, she admits that the reason she is in love with him
is because his love “daungerous” to her. The word “daungerous”
itself which means “offish, uncooperative sexually, reluctant to
make love” and the explanation of “queynte fantasye” of women
which is about how women falls in love with things they “lightly
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have” (523) suggest that the Wife favors Jankyn because he is
quite unavailable to her (Burton 42). In fact, Jankyn treats her
as he is her lord (Burton 42); he is both her unattainable goal
and her turning point in marital life. She officially turns from
a “wicked” wife to a submissive one showing her softer sides. As
a result, not only does she capitulate him emotionally, but alo
gives Jankyn the right to govern her property: “And to hym yaf I
al the lond and fee / That evere was me yeven therbifoore;”
(636-37). She only loses her interest in him when she realizes
he is trying to make her get rid of her gossip hobby; she seems
to be aware of the reasons why he does so but by forbidding her
from gossiping, he violates her sovereignty, and that makes her
furious: “I hate hym that my vices telleth me;” (668). The Wife
of Bath ends her confession of the fifth husband by saying that
they have a big fight, and after that the husband gives up on
his authority, allows her to behave in any way she chooses, and
gives the Wife her most favorite part: she makes him burn his
book (822). By that, she gains back her sovereignty and but at
the same time loses her own unattainable goal and her interest
in her relationship with Jankyn.
Although how much the Wife favors Jankyn, she bitterly goes
to a final consent with herself that she is done with this man.
In fact, she is so bitter him that she prefers him dying soon,
“Whan myn housbonde is fro the world ygon,/ Som Cristen man shal
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wedde me anon” (53-54). Maybe he is the point making her realize
that her game of marriage is only entertaining if she is the
winner. However, the Wife changes her spouse but not her ideal
for a perfect husband. Most importantly and also most
perplexingly, she does not learn a single thing from her
previous marriages; she is addicted to toxic relationships and
sees that involving in one is the only way for her to spice up
her life. My point is that there is a firm possibility that the
Wife’s sixth husband will share some common points with Jankyn’s
trait and since he has not come yet, the Wife set the ideal for
her number six through the Knight.
Before diving into analyzing the Knight or the Old Hag, it
is necessary for readers to note that: “Far from picturing woe
in marriage, this tale emphasizes Alice’s desire for a sixth
husband” (Pratt 66). This can be said that the tale is “an
imaginative wish-fulfillment, for it presented an old woman who
gained a young husband and magically changed herself into
everything he could desire in a wife” (Owen 303). The tale is
also “an expression of Dame Alice’s hopes and dreams, for the
Knight ‘is Dame Alice’s vision of masculine perfection’”
(Townsend 3).
The Knight is the reflection for the Wife of Bath’s ideal
husband and through most of details related to this character,
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readers can trace to the Wife’s ideas of an ideal husband. The
very first point about the Knight is his moral corruption: on
one hand, the Knight is not introduced by his name but his lusty
crime. What the Knight commits reveals him as “selfish and
lusful, a man easily aroused by surface beauty and determined to
satisfy his lusts without consideration of the cost to his
victim or to himself” (Roppolo 266). On the other hand, his
crime reflects how the Wife sets the ideal for her future
husband; she does not care much about her future husband’s real
identity such as his origin or his inner soul. All she cares
about is sexual ability. Then, there is one minor but very
powerful detail showing how the Wife feels about her ideal
husband through the Knight, that is, the Knight is the favorite
of the Queen and the ladies. This detail raises a question of
why those women has to plead for the life of a person committing
a such a horrible crime. Is that because they merely wants to
save a life or they have “excitement at his sexual “lustiness”
and not want to such potential go to waste? ... Thus, the
attitude of the court ladies may at least in part represent a
projection of her own feelings” (Puhvel 292).
If the knight is an unattainable goal, then the Old Hag’s
final decision is the effort to reach that goal. On figurative
level, this effort reflects Wife of Bath’s proneness for
challenge of unattainable goals in marital life. First, the
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moment the Old Hag chooses to help the knight, she may or may
not know the reason why he must find the answer for that
question. However, the moment in which she decides to become his
wife, she must know everything. The moment that the Old Hag has
the Knight as her husband, she has already had a long-term
nuisance. Ultimately, the Old Hag finds it fine to marry a
rapist. Her desire to marry the Knight is the desire of an old
woman to marry a young man which reflects very clear the Wife’s
marital wish.
The Knight's attempt to get the correct answer at first
will be very impressive and surprising since there is no way
that this “lusty bacheler” (889) can come up with that answer.
However, according to Aaron Steinberg, the author of the article
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale and Her Fantasy of Fulfillment,” it is
not too puzzling to see how the Knight get the right answer.
There are only two choices, and obviously, the Knight will
absolutely says no to marry an old but faithful wife since
“certainly he has not fallen in love with her in her present
hideous condition” (191). Therefore, the Knight gives an
immediate elimination for this option. The second option seems
to be better to him. After all, he is rapist then a chance of
being cheated seems nothing to him. “The Knight is only told
that he must take his chance that she may be unfaithful. But he
is not guaranteed that she will be unfaithful” (Steinberg 191).
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However, he does not pick the second one since he might face the
Old Hag’s furious disagreement, and then she will choose the
first option by her own. He cannot put himself at risk. Until
now, there are only two ways to explain for the Knight’s sudden
wit: one, he knew the pattern of the transformed-hag; two, this
is the Wife of Bath’s tale, and it is her wish-fulfillment that
her young husband will be both virile and absolutely respects
sovereignty (Steinberg 191). The second way of explanation seem
to make more sense. Besides, the Knight’s decision brings an
immediate happy ending which is the Old Hag transforming into a
beautiful wife, but there is a question remained: whether the
Knight genuinely has his respect for his wife to let her make
the decision for herself or whether he has merely learned how to
give her the appropriate answer. If readers concur with the
former idea, they can perceive the Wife as the one who thinks
that evil men are capable of conversion. If the latter case
chosen, one might see the Wife distrust all males. The Hag's
transformation into a beauty, the material object of wishes, and
the Knight's shallow, temporary alteration in his behavior but
not in his ideology can be both seen as superficial changes.
Both changes are just skin-deep; the body or temporary behavior
are changed, but deep down the way in which they think about
love or philosophy of marriage remains the same. However, in a
way, these half-hearted changes are fair enough; none of these
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two are really into other's inner value at all. Not only does
this happy ending reflect how Wife of Bath ends her fifth
marriage, but also suggests how she set her new unattainable
goal.
Getting married at the age of twelve and being through five
marriages give the Wife a ton of experience to “speke of wo that
is in marriage” (3), to feel like on top of the world, and even
to have sovereignty over someone else, but they never give her a
sense of fulfillment. Her whole marital life is an endless,
painful journey of chasing unattainable goals. Sometimes, she
only finds the goals desirous if they are like the moon which
is beautiful, unachievable, and faraway. That sounds so
hopeless but that is how unattainable goals spice up her life.
She does not perceive that she is not really “welcome the sixte,
whan that evere he shal”(51), she is only welcome a new
unattainable goal.
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Works Cited
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Mifflin Company, 1987.
Burton, T.L. “The Wife of Bath's Fourth and Fifth Husbands
and Her Ideal Sixth: The Growth of a Marital Philosophy.” The
Chaucer Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, Penn State UP, Summer, 1978, pp.
34-50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2509344. Accessed 2 November
2022.
Murphy, Ann B. “The Process of Personality in Chaucer’s
Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The Centennial Review, vol. 28, no. 3,
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