Topic: Response #2, Sept. 6 (1 of 1), Read 3 times
Conf: Gender in Medieval Europe (Chaucer)
From: Denise Mitchell dmmitc2@ilstu.edu
Date: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 08:57 AM
Denise Mitchell
Dmmitc2@ilstu.edu
Response Questions #2
Question One:
Chaucer’s Prioress and Wife of Bath are both very interesting women. Both women are similar to one another in that they
are both probably very funny to have been communicating with on a Pilgrimage. The Prioress is funny in her artificial
character while the Wife of Bath is hilarious in her appearance and sense of humor.
The Prioress is the head nun at her monastery. Usually a Prioress has a high spiritual love. They have unconditional love
for God and other people. Chaucer’s Prioress is interesting because she really has more of a greed for materialism. The
Prioress has a nasal singing voice, a coy smile, a broad forehead, a very full figure, and her greatest pleasure is in
etiquette. She was very precise in her eating habits and daintily reached for whatever she was going to eat. She also had
an artificial French accent that suggested she spent all her time learning French from the textbook. Her appearance
suggested that she had a love of material items. She was dressed in a gold broach, a red shawl, and green jewelry which
were very suggestive, especially for a nun. In addition, the Prioress did not hold the self-less love for others as most nuns
had. She was mocking her title with the way she acted. .The Prioress was trying to fit into the class of the aristocracy, or
at least her idea of the aristocracy and her mannerism appears fake to others.
The Wife of Bath was a middle aged woman whose appearance was very funny to other people. She was deaf with a gaptoothed smile and described as being “handsome”. She wore a big hat with lots of cloth around her head. She also had
red tight knitted stockings that went up to her thighs. The Wife of Bath was married five times and that didn’t count all the
lovers she had when she was young. She knew the curses of love and she knew the preciseness of love. The Wife of
Bath traveled all over the world and always had a great story to tell. She joined the Pilgrimage to look for another suitor
and not necessarily for the love of God. She had a very loose attitude towards sex and virginity. The Wife of Bath was
very funny in her appearance and her sense of humor.
Question Two: In the Prologue of the Wife of Bath, there is a rather comical statement made towards St. Jerome and his
teachings on the virginity of women. St. Jerome believes that if a woman does in fact lose her virginity, it must be out of
marriage. The Wife of Bath is a very sexual woman who has been married five times. She uses reference to Biblical
passages to support her ideas of sexual purity but as she uses these passages she disregards them with what her beliefs
are. St. Jerome would be furious with the behavior of the Wife of Bath and her behavior because she uses Biblical
passages to support her visions of love and the passages are often taken out of context to fit into her own theories. The
comical side of this story is that The Wife of Bath actually lost some of her hearing because a former husband of hers hit
her upside the head with a book of St. Jerome’s teachings. St. Jerome was popular for his teachings of silencing women.
The comical part of the story is that St. Jerome’s words actually silenced the rather loud Wife of Bath when she was hit in
the ear. However, in the Wife of Bath’s critique of St. Jerome, she is not very creditable in her critique. She changes the
passages to fall in her favor.
Question Three: The Wife of Bath speaks of a young knight of King Arthur’s court. On his way home one evening, the
young knight stumbles upon a young maiden and basically takes advantage of her. King Arthur and the people of the
country side were horrified to learn of the young knight’s act. King Arthur sentenced the knight to death. The Queen and
her ladies, however, argue for an extension to pass their own judgment on the knight. The Queen told the knight that he
was going to face life or death depending on his answer to the question of “What is the thing that women most desire?”
The knight travels for one year meeting many women and seeking what it is that women want. He receives many answers
from many women. Some women want pleasure, some want to be flattered, and some want wealth. Finally the knight
meets an old hag who reminds him that old women are wise and she would help him save his life under her conditions.
She will provide the answer he is seeking as long as he marries her. The knight agrees to the deal. The hag explains that
women want to be treated fairly and with respect. They want to be loved and not to be some man’s servant. Women want
sovereignty passed into their hands. The knight then passes this answer onto the King and Queen. He is spared his life
and goes home to his ugly wife. He finally confesses that he thinks she is old, ugly, and repulsive. After she gives him a
lecture on the difference beauty makes in a person she changes herself into a beautiful young maiden. The two of them
end up living “happily ever after.”
I think I have a little trouble understanding why the Queen was so generous in her finding justice for the knight. The knight
starts off the tale committing a sin however, by the end of the tale he ends up “happily ever after” with his beautiful young
maiden. This tale goes along with the Wife of Bath’s prologue because she is an older, unattractive woman who is
attracted to young, handsome men. The relationship between the prologues and her tale go together because she is a
promiscuous women and she enjoys attractive people, mainly she enjoys attractive men. The knight was basically
rewarded for raping a woman which in the Wife of Bath’s mind may not have been such a bad thing because she is such
a sexual woman.
Question Four: Pope John Paul II, St. Jerome, and the Wife of Bath hold very different ideals of marriage and virginity.
Pope John Paul II states that it is not sinful to have sex after one has been married. He even believed that sex was
necessary and natural for reproduction. St. Jerome, on the other hand, was strict in his views of virginity. He thought
virginity was a sacred thing that should not be broken. He believed that even an impure thought was sinful. St. Jerome
stated that, “to show that virginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt, what is born of wedlock is virgin flesh and it
gives back in fruit what in root it has lost.” (Line 19). St. Jerome did not even really approve of sex in marriage. He only
accepted it because wedlock brought new pure virgins to the world. St. Jerome would have been disgusted if he
encountered the Wife of Bath because her ideals contradicted everything St. Jerome believed in. The Wife of Bath holds
loose views on virginity. She enjoys sex and has always been a promiscuous woman. She was married five times and
was basically on the Pilgrimage to meet a man. The Wife of Bath believed that sex was natural because God gave us sex
organs. The Wife of Bath is the only of the three that believed sex should be pleasurable and necessary in life/marriage.
Question Six: The first thing I would like to discuss is from the General Prologue. I think it must have been very funny for
all the people on the Pilgrimage to encounter Prioress. The Prioress would have been funny because she was really a
very large woman who when she ate, was so precise that she never dropped a crumb or left a mark on her glass. The
Prioress was very proper but it was all in a fake matter. The way she talked, the way she ate, and her appearance must
have been hilarious for the other people. It’s just funny because she is supposed to be the head of the monastery and
really she does not do any of the practices that other nuns do. She has a material love and a fake compassion for others.
While she should have been reading scriptures of the Lord, she was instead learning French and trying to fit into her idea
of the aristocracy.
The second thing I want to mention is that I don’t agree with the way the knight and his beautiful young maiden lived
happily ever after. Here he raped a young girl and then was left unpunished with a beautiful wife. I just think it really shows
that men can easily get what they want even if they don’t deserve it. Men hold the sovereignty over women.