The Wife of Bath’s Tale
Of all the Chaucerian romances, the tale of Alisoun makes most urgent a warning that J. Leslie Hotson made about all the Tales: “Now the medieval readers did not understand ‘art for art’s sake’; they preferred useful stories: stories that taught, that satirized, or that pointed an excellent moral.”76 Although the tale of the Loathly Lady makes a point that the Wife of Bath wanted to make within the context of the Canterbury pilgrimage, it must also make a point that Chaucer wanted to make. Of course, Chaucer’s point may not be the Wife’s own point.
It is noteworthy that Chaucer has changed the Wife’s tale from the usual versions of the Loathly Lady. We must be cautious in our speculations here, because the Wife of Bath’s Tale was obviously in existence by 1400, and there is no attested English version of the tale that can be shown to be older.77 Still, the other versions differ significantly from Chaucer’s. The idea of the “loathly spouse” is common in folktale even today, as in the tales of “The Frog Prince” and “Beauty and the Beast.”78 English versions in which the woman is the ugly one seem to be less common. There are two major analogs,79 the Tale of Florent in Gower’s Confessio Amantis,80 which is obviously contemporary with Chaucer, and the romance of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall.
Gower’s version, found in book one of the Confessio, begins with line 1407.81 A tale of the elite for the elite,82 we can quickly summarize it and move on. The main character, Florent, is “nephew to the emperor,”83 who “rod the Marches al aboute.”84 “Florent has to answer the [question ‘What do women want?’85] because he has killed someone in battle. His ‘loathly lady’ gives him the answer ‘all women most dearly desire to be sovereign in man’s love.’86 In the marriage bed, the usual question ‘fair by day and foul by night or vice versa’ is posed. Florent lets the ‘loathly lady’ have her own way and she turns out to be beautiful87 and the daughter of the King of Sicily.88 Gower’s version, about as long as Chaucer’s, is painfully verbose and wandering.”89
Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall, found in a single poorly-written sixteenth century manuscript90 but thought to have been composed around 1450,91 is altogether more interesting — although sadly incomplete in the only manuscript copy.92 Here the hero is Sir Gawain, but it is not his fault that he is yoked to the Loathly Lady. “In tyme of Arthoure thys adventure betyd.”93 Arthur, hunting, is taken prisoner by one Gromer Somer Joure,94 who insists that Arthur has wronged him. A terrified Arthur declares,
“Now,” sayd the Kyng, “so God me save,
Save my lyfe, and whate thou most crave,
I shalle now graunt itt the....”95
Sir Gromer puts a demand: Arthur must return in a year, and “shewe me att thy comyng whate wemen love best in feld and town”96 — in other words, Arthur must answer, “What do women want?” But he does not know the answer, and after spending most of the year searching, he cannot find anyone to tell him. Finally he meets a woman who will give him the answer, but she is “the fowlyst Lady That evere I saw”97 — and she demands a condition:
She sayd to me my lyfe she wold save —
But fyrst she wold the to husbond have.98
In other words, the Loathly Lady will answer Sir Gromer’s riddle, but her condition is that she be allowed to marry Sir Gawain, the most courteous knight in Arthur’s court. Arthur goes to Gawain, and though he says he hates to ask, he clearly hopes Gawain will consent.
“Ys this alle?” then sayd Gawen;
“I shalle wed her and wed her agayn,
Thowghe she were a fend;
Thowghe she were as foulle as Belsabub,
Her shalle I wed, by the Rood,
Or elles were nott I your frende.”99
Arthur has displayed no honor, but Gawain gives his trouthe to Arthur, and so gives it also (in a different form, obviously) to the Loathly Lady. Arthur hurries back to fetch her, and once she has been given the promise, she answers Sir Gromer’s riddle:
“But there is one thyng is all our fantasye,
And that nowe shall ye know.
We desyren of men above alle maner thyng
To have the sovereynté, withoute lesyng.”100
So Arthur is able to go to Sir Gromer and gain his release (learning in the process that the Loathly Lady, Dame Ragnall, is Sir Gromer’s sister101), but Gawain is still on the hook. Arthur goes to fetch Dame Ragnall — and is told that she will wed Gawain openly;102 the world will see both her and him. When Ragnall appears, Guinivere weeps for Gawain,103 so hideous is his bride. But “Ther Sir Gawen to her his trowthe plyghte, In welle and in woo, as he was a true knyght.”104
The wedding is held, and they proceed to the wedding feast, where the lady eats as much as any six men, and shows poor table manners as well.105 Finally they reach the wedding night, and she challenges him, “for Arthour’s sake kysse me att the leste.”106 He declares he will do his husbandly duty — and turns around and beholds “the fayrest creature That evere he sawe.”107 In his amazement, he asks “Whate ar ye?”108 He is assured that she is his wife — but
“My beawty woll nott hold —
Wheder ye wolle have me fayre on nyghtes
And as foulle on days to alle men sightes,
Or els to have me fayre on days
And on nyghtes on the fowlyst wyfe —
The one ye must nedes have.
Chese the one or the oder.”109
Gawain, not liking either of the choices, finally declares, “The choyse I putt in your fyst.”110 And, because he has given the choice to her, “For now I am worshyppyd, Thou shalle have me fayre bothe day and nyghte.”111 She explains that she had been bewitched, but that his respect for her has freed her of the enchantment. The romance goes on for another hundred and fifty lines, but it all boils down to the fact that Gawain and Dame Ragnall are very happy although she does not live long.
It is a powerful and effective story, strong enough that it still survived, in a shortened but very similar form, in the seventeenth century ballad-like piece “The Marriage of Sir Gawain.”112 Chaucer probably knew the Ragnall version in some form or other. But this is not the tale he told.113
Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale is formally an Arthurian tale, but it dispenses with most of the Arthurian paraphernalia — which tells us something about Chaucer and romantic love, since by his time Arthur’s court was regarded as “the fountainhead of true loving.”114 Chaucer’s move away from an Arthurian setting may be another of his moves away from love themes. The Wife’s story actually has less characterization than the Ragnall;115 it opens with a rape — by a knight whose name we never learn!116 — who is therefore forced to abide the judgment of women and made to find out what women want.117 Like Arthur in Ragnall, Sir Rapist meets a Loathly Lady who can give him the answer — but in return will require him to marry her. He agrees. At the appropriate time she shows up looking beautiful — but, as in the analogs, demands he decide a question about her beauty. When he gives the choice to her, she becomes beautiful all the time, as in the other versions of the tale.
Chaucer obviously has given us a tale that is neither like Gower’s nor like Ragnall’s. Some of the changes are minor; “in all the English versions except Chaucer’s, the loathly lady is described at some length,”118 but Chaucer is content to keep things short.119 Unlike Ragnall but like Gower, in the Wife’s tale there is no Gawain taking on another’s burden; the male main character is himself guilty of a fault which he must redeem. This is utterly unlike Gawain in the Ragnall, who in a very Christian way undertakes to redeem Arthur’s fault.
Chaucer’s version makes the question “What do women want?” far more relevant than in the other versions. In Gower, the question has no relevance at all; it’s just a random demand on poor Florent. In Ragnall, although the question isn’t directly relevant, there is a reason Sir Gromer asks it; he wants his sister to make a good marriage — which means he wants her to marry a man who can understand her. But in Chaucer, the question has real importance, because Sir Noname has shown, by raping his victim, that he has no respect for or understanding of women’s feelings.
But the key change Chaucer made is not in the setting — it is barely possible that the association of the Loathly Lady with Gawain was made after his time. Instead, Chaucer changes the Loathly Lady’s question to the knight. Most often, as in Ragnall, the Loathly Lady offers her new husband the choice “fair by day and foul by night,” or the reverse. In the Wife’s tale, the choice is “fair and faithless or foul and faithful”:120
To han me foul and old til that I deye,
And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf,
And nevere you displee in al my lyf,
Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair,
And take youre aventure of the repair,
That shal be to youre hous by cause of me,
Or in som oother place, may well be.121
Chaucer’s Loathly Lady is actually a less complete character than Ragnall, who is if nothing else both logical and full of spunk — but Chaucer’s lady, and only Chaucer’s lady, asks a question which involves trouthe. Gower’s version has little of trouthe; Ragnall involves Gawain’s trouthe to Arthur, which is fine motivation enough — but in Chaucer we have marital trouthe as well. The knight has offered trouthe to the Loathly Lady, but only because he was forced to — now she asks him if he wants her to have trouthe to him. He does not choose, but he does give her the option. And so, when both parties have trouthe, we get the happy ending that she becomes beautiful all the time.
After the lady is transformed, we are told,
she obeyed hym in every thyng
That myghte doon hym plesance or likyng.122
In other words, now that he has served her, she serves him. Some have accused Chaucer (or the Wife, or somebody) of wanting to have it both ways here — having made him serve her, she now takes on the standard medieval role of wifely subservience.123 This ignores the fact that service can and does go both ways — as any good student of the Bible would know, for Jesus said that “whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your servant.”124. Sir Noname and the Formerly Loathly Lady are servants of each other, which — as the Franklin’s Tale will show us — is the truest of trouthe.
So, for Chaucer, trouthe has conquered.
It is perhaps particularly touching that the Wife tells this tale, because — even though she has been married five times — she has never really had a trouthe relationship. Her first three husbands were old men she took advantage of (but did not enjoy particularly); her fourth marriage “was little more than nominal,” and while she enjoyed her fifth, she had to offer up all the property gained from earlier pairings125 — and suffered from him the blow that left her deaf in one ear. She is now seeking a sixth husband126 — and, one suspects, is now at last looking for a marriage based on mutual respect.
There is more to her tale. Sir Noname, having been stuck marrying Loathly Lady, makes it clear on their wedding night that he doesn’t want to go near his new bride. And says so, as if her looks are her fault and as if he, despite being a rapist, is somehow superior to her. “She replies that a true gentleman honours goodness, not rank and family; honours the poor, not just the well-to-do; and honours the old and reverences them.”127 In other words, “handsome is as handsome does.” Trouthe, not beauty, is the true measure of a person.
In a period when the Church was dominated by men, and society ruled by men, the Wife’s attitude that women should have dominance over men was so profoundly shocking that, in the opinion of the time, “The woman was an heresiarch, or at best a schismatic.”128 This is true, in a way,129 and her bold assertions, and the way the other pilgrims respond to them, leads to a suggestion that the Wife’s Tale opens a “Marriage Group” of tales, in which Chaucer starts a discussion of the meaning of marriage, with the Alisoun opening the discussion and the Clerk’s Tale of Griselda and the Merchant’s Tale responding.
To a certain extent, this depends on the order of the fragments of the Tales, for the Wife’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale are in different fragments. If the Clerk’s Tale was intended to precede the Wife’s, the argument fails.130 Still, the state of the manuscripts make it seem highly likely that the Clerk was answering the Wife. Although he was not given the last word; in the view of Kittredge, who originally proposed the “Marriage Group,” The Franklin’s Tale is the the final word.131
Whether Kittredge is right about the Marriage Group or not, there clearly is some interplay among the pilgrims on this topic, since the Wife wants women to have “sovereignty,” and the Clerk soon discusses that very concept:132
Boweth your nekke under that blisful yok
Of soveraynetee, noght of servyse,
Which that men clepeth spousialle or wedlock.133
The Wife’s demand for “sovereignty” has another significance. Even if she wants to be boss in relationship, her version of marital relations is probably more equal than that of most men in the Middle Ages. And, as we saw in the Knight’s Tale, equality increases the power and significance of trouthe.
Debates over fidelity and related topics were nothing new in the Middle Ages. The poem The Flower and the Leaf, once attributed to Chaucer, is typical: It involves a contrast of the followers of the flower — flirtatious but short-lasting — with the faithful and enduring leaf.134 Chaucer himself used this motif in the portrait of the daisy in the prologue to The Legend of Good Women.135
But the bottom line is this: Chaucer has taken a tale that, all along, was about women’s sovereignty — a tale which existed before the Wife of Bath and her supposed heresy — and made it also a tale of trouthe. And one in which trouthe triumphs.