The Wife of Bath Flashcards
“An husband wol I have, I wol not lette,
Which shall be both my dettour and my thrall”
(prologue: 160-161)
The Wife uses a vocabulary of financial terms, when she refers to sex as paying a debt. At other times, when she is less argumentative, she discusses sex irreverently, using vulgar terms to refer to genitals instead of the more polite “instrument” which she uses when she is trying to make an argument.
“Let hem be breed of pured whete seed,
And let us wives hote barly breed”
(prologue: 149-150)
Language of domestic life. Wife compares virgins to pure white. Since women were the ones responsible for setting up and maintaining the house, this metaphor signals the prologue’s ‘feminine’ authorship.
“They had me yeven hir land and hir tresor—
Me needed not do lenger diligence
To win hir love or doon hem reverence.”
(prologue: 210-213)
Explicitly connects love to money. Says she didn’t need to please her husbands because they had already yielded their property to her. Winning husband’s love means winning his money.
“That i ne told no daintee of hir love.
A wise woman wol busy hir ever in oon
To get hir love, ye, there as she hath noon.”
(prologue: 214-216)
The wife sets no value on love. This attitude towards love is part of the wife’s philosophy that everything is for sale and is subject to supply and demand. Things that are easily gained the wife then holds to be cheap.
“I have the power during all my lif
Upon his proper body, and not he.”
(prologue: 164-165)
The Wife is inverting the idea that women are exploited by men for their sexuality; she says that she is not only exhibiting her sexuality by choice, but also using it to gain mastery over her husband. Because of her sexuality, the Wife has all the “power” in the relationship, and her husband has none. Because she has it “all [her] lif,” she’s saying that age doesn’t affect a woman’s ability to control men’s bodies through their desire.
“Who paintede the leon, tell me who?”
prologue: 698
This is a comment on patriarchy: because the ruling class determine the morals and standards of the time, men are responsible for creating society’s attitudes towards women. Men wrote the ancient fables and holy scriptures, and that’s why the views on women contained within them are so abhorrent. In the Wife’s tale she inverts the attitudes towards women by making them the rulers, so her example is, to extend her metaphor, the lion painting the lion.
“After the beer, me thought he had a paire
Of legges and of feet so clene and faire
That all mine hert I yaf unto his hold.”
(prologue: 603-605)
She felt no love or affection for her fourth husband. The marriage was meant only to secure the Wife economic power, because the only way a woman could become powerful was to become widowed by a wealthy man. This made it a mistake, almost a self-indulgence, for a woman to marry out of love.
“He yaf me all the bridel in mine hand”
prologue: 819
The Wife believes that a marriage based in equality will never work. Courtship held joy for both the Wife and Jankin, but with marriage came woe. When Jankin had mastery she was miserable, and it’s only when she gains mastery that they have a happy marriage. Although she’s kind to him, he has no power in the marriage, giving her control over the “governaunce of house and land.”
“As help me God, I laughe when I think
How pitously anight I made hem swinke!”
(prologue: 207-208)
There was no sexual love present in her first three marriages: she used sex as a method of control, a way to keep her husbands loyal. She mocks them for mistaking her use of sex (a way of controlling them) for genuine sexual desire for them.
