Laura Wang
Reimagining Natural Order in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue
What is the Wife of Bath really saying when she asks, “Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?” We know that she is alluding to the Aesopian fable of the man and the lion, which demonstrates how drastically one person’s perspective can differ from another’s. But her question also implies that at some level she identifies with the lion, who takes umbrage at seeing his species portrayed in humiliating subjugation. In my paper, I propose that we apply more pressure to this moment and to the many other references to animals in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. The misogamous and misogynistic texts cited by the Wife of Bath often compare women to livestock or wild animals in need of male control. I will argue that the Wife counters these texts in a highly unconventional manner: by engaging with them on their own terms. Rather than attempting to prove that women are as fully human as men, and therefore deserving of the same dignity, she shows through her “experience” that men and women are in fact equally animal. In so doing, she defies traditional conceptions of natural order from both classical and early Christian writings.
My discussion will focus on several ways in which the Wife of Bath uses animal metaphor to her own advantage. I will first draw attention to the sheer abundance of animal metaphor in the antifeminist sayings which the Wife recites, placing them in their philosophical and theological contexts. Then I will show how the Wife uses these very animal metaphors to explain all her potential faults from irrationality to wantonness, making them look “natural” and therefore unchangeable and impossible to condemn. Finally, I will show how she applies the same animal metaphors to describe male misbehavior, particularly male violence against women. In effect, the Wife actually accepts the clerics’ comparisons of women to animals, but levels the field by showing that men are just as beastly if not more so. Ultimately, this paper will suggest that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue has at least one important point in common with her tale: both play imaginatively and irreverently with received notions of natural order.
Critics have long recognized how Chaucer seems playfully both to undermine and to reinforce traditional ideas about gender in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. This important discussion should be broadened, however, to include the way in which Chaucer also puts notions about “nature” and natural order to the test. I hope to contribute to the proposed collection, In Hir Corages: Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts, by showing that just as the Wife turns from caricature into surprisingly believable character at a certain point, the animals she constantly refers to cease to be mere figures of speech and become inextricably connected with the human.