The Wife of Bath Her Portrait General Prologue

The Wife of Bath • Her Portrait (General Prologue ll. 447 -78) • Her Prologue – Division into two parts: Lines 1 -168 Lines 199 -834

Wife of Bath • General Prologue Portrait: Line 447 ff

Lines 199 -834: The 5 Husbands • The Three “Good Husbands” – l. 410 • The Revelour (#4) l. 487 • Janekin and the “Book of Wikked Wyves” (#5) l. 509

“Book of Wikked Wyves” • • • Line 672 ff. Anti-Feminist tradition Valerian and Theophrastus St. Jerome’s Against Jovinian St. Jerome, letter to a woman contemplating a second marriage: “You've already learned the miseries of marriage. It's like unwholesome food, and now that you have relieved your heaving stomach of its bile, why should you return to it again like a dog to its vomit? ”

Church Doctors and “Fathers” on Women • Woman is a temple built over a sewer. –Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (ca. 160 -225) • In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. —Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1 • What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman… I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children. – Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354 – 430): De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5 -9

Church Doctors and “Fathers” on Women • Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. … Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good. –Saint Albertus Magnus, Dominican theologian, 13 th century: Quaestiones super de animalibus XV q. 11

Wife as an Interpreter of the Bible • l. 149 • 1 Corinthians 7: 4 • “For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does, likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. ” • Scholarly exegesis vs. the Wife on scripture

From Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 7: 1 -9 • “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband, …For I would that all men were even as myself…I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. ”

The Wife of Bath vs. The Anti. Feminist Tradition • Is she the anti-feminists’ worst nightmare? • Does her bold, outspoken resistance to misogyny inspire admiration? Or condemnation? • Is Chaucer demonstrating how a woman might resist patriarchal power and control? • Who speaks for “woman”? • l. 698

Additional key passages in the Wife of Bath’s Tale • • • ll. 1 -3 ll. 57 -58 ll. 121 -24 ll. 322 -28, 335 -36 ll. 403 -08 ll. 578 -79

Whose “Fantasy” is this? • Arthurian Romance (vs. Church fathers) • Parallels between Prologue and Tale – Parallel endings to Prologue (l. 817 ff) and Tale (l. 1256 ff)

The Pardoner’s Portrait in the General Prologue • Line 671 • What does a Pardoner do? • Gelding or Mare?

The Pardoner’s Prologue • Hypocrisy and Deceit – Line 41 ff –Eating and drinking as he lectures against drunkenness and gluttony (line 34)

The Pardoner’s Prologue • Confessional, like the Wife’s • Hypocrisy and Deceit –“Relics” (line 59)

The Pardoner’s Prologue • Hypocrisy and Deceit –Relics and blackmail l. 89 ff.

The Pardoner’s Tale • Form of the tale –Sermon –Exemplum

The Moral of the Story Radix malorum est cupiditas (l. 46) “…those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil…. ” (1 Timothy 6: 9 -10) Attack on a series of related sins: Avarice, Gluttony, Drunkenness, Gambling, Swearing But the love of money is the gateway sin The exemplum: a story to illustrate the consequences of these sins, a cautionary tale (cf. God sending the plague as a punishment for sin)

The Black Death (bubonic plague) • Reaches England in 1348 and kills up to 30, 000 of London’s 70, 000 inhabitants as well as up to 1/3 of total English population • Plague reference is Chaucer’s addition to this well known and widely transmitted tale

The Black Death

The Black Death

The Three Rioters • They hear a bell announcing a death l. 376 • Jesus Christ “defeated death” when he was resurrected and in offering salvation and “eternal life” • They understand death literally – (Paul: the letter vs. the spirit, see 2 Corinthians 3: 6) – Persistent pattern of irony: they set out to find and kill Death

Parodic Inversions in the Tale • Demonic subversion of Christian meanings • • • Sin/Virtue Damnation/Salvation Tavern/Church Oak Tree/Cross Earthly Treasure/Heavenly Reward Poisoned Wine/Wine at Last Supper, Christ’s blood: Deadly Poison/Source of Eternal Life and Bliss (False) Communion

The Devil Tempts with Gambling

The Pardoner’s Ambiguities • The Pardoner also clearly suffers from a type of “blindness” • His physical ambiguities mirror his moral ambiguities • Chaucer creates a correlation between his moral and physical state

The Pardoner’s Ambiguities • Why does the Pardoner try to “con” the pilgrims? Why would he do that after he revealed his true motives? • “Epilogue” Line 631 ff • Why does the Host react so violently?

The Pardoner: Radical Evil? • Claiming to be virtuous and to serve others, but really seeking profit and self-interest: hypocrisy • A con artist, a performer • Selling pardons to those who fear the eternal tortures of purgatory (and hell) • The root (radix) of all evil: “radical” evil • What is “radical evil”? Then and now? • Is the love of money the root of all evil today?