The Other Half

Here is a strange hypothesis. Reading through the Wife of Bath’s Prologue again gave me an idea; I’m not sure it’s a good one but here it is. One of the questions we discussed in class was whether the Wife of Bath was supposed to be sympathetic or not. Perhaps the question beneath that is: is the Wife (I’m going to call her that through the rest of this. It’s easier) presented as herald of positive change in women’s role or is she the model for women of what not to do and for men who not to marry? I’ll argue it’s neither. What if her presence on the pilgrimage and her extraordinarily long prologue are not comments on women’s behavior at all, but rather on men’s? Let me explain a little.

            The prologue opens in the middle of an apologetic discussion. The Wife is making a case for her situation and beliefs, pulling from the Bible and classical literature, yet it seems that these bits are given a rather lose interpretation or are half quoted.  Not being an expert on Ptolemy, I’ll stick to the arguments she relies on the Bible for. I could probably go on and on about almost every reference she makes to the Bible but I want to focus on a particular passage that caught my eye. Speaking of her husband (I don’t know which one particularly), the Wife pulls out a pair of ideas one from Corinthians and the other from Ephesians:

I have the power during al my lif

Upon his proper body, and nat he.

Right thus th’ Apostle tolde it unto me,

And bad oure housbonds for to love us wel;

Al this sentice me liketh everydel.’ (159-162).

It is interesting that she ends the statement with “Al this sentice me liketh everydel.” She is implying that she has considered the whole statement and likes every bit of it. According to her she this is a solid basis for her argument. That however is literally half the story. I think it is safe to assume that many if not most of her audience would be familiar with the passages she is referring to. I can’t read Latin and nor do I have the Bible in middle English (which of course she probably didn’t have either) but here are the passages from the New King James Version which I think is close enough for my purposes:

1 Corinthians 7:4 “The wife does not have authority over her body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

Ephesians 5:22,25 “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord…. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and game himself for her.”

The Wife of Bath has pulled exactly half of these passages for her argument, which is what she wanted and nothing more. Her argument is based on what she wants her argument to be. From there she can find support for it because she wants it to be there. I could go on about this but I wondered: how often was the other half, and just the other half, used in medieval society? I’m no expert but what I remember from class discussions and a little of my own digging was that the women was very nearly the property of her husband in medieval society. No doubt our society emphasis the negatives disproportionately with the reality but there is also no doubt (correct me if I’m wrong Dr. M-B) that Medieval English law favored the man more than the women in most regards.

            Sorry I’ve been going on for a while now, don’t worry I’m almost done. Right before we learn that the Wife’s arguments (at least in this instance) are based on only what she wanted she uses what I thought rather severe words to describe the position of her husband to her; “Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral” (155). Once I got past the strength of these descriptions (he shall be her debtor and slave) I realized a similarity with something Custaunce said in The Man of Law’s Tale. She said, “Wommen are born to thralldom and penaunce” (Man of Law’s Tale 286). The similarity is striking. Both contain “thrall” or “thralldom” and both contain ideas of debt or “penaunce,” which is paying for some wrong doing or debt.  It seems then that the Wife seeks to place men where men place women. All this to say that it seems that the Wife of Bath has been painted like this to point out the extreme lopsidedness that men assume with the same flawed logic. I think that as she repulses her audience they cannot but realize she has exactly the same basis for what she does as they do. The only difference is that she uses the other half of the whole.

            I apologize for making this so long. A applaud your patience for making it this far. Now you know why I only brought up part of it in class.