The Wife of Bath as Neither a Feminist nor Antifeminist Character

The Wife of Bath as neither a
Feminist nor Antifeminist character

The wife of bath, a character in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, has consistently been labeled as either a feminist or an antifeminist. Being to able to label her is not as easy as it first appears however. She displays behavior and speech at various times throughout her prologue and story that when taken by itself or out of context could lead a reader to make such a judgment, but when everything she mentions and uses to support her argument and outlook on life is brought together, we see that she is a far more complex character that refuses to be brought down into a single label. While the wife of bath displays characteristics that can be classified as feminist or antifeminist, she can not be labeled one or the other without ignoring some aspects of her personality. One of the first and most important issues that show both the complexity of character and inherent contradictions of the wife is her argument. Her argument is that "experience (Chaucer 1)" in marriage gives her the authority to speak on the subject. While she relates stories of past husbands, she makes mention of the last one, Jenkin, reading from "this book for tales of wicked wives (Chaucer 681)". He used the book to lecture her about the various ways in which women have betrayed their marriage vows. This brings the idea that while her authority arises out of her experience of 28 years of marriage; men rely on mythological stories like Deianeira and Hercules, textual fiction and religion to support their point of view.
The other side to this comes in the wife 's tale when the woman takes on the role of the lecturer. The old woman uses God to support herself against the criticisms of the knight when she says, "almighty God in whom we all believe in willful poverty chose to lead his life (Chaucer 262)." Here, it is the woman that uses literature and God. If the wife 's use of personal experience to justify herself can be seen as feminist, because she is being empowered through and by her own observations rather than by the writing of other mostly male authors, then the move away from this in the tale must show either the strength of using scripture for support or weakness in using experience. Regardless, the woman in the tale does justify herself through religion and male writers such as Seneca to the knight. Using argument as a base we see that the wife of bath can appear to be both feminist and antifeminist depending on a person 's interpretation.
Another aspect of the wife of bath that can either be viewed as feminist or antifeminist is her attitude towards men. She says that, "every man should pay his wife his debt" (Chaucer 136). This essentially means that the husband has an obligation to keep his wife pleased in bed. This can be seen as feminist in the sense that it is the man who has the duty to please the women as opposed to the standard in medieval times where a good wife was obedient and it was her duty to please the husband.
This feminist side is contradicted by the fact that she wants men to objectify her and praising for her beauty (Chaucer 298). She recognizes the fact that looks don 't last and this leads her to use sex as a commodity. This is evidenced by the fact that most of her marriages were for money, except for the last which was for love. When she speaks, "why task myself to spoil them or to please unless for my own profit and my ease (Chaucer 219)," we see that we see that personal gain is her primary motive for marriage. The fact that she is telling this to the other travelers, who are primarily men, would undermine any feminist intention.
She goes even further than just telling them that she married for money. The wife of bath tells the fellow travelers that all women have negative qualities. She says, "There isn 't on the earth so bold a man he can swear false or lie as a woman can (Chaucer 234)." In addition to this accusation that women are liars, they are whores also, "for she can 't long keep chastity intact who is from every side at once attacked. (Chaucer 263)." The wife of bath is successful in painting a negative picture of women. The result of this is to support men 's previously held theories about the weakness and flaws of women. These are not the actions of a feminist woman, but of an antifeminist.
The wife of bath has proven herself to be one of The Canterbury Tales most developed and analyzed characters. She has a personality that possesses a depth which the other characters in the work only approach but do not attain. It is because of this, that readers find her intriguing and try to decipher her intentions and rationale. Feminism did not exist as a fully developed concept in Chaucer 's time as it does now. Even if the wife of bath has feminist actions or saying at certain times, they can 't technically be feminist because feminism did not exist. Retroactively labeling is not appropriate in this case either, because her behavior is not one sided enough. She is a woman confident enough in herself to use vulgar language around men and tell them of her experiences. The wife of bath is neither a feminist nor an antifeminist; she encompasses aspects of both and as a result is a well rounded person capable of sustaining our interest.

Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd Ed. New York: Norton & Co, 2002

Cited: Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd Ed. New York: Norton & Co, 2002