Discussion and Journal Questions
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s tale and her prologue are deemed by many to be some of the best parts of The Canterbury Tales. The story vividly describes the role of a woman in the Middle Ages through the character of Alison. However, her position does not seem to be very typical for that period of time, as she believed her experience in marriage matters could dominate the male authority. This idea is constantly expressed with the help of the notion of woman’s “sovereignty” over her husband.
In The Wife of Bath’s tale, the young knight cries out “Taak al my good, and lat my body go" (Chaucer 119), as he admits reluctantly his promise to marry the Loathly Lady in exchange for an answer to the question "What do women most desire?". This important phrase for Chaucer’s concept of the world can be interpreted in several ways. First of all, this is a direct allusion to a previous episode where the knight refuses to respect a young maiden’s body and commits a crime against it. As retaliation, he is then forced into a similar position as the woman’s where they both would rather give away all their possessions than have their bodies, and indeed themselves, incarcerated. We can see that the knight’s punishment to come under sovereignty of a hag could be fitted into his crime.
The phrase also alludes to the question of the women’s main desire raised in the story. From the prologue we know that a wife has sovereignty over her husband’s body until the end of his days. That means that by asking the knight to marry her, the Loathly Lady has in fact requested for his body to belong to her. In that case the knight’s desperate exclamation could show his non-acceptance of the idea of a wife’s sovereignty over her spouse.
Another significant thing about the discussed phrase is that declining all of his possessions in attempt to not give his body to the hag, the knight omits the notion of a soul. Although the story is set in the times of ultimate domination of religion over all spheres of human lives, both the Wife of Bath and the knight, whose tale she is narrating, seem to hold more value in a body rather than a soul. Alison challenges the Biblical concept of marriage, whereas the knight is a criminal who has committed violence against a woman. In The Wife of Bath, the dissatisfaction with certain religious ideas is often present in Alison’s seeking more autonomy for herself and disagreeing with the Church’s view on the relations between a man and a woman. In the knight’s line, his referring to his body seems to mean his whole person.
Works cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Larry D. Benson. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. From "The Riverside Chaucer" Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.
Discussion and Journal Questions
Why did Margery Kempe have a difficult time getting her autobiography written down?
Margery Kempe, who is believed to be the author of the first English-language autobiography, was a Christian theologist living in the 13-14 centuries. The story tells us about Kempe’s life, her religious visions after the birth of her child, and her spiritual callings. According to the existing society norms at that time her position was difficult, although most common for women. Kempe’s struggle to have her autobiography written down result from the predominant role of the Church in all spheres of a human life, and the rules it had established and maintained in relation to women.
Although Margery Kempe was a daughter of a merchant, as a woman she did not receive education and did not have any substantial command in writing. However, she had a story she wanted to share with other Christians. The main difficulty in her case was the need to find a person who was both literate and deeming her experience worth being written down.
Throughout her Book Kempe explains her ability to find a scribe who would help her write her autobiography through her miraculous translations. The second cleric who assisted her could not make out the poorly written first draft of the story. However, after Kempe’s prayer, as she states in the text, he found it much easier to read and comprehend. During the second “miracle”, the priest got back his sight after his eyes had failed him.
The story of the creation of the book is parallel to Kempe’s life in several ways. The most protruding is the idea that due to her sex she had to struggle for the rights that we today consider unalienable. The simple will to have her life story shared among the others was something that she had to fight for in spite of the norms and regulation that society was imposing over her.
It is also worth mentioning that the priest transformed a lot of Kempe’s dictation, perhaps not in content but in form, adding specific theological information and turns of phrases. This could be the reason to consider the Book “a woman’s story filtered through a male religious lens” (Flood).
Another difficult thing for Kempe was entirely religious in nature. Her bursts of weeping and crying when she reflected on the Church matters could make people think of her as mentally instable, rather than a saint. In those circumstances, it took her even more efforts to find a reliable person whom she could dictate her autobiography.
Works cited
Flood, Alison. "Archive find shows medieval mystic Margery Kempe's autobiography 'doesn't lie’" The Guardian, 8 May 2015, Web. 2 Aug. 2016.
