Gone Medieval - Chaucer's Wife of Bath: Medieval Feminist

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

This episode contains explicit language and themesWe're revelling in the Canterbury Tales this week; who else to kick things off with a bang than the scandalous Wife of Bath?Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Dr. Hetta Howes to celebrate Chaucer's scandalous and witty Wife of Bath, as they explore her five marriages, defiance of medieval norms, and her unapologetically bold voice. Together they unravel the rich details of her prologue and tale, filled with humour, controversy, and groundbreaking challenges to gender roles. Romp through one of literature's most unforgettable tales and characters.More:Medieval Writers, Extraordinary Womenhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/2axC5tQ8weR8tfb9ZwQJbKGeoffrey Chaucer, Father of English Literaturehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/3TMGrNTfPS5wwOqspKNfK3Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. Before we get started today, just a word of warning. We are talking about the wife of Bath's Tale, which is fairly saucy, and the language gets a little bit fruity at times. So you might just want to have a listen first before inviting any of the littler ears in your life to do the same. If you've ever wondered if five marriages is perhaps a little excessive, today we are rolling out the red carpet for the original queen of oversharing

the sassy, saucy, and spectacularly scandalous wife of bath. Picture this. Chaucer's Canterbury Road. A motley crew of pilgrims swapping stories. Suddenly, a woman in a sense. scarlet dress stands up, clears her throat, and before anyone can say amen, she is off. Not with a prayer, but with a prolong so long and juicy it makes the other pilgrim's ears burn and their ale go flat. Experience, even if there were no authority in this world, is quite enough for me. That's right, our girl Allison boasts five husbands, a world tour of Jerusalem.

and more opinions than Pierce Morgan. She's here to spill the beans on marriage, men, and why she thinks the Bible is best used as a debate prop. She is not afraid to take on the church, the patriarchy, or that one guy who thinks women should be seen and not heard. No, has she got stories? From outwitting her old rich husbands to delivering a tale where a knight learns the hard way

what women really want. And it's not a foot massage. So grab your god, adjust your wimple and prepare for a wild ride through love, laughter, and a little bit of medieval mayhem. Because when the Wife of Bath takes the stage, the world turns upside down and the punchlines are as sharp as her tongue. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale is one of the most provocative and multifaceted text in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. And joining me today to get to grips with Bath's original stand-up comedian is Dr. Hedah Howes. senior lecturer in English literature at City University of London,

and the author of Poet Mystic Widow Wife, The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women. Heda has extensively analyzed the character of the wife of Bath, situating her within the broader discussions of gender, authority, and social critique in the Middle Ages. And Hedda's no stranger to gone medieval either. She joined me before for our episode, Medieval Writers, Extraordinary Women.

So do go back and have a listen to that if you have a question. haven't done so already. Hedda, welcome back to God Medieval. Thank you so much for having me back. Oh, it's just a pleasure. It's Girls night. Girls night. And the girls are here to talk about your good friend and mine, Hedda, Allison, the wife of Bath. Love her. I feel like I should have brought wine rather than coffee to this meeting. 100%, right? Because, okay, to our girly, right? Like, you and I love her. I think everyone who works on women in the medieval period is obsessed. I think Boopi we know what the premise of the Canterbury Tales is, right? So Chaucer's written about this super diverse group of pilgrims.

They're traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett and Canterbury. And along the way, they're stopping and they tell stories to entertain one another. But the wife of Bath really stands out among the pilgrims, at least in my opinion. Why do you think this is? Is this just because she's a woman or is this a sex-cells thing? I mean, look, I think it's a bit of both, right? So I agree. I feel like whenever I say Canterbury Tales people, it's always wife of bath that people remember and know of. And I think partly it is a woman thing because out of, you know, the 20 plus pilgrims,

only three are women, two of them are nuns and not really nearly some memorable. But also, yeah, 100% sex sales. I think people are always so surprised by how sexy her prolog and tail are. And I think we always have this idea. You know, obviously you've talked about the slows yourself that it's a very prude time, which is just absolute rubbish. So I think that helps. But I think also she has such a distinct voice of all the different pilgrims she tells us so much more about herself. Her prolog is the longest one by far. And that's partly a little bit of a joke from Chaucer that women talk too much, right? But also means that we just get so much more of a sense of her than of any other pilgrim. Can we talk a little bit about the prolog?

because this is the interesting thing. Her prolog is like so much longer than her actual tail bangs as well. I want to point that. It is good and no one ever gets to it because we're always talking about the prolog because it's like three times as long, four times as long, something like that.

And it does have all this really intricate detail. So what do we find in there? Yeah, so actually interestingly, and we can get to it later maybe the tail mirrors the prolog in lots of quite interesting ways, particularly the ending. But, you know, we get an interesting, introduction to her in the general prologue where we're sort of all the pilgrims are described to us and we're told that she wears red stockings, that she has had five husbands, which I think would have been less surprising to people then than it is to us now. But yeah, she's like, she's looking for number six, we're told later. She works. I mean, it's interesting because she's called the wife of Bath, not the cloth maker, but we're told she works in the cloth trade. She's the only pilgrim that isn't named by her profession, although arguably wife might be a bit of a profession at that time. And she, yeah,

she is sort of respectable, but talkative woman. And then in the prolog itself, we get way more information about her and about her husbands. And she sort of talks us through the various different men she's been with. Three of them were sort of old and good husbands because she could get them pretty much to do what she wanted. And she had a sweet deal with them in that she made sure she kept all her land of money and sort of kept them under control, if you like. And then the two less good husbands, one of which is her sort of fifth husband and the love of her life, but also sadly, an abuser. So it gets quite dark towards the end. Even at the beginning of the prologues, she sort of says she still feels in her ribs the beatings that she's had from a husband.

But no matter how much he beats her, she still ends up coming back. And she says, oh, it's a sort of fantasy of women. The sort of hard to get man. So it's a complicated tale in terms of relationships. she's had certainly been had better deals than others. But it is a remarkable amount of personal detail, whereas other characters we tended to like get a little bit of color about them. You know, the miller's drunk and a bit raucous, for example,

but not such a kind of running autobiography as we get from there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think this is an interesting one because I think there's this sort of tendency for people to say, oh, well, look at, look at the, this character, look at the detail, and she kind of subverts what we would understand to be expectations of women at the time. And Chaucer is really challenging the norms of, you know, patriarchy and misogyny. And I'm kind of like, I don't know. I don't know about all that. So I also raise my eyebrows this because what we have to remember, right, is that however

playfully is being, this is a story written by a man, Chaucer. And at one point, Allison says in the prologue, who painted the lion, right? Who gets to, essentially is from a sort of fable about a lion and a man looking at a picture, and the man has conquered the lion, and the lion's like, yeah, but you drew the picture. So of course you're the victor, right? So the history kind of goes to whoever's telling it, and she says to us, or men tend to tell the story. So of course we hear all these terrible things about women.

But at the same time, the story is written by a man, however much of a distinct voice she has, and she seems to be embodying a lot of the stereotypes about women that are negative. So, for example, the fact that her prologue is so long, she keeps losing her place, has to be interrupted a number of times and sort of brought back on track, you know, women talk too much. The fact that she has used and abused her husbands. And, you know, obviously I think we quite enjoy that as an audience who are like, you know, go for it. Women are so subjugated at this time, like right on. But then she kind of gets her comeuppance at the end with this last husband. And she's extremely sexual. And again, do we read that just straight? And like, oh, yeah, women women. we're, you know, having sex and everybody celebrated it and they're not as prudish as we think, or do we read that as part of, okay, there's all this misogynist rhetoric about women being too sexual and not being able to be faithful and sort of always on the lookout for the next sort of sexual prospect. And is Chaucer actually kind of having her play out a lot of that in the prologue? Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you here unsurprisingly.

Because I think the thing is we have a tendency now to kind of read this as possibly a feminist text, but it's because we've changed our understanding of what would be feminist. Whereas, you know, it is a perfectly normal medieval view to think women are voraciously sexual and cannot be stopped. Yeah. And so that is just one of the normal everyday things that people say about women. And so, of course, we're seeing it on display here. And, you know, further, are we really going to say that it is kind of emancipatory in any sort of way that she's like, oh, and I love my husband who beat me? Exactly. Like, calm down, Lana Delray. I don't know.

Yeah. Oh, my God, I've never thought about it's Lana Delray before. I love that. But, I mean, and so much of it does feel like too playful to be straight. So the fact that at one husband's funeral, she's eyeing up the ankles of the next husband, that can't be read straight, right? that's got to be a sort of jive, oh my goodness, look, she's already kind of on the lookout for the next guy type situation. And even slightly more sort of literary things about the prolog. It starts with her saying she sort of pits experience and authority against each other.

And she says she's got experience of marriage enough to talk about it. And she's tapping into sort of literary debate there of like what's more important experience or authority. And authority tends to be male, monastic sort of privilege and experience tends to be more. associated with the female. But she then goes on to quote, you know, lots of the Bible, lots of writers, lots of thinkers. So then some critics say, okay, but she's clearly really really well read and educated, but then she's getting a lot of it wrong or half remembering it or not quite taking the right interpretation from it in terms of what would be the sort of prescribed reading of the time. So it's quite convoluted in how Chaucer is sort of every time you think,

oh, he's trying to say this, but you're like, oh, but then there he's making fun of her. And then actually she's kind of completely misunderstood that Bible reference or that thinker is is um doesn't actually exist or you know um all these little kind of undercurrents. And so I think it is interesting because there is this way where this reads for a medieval audience very clearly. You know, for them this is these are tropes that make perfect sense. This is a literary device that they can understand. I mean, for them this is the equivalent of like women be shopping. now, you know, or whatever. And I just think that it's not necessarily legible for us now because

we've really changed our ways of thinking about women. Although I suppose that women talk too much is still probably on the list of things that people would say. But still, having said that, I don't want to be too down on it because I mean, I would say that the inclusion of a woman who talks this way about her life at all is still fairly radical for its time. Would you agree with that? Yes, absolutely. So yeah, I think you're right. I think take with a pinch assault calling it feminist, but regardless of whether or not Chaucer was kind of poking gentle fun at her, he pokes gentle fun at everyone. Everyone in the tails gets kind of ribbed. So whether they're man or woman, it just happens as far fewer women. So yeah, and I think the fact that she gets so much

airtime, and she's endured so much and we still kind of so interested in her and her prologue, but also her tail, sort of speaks for itself. It doesn't really matter what the purpose was, because we've taken so much from it. And, you know, again, whatever the intentions were and however much it sort of might be buying into my sodgy the time, it does contradict, I think, a lot of ideas we have about women in this period now. So the fact that they could get married multiple times, and that was not unusual, actually. You know, a medieval audience probably, like I said, would have been far less shocked by that than perhaps we are, because people died more often and, you know, marriage was kind of what was expected of women, so it wouldn't have been

that unusual to be finding the next husband. We also see exercising a lot of free agency in terms of her property and land. She's kind of accumulating wealth and money. Widows often did pretty well at this time in medieval England. One particular historian refers to it as a golden age for women. I'm not sure it was quite a gold-based women, but it was certainly better than some other times prior. And then better than some other times later. So, you know, in that context, yeah, it's a relatively good time to be a widow. And she's also showing free agency over her body and her preferences. And she's unapologetic about it. She's like, yeah, this is what I'm doing. This is the advice that I would give. And actually, this is all the things I have to put up with. And ultimately, marriage is a contract and they get

something and I get something and I get something and everybody wins. So there's something really admirable about that. I think we always, I think, when we read stories like a character that feels authentic and she absolutely feels authentic. Oh, I completely agree on that. I think one of the things that I find really interesting about her prologue here, it's something that you've mentioned in briefly in passing. Yes, okay, she does it incorrectly. But she does this job of defending the fact that she's been married so many times. And she does try to attempt to use the Bible and literature to describe why this is all right.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so she is quite directly challenging a lot of the sort of particularly church rhetoric at the time about the sort of purity of virginity, that virginity is this ideal, that everyone should be aspiring to. But she points out, quite rightly, that that's really contradictory with the fact that marriage is also a sacrament of the church and something that women are encouraged both in the church and in secular life to pursue. So she's sort of saying, hang on a minute, actually, you know, there's a double standard here. And sure, some people can be virgins and that's great, but not everybody can be.

She also directly quotes scripture, which is pretty radical for women, sometimes with dangerous form. anyway. And she interprets her own way. So she says, you know, God said, be fruitful and multiply. And I take that to me and I should get married as many times as I want. And who's to argue with her? Because that kind of makes sense. And just because it's not the traditional sort of gloss of the text, who's to say that that's not right? So she's, you know, she's getting into some interesting conversations about, you know, this is a time when there's debates or whether the Bible should be accessible at all, where, you know, women are getting slightly more access to scripture. And she's sort of pointing out a lot of the sort of inherent illogic of these authorities.

So, yeah, like you say, okay, sometimes she's maybe slightly misquoting or getting it wrong, but it's quite hard to argue with her. I mean, people did. You get sort of particularly in later centuries marginalia from sort of staid writers that try and argue back with her. But ultimately, a lot of it makes a lot of sense. You know, all these people writing about how women should be virgins were usually men who were also celibate and knew nothing about any of it.

and sort of set up this standard that women were expected to live by. And she's like, well, like, where does it say in the Bible that you shouldn't get married not than once? Show me where it says that. I mean, that's a really good point. And I think that also it's very funny, this idea of people trying to argue with a fictional character. They get so annoyed. Come back here. No.

Like, okay, like maybe calmed out. I think that perhaps she doesn't exist. But it is an ongoing debate, right? And it is one of those things. You know, marriage is such a contentious issue in the medieval period. Families, a lot of the time, get angry at the church for saying that people can freely choose who they marry. The church gets angry when people get remarried because they're like, no, stop it. So there are all these different ways of interpreting it, and it's constantly changing all the time.

So I think it's really refreshing to see a woman portrayed as having thoughts about this and really kind of sitting with that. Yeah, and I think pointing out the slippage between. between these sort of, you know, these very esteemed texts written monastic men usually and lived reality and actually pointing out what most people at the time were aware of is that there's a really big gap between everything that's said in sort of clerical texts or this advice literature or written sermons and what was actually really feasible and possible in daily life. I think oftentimes because there's not as much literature from the middle ages as we'd like left, We tend to put a lot of weight on anything that we read.

Oh, this must kind of suggest a universal opinion, or maybe this is what everyone was thinking. But what her prologue seems to suggest is, yeah, there were absolutely men writing this advice, but it doesn't mean that women were taking it. And it doesn't even mean that other people agreed. I mean, the other pilgrims interrupt her and sort of playfully interject, but none of them sort of seem particularly outraged by what she's saying.

Yeah, I agree. And I mean, I think also it's quite funny to watch people sort of taught about her getting scripture wrong or misapplying authorities because I've literally seen monastic men get things incorrect. You know, if you read the Malius Malifakarum, which I do all the time because I'm cool, you know, here, you know, Haino Kramer get scripture wrong a lot. I've seen him completely misapply St. Augustine, for example, where I've gone looking for things that he says are there and they simply do not exist. And so, you know, are, is this a misinterpretation or is it a lie, right? But when a woman does it, it's, you know, laughable, it's risible, it's cause for comedy. But when a man does

it, you know, a hundred years later, people are going to be like, oh, this is real, we should per, we should be hanging witches, you know? So there's this real, yeah. On the one hand, she gets a lot more sort of fame and attention because she's woman, but, you know, we were saying earlier about these people arguing with her. That doesn't happen with the other pilgrims, you know, that really, it's almost like there's a spotlight on her because she's one of the only female pilgrims and also this idea, you know, women should really kind of be seen but not heard and not allowed really to be part of this tradition of writing. And, you know, if you look at someone like Christine the Pizan writing in the Middle Ages writing back to misogyny, she makes a lot of the same

arguments. She might not do it quite as humorously. But, you know, her narrative's similar. And if anything, she's probably much more conservative than the wife of Bath. Yeah, there's definitely a sense in which, I mean, Chaucer himself makes up source. all the time, pretends that there's authority where there isn't. So the fact that she's doing that shouldn't necessarily suggest that there's anything malicious about what she's saying. And it also just shows that there's like a lot of sources floating around at the time. There's a lot of kind of authority. You have her fifth husband sitting, reading his like book of wicked wives and sort of retelling all these tales of women that have done bad things to their husbands. But there's different

ways of reading all those stories. And there's also all kinds of other stories that he's missing out. So he, just as much as her, is kind of taking an interpretation from text. They're all kind of participating in that in the story. So sort of, I guess one question I have about your interpretation of her is, do you think that the wife of Bath is meant to be representative of a very particular class of medieval women? Because, you know, she's a clothmaker. She's obviously very wealthy. She talks a lot about how she makes her marriages for money in addition to trying to ask us sex.

Do you think that this is, you know, a critique very particularly of the middling sort, as they said at the time, you know, women who are kind of attached to guilds or are we meant to read her as more of an every woman? So I feel like it's somewhere kind of in the middle. I definitely don't think of her as an every woman because she's so distinctive in her voice. And I guess her counterpoints in the tale are so different to her, the sort of religious women sort of show. that no, she's not every woman. There's sort of different professions of women. Does she represent every wife? Again, no, because there's all kinds of different wives. But yeah, I mean, I guess I do definitely see that at the time she also was rising, women were, you know, enjoying a new sense, not always, but in some spheres, a new sense of freedom cloth making, for example, was a sphere in which women really could make a good living, forge connections with one another,

you know, do things they hadn't been able to do before, enter into the mercantile world and ways they hadn't before. And Chaucer was, you know, a man about town in London and would have had a lot to do with a lot of quite powerful outspoken women. I mean, there's a lot of records of really powerful kind of merchant wife type women at the time. So I imagine he was coming into contact with women sort of like Alison. But I don't think he's specific enough for it to feel like a really particular critique. I think Chulsa treads the line really carefully between giving enough specific detail of the time

that the audience would have recognised elements, but of keeping it at the same time a universality to it. He does this, you know, the miller is a miller, but could arguably be, you know, another kind of tradesman as well, for example. But yes, I think she definitely feels of the sort of emerging middle classes or sort of middling sort, and it definitely seems to be an awareness that you don't actually see in much of the literature of the time. that women are making choices and moving in the world. She doesn't really have a literary precedent at all. She does feel like a real invention and that suggests that he's getting it from life. So you mentioned this very briefly already, but there are people who do push back against what she's saying in her prologue. And in particular here, I'm thinking of the partner and the

clerk who are supposed to be these sort of more traditional pilgrims. And is this supposed to be read as, you know, a clash of ideas, or is this just supposed to be like, ha ha, we're scaring the streets? I mean, she very deliberately criticizes friars at the beginning of her tale. So it never, like you say, the tail never gets much airtime, but at the beginning of the tale, she sort of starts off in this way where we're led to expect a very particular kind of thing in the, you know, in the days of King Arthur. So we're like, okay, it's going to be an alfeyerian legend. And then she talks about the woods and supernatural creatures and elves. And then she's like, oh, no, they've all gone because the landscape's just covered with

like begging friars and you can't, you can't move for them. And then she says, oh, women can go wherever they want with freedom. All they need fear is their dishonour. So this idea that friars won't do them any harm, but they might rape them, which is actually what then happens in the tale, not by a friar, but by a knight. So she's definitely criticising church people, generally, both in her prologue by sort of going toe to toe with some of these writers about the Bible, for example. I feel like when they're sort of interrupting and then they sort of get in their own little infight separate to her tail, it's almost kind of more of a comment on them than on her, this idea that they can't really listen to anything other than what they're interested in

and then they get sort of sidetracked and start infighting with one another. But I definitely feel like she, I mean there's tons of what we call anti-clerical satire throughout medieval writing and Chaucer's really good at it. This idea that he's not attacking the church. He's a Christian man. There's no sense in which he doesn't believe in God. But he, like many other writers, gets agitated by church people who claim to be good

and are actually, like, pretty bad people. Now, he doesn't do it so seriously as a, like a writer like William Langland takes it really seriously and is very, like, stern about it. Chaucer is more playful with it. But yeah, I think, you know, here's a woman that stands for everything these church writers stand against.

And like the partner, of course, isn't a church writer, he's, you know, but he's affiliated with the church. He's part of the system, if you like. And he's quite a bad part of the system, as we later discover it, right? He's not, he's not someone to admire. In fact, the only, like, real one to admire out of the holy people in it as like the frat, yeah, there's not many. So, yeah, so I think G sort of stands as a counterpoint to everything that writers were afraid of, you know, there's such a sense of fear in so many of these monastic writings about women, just this real anxiety about, like you said earlier, how sexually voracious they are and how immoral they are and how they're so sinful

that sin just kind of attracts itself to them and there's nothing that they can do about it and how awful menstruation is. I mean, it really honestly, like a horror show like, poor women, you know, hearing about this. I must be like, really, am I that bad? I thought it was okay. So yeah, I think she does embody a lot of the fears and anxieties of the time. And I think, you know, when we kind of look at other types of literature at the time that show anxieties about women, like poems about what do women talk about when they get together, are they sort of criticizing the lovemaking of their husbands? And she's just openly doing that. She's not a woman chatting with a woman, you know, over in the tavern sort of gossiping. She's with a group of men and she's like, yeah,

no, I got mine. And then... One of the ale wives' tales. where there's these women who get together and they all sit around comparing the size of their husband's junk. Yeah. Which is hilarious because it's like, yeah, oh yeah, that's what women do when they get together.

They can't wait to talk about penis size. Yes, like, but when I love about the wife of Bathis, she's just like, yep, love that, you know, and she makes direct reference to it. You know, she's got all these great double entendres, you know, how she chooses her husbands for the size of their purse, wink. nudge, you know, and things like this. So it is quite funny to see Chaucer just be like, yeah, no, she'll do it in mixed company. And I love that for her. So do I. And also the fact that she,

you know, because like you say, all these ill health poems are like are obsessed with penises. She mentions penises, but she also mentions vaginas. She's like the word quaintor, which essentially lucid translates to mean vagina, she uses it all the time. So she sort of calls it her instrument and she sort of has a couple of puns on it and how she's been praised on it. You know, She's not just talking about sort of male sexual organ. She's like, no, we have them too. And, you know, I'm here to remind you and talk about it. She's just like me for real, you know?

She's so much fun. How do we then compare her to the other women who are on the pilgrimage? Because as you say, we do have two more women who are going down to Caterbury that nobody talks about because they're very dull. So how do we compare these women? and should we? Yeah, such a great question. And as you asked it, I was like, yeah, I really, because I remember the prioress, but the other one, I'm like, yeah, can't really remember what he says about her?

What's the story again? The prioress is really genteel, and she's sort of the head of her religious institution of the convent, and there's, you know, much like with all the pilgrims, there's some real gentle, fun pote to her. So she's sort of trying to speak the language of the court. She's got this really courtly demeanor. She's got these dogs that she feed scraps of meat. But actually this is again sort of a gentle sort of satire of people abusing their power.

Because we get tons of records from the time of prioress, not really using the money as they should, or spending too much money on their clothes or worrying too much about, you know, themselves as opposed to the good of the convent and what the sisters need. And a lot of the times you get none sort of grassing in their prioresces if they think they're not doing their job properly. And she seems to be of that vein, you know, that yes, she's a nice, enough lady and she sort of seems very courtly and genteel, but should she really be saving the nicest cuts of meats for her dog and, you know, how much, you know, should she really be traveling as much as she is? So there's, you know, there's a sense in which they were trying to cut down on the

travel of women at the time from religious houses and she's sort of out and about on pilgrimage and should she be. So there's sort of an undercurrent with her too. I think in terms of comparing her with the wife of Beth, again, I'm interested in the fact that all the other pilgrims are defined by profession. So we talk a lot with the Canterbury Tales about how Cholsa was really committed to people from all walks of life. And that's absolutely true. And it's one of the best things about the tales. You know, other people writing these stories keep it very aristocratic, for example, that a Cameron is mostly nobility. But she's the only one. Yes, and she has a profession. It's not like she doesn't have a profession. She's a cloth maker. And how seriously she does that,

we don't know. But she's certainly engaged in it. She's talented at it. But she's described as a wife. So I think in terms of comparing it with the other women, that's the way I often think about her. I'm like, okay, so her sort of raise on detra in the poem is her relationships. And you can read that in lots of different ways. Part of me is a bit like, oh, of course she also made her actually just talking about relationships all the time. Of course, that's all that she would care about. But she is a wife, and she is finding ways within that sort of tradition to exert agency. And in fact, you know, the end of her prologue and then the end of the tale is all about power dynamics within marriage, right? Who gets to be in charge? So the prologue ends. Her husband beats her so hard in the heads that he thinks she's died. It's pretty horrible. She comes to from her feigned and he's like, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'll never do this again. And she sort of gets her land and money back from him and he offers to give her sort of sovereignty, to give her master.

mastery. And then we're told that this sort of solves things and they're sort of, she's true to him forever and sort of it sort of rebalances things. And then in the tale, there's a knight who, in order to try and avoid capital punishment, he has raped a woman. If he can't find within a year the answer to a particular question, he will be executed. And that question is, what do women want? And of course, there's all kinds of possible answers to that that Cholsa goes through. And it's quite a fun passage about, you know, is it wealth? Is it someone who's good bed, is it, you know, what is it, is it flattery? Is it for people to pretend that they're really worthy when they're not? But the answer to the question is women want sovereignty, women want

mastery. And that is kind of the answer that gets him off the hook and means that he's not executed. So we have at the end of her prologue, a sort of uneasy version of that, that's on the back of violence and you're not quite sure how much you believe in it. And then in the story, you've kind of got this sort of more idealized version of it, but again, complicated by the really dark backstory, the fact that this knight is on trial because he raped somebody. And yeah, it's sort of, it's complicated in terms of what mastery and sovereignty means and, you know, how much that follows through. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of sort of complex things at play there that all come back down to the fact that she's a wife, that that is her sort of main purpose. Yes, she does

a cloth making, but maybe she does it on the side. Lots of women did do housewife work on the side, but it was actually things like brewing or milling or what have you. So yeah, she feels miles away from the priorist. But then I imagine she would in real life feel miles away from the priorist, too. I mean, absolutely. And I suppose it is sort of a, these are the two things that you can do as a woman in the medieval group. The question is sort of like, are you going to go into the religious life and forego married life? Or are you going to get yourself? husband be a wife and mother and, you know, the great majority of women end up being wives and mothers and not religious, but those are essentially the two options that are available.

Yeah, well, in a way, Chaucer also kind of tied his own hands when he decided to divide everyone up by profession. Because then what have you got for women? Nothing. You've got, yeah, you've got, like you say. And then he's like, okay, well, I guess we'll have a nun and a priores, that's two. And then we'll have a wife and then, oh, run out. Yeah, it is really difficult if what you're going to do is you're going to define, you know, wife is the profession because, you know, obviously all these women have professions. You know, if your husband is a cloth maker, then you're a cloth maker. But the thing that defines you is that you're the wife of a cloth maker and therefore you make cloth, right? So it also gets you out of

doing more women to a certain extent because you're like, well, yeah, you know, a wife. We covered that. We did that, right. It's like the tapebox. It's like when you got the all male panel and then the woman at the end and they're like, no, we did it. Look, we got the woman. She's here. We asked her yesterday. She came. It's not quite as bad as the smurfs, you know. There's more than just smurf at, but it's It's not great. Let's put it that way, right? So let's talk a little bit more about her tale, though. So, you know, we get this story about this errant knight who isn't a great guy.

And, you know, the solution to it all is that women want sovereignty, women want, surprise, women want to be able to run their own lives. That's crazy. But the resolution is still kind of really ambiguous, right? Because I think that we're left to sort of ask whether or not the knight becoming compliant here is a result of, actual growth as a person, or if this is a sort of strategic submission because he doesn't want to be killed. Yeah, or he's just exhausted. Like, she's worn him out. So, but yeah, so I'll back, I'll back track a little bit because I think I'd like told the first bit of the story, but not the second. So he goes off on this, like, what he gets one year to try and save himself. So the king wants,

Alpha wants to execute him, but interestingly, the queen and the ladies save him and say, no, let's give him a year. Let's let him go and find out the answer to this question. And one positive way of looking at that is okay, this is sort of rehabilitation as opposed to capital punishment. This is maybe really progressive. So, because he's got to go and like talk to lots of women and try and find out what they want. And he is like the last day of the challenge, he's not managed to find anyone in agreement about this. Although, interestingly, I always wonder who he's asking. He says he can't find any two people in agreement. And I'm like, are you asking women or are you just asking men? It never specifies that he's asking women. I assume, I assume you'd hope that he

was, but who knows? Like, maybe he's just not bothered to ask them. But then he comes in the wood across, he's within dancing. They all disappear and they leave behind this old kind of hag lady. I'm blessed her, she's probably just like a slightly older woman and he's like, oh, wow. Oh, no, oh no. I hate to see those. Oh, my God. And he goes up to her and sort of tells her what's happened and she says, I will give you the answer. If you promise to give me whatever I want in return, he's like, fine. So if they go to court, he gives the answer, it's the right answer. It's the right answer. He saves himself and she was like, hang on a minute, you promise to give me whatever I want. And he's like, well, what do you want? And she says, I want to marry you. And he's like,

oh, this is the worst. I'm this young, lusty bachelor. I don't want to marry you. And he says, actually, to her he says, take my land, take my money, please leave my body to me. And again, this is perhaps a bit of a throwback to his crime. You know, he did not leave this woman's body for her own. And she says, no, this is what I want. And they sort of get married in a very quiet, secret wedding because he's so ashamed of her and then they go to bed together and he's been like really off and she's like you're not treating me very well and the subtext is you know he's not initiating anything with her and he sort of says well you're you're really old and ugly and poor I'm like why did you want to marry this night old hag why this is a terrible marriage

but she goes on quite a long speech then about how nobility isn't to do with social rank it's to do with your actions and it comes from God. It's a slightly odd diversion in the tail, you know, this idea that they're in bed together and she's like, let me tell you about nobility. But what this leads to is she says, I'm going to give you a choice, right? You can either have me exactly as I am, but I'll be faithful and true to you, or you can have me beautiful and young, but take your chances. There'll be men here all the time and I'll do what I like, really. So it's up to you. And he gives a painful sigh and he deliberative. and then he says, just whatever you think is best. And again, okay, do we read this as like,

he's learned his lesson, he's understood that, you know, there are more important things, he's listened to a speech about nobility, he's internalized all this knowledge and he's turned a corner. Or do we just read it as he's just in bed like, oh, fine, I don't know, they both seem awful. I'm married to you. It's a disaster. Sure, you decide. And then she, he gets a happy ending because she says, aha, you've given me the mastery, you've given me what women want. I will be both young and beautiful and Trutie forever.

Happy ending for the night. Everyone lives happily ever after. But then the wife of Bath's last line, it's almost like direct to camera. We get her speaking to us again. And it's basically like, don't we all wish that husbands were obedient to us and any husbands that aren't obedient to us,

I hope they die of the play. Queen. A hundred percent. But it is, it's so difficult to read this tale and know what you're supposed to think about. I mean, this is the beauty of Chaucer, really. Because like you say, do we read it as positive and sort of rehabilitation and growth? Do we read it as like actually like he, you know, he is strategically playing the game? Like he's clocked on what's going on and he's giving the right answer or he's like exhausted into the right answer.

And what do we make of the fact that we're then told she's obedient to him forever? I mean, in medieval marriage terms, this is, this would be expected. sure, but it seems to go against a lot of what her prolog and tale suggests women want. And then, of course, this ending coda that sort of deflates everything with the Wifer Bath basically just being like, yeah, look, just do what we ask. And we'll be fine. So it's really tricky to follow the thread. And I think that's why it's such a sort of fascinating tale still and scholars still argue about the meaning because it's so difficult to find. a fixed reading of it, partly because it's quite difficult to find a fixed reading of the teller, right, of the wife herself.

Do you think one way of looking at this is kind of a subversion of, like, what we would call the traditional exchange of, you know, women's virtue for the protection of men? Because this is sort of what happens here is that this woman has saved the night, right? And he has to sort of give up his body. And so can we consider this, you know, Chaucer very directly alluding to these more expected gender roles? Yeah, I really like that reading, not least because I feel like so much of the prolog and tale is about exchange. And actually, marriage is talked about often in terms of sort of contract and debt and reciprocation and sort of this is your role, this is my role, which is not uncommon at all for the period of. In fact, it's quite common. But yes, I think what Chaucer's doing that's more unique is sort of drawing attention to that

by flipping the sort of expectations and roles on the head. I mean, he does it in a literary sense from the beginning of the tale. We're expecting this sort of elevated courtly story. Here's, you know, Arthur's legend. Oh, we're going to get an Arthurian tale. And we sort of almost, it's a bit of like a headwit moment because you don't expect the wife of Bath to tell an Arthurian tale. She's just been, you know, we're expecting some kind of sexy, bawdy story.

And then she's like, long ago in the time of Arthur, and you're like, oh, okay, long ago in the time of Arthur. That's not what I expected, but cool. And then it's like this like joke about the Friars and then we get a completely sort of on its head, Arthurian courtly romance. Because of course, like you're saying, I mean, even in sort of literary history, courtly romance is very much about women sort of being guilted into giving, allowing men to love them. I mean, Troilus and Crusader is basically just like a real exercise in this crusader being beaten down by both her uncle and. her lover into like you're killing this man unless you sleep with him. Here he is in your bed. What are you going to do? I guess I'll have sex with him because I don't want him to die. Ah, romance. Yeah, I think that this is an interesting one, right? Because I think we also need to sort of think about what it is we're supposed to embake of the wife of Bath's own marriages here because you know, we have this strategy being played by the old woman in the story. And I'm and Are we meant to be saying, okay, well, what is what's going on with Allison? You know, she's had these five marriages.

Is this like a strategic thing? Is this just about sex? Can these things really be pulled apart? Do you think this is intentional? Yeah, I do. I think critique of women and critique of marriage is quite prominent in the prologue, whatever side that lands on. And I think then that's continued into the tale as well.

Like, what should marriage mean? what should it be? But also, more importantly, like, in a way, one way of reading it is that neither the wife of Bath nor the night are really seeing marriage in a sense of what we tend to think of marriage as sort of reciprocal love and affection and respect. It always seems to be what can you guess out the other person who's winning, who's in charge, who's on top,

who's kind of getting the most out of this situation. And, you know, the wife of Bath is very open. Alison is very open about, you know, with her three husbands who are older than her, Rich, I mean, she treats them really poorly. She says, you know, I would go out myself having affairs, but I would pretend that I was going and looking for their mistresses. And I would accuse them before they could accuse me.

She also says that she made them work really hard in the bedroom, but I'm like, well, you know, it's probably good for them to practice. So I'm not sure that's a negative. But yeah, I mean, she's being really sort of mercantile about it, I guess. And look, marriage wasn't considered in the middle ages the way we consider it today. It's not kind of, you know, we'd have a very different concept of it often. It was arranged, for example, but for someone like Alison, I guess there's a sort of questioning

of like, okay, what is the point of marriage? Interesting as well, one of the main points of marriage in like all medieval rhetoric, whoever's writing it, whether it's a church or secular writers, is often children, right? This is one of the things that women are expected to do is to have children. And Allison makes no mention of any children. That to me is also really interesting. Hmm. Well, you know, I simply love this for her. Yeah. I mean, God, the, you know, you think someone like Marjor Kent, 14 pregnancies.

Oh, no, thank you. That's just, it's a lot. I mean, think about how much time in your life that is just being spent pregnant. It's ridiculous, you know. Well, no one. Like, could do any writing. Like, why can you, it's there's a, you have no time to do anything else except, you know, be sick, essentially, you know. All right. Well, do you. All right. Well, do. Do you think that there are any kind of contemporary parallels with the wife of Bath's tale and prologue? You know, is this something that lays the groundwork for our understandings of, you know, how sexual assault works? Yeah, I feel like in terms of the reason the tale is so enduring is because, obviously, feminist is an anachronist term. She's not a feminist, but much like many of the medieval writers of her time, I mean, she wasn't writing, but like women,

kind of characters or women who were writing. She's sort of laying the groundwork for things we will discuss later in terms of feminism. So, for example, you know, free agency in relationships, free agency of your body, violence, assault. You know, in the Middle Ages, sadly, it was legal to beat your wife up. And, you know, a writer like Christine de Pizan, who advises women, largely noble women, says, you know, even if your husband's beating you is awful, but you do just have to try and kind of find a way around it or try and cajole them out of it because you're married

and it's a sacrament of marriage. You know, that's really sacred. So you can't get out of it. Divorce is not nearly so common. It's much harder to be divorced or separated. So the sort of realities of that marriage with Jenkin is the husband who beats her feels weirdly contemporary in the sense of someone feeling trapped.

in an abusive marriage. So she talks about the fact that she does, she still loves him no matter how much he hurts her. And she even says, I wonder if the reason I loved him the most is because he was so standoffish. And this is a massive trope, right? We get this all the time. You know, oh, play hard to get or like treat him mean, keep him keen. And it happens you sort of in both directions. But I think, you know, sadly often then what we understand more now than perhaps Chaucer did is that this is a sort of pattern that happens in abusive relationships that there's ways that you can kind of make people feel trapped and like there's no way out. So I think, you know, obviously it's a different time period in a very different context, but it is starting

a lot of the conversations that we're having now. And I think, you know, we can read into her as contemporary people a lot of the issues that women face today. So even if we're reading them slightly on our own terms, you know, I don't see that as problematic. I think one thing that I feel as a scholar is, just because something feels accessible or relatable. That's not a bad thing. Like, you can understand a story on its own terms, but also take something from it that helps you now and today and sort of helps you think about situations in modern life. I mean, these, you know, it feels increasingly like we're going backwards today in terms of, you know, feminism and women's bodies and agency. So I think a story like this can remind us of what it really

looks like for women to be trapped in sort of bad marriages or not have agency over their bodies or, you know, all that stuff. And it's not a good path to tread. It's not a good way for us to be travelling. So yeah, look, obviously it's a very particular context in time and it has its own resonances in that sense. But it, I feel like students when I teach them it can find so much that feels resonant to them. And that to me can only be a good thing. And that's like the power of storytelling and why endures more than perhaps a more, I don't know, a more old-fashioned one of the pilgrim's tales. Yeah, I mean, I think you're bang on here. And indeed, this is one of the reasons why the wife of Bath's tale still lends itself to modern interpretations. You know,

this is one of the ones that we see people coming back to over and over again, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I went to see a few, it was a few years ago now, but Zadie Smith's wife of Wilsden was incredible that was on in Wilsden. And, you know, she, took a lot directly from the poem, obviously put her in spin on it and did, you know, it was a modern interpretation, but the spirit of it was so strong. And that was really popular because she's a really sort of interesting and fun character that it's nice to spend time with. She's funny. She is honest and playful and clever and a nice person to sort of spend an evening with. I would love to see a TV adaptation again, because we haven't had one in a little while.

I think we're due a sort of, I don't know, but more 21st century wife of Bath. I feel like we are owed a new version on our screens. But yeah, Zadis' version is great. And there's been, like, I mean, throughout time, tons of writers have drawn inspiration from her. She gets reworked and reimagined and sometimes in more positive and more negative ways. But again, I think it's testament to how full a character she feels much more so than a lot of the other pilgrims. You feel like you have a sense of her. she reminds you of someone, oh, it's just like, you know, you can think of someone in your head that is a bit like that.

Whereas with the other pilgrims, it's maybe not quite so brought to life. I think that this is absolutely it, right? If you're thinking about which one of the pilgrims you want to go grab a pint with, it's her every time. 100%. Yeah. No one else seems even fun. She's at least kind of bubbly and outgoing. And you know this, you know my girl's going down, pub.

You know she is. 100%. And you're just chatting all night. and she's telling you the funniest stories. Yeah, because, like, you know, if you're going to the pub with a Miller, he's basically an alcoholic and he's just going to get really angry and upset everyone else.

Like, so many of the characters do either shady or aloof or annoying or boring. And she, and, you know, Chilso is aware of that. He's doing that on purpose. He's making fun of them. He makes fun of her, but I feel like he's fond of her. She crops up in another short poem of his,

as sort of a bit character. I feel like whether or not it's a bit of a joke that her prologue is so long, He was obviously enjoying himself writing this story. And maybe that's because this particular prologue more than any of the others is sort of moving towards a new type of genre. I mean, one way we can look at the Canterbury Tales is an experiment in different types of genre, like how to tell the best sort of chivalric tale, how to tell the best fablios, sort of comedy farcical tale, how to subvert different genres. And I feel like, obviously, the wife of Bass Tale, he's doing really interesting things with subverting this Arthurian legend and sort of undercutting it. But even in the prolog, we're sort of getting towards a kind of more modern narrative

that we're more familiar with of kind of finding out a little bit more about people's daily life, of it being less farcical, and more just like, oh, someone's kind of doing a bit of stand-up comedy about their relationships, and it's really working. I mean, no one's doing that in the middle ages. There's tons of genres and conventions, but it's not that kind of confessional. And of course, she's a creative character. I know that. But it feels like it's starting to move towards that vein of like actually just saying like let me tell you about my five husbands can be just as interesting as like let me tell you about this greed knight who won't die in the woods. Or just wrapping up, how do you think we should view the wife of Beth?

Because I think that there is this tendency, you know, as we've mentioned, for people to really say, oh, look at her, she's a rebel and she's kind of going against the grain. You know, or is this a, you know, a woman who's really kind of just doing her best with the gender norms at the time. Yeah, so for me it's absolutely the latter. I don't think she's actually doing anything that rebellious for the time. You know, as I said, none of the pilgrims criticize her, but not for, you know, marrying a lot. And she, you know, obviously she has this whole thing of defending herself, but it's all a bit tongue in cheek. And I feel like most listeners or readers of the tale, even at the time, would be like, yeah, I mean, yeah, sure, there's these kind of

handful of people that think everyone should be virgins, but obviously that's ridiculous, because then, you know, the human race would die out. So I feel like she's not necessarily a rebel. However, the sort of outspokeness of her is really unusual to find. You know, female characters are few and far between a medieval literature and where we do find them. They tend to be sort of quite staid and reflective and quite all evil, right? You know, tyrants and witches and things like that.

So I think she's not necessarily a rebel in anything that she's doing. but she is sort of something new in terms of how open and honest she's being in literature. Now maybe there were tons of women like that, I'm sure there were, but we're not necessarily reading about them. So I think that's kind of the new thing about her. But no, I think she's doing the absolute best she can. You know, she is adopting the language of like all these writers in terms of, you know, marriage being an exchange and a contract. And she's making it work for her. She's like, yes, there is a marriage debt and you owe it to me just as much as I owe it to you. You're so true, so true. I mean, I guess for me, the thing that I actually find most interesting about her is that I think that she's really written by Chaucer as likable.

Yeah. This is a character that we're meant to enjoy, that we're meant to want to spend time with. And indeed, we do feel as though we've spent time with her when we hear her prolog. And that's so cutting edge at the time. I think it's really brilliant. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I don't know whether he always intended that's happened or she, like, ran away with her.

of him, but either way, he created this, like, lasting legacy. And I hope people continue to read her and enjoy her and write kind of versions of her, because she's timeless in that way. You know, it's just like, okay, who's like a cool, fun woman? Well, Hada, speaking of cool, fun women, it has been such a pleasure hanging out with you once again this afternoon. Thank you so much having me. This has just been absolutely joy to talk about her and to talk to you again. So thank you. Thanks to Dr. Hedahows and to you for listening to you for listening to you for listening to you. listening to Gaughan medieval from history hit.

And our exploration of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is not over. In the next episode, Matt Lewis will be looking at the other characters to be found amongst Chaucer's pilgrims. What are the differences between the Parson, the Pardner, and the Summiter? Between the Franklin, the Reeve, and the Mancable? And what do their tales tell us about their personality, social position, and values in 14th century English society? Don't miss it. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film Medieval Apocalypse,

and add-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.