Wife of bath Maistrie
Wife of bath-MaistrieBeginning her tale unannounced, the Wife of Bath bursts onto the scene taking the entire pilgrimage by surprise. Her agenda is to engage in the medieval debate on marriage, confronting the scholarly authority of the church from the standpoint of common experience. Her main emphasis is on maistrie and believes that women should have the upper hand in marriage, making winning and retaining maistrie their main objective. She also refutes canon law which says you are only allowed one husband, distorting and manipulating carefully selected parts of the bible and mythology to support her argument.
Justification for having more than one husband, the wife argues, can be found in several instances in the Bible and argues this point throughout the prologue. She brings up Abraham and Jacob who ‘hadde wives more then two’, siting this as evidence of the condonance of multiple marriages. She also mentions solomon who had over seven hundred wives and uses this in support of multiple marriages being permissible. These men ‘are all accounted wise holy men, yet all were married many times without incurring any stigma’. She cannot see where God expressly forbid marriage or ordered people to be chaste. Even Saint Paul merely advises those to remain single and chaste who could live happily married, ‘that is to be wedded is no sinne; Bet is to be wedded than to brinne’. She points out that when he spoke of virginity it was only his opinion anyway and ‘conselling is no commandment’, he was not speaking with divine authority. The way the wife is very selective with information from the Bible and manipulates it to her advantage is typical of her narrative style and she omits parts that contradict her viewpoint. She does not mention that Abraham and Jacob were permitted to marry more than once due to special circumstances and that Soloman turned away from the Lord and followed strange gods. She also uses the Samaritan woman who had ‘five housbandes’ to support her point, contradicting and dismissing the words of Jesus claiming ‘what that he mente therby, I kan nat seyn’ when he said ‘that ilke man that now hath thee is noght thyn housbonde’.
The wife does hold virginity in high regard, ‘virginitee is greet perfection’, but admits that it is not for her and it was not intended for everyone, ‘he spak to hem that wolde live parfitly; And lordinges, by youre leve, that am nat I’. She continues to use religion in her support of sex and marriage as God told Adam and Eve to ‘go forth and multiply’ and that is exactly what she is doing, the world must be populated. She adopts a common sense approach whilst admiring the form of sexual organs. Taking the view that they cannot have been made for nothing, she lists their uses such as ‘to knowe a femele from a male’ and concludes that they were made for both practical and physical purposes, ‘they maked ben for bothe’. If men and women were provided with different sexual organs it must have been so they can have sex together as well as the necesssary functions such as ‘purgacioun of urine’.
Having established that sex and marriage, multiple marriages in particular, are acceptable, she embarks on her discussion of maistrie. She believes ‘that man shal yelde to his wyf hire dette’ and this must be true as men ‘in hir bookes sette’. The wife thinks that this duty should be paid in sex, ‘Now wherwith sholde he make his paiement if he ne used his sely instrument?’ She reveals how she obtains maistrie within marriage by using sex as a weapon, ‘in wyfhod I wol use myn instrument as frely as my Makere hath sent it’. She is deliberately confrontational in her further explanation of the concept of maistrie as the Bible says differently, ‘I have the power duringe al my lyf upon his propre body, and noght he’. Manipulating a biblical reference and taking it out of context she supports her opinion, the Apostle ‘bad oure housbandes for to love us weel’, omitting the section that states wives must obey their husbands. Despite using religion and subverting texts constantly to suit her needs she hypocritically dismisses the Apostles saying ‘After thy text, ne after thy rubriche, I wol nat wirche as muchel as a gnat’.
Through the account of her previous lovers and husbands the wife continues to demonstrate how she has achieved maistrie in her relationships and her motives behind them. Her primary motive for marrying her first four husbands was to secure marital wealth and social status as they were all very wealthy. She wanted them to do their marital duty to her all the time despite the fact that the first three were clearly ‘dettour’ and ‘thrall’. She admits that having secured their marital wealth she felt no need to ‘do lenger diligene to winne hir love’. She had power over her husbands as she refused to have sex with them unless they did what she wanted and bestilled a lot of pain on them, ‘the peyne I dide hem and the wo’. She complained when she was the guilty party and made their lives unbearable, ‘for as an hors I koude bite and whine’. When she eventually marries ‘the jolly clerk jankin’ she is sufficiently wealthy to no longer need to gain anything from the marriage and gives him her possessions. For once the wife does not have maistrie within a relationship as it is Jankin who has the upper hand and he reads her stories from his book to show her how inferior women are, ‘he hadde a book that gladly, night and day, for his desport he wolde rede away ’. Yet she managed to gain maistrie and ‘made him brenne his book’. She got back her independence and control over her husband and ‘after that day’ they ‘hadden never debaat’. The marriage was improved by Jankin’s acceptance of his wife’s soverignty. On the basis of Jankin’s book she argues the misoginy of scholars and writers, ‘it is an impossible that any clerk wol speke good of wives’. She points out that they cannot write objectively and so can dismiss what they say in favour of her own pragmatic doctrine.
The knight in the tale is more willing to find out what women want and goes about giving it to them. Having been enlightened by the old woman that ‘wommen desire to have soverintee as wel over hir housbond as hir love, and for to been in maistrie him above’, he actually gives her the power in the marriage he is forced into. Convinced of her wisdom he gives her maistrie by letting her decide whether she remains old, ugly and faithful or beautiful with all the shortcomings that accompany it. When she asks the question ‘thanne have I gette of yow maistrie’ he accepts that she has. She becomes beautiful and remains true to him as they both live in ‘parfit joye’ ever after.
The wife’s prologue and tale suggest that there is nothing wrong with multiple marriages and sexual intercourse, however her authority for this is questionable due to the way she distorts and perverts texts in order to prove her point. Marriage is like a battle of the sexes, although the wife clearly does not intend to accept the subordinate position as wives should retain maistrie. It suggests that to give sovereignty to wives is good for both partners in a marriage, although this view may be reached with the bias of self-interest.