1. The Wife of Bath’s Tale

2. Contention: The Pardoner mocks the wife
Prologue
Contention: The Pardoner mocks the wife
“I was about to take a wife…There’ll be no wife for me this year”
This is in response to the Wife’s mentioning her desire for a sixth husband

3. Prologue continued Shows that not all members of the group get along
Underscores Chaucer’s admiration for the Wife by the Pardoner’s opposition

4. The Tale
Theme: marriage
Theme: “What women want”
Character: Chivalry (the knight)
Comments on the general treatment women received from other men, especially their husbands

5. Background
Religion is set up to “fall”
Friars have displaced spirits in lines 31-56
Women had been ravaged by spirits, but the wife suggests that friars are even worse
Scathing commentary on the “morality” of the friars

6. Background
Chivalry is set up to “fall”
59: “There was a knight who was a lusty liver.”
64: “By very force took her maidenhead”
These examples are directly contrary to the values espoused by chivalry

7. Irony
The knight was to be beheaded, but Fate intervenes: the queen
The knight is saved by the queen and her court
His next task is Herculean: discover “what women most desire” in a year

8. What Women want
Honor
Jollity and pleasure
Gorgeous clothes
Fun in bed
To be oft widowed and remarried
Pampered and flattered
The variety of answers suggests that there is no answer
Suggests that women are impossible to please

9. Midas’ Wife
Line : “…vicious we may be within/ We like to be thought wise and void of sin.”
Women have an image to keep up
Pertains to men only—women know their true natures among themselves

10. Midas’ Wife
Vicious: though Midas “loved her best,” his wife’s vicious nature superceded her own love
Of Midas’ ears transforming: “she thought she would have died keeping this secret bottled up inside”
Wife must gossip

11. The Secret’s Out
The Midas story prefaces the secret to what women want
The knight finds fairies who disappear, leaving an old hag
Note that fairies are mentioned favorably

12. Secret
The hag gets the knight’s promise to give her whatever she asks in exchange for the difference
“And then she crooned her gospel in his ear”
Crooned suggests intimacy; gospel means truth

13. Secret Revealed
A woman wants the self-same sovereignty/ Over her husband as over her lover,/ And master him: he must not be above her.”
Women want equality in the relationship

14. The Bargain Met The old hag takes he knight to be her husband
This is the woman in “sovereignty”
This is ironic for the knight, who ravaged a maiden at the beginning of the tale

15. The Bargain Met Line 248: “He takes his ancient wife to bed”
At this point, the old woman teaches the knight “chivalry”

16. The Arguments These are the Knight’s reasons for not loving his wife
Line :
Old
Ugly
Poor
Low-bred
These are the Knight’s reasons for not loving his wife
They reinforce his character as not chivalrous

17. Rebuttal: Low-bred Lines 285-293
The hag says that the idea of noble birth guaranteeing “gentility”
The hag claims that deeds make a nobleman (gentleman)

18. Rebuttal: Poverty
355
Hag mentions that God approves of poverty
This appeals to Chaucer’s audience, who would have been familiar with this Christian concept

19. Rebuttal: Poverty
Claims that poverty is not shameful—indulgence and avarice are
The poor are not missing what counts: being happy

20. Rebuttal: Old and Ugly
The hag claims that these two attributes ensure that she is chaste
The old hag will still satisfy the knight’s “worldly appetites”

21. Submission The knight finally submits
He has a “loyal, true, and humble wife
At the time of submission, he finds his wife young and beautiful

22. ‘The Moral to the Story’
“cut short the lives of those who won’t be governed by their wives”
Request by the Wife for all husbands
The wife displays her real world intelligence