Post date: Jan 30, 2017 1:01:58 AM
Whether it's my personality or the political climate I've been born into, I can't help but look back at stories and think of how I would have reacted in that situation. Would I have been as brave? Outspoken? Active? I honestly don't know. Reading the tale of the Wife of Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I would like to think I would have been as assertive as she was. While she certainly was a novel figure for the time, I hesitate to label her as proto-feminist. I think she was definitely fighting to assert more rights for women and justify her life but I did not get the sense that she was fighting to be equal to men.
As all of these ragtag group of characters are referred to in the tales, she receives no other name than the "Wife of Bath". However she does get a worthy introduction. She has traveled the world, had five husbands but is still a worthy woman, and was excellent at making cloth. Coupled with the page spent on how the nuns ate, I would say the Wife of Bath is the first fully formed woman we've seen.
So why would I choose to not outright call her a proto-feminist? Mostly it's my own hesitation for sticking anyone into a box but it's also partly due to her aggressiveness. She very points out (very sassy) that virginity doesn't make sense because then where would babies come from and new virginity? I feel it is certainly a clap back against the church imposing virginity on women but I feel like it still very much applies today that women can be sexual creatures. There is also the portion where she calls her next husband her "debtor and...slave" (295). While I appreciate the dominance, it's not very equal rights. This vibe continues in her actual tale where she seems to just go a bit too far for my liking with her dominance over men. Does that make her wrong or make me dislike her? Not at all. As long as she can make people think about the concept of feminism, I would call the Wife of Bath a win.