Miss Independent

We said a lot today in class about the Wife of Bath's prologue and her character but I think a little more interpretation would not be excessive.

It was established in class that Allison of Bath is sort of quite-ing herself in her prologue as means of protecting herself or lending a certain kind of validity to her story, but this doesn't seem to be true. She quites herself so as to hide herself and give an impression of honesty and humility (a "grounding" self-knowledge)but her gloss of herself is a false sheen covering a more ingrained and influential ambition from which she cannot divorce.

I've read in some of my research for the annotated bibliography that women - more often than men - in the 14th century were more apt to petition to save their marriage - even a bad one - because it was their only claim to security (even if her husband was poor) or social standing of any merit (even if her husband was lowly born). The courts in this era sided with the wives overwhelmingly perhaps because they didn't want a bunch of single women to further burden the state, I'm not sure on that point. The point I am trying to make is that Allison's virtue - if she had any - was in the nakedness of her ambition. She lived in a man's world but had a man's appetites and therefore had to resort to exaggeration, manipulation or outright duplicity to quench her worldly desires. Her biggest sin lay therefore in her deception. Further, she has - by living this way (or having been "forced" to live in this way) enabled her paradox which is that which she most desires, which she most pursues - when satisfied - is what increases her unquenchable desire. This is obvious in her admission of love for the "bad" husbands and the uselessness of the "good" though they were useful in other impersonal, material ways. She loves the "bad" men because she cannot conquer them; she cannot quench her womanhood through them - only in periodic trysts - but as it is in the lovemaking to these men that her womanhood is quenched it is increased (and taken back) by the postcoital treatment the men show her. They do not value her so she sets out to make them value her.

As to the pilgrimage and her fellow pilgrims she could be seen as virtuous (or at least important) if her virtue as an accomplished deceiver (tale teller) is noted as fulfilling the necessary expectation of an evening of narrative play.

Her tragedy otherwise lay in her misconception of what is desirable.