“Debtor and Slave”: Reversing Gender Roles in The Canterbury Tales

“He came up close and [kneeled] gently down… I up at once and smote him on the cheek” (280). Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a feminist text that encourages women to break out of the one-sided patriarchal bonds and standards that were common during the Middle Ages. Through the character of the Wife of Bath, Chaucer encourages women to develop their personality but to not get full of themselves and fall into the trap of thinking they are more important than men.

Chaucer uses the Wife of Bath, who undermines medieval patriarchal bonds and standards, to convey his idea that women should not be held back by restrictive and misogynistic interpretations of patriarchal authority. The Wife of Bath reinterprets Scripture to justify her multiple marriages and challenge doctrines of medieval clerical figures. To have many partners is often frowned upon but the wife tells the pilgrims to “take wise King Solomon of long ago; we hear he had a thousand wives or so” (259). The Wife of Bath is saying that her actions are defended by scripture and therefore the standards that men put on her are incorrect. Chaucer is using this to represent medieval standards at the time and how they are false and should be forgotten. The Wife further proves this point by telling the story of her fifth husband. She explains that each night he read a book written by men to warn other men about the manipulative and wicked nature of women and that “there is no libel on women that the clergy will not paint” (276-277). She is suggesting that men will always put the blame on women in society but that is incorrect and women should fight back. That is why one night when her husband was reading the book “[she] suddenly grabbed and tore three pages out … and fisted such a buffet in his face” (279). After hitting her husband, she explains that they made it up together and after she made him burn the book she had “secured [herself] the sovereignty in wedlock” (280). Proving that true marital happiness only comes from female dominance. The Wife of Bath also challenges the idea of female submission by describing how she gained mastery over her first four husbands through her wit and sexuality. She explains that she uses her sexual powers to “have a husband yet who shall be both [her] debtor and [her] slave” (262). By using the sexual act as a “marriage debt” she is able to reverse the traditional power dynamic in which the husband was the master. Her use of the word “slave” suggests that she is not interested in a partnership of equals but in a relationship which she holds absolute control. Given the information above, it is reasonable to conclude that Chaucer strongly believes that a society should not be strictly patriarchal and that women should seek to gain more power in a relationship.

After showing how the Wife of Bath undermines patriarchal authority, Chaucer uses her tale to give more evidence that women do not always have a one-sided personality and sometimes have control of the power in a relationship. Before her tale, Chaucer gives the Wife of Bath the longest prologue of all the people because he wants to develop the wife as a complex character rather than a one-dimensional stereotype. She is intelligent, resilient, manipulative, vulnerable, and confesses her sins which challenges the medieval gender binaries. The fact that she openly talks about her actions that would be considered sins shows her bold honesty in contrast to the hypocrisy of men who hide their intentions behind their actions. While male authority figures, like the Pardoner, are portrayed as corrupt underneath their good exteriors, the wife is open to her actions showing she has a superior form of wisdom to men. By being upfront about her pursuit of sovereignty, money, and pleasure, she exposes the double standards of a society that frowned upon female sexuality but ignored male hypocrisy, showing Chaucer’s belief that women are not one-sided. Furthermore, in the Wife of Bath’s tale, a knight has committed rape and is facing punishment in front of the court; however, as the king decides on the death penalty, the queen intervenes and overrules his sentence. She shows how the power has shifted from the king to the queen as she takes power of the situation. Chaucer clearly uses this to show that if women see an opportunity to take control over a man they should not hesitate to do it. The Queen decides to spare the knight but only if he comes back and tells her what it is that women most desire. If his answer is wrong or he fails to return, he will be put to death. Desperate to survive, the knight finds an old hag that will only provide him the answer if he swears “to do whatever [she] shall next require of [him]” (285). After the knight agrees, he travels back to the queen and gives her the correct answer, revealing that a woman desires to have mastery and sovereignty over their husband. The old hag then comes forward and demands that the knight marry to return his debt. She exercises her power over the knight to make him marry her, showing Chaucer’s feminism and his belief that women should hold some if not all power in the relationship.

However, even though Chaucer clearly believes in women gaining more power he also enforces that they should not get carried away and think they have more power than men. In the prologue, the first thing that Chaucher mentions about the Wife of Bath is that she was “somewhat deaf, which was a pity” (15). This is from her fight with her fifth husband who “started up and smote [her] on the head” after she tore out three pages in his book and hit him (279). While her rebellion is a representation of feminine power, her husband's retaliation shows that women are still subordinate to men. Chaucer also uses satire to present the Wife of Bath as a bad woman when in reality he is disarming the male audience so that they can absorb her arguments about challenging male authority. Chaucer states that “she was skilled in wandering by the way” and  that “she had gap-teeth, set widely, truth to say” (15). He repeatedly brings up her “wandering” sexuality, which fits into the misogynistic stereotypes of women, even as she inverts traditional power dynamics. He also brings up her gap-teeth which represents her lustful nature and that she is pleasure-seeking. Even though he may be using satire, these are still true arguments which Chaucer uses to show that women should challenge male authority but they still have flaws. In closing, Chaucer clearly believes in increasing feminine power but that women still have flaws and should be careful to not believe they have more power than men.

The evidence presented in this essay suggests that Chaucer encourages women to seek more power in relationships and break out of the medieval misogynistic and patriarchal bonds while not becoming too power-hungry. Chaucher presents the Wife of Bath as someone who has taken control over her relationships exemplifying her feminine power. However, he also describes her as gap-toothed and someone that has a wandering sexuality suggesting her lustful and pleasure-seeking nature which is clearly used to show that women with power are flawed and should not have complete power in a relationship.

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Translated by Nevill Coghill, Penguin Classics, 2003.