© Rafał Borysławski

1/2

Chaucer’s Wife of Bath: Between Medieval Misogyny, Feminine Ambivalence and Fertility
Magic.

1. The Canterbury Tales – begun by Geoffrey Chaucer in his late 40s, ca. 1385 (roughly contemporary
to SGGK).

•

Very much Early Modern (Renaissance) in the choice and constructions of characters.

•

14th c. – momentous social changes (Hundred Years’ War; the Great Western Schism in the
Church, the Black Death).

2. Dame Alice (the Wife of Bath) – ambivalence, misogyny and power:

•

Most likely a generic character – a depiction of both male fears, hatreds and desires;

•

A proto-feminist? A comic character? A sociopath? Misanthrope? Nymphomaniac?

•

The astrological influence over her – (medicine – humours // magic);

•

Unorthodox / heretical approaches to marriage – marriages built upon prostitution, lies and

dreams of dominance;

•

Paradoxically (or not), the above may confirm the misogynic perspective on her;

•

Androgynous elements, sexual lust combined with old age – hence the likely monstrosity of

the character of Dame Alice;

•

Her tale uses the Loathly Lady theme – the duality between the Hag and the Goddess

(familiar from folklore and folktales, also later from The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame
Ragnell

);

•

But Chaucer also presents very kind and sympathetic portrayals of women, notably in The

Book of the Duchess

(ca.1368), The Legend of Good Women (ca. 1378-82).

3. The "sovereignty theme" - a continuation: Sheela-na-Gig vs. ‘‘Sirith-na-Gig’’ (?) vs. ‘‘Dame
Alice-na-Gig’’ (???)
Exhibitionism of the Wife of Bath vs. representations of women/femininity in the so-called "Baubo”
position:

•

fertility cult?

•

apotropaic roles?

•

warning against the dangers of lust?

•

medieval mockery of the apparent feminine inclination toward promiscuity?

4. Anthropomorphic figures from Boa Island, co. Fermanagh, Ireland. Badhbha? Megalithic Celtic
idols? Early Christian period (ca. 400 AD)? (Badhbha, Macha and the Morrígan were a trio of
goddesses known as the Mórrígna "Great Queens", the goddess(es) of war) – cf. Mars and Venus in
the Wife of Bath’s Prologue.

"Fear and dislike of women may, however, sometimes have accompanied this recognition of
female power, including their alleged unnatural powers, and this may have helped to bring
about the duality of the goddess/ hag figures."

Jørgen Andersen, The Witch on the Wall. Medieval Erotic Sculpture in the British Isles
(Copenhagen, 1977).

5. Spatial and temporal location of the Sheela figures may relate them to the context of mediaval
fabliaux:

•

Dates: Most of the buildings where they are located are dated to early 12th/13th c. (though
they may be older)

•

The production of Sheelas in Ireland and England ceases with the Reformation;

•

Fabliaux likewise declined around then, survived until 15th c., then was transformed into
obscene oral stories and obscene humour;

•

Locations of sheelas – churches, castles (poss. apotropaic – protection from evil eye,
lightening);

•

Subversiveness of locations (like subversiveness of fabliaux) –mocking the strata of power
and hierarchy.

© Rafał Borysławski

2/2

•

Margins: margins of buildings (sometimes figures are hard to spot – corbel stones, quoins)
and of manuscripts (fabliaux);

•

Moreover Sheelas are located on less prominent castles and churches.

The similarity also lies in grotesque characterisations.

•

Grotesque elements are common to both visual and textual representations

•

The grotesque converges in the image or motif of the hag, crone or Loathly Lady.

•

In medieval romances this motif appears in John Gower’s Tale of Florent of Confessio
Amantis

(late 14th c.) and mid-15th c. Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell.

•

The motif appears also in the English fabliau tradition –13th c. Dame Sirith (though not as
transformation of the loathly lady) and in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale.

•

Cf. how the Dame of Bath combines old age with attractiveness – a hag / maiden creature.

The hag: the grotesque and the monstrous, humour and fear.
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell (15th .):

Her face was red, her nose snotid withalle,
Her mouithe wide, her teethe yallowe overe alle,
Withe blerid eyen gretter then a balle.
Her mouithe was not to lak:
Her teethe hing overe her lippes,
Her cheekis side as wemens hippes.
A lute she bare upon her bak;
Her neck long and therto great;
Her here cloterid on an hepe;
In the sholders she was a yard brode.
Hanging pappis to be an hors lode,
And like a barelle she was made;
And to reherse the foulnesse of that lady,
Ther is no tung may telle, securly;
Of lothinesse y-noughe she had.
(231-245)

10th c. Irish poem Aithbe dam bés mora, translated by Kuno Meyer as “The Lament of the
Old Woman of Beare”:

“She had seven periods of youth one after another, so that every man who had lived with her came
to die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races.”

Kuno Meyer, Ancient Irish poetry (London: Constable 1913 [1994]).

My arms when they are seen
Are bony and thin:
Once they would fondle,
They would be round glorious kings.

When my arms are seen,
And they bony and thin,
They are not fit, I declare,
To be uplifted over comely youths. ...

Youth’s summer in which we were
I have spent with its autumn:
Winter-age which overwhelms all men,
To me has come its beginning. . . .

I had my day with kings
Drinking mead and wine:
To-day I drink whey-water
Among shrivelled hags.