The Wife of Bath's Tale
Content warning: References to various violent acts and other shittiness towards women.
There is no further interlude to hand the mic over to the Wife of Bath; we jump straight into her preamble, which is by far the longest preamble of any tale to this point, and dwarfs the actual tale that she eventually tells. This is likely because she is only one of three women who get to tell tales today, and of those three is the only one who hasn't devoted her life to the church, so she may very well be the only voice for her gender at all in this book and by god is she going to seize the opportunity while she has it.
She starts off by saying that she's had five husbands. While that may sound nuts by today's standards, with health care the way it was in the Middle Ages, you really couldn't get too attached to people. Still, the Wife of Bath feels the need to defend herself here, arguing against social stigma by saying, hey, maybe Jesus said some things about only having one spouse, but maybe you're inferring some things you shouldn't be. All I know is, God said "go forth and multiply", and that's what I'm doing. Besides, so many biblical figures had multiple wives, so who's to say I can't have multiple husbands? God certainly didn't.
And you know what else God didn't mention anything about, she says, was staying a virgin. Oh, sure, the church thinks we're all supposed to stay chaste, do they? Well that's a lofty ideal, but that sure ain't practical for most of us. You know what they also said, that we should give up all of our possessions and spend our entire life in service to God, which is great and all for some people, but wouldn't society collapse if we all did that? Hell, it doesn't even make any sense, telling us we need to stay virgins, but also that we need to pump out kids. That sounds like some church shit, because God gave us these body parts for screwin', so it seems to me like that's what he wants us to do.
And then she drops what is hands-down the best line in the book:
For Christ was chaste, yet shaped like any man,
And many saints were, since the world began;
Yet always live as chaste as man could be
I will not quarrel with virginity;
Let them be loaves of finest wheaten bread,
And we wives be hot barley loaf instead.
Then she says, look, the scholars all write that a husband must pay the debts that he owes his wife. Well there is only one possible thing a man could owe his wife, and I intend to collect. That man's ass is mine, and I am going to collect so hard he will never be able to rest. I own him, and I'm going to make sure he knows it.
"Shit," says the Pardoner, "I'm having second thoughts about ever being married now."
But the Wife says, look, I'm going to help you out. I've had a lot of husbands, and you can learn from their bad examples. And she begins to recount her marriages; this takes up about two-thirds of her preamble.
Three of her husbands were older men who had a small sum of wealth, and that generally put them in a fairly agreeable mood and they did more or less care for her. The Wife says this meant that she had them wrapped around her pinky, and knew that if she complained that she wasn't being treated as good as some other husband was treating his wife, she could get them to provide her with anything she asked.
The Wife's fourth husband preferred having relations with his mistress instead of with her, and she did not care much for this. She decided to start flirting around with the other gentlemen to make him angry and jealous. She ran that man through hell like that the rest of his days, which was no less than he deserved.
Husband number five takes up half of the preamble as she discusses how she won him over and married him a month after one of the old guys croaked. Wedded bliss did not last long. He was a scholar, and one day, she accidentally tore some pages out of one of his books, and he hit her in anger. Well, if you've learned anything about the Wife of Bath so far, you know she wasn't going to take that lying down. What happens is this: the husband has a book that's his absolute favorite, detailing a great many stories where a husband was ruined by his wife (including a bunch of stories we already heard in the Monk's Tale), and one night he's sitting by the fireside and reading it aloud to her and laughing the whole while. She has about enough of this, so she walks up to him, tears some pages out of the book, and shoves them in his face hard enough to knock him over. He strikes her in anger again, and she crumples to the floor, falling dead still. He thinks he's accidentally killed her when she opens her eyes and sucker-punches him. From that point on, she has the run of the household, and she has the damned book burned to boot. She says he was the best damn husband she ever had.
Finally, she's ready to tell her tale, and naturally, she gets interrupted by one of the men—the Friar, in this case, who jokes that, with a preamble that long, is there any need for a tale at all? The Summoner sticks up for her and tells the Friar to put a sock in it, to which the Friar makes threats about telling a story where a summoner is made a laughingstock, and the Summoner counters with threats of friar stories, until the Host tells them both to can it and let the lady get on with it. And she finally does:
The story takes place during the reign of King Arthur, when the world was still magical (before the church came in and ruined it all). One of Arthur's knights was, well, a little less than noble, and he got caught deflowering a maiden in a way that, to put it mildly, was not entirely consensual. So there are calls for this knight to be put to death; but oddly, all the ladies of the court plead in his favor. Arthur, proving himself the wise ruler of legend, strategically removes himself from this decision by making his queen figure it out instead.
The queen says, all right, I'll make you a deal. You have a year to go wander the world in search of the answer to a single question. In one year's time, you will return here and give your answer. If you are correct, you may go; if you are wrong, you will be put to death. The question is this: What is the thing that a wife wants above all else?
"Is this at all relevant to my crime?" the knight asks.
"No. Now scram."
So the knight wanders around for a while, asking everybody he can find, trying to get a consensus, but everybody gives him a different answer.
One day the knight is wandering through the woods when, through the trees, he spies a dozen beautiful young women bathing in a spring. Of course, he decides he needs to intrude on this; but when he approaches the spring, the women have disappeared, and only a single ugly old hag is in their place. This causes him to grumble, and the old woman asks what is troubling him so, suggesting that she could be a great asset to him. He tells her his dilemma, and she says, aha, I have the answer the queen is looking for. But if you want to hear it, you have to promise to do something for me later on down the road. He agrees, and she whispers in his ear, and they both go off to court together.
In front of the queen, he gives his answer: More than anything, a wife wants sovereignty over her husband; she wants to influence her household and make her own decisions.
The queen says, that is correct. As is customary, the rapist will go free.
The old woman then chimes in and says, hey, so, remember how you promised you'd do something for me? I'm cashing that in now. I want you to marry me.
The knight tries to talk and bribe his way out of it, but the court decides, you made a deal with a mysterious old woman in the woods, there's nothing we can do here.
Their wedding day is an utterly joyless affair, and quickly becomes the wedding night. Well, we all know what that means, but the knight is still dragging his feet because he absolutely does not want to do the deed with this repulsive old woman. He even tells her this when she asks why he won't come to bed; he calls her wretched and ugly, but like, no offense.
She responds, look, maybe I'm poor, but poverty is a virtue, and I'm virtuous as hell. But my ugliness? Well, I might be able to do something about that, but you need to make a choice here. Option A, I stay old and gross, but I will be a doting, caring wife all through our days. Option B, I'll be young and pretty, but other men are going to be all up in my business all the time, and I make no promises that I'll be faithful or kind to you. So you have fun mulling that one over, and I'll be over here in bed waiting for you to decide whether or not you want to do me, because, y'know, THAT'S a huge turn-on.
The knight hems and haws over this for a while, but he just can't come to a decision. Eventually he tells her, I don't know, what do you think is best?
The woman says, hold on a minute. Are you asking me to make a decision about what I should do?
"...Yes?" hazards the knight.
The woman presses a button on the nightstand, and suddenly, balloons and confetti begin to rain from the ceiling. A banner unfurls, reading "Congratulations! You solved feminism!"
"...What is all this?" asks the knight.
"Don't you remember the thing with the queen?" she asks. "You let me make my own decision! You valued my input! This, of course, means you must be rewarded. Henceforth, I will be young and pretty and faithful forevermore." And she turns into a beautiful woman.
"Sweet," says the knight. "I totally deserve this."
"How the hell is the most progressive story in this book also the most problematic?" says Skep.
Here ends the Wife of Bath's Tale.