Max Quayle Bathed in a Bath of Bliss

“Bathed in a Bath of Bliss”1

As the reader joins the unlikely pilgrimage to Saint Thomas Becket,

masterfully illustrated in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he inadvertently sets foot

into a realm where handy satire, rich irony and hilarious visions of coincidence

meld and pool, quickly obscuring the previously solid ground of logic and

predilection. While wading through this unseemly mire, in which mingle the sweet

scents of love and the sharp reek of ribaldry, one traveling companion stands out

garishly. To her can be ascribed anachronism, exception and a broad spectrum of

human traits: She is boisterous, oft times crude, uninterruptible and fashionably

precocious, she is Alison of Bath – a wife. The pilgrimage to Saint Becket’s shrine

is the perfect backdrop, as his untimely demise was brought about by conflict,

confusion and cowardice.2 Within The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are found

these three conditions and more as an indelicate study of men, and a portrayal of

the institutions of marriage, sex and love unfolds. As Alison Bath weaves her spell

over her twenty-eight fellow pilgrims, she articulates widely held yet conflicting

1
Chaucer, G; Line 1253, from The Wife of Bath’s Tale: “His herte bathed in a bath of blisse.” This and all following
direct line quotes from the Tale are gleaned from the Interlinear Translations found on the Geoffrey Chaucer Page;
http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm
2
Black, J; Broadview Anthology footnote suggests he was outnumbered and dispatched amidst a ‘dispute’ with
Henry II (p. 330)

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attitudes toward women, love, and honor, and within her well phrased delivery,

slyly makes her version of ultimate satisfaction seem best.

Every pilgrim presented is cast in the light (or shadow) of an occupation; in

fact, most are known only by the title of their vocation. The Wife of Bath should be

no exception. Her occupation is love, be it courtly, amorous, lusty or pure. In short,

she is a professional wife. Here, she fairly boasts of her credentials:

3: To speke of wo that is in mariage;

4: For, lordynges, sith I twelve yeer was of age,
5: Tonked be God that is eterne on lyve,
6: Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve, --3

Over the course of five widowed marriages, she has accumulated far

reaching insights; these carry her to the fore in any discussion of nuptials. When

Marchette Chute, an American woman who wrote of Chaucer in the mid twentieth

century, qualifies The Wife, she supports the notion of labor: “…[Wife] has so

much vast an enthusiasm for her subject, and knows so much about it, that she

surges along like some great natural force, and is quite unstoppable.” Having

similarly won the admiration of women throughout the ages, The Wife of Bath can

be viewed as iconic in the somewhat sparse collection of pre-renaissance leading

ladies, and may be considered as a primal source of the modern feminine

3
My understanding of these lines is culled from the parallel text translation found on public domain at:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT-prolog-bathpara.html,(All subsequent direct quotes from The Prologue
to The Wife of Bath’s Tale are from this source).

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movement. Chute distinctly removes any suspicion of man hatred by further

asserting The Wife’s attitude toward her husbands: “It is not that the Wife of Bath

bears any ill will towards men. On the contrary, [men] are …her chief

occupation…passion, and delight.”4

Fulfilling her self proclaimed wisdom concerning the male, this woman

from Bath sets forth a model of manhood and by that standard shows herself to be

an equal of, if not superior to, man: “And alle were worthy men in hir degree.”

Honor is mentioned early in her autobiography, and a distinct definition confirmed:

A worthy man is of a vocation, and is good at what he does. She reminds the reader

of a state of being that has remained unchanged throughout the ages of men. Males

are defined by their work, and by default women are defined by the fruit of their

husbands work. Enter Alison of Bath’s first stark contrast: She is a merchant, and

has procured her living from clothier trade and, though not wealthy, has been able

to display her wares by being a model, and has not tasted of bitter poverty. So

immediately she stands apart from her own stereotype and is a ‘modern’ self-

sufficient woman.

In order to assess her worthiness to officiate in the theatre of marriage, we

must analyze, briefly, Alison Bath’s position on chastity as untainted love. In short,

The Wife sees little use for the concept, and in a rare flash of humility explains that

4
Chute, M. Geoffrey Chaucer of England

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her “vocation is not virginity”5. The joke is against her own self, not virginity; the

premarital condition. Her humor is in context; here is The Wife, radiating

succulence and promiscuity, discoursing on ethics and theology, among clergymen,

no less. Chaucer’s craft reminds the reader of the loose and flippant nature of the

common non-devout English subject, wherein is found a nature vacillating between

ambivalence and passion, as audience requires. The only hypocrisy is the type

‘personal’, the reader can merely accept a standard and view his own position in

relation to it. Frankly, Alison of Bath is only qualified to judge herself, as are all of

us.

Within a broad passage of her lengthy Prologue (lines 246 – 451)6 The Wife

relates a rainbow of women’s tastes and doubts, preferences and misgivings. The

wife has culled many of the characteristic ways portrayed as common to good

wives, but never allies herself too nearly to any singular feminine thread. In the

entire section, Chaucer may be seeing to it that every woman in the world is at

least passing mentioned, and that common feminine dictates in men are set forth:

dominance, idleness, dimwittedness, even simple visual distraction is decried.

Certainly if a woman of any age, literal or historical, wanted an extant list of the

ways which she is seen in the world, The Wife of Bath has provided a fine

summation of characteristics from which she may choose. The section also lays the
5
Chesterton, G. Chaucer. Preceding this line Chaucer elaborates the entire Catholic theory on chastity, and then
posits this understated quote as subtle humor,
6
This, and all subsequent numbering references are accurate to all Riverside Chaucer texts.

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groundwork for what ends up being the climax of the prologue when she explains

that a kept woman will not abide. Seen out of context and in modern verse, the

spell is revealed in its potency:

311: Why would you make an idiot of your dame?

321: We love no man that guards us or gives charge
322: Of where we go, for we will be at large.
361: I could delude him easily- trust me!
371: "'You liken woman's love to very Hell,
372: To desert land where waters do not well.
395: Yet tickled this the heart of him, for he
396: Deemed it was love produced such jealousy.
408: There would I chide and give them no pleasance;
409: I would no longer in the bed abide
434: You should be always patient, aye, and meek,
435: And have a sweetly scrupulous tenderness,

A litany of filler material lay between each of these level, incremental steps, but

these suffice to show that a strong case is laid to let the woman be the sovereign of

the pair; for she has more grasp the intricacies of such complicated things as

spousal relations. Looking at the same statements with gender reversed is a fine

comedy in itself; for when in life has a man who withholds intimacy ever been

known to prevail in will by that fact? The thought makes reason stare! Nay, Alison

Bath knows, after long and weary travel, the roads she must tread to accomplish

her desires from a man, and any man, at that. For, aren’t all types set forth in the

churlish voice of her total perception?

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Though not as lengthy as the number of lines Chaucer dispensed to outline

all things foolish in the common man, his treatment of the lore if the unwise

woman certainly matches in scope (covering 641 – 785, inclusive). It reflects a

strong sentiment in an age of distrust and suspicion. The extent of Chaucer’s

familiarity with the diverse world of misogyny reveals that he too carried concerns

in his days, and that mayhap he was made the fool on an occasion or two.

What of love? Conventions in courtly love in the age simply were not shown

between husband and wife. This sadly implies that most, if not all, romantic energy

is to be dispensed during the prenuptial relationship, and it is to be promptly

extinguished once the formal betrothal is consummated - never to be observed

again: A tradition that hounds some Englishmen to this day. For The Wife, this is

completely unacceptable; in fact this is her self-acknowledged purpose to begin

with. Though not out rightly forbidden, public display of affection, likely The

Wife’s favorite part of love, was “something of a scandal”7

What of virtuous love? Did she ever consent, or become smitten with that

elusive and much touted pure emotion? She did indeed, though not most probably

in the instant she would claim. It turns out that she falls into a love with her fifth

husband, Jenkyn. Not in love with money, but in love, with money, she carries her

7
Morrison, T. The Portable Chaucer.

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Jankyn troth to the highest height she can conceive. The initial description of the

fall, however, is unmistakably of the flesh:

And jankyn, oure clerk, was oon of tho.

As help me god! whan that I saugh hym go
After the beere, me thoughte he hadde a paire
Of legges and of feet so clene and faire
That al myn herte I yaf unto his hoold.

Surely she fell, and great was her fall, or as Neville Coghill observes, “…her

greatest blunder was when she allowed herself to fall in love.”8 His study is keen,

for he identifies the Wife’s sincerity and perhaps her inability to remain in any one

love for long when he points out that Se drove the poor man towards a partiality

toward misogynistic readings: He grew weary of her petulance, as her

preconceived tendencies began to show in the home built of bliss. Pearsall shows

concisely the full swathe of The Wife’s singular departure into love, as it pertains

to the heart:

“The full flower of Alison’s awakened heart is her gift

to Jankyn of the "maistrye" of her property. She gives
freely, consciously, as a token of perfect love, a sign of
pure faith, a pledge of true "gentilesse." It is the
extravagant gift of an extravagant sentiment, of "love
and no richesse," and it promptly gets her into the worst
trouble of her woeful life. For her gesture does not
inspire a corresponding generosity in him. Instead he
proceeds to rob her of her independence and her will.
Her one romantic excursion ends in a deafness
symbolic of her failure to heed her own lesson: "With

8
Coghill, N. The Poet Chaucer.

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empty hand men may no hawkes lure." It is a lesson she

will not forget again.”9

It would be remiss to discharge the stimulus that opened the ‘flower’ of her heart

without a reminder that it was first ‘watered’ as she gazed upon the legs of a man

bearing pall to her recently deceased fourth husband. In a thoughtful paragraph,

Pearsall has reduced the Prologue to The Wife of Bath’s Tale to its bones. One of

these, perhaps the spine, bears further study: Power.

Alison’s dual nature has led her to covet both loved and power and when

force to choose, the outcome is a performance of femininity that stands beyond the

comprehension of a man; not just Jenkyn but we all. When she has finally tired of

his readings she makes a bold power based move (tears pages from his volume,

knocks him about the head, and nearly burns him), and immediately plays the

diminutive woman. When his return blow provides her the perfect storm to ride

through and into sovereignty, she knows the part to play:

“When she has power it is no love, and when she

achieves love, her power is gone; but there is left her
femininity; she has the woman’s ace to play even when
all the cards are on the table. Her final victory over
Jankyn has an element of intuitive stratagem, an
extraordinary mixture of ruse and passion, impossible in
a man.”10

9
Pearsall, D. Chaucer to Spenser: A Critical Reader Google Book Search
10
Coghill, N. The Poet Chaucer.

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Chaucer alludes to all women, in varying degrees when he suggests, now openly,

that to be master in wedlock is the pinnacle of marriage.

As sex is breached throughout the prologue it is not ever associated with

love, in the higher form of adulation, honor and equality. Alison establishes

feminine appetites with no prerequisite for ardent abiding devotion, but does agree

that within the bonds of matrimony there exists a boundary that she will not, nor

confesses to having crossed in the past: Adultery and pre-marital explorations

surely fits the character of The Wife, but no connection is implicit or explicit in

Chaucer’s work.

Undertaking to review all sexual overtones, innuendoes and allegations of

this work is beyond the scope of this essay. For purpose of honor, be it earned, or

falsified, it is noteworthy that The Wife is willing to quote scripture or refer to

deity as she builds her case. Her position on intimacy is thus sanctioned by the

highest authority. The manner and habit in which she exercises her freedom to

indulge is not scriptural in context:

28: God bad us for to wexe and multiplye;

29: That gentil text kan I wel understonde.

Though it must be apprehended that her delectation is toward the casual act rather

than its implied intent of populating the earth, The Wife shows her willingness to

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abide within the precepts of holy writ as long as the borders of scripture can be

stretched to accommodate her somewhat lusty appetite.

Continuing in her borderline inappropriate scriptural justifications, she

extols that a wife is for being loved, the physicality is revealed in the following

line. “…and bade our husbands love us well – and all this pleases me whereof I

tell” As with so much of the Wife of Bath, it is a stark contrast to what history tells

us of the age. Chaucer, having the inside view of the middle class, may be

revealing the true nature of medieval women or simply yearning for openness and

prowess in his opposing sex.

Impurity, as a physical trait, is common enough in Middle England and is

pre-emptive to the earth changing revolutions that will follow with the Renaissance

and our own, modern history. As though he were a soothsayer, Chaucer

foreshadows the usefulness of a well-educated, sexually mature woman by

correlating that status to barley bread. The contrast between wives and virgins is

not insulting to either and reminds most readers of their own impurity. In

Chaucer’s own script:

I nyl envye no virginitee.

Lat hem be breed of pured whete-seed,
And lat us wyves hoten barly-breed;
And yet with barly-breed, mark telle kan,
Oure lord jhesu refresshed many a man

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Max Quayle Bathed in a Bath of Bliss

The Wife’s tacit emphasis by invoking the Lord’s name reminds the reader of the

length to which she is willing to go in justification – this should not to be confused

with faith.

Bigamy was considered the term for a practice of re-marrying regardless of

circumstance and didn’t carry the sting it would in our day. In perfect reverse

continuity to her general character, she sets forth a standard to compare, without

direct statement, herself to another. In the case of polygamy she has the presence of

mind (which is to say Chaucer has carefully arranged) to bring the image of

perhaps the greatest polygamist of all time to the fore:

Lo, heere the wise kyng, daun salomon;

I trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon.

The understatement screams, ‘more than one’, when it is popularly held that

Solomon kept seven hundred or more concubines. An allusion to Jacob and

Abraham reinforces to the reader her desire to set up an unparalleled cast of men

who are decidedly not peer to her. Yet, they become permissive by contrast if we

are not willing to excuse her.

We learn of Alison’s true nature when the line is reached that she admits she

could hear no more:

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784: -- A fair womman, but she be chaast also,

785: Is lyk a gold ryng in a sowes nose. –

Here, all wives are revealed in their sensitivity to being called impure. Knowing it

is one thing, but hearing it spat as joke or insult, especially for a woman who

witnesses such from the man who has plucked her own flower, proves to be too

much. Though not penned until after Chaucers time, the proverb “Hell hath no

fury, like a woman scorned,”11 is apropos. Our Wife, however, may have been

stung by the obvious fact that Jankyn had never even known her as a maiden. Here,

with temper and patience worn to paper thin, she lashes out, attacking her true

love, the book; indeed, the very thought. She gambles a fixed game when by

perfect stratagem she leads our man Jankyn down the path of disguise and accrual.

Chaucer has made way for the perfect, necessary foreshadow. Upon hearing

Jankyn’s prostrate apology and true penitence, she sets forth the conditions of his

forgiveness: She is to be made sovereign in property, home and tract. The Wife is

the master now, and will be loath again to defer to the authority to another. In

perfect form of prologue, hers ends just as her tale will end with the truth she has

learned all her life: That which a woman wants most is mastery in the marriage.

Upon this point, and few others, do the prologue and tale equate, showing

yet another facet to the wily author; he teaches the principle message of The Wife,

11
Hirsch, E. This proverb is adapted from a line in the play The Mourning Bride, by William Congreve, an English
author of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

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first in the language of the class, and then in the typical narrative style of the fairy

tale.

Honor incarnate opens her tale, for whom, more than the venerable King

Arthur, represents dignity, chivalry and honor? The comparison to the earlier line

wherein The Wife of Bath says men ‘worthy in their degree’, pales next to the

gleaming flawlessness of the ‘Once and future King’.12 Likewise, the portrait of

woman is of lesser greatness; a maiden is raped without provocation and without

guile in her eye. This places all men of passion on the lookout for justice, not least

of which, those in the company who have fantasized or even committed similar

offenses.

The queen is posed as of high honor. Yet, she still has to beg leave of the

King for the release of the Knight to her charge. Clearly the queen was not master

in that great hall. The sentence she passes on the knight is not articulated as either

given within ear of the king or without, but it has the feel of a private matter. If this

were the case, more contrast falls between the tale and the prologue where, a

woman of such high rank would have been the penultimate ideal to Alison’s

liberated sovereign wife.

Right away in the tale, a profound dullness overcomes the already tattered

image of the fallen knight, when he shows neither gratitude, nor enthusiasm for his
12
White, T.H. Title to his Arthurian tale, circa 1958.

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new lease on life. And thus he will remain throughout the tale; melancholy,

downcast - hopeless. The presentation of women as crafty, thoughtful and able

minded is all the more prevailing in the comparison to the tarnished knight. As

equal ‘creatures’, the women of the lands about are by no means delivered in

identical light: The responses the knight collects as he travels about seeking

enlightenment are as different as the spells that poison all men in The Wife’s

Prologue. This technique of providing diversity in equal measure between the

sexes, when viewed as a whole, sets the road before the Knight as near impossible;

but, for women seeking husbands they can maneuver and groom, it is a clarion call.

“But he could not arrive in any region where he might find in this matter two

creatures agreeing together.”

As Chaucer delineates the preferences of every woman in the world he

slowly distances us from the Wife as the model. She has touched on many of the

attitudes that the knight finds but has wholly embraced only two:

936: For to be free and do right as us lest,

944: We wol been holden wise and clene of synne. 

Strangely, the wife has long enjoyed the first (freedom) and may have had the

second in her possession only fleetingly in her childhood (seen as sinless), a

dichotomy and a clue, into the mind of the medieval woman.

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Max Quayle Bathed in a Bath of Bliss

The question of what a woman wants most has long plagued the counsels of

both the meek and mighty. Many a man has sat to ponder this dilemma when

wringing his heart for the inspiration that will endear a woman to him. Answers to

such altruistic questions can be found in the most peculiar places. “A woman wants

to feel that she can freely express herself without fear of ridicule, abuse, or

judgment of her person. Further, that she is loved for who she really is, though she

retains the right to withhold proof of this until her life is before her to view”13 This

modern answer to the 600 year old question might not please the Wife of Bath, but

surely, Chaucer wished all of his male readers to critically seek an answer of their

own; this therefore represents mine.

Of course, Chaucer withholds from the reader the solution to the Knight’s

riddle, and has wisdom incarnate, the “the Loathly lady”14 whisper it unto him

privately, letting us only observe the covenant he made. Interestingly, he is not

permitted to know her fondest wish yet, and thus the reader is led to presume that

the yearnings of both are correlated in an unknown way.

When the year has nearly passed, the Hag and Knight return to court; the

knave, in his second public hearing, quotes a pure heart’s desire. And, though the

13
Overheard in a defensive driving course in Manchester, NH, 2001:. An ex-Navy Seal made the statement and was
heartily agreed to by the only two women present, one of whom posed the question: “What do you think we want
most?” The answer, said he, would come after lunch, and he dismissed us immediately. The other 10 students were
male; we sat slack jawed throughout the exchange – no one returned late from lunch.
14
Mann, Jill. Quoting Jean de Meuns usage of Joan Riviere’s masquerade concepts. As quoted in the preface to the
2002 edition of “Feminizing Chaucer”

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words do not ring of fairy inception, they enchant nonetheless; not a woman

present would dissemble, said he:

1037 "My lige lady, generally," quod he,

1038 "Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee
1039 As wel over hir housbond as hir love,
1040 And for to been in maistrie hym above.

You might have heard an ostrich plume drop, in the hall of the man king. For true

wisdom poured forth from the humbled knight; he captured the freedom of his life

in four short, albeit borrowed lines. The interchange that follows, the ugly woman

outlines her pure, virtuous hope: To be wed to the Knight. All heads wag in accord

as the truth distills around reason itself. If she, wisdoms own keeper, will have him

to husband, then prudence begs the truth. ‘Of course!’ might all present (and the

reader, as well) have cried, ‘tis justice for his crime; let him have none but the old

hag with whom to spend his time’. Our knight, he begs to disagree, his chagrin

gleaming, but receives her unto himself and they exit, betrothed.

At this point, discourse in true nobility is framed and delivered in no other

place than the bed of consummation, clearly coming before the physical act, which

the knight has resigned himself to participate in:

1100 Thou art so loothly, and so oold also,

1101 And therto comen of so lough a kynde,

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Chaucer is purposeful, as in the rebuke of Jenkyn, to have the male speak the most

biting curse a woman could be lashed with. Now, he may reveal the greater

feminine spirit, ironically, to a man less worthy than most. Recall that Alison, upon

being stung, reacted in violence and strategy for her gain, but this humble creature

received the flailing insult as if it were her habit, and proceeds to cultivate and

fertilize this question of honor. Chaucer has carved for her a place far above

Alison, and our knight far below Jankyn. The double extreme serves her Lady’s

sermon well.

1109 "But, for ye speken of swich gentillesse

1110 As is descended out of old richesse,
1111 That therfore sholden ye be gentil men,
1112 Swich arrogance is nat worth an hen.
Continuing,
1134 If gentillesse were planted natureelly
1135 Unto a certeyn lynage doun the lyne,
1136 Pryvee and apert thanne wolde they nevere fyne
1137 To doon of gentillesse the faire office;
1138 They myghte do no vileynye or vice.
1163 Thanne comth oure verray gentillesse of grace;
1164 It was no thyng biquethe us with oure place.

And, in magnificent conclusion, our loathsome, yet somehow endeared lady speaks

the keystone:

1174 Grante me grace to lyven vertuously.

1175 Thanne am I gentil, whan that I bigynne
1176 To lyven vertuously and weyve synne.

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A note here, the idea of Christian fairies is a fiendishly clever audience delimiter,

recalling that many in Chaucer’s England still lugged ponderous pagan roots about

with them, and many even thought Christianity was somehow spawned by the

ancient forces. This appeal may be broadened by the inclusion of both leading

belief structures of the day. While balancing the prevailing masculine opinion that

beauty and lust are critical components of happiness with a woman, Chaucer

intertwines these with the regard of women for love, even as he masterfully leads

us to his climax: The choice.

Beauty, passion, and fulminating sex or safety, security and enduring

commitment: Chaucer whittles all the needs of man down to the primal two. And

there he holds us for a protracted breath, as we all expect our knight to succumb to

his baser nature. He then illuminates him, and in a flash of genius, paints him as a

beaten, indifferent man. But which of the two? We’ll not know for his answer

comes too quickly, and without qualification; ‘Whatever you wish’. The trap is

sprung, the bait is taken and both sides stand to gain all. An interpretation that the

knight was being coy, and subtly believed the fairy capable of granting all of his

desires if he simply bore her audience to its rambling end, would have more

closely allied the knight with The Wife of Bath in strategy and guile - and no line

of Chaucer’s eliminates this theory. However, it is commonly accepted that the

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Knight is in utter forfeit and has cast his fate to the wind, never expecting to be

happy again.

Facing these distinctly disappointing ends Chaucer needs to prevail, to win

us to him and to render his Wife in the becoming light her foreshadows elicit. To

accomplish this he must descend into the world of the supernatural feminine, even

the fairy, to sew the remnants into a palatable conclusion:

1240 For, by my trouthe, I wol be to yow bothe --

1241 This is to seyn, ye, bothe fair and good.
1242 I prey to God that I moote sterven wood,
1243 But I to yow be also good and trewe
1244 As evere was wyf, syn that the world was newe.
1245 And but I be to-morn as fair to seene

Jill Mann expands this finality succinctly: “…the loathly lady’s switch from

ugliness to beauty constitutes both these bodily forms as ‘masquerades of

womanliness, exaggerated facades reflecting back to the knights own standards of

repulsion and desire.’”15 The suture adorns the wound; Chaucer the surgeon has

performed the miracle: Woman is shown to be the most giving, most patient and

most pleasing thing to man; and his subjection, the ultimate fulfillment for her.

So Chaucer has the tale beneficed with a parable prayer that speaks to all to

all men from the voice of woman’s bodacious representative, Alice of Bath: He

carefully casts in verse, a prayerful plea and a warning that will stand, though

subsequent ages fall, at the very nucleus of independent feminine thought: “…send

15
Ibid

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husbands meek, young, and vigorous in bed; and also…shorten their lives [of

them] that will not be governed by their wives.”16 Though a bawdy and

blasphemous conclusion, it does prepare the reader well for the subsequent tales,

some of which answer the Wife’s broad swath of knowledge with potent

counterclaims.

Chaucer has, even while charting unknown literary waters, painted a

thoroughly conflicting standard for both men and women: Diametrically opposing

one another, the Wife of Bath admires the Loathly Lady, while Jankyn (though

dead) is only recently catapulted from a position of control not unlike the Knave

Knight now enjoys. Though the clash of the sexes will undoubtedly continue to be

the most written about topic in literacy, no characters will reach more deeply into

the scruple of the modern human heart than Chaucer’s Alison of Bath and her alter

ego, The Loathly Lady.

16
Interlinear Translation, brackets added for continuity.

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