The Medieval Podcast Behind the Mic

Episode 183:
The Wife of Bath

Chaucer has never been my favourite medieval author (shhh!), but in all of the poetry I’ve read of his, Alison, The Wife of Bath is definitely a standout. In my literature classes in university, she was always described as “earthy”, a sort of polite way of saying bawdy, natural, common, and she is all of these things. And yet, as Dr. Marion Turner says in her episode on this (in)famous character, The Wife of Bath draws attention and admiration far more than those characters of higher status and class.

One of the aims of Marion’s book The Wife of Bath: A Biography* is to look at Alison’s impact on culture in the years since The Canterbury Tales first started circulating, and her “earthiness” seems to be what is most often at the forefront in the centuries between then and now. She’s embodied as every kind of vice, and sometimes as proof of what can happen if you let women run amok. William Blake, eighteenth-century author of the famous “The Tyger” poem and artist, depicts Alison in full-on party mode, with a glass in hand (despite being on horseback) and her dress nearly falling off (see below).

What Marion emphasizes in our chat, and in her book, is the ways in which this woman who has been held up as the epitome of all things brash and in-your-face is written to work in subtle pushbacks against the misogynistic culture of the time. From her backstory to her tale, Alison challenges narratives around independence, marriage, sex, and assault, issues which are complicated further by Chaucer’s own history.

It’s interesting to imagine what the reactions of Chaucer’s various contemporary audiences would have thought of her. It’s very likely they would have sided with her or against her based on complicated intersections of gender and class (much as Christine de Pizan did in her own works, prioritizing class over gender solidarity much of the time).

William Blake, The Wife of Bath, from Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the nine and twenty Pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury. (1809). Wikimedia Commons

It seems evident, though, that of all the reactions people have to her, Alison rarely merits a “meh”. She’s been loved and she’s been hated, but what can be said for sure is that she has never been forgotten.

I hope you enjoy Marion’s episode and our discussion about the many ways in which The Wife of Bath has been reread, reworked, and reimagined, and which century provided some of the most misogynistic backlash of all (spoiler alert: it’s not the fourteenth!).

* Amazon book links on this website are affiliate links, meaning that anything you buy on Amazon through these links helps me fund my work as an indie historian. Thanks!