Marian Zuehlke

Dr. Eileen Joy

LIT483 – Seminar in Chaucer

April 25, 2003

In Defense of the Wife of Bath Against the Charge of Murder

        A person charged with murder today must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to be convicted of the crime. Barring eyewitnesses, several things are usually required to accomplish this, among them are a body, motive and the opportunity of the accused. A confession, if one can be obtained, is a trump card that will usually send a defendant to prison regardless of the evidence. Dolores Palomo has charged Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, Alisoun with the murder of her fourth, fifth, and possibly her third husbands. Since Chaucer has not provided his readers with an eyewitness to the alleged murders, the bodies of the victims do not litter the tale, and the opportunity of a wife to kill her husband is taken for granted given their cohabitation, Palomo attempts to prove the Wife’s guilt through character assassination, which will serve to provide a motive, and a reading of the Wife’s own words in such a way that they betray a guilty conscience.

        Palomo begins with reasons that the Wife’s might have animosity towards men and marriage. She reminds us of the dream in which "blood betokeneth gold" (581) that Alisoun’s mother told her before the twelve year old girl married. The dream signifies that a girl’s virginity is traded for wealth. Palomo argues that Alisoun had read many of the romantic tales of King Arthur and his knights and of fairies and elves "in her formative years" (304), and that these idealistic and erotic tales had left her with unrealistic ideas about men and marriage. As for the virginity that Alisoun is trading, Palomo writes, "Actually, she cherishes virginity as a special mode of being, a mode forever lost to her since that night when blood was exchanged for gold" (305). Palomo also states that, "Triumphs in marital bickering, gossiping, skittering after social diversion, grasping for money and luxuries . . . [are] the ways she confronts the failure of love and the bitter knowledge that marriage was a bad bargain" (307).

        The fact that Alisoun knew of tales of idealistic and erotic romanticism does not mean that she read them "in her formative years." Palomo is attempting to attribute sentimental feelings and motivations to Alison that Chaucer doesn’t give us reason to believe she possesses in those early years. In fact, when Alisoun describes her early marriages, she does so with a clear sense of amusement, and a playfulness that one would expect to find in a twelve-year-old. She says:

                    The thre were goode men, and riche, and olde;

                    Unnethe myghte they the statut holde

                    In which that they were bounden unto me.

                    Ye woot wel what I meene of this, pardee!

                    As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke

                    How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke!

                    . . . .

                    I sette hem so a-werke, by my fey,

                    That many a night they songen ‘weilawey!’ (ll. 197-216)

Although, today, we consider the idea of parents’ marrying off a twelve-year-old girl to an old man for financial gain bad parenting to say the least, and forced prostitution and rape at worst, parents in the Middle Ages would consider the arrangement of such a marriage as having done well by their child. She would have a place in society that would provide well for her safety and comfort, and give her financial security. We can assume that Alisoun was well aware of the realities of marriage in her day from the fact that her mother was quite frank about the exchange of goods, blood (virginity) for gold. She also says:

                    I bar hym on honed he hadde enchanted me;

                    My dame taughte me that soutiltee. (ll. 575-76)

So, we know that her mother made her aware of the necessity of understanding the economic realities of the marital contract. As Mary Carruthers writes,

By the fourteenth century, the dower was being replaced by jointure, property settled on the wife by the husband, usually as a condition of the marriage contract but sometimes at a later point in the marriage. Alisoun is obviously aware of the importance of jointures and other property gifts:

                    I wolde no lenger in the bed abide

                    If that I felte his arm over my side,

                    Til he hadde maad his raunson unto me;

                    Thanne wolde I suffre him do his nicetee. (ll. 409-12)

This bald exchange may strike us as cynical, vulgar, and immoral, but we must remember that by the standards common to her class Alisoun's behavior is simply shrewd business. (211)

Alisoun has made it clear that she does not consider the state of virginity to be blessed, however much religious dogma of her day praised it. She says:

                    The dart is set up for virginitee;

                    Cacche who so may, who renneth best lat see. (ll. 75-6)

Her understanding of the economic worth of virginity resonates here. It wasn’t even a special "mode of being" lost forever on that first night, as she sold it three more times to husbands two, three, and four. It is important in regard to her character to note here that she was willing to give as well as take:

                    In wyfhode I wol use myn instrument

        Alisoun did not need to "confront the knowledge that marriage was a bad bargain", because it was anything but. Marriage, and the selling of her virginity, had made her a very rich independent woman who did not have to "grasp for money and luxuries." Of Alisoun, Carruthers writes, "As a cloth maker in the west of England (Bath is in western England) at this time, she was engaged in the most lucrative trade possible. Women wool merchants and clothiers are common enough in the records of this period. They were usually widows, carrying on after their husbands' deaths, and some of them were very wealthy indeed" (209-10). The wife’s story of her wealthy husbands and the rich dress she is described as wearing are signs that she may be seen as one of these.

        Palomo also questions Alisoun’s faithfulness as a wife, and suggests that her behavior is more than promiscuous; it is adulterous. She uses Alisoun’s own words against her, that "a likerous mouth moste han a likerous tayl" (466), her "dalliance" with Jankyn while she was still married to husband number four, and the descriptions of her lusty inclinations in lines 602-626. It should be noted that the first description was made referring to the time of the Wife’s fourth marriage. While she, herself, was fond of drink, a fact which probably gives some indication as to her reasons for choosing a "revelour" as a husband after her three old ones, there is no indication that her reference was to carrying on adulterous relationships. In fact, she refuses to do so even knowing that her husband has a "paramour". She got even, but, "Nat of my body, in no foul manere" (485). "Dalliance," in A Chaucer Glossary means small talk, sociableness, gossip, friendly intimacy, flirtation, and only as a final alternative, sexual intercourse, which is Palomo’s choice. Chaucer evidently used the word to give an impression that was open to interpretation.

        Beverly Kennedy focuses on the descriptions of the Wife of Bath’s amorous behavior, and argues that, "Throughout the General Prologue portrait of the Wife and also in her own Prologue, Chaucer is invariably, and therefore I am tempted to say, deliberately, ambiguous on the subject of the Wife’s sexual morality" (354). There are five substantial passages in the Wife’s Prologue that, for historical reasons, are in question as to their authority and the time and limited nature of their addition. These passages are: 44a-f, 575-84, 609-12, 619-26,717-20. Their content is clearly damning to the character of not only the Wife, but all women, since the story of Eve is included. Kennedy believes these variants can be attributed to the Cambridge Dd scribe whose marginal comments are clearly misogynistic. The effect of these added passages is to "erase what appears to be a deliberate pattern of characteristically Chaucerian ambiguity" (355). They also contradict other passages in the Tale. The descriptions in passage 44a-f contradict the Wife’s descriptions of her three old husbands as barely adequate in bed. The addition of lines 609-12, change the Wife’s astrological character from one of amorousness to one of lechery and aggressiveness. Lines 619-26 strongly indict Alisoun of adultery, but Kennedy responds:

First, the emphasis on her willfulness in this passage contradicts the implication of "astral determinism" in her horoscope. Second, the emphasis on her insouciance contradicts the implication of sorrow for sin in the line, "Allas, allas, that euere loue was synne" (614). Third, the emphasis on her lack of "discrecioun" in satisfying her "appetite" with any man who pleased her contradicts her earlier statement that she would not commit adultery ("Nat of my body in no foul manere" [485]), not even to be revenged on her philandering fourth husband.

The numbering of the husbands in the text was also "corrected" for a time, and has been attributed to scribal error. Rather than have the Wife introduce her fourth and fifth husbands twice and lose her train of thought after two long digressions, the husbands were introduced chronologically, the result of which was to "make the Wife more like the stereotypical wife of traditional estates satire, not only by making her appear younger and more in control of the narrative situation, but, more importantly, by making her appear obsessed with the sexual capabilities and activities of each of her five husbands" (Kennedy 350). As we are aware, Chaucer’s Tales are not stereotypical.

        Palomo’s insistence on the Wife of Bath’s aggressive, lecherous, adulterous behavior arise from reading the worst possible meaning into Chaucer’s deliberately ambiguous adjectives describing the Wife, and from those disputed passages. Given Kennedy’s findings, Palomo’s reading of the character of the Wife is anything but certain.

        Palomo begins her accusations of murder against Alisoun with her third husband. As Alisoun tells of her fourth husband, and of her fondness for drink, what Palomo calls "her dissipated ways", Alisoun brings up one Metellius who beat his wife to death because she drank. Palomo asks why Chaucer would have Alisoun bring up the story of Metellius and, "Does a fight that involves a staff cause the end of the third marriage, a fight in which the vigorous woman has the advantage over an old man" (308)? Alisoun has introduced "auctoritee" all throughout her tales in order to argue against them. It is not surprising that she continues to do so. In bringing up Metellius, she defends her right to drink, regardless of authoritative stories whose morals urge abstinence for women. There is no reason to think that there is any more to it than that.

        When Alisoun’s fourth husband went to revel in London, leaving her free to spend her time as she pleased, she spent some time walking in the fields with her friend, Dame Alice, and the clerk, Jankin. True to character, Alisoun flirted with Jankin, and was so taken by him that she told him that if she were free, she would marry him. She explains picking out her next husband before the demise of the present one as,

Alisoun also tells him that she dreamed a variation of the marriage contract theme, "blood betokeneth gold", in which he wanted to slay her, but that she thought that the blood meant that he would bring her gold. Palomo says that "purveiance" means plans or resources, and that, by telling Jankin of her dream, Alisoun was prompting Jankin to kill her husband. She says, "In this context, gold refers to the estate Jankyn would achieve by marrying her, the blood to the murder of her faithless husband" (309). A Chaucer Glossary defines "purveiaunce" as providence, foresight, provision, prudence, preparation, all things that a businesswoman of Alisoun’s class would consider when planning a future marriage. The shade of difference between those definitions and the intimation of plans or a plot is something Chaucer would have appreciated in his choice of words. The relaying of the dream is one of the disputed passages (ll. 575-84) that is thought to have been added by the misogynistic Cambridge Dd scribe. As has already been pointed out, these disputed passages don’t agree with the intent of Chaucer’s other writings, and Kennedy asks, "why would she bother to make up any sort of dream at all, after it has been agreed that he should marry her if she ‘were wydwe’" (345)?

        Sometime after that, Alisoun goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Palomo says that such a long and arduous trip "implies a particularly urgent quest on the pilgrim’s part" and that "I can only conclude that Alisoun conspired with Jankyn to murder the reveler and that though she may have later backed out of the scheme, Jankyn carried it out and Alisoun cannot deny her moral culpability" (309). The Wife of Bath has made it clear that she loves to be out and about and that she loves company. Ann S. Haskell suggests a reason that Chaucer has her go on a pilgrimage in these lines:

                    I seye, I hadde in herte greet despit

                    That he of any oother had delit.

                    But he was quit, by God and by Seint Joce!

                    I made hym of the same wode a croce. (ll. 481-84)

Haskell writes that, "The symbol by which St. Joce is identified is a burdoun, a wooden shepherd’s staff carried by a pilgrim" and that "ample literary references, established for burdoun the double meanings of ‘phallus’ and (pilgrim’s) staff" (86). There is also a double meaning for croce of "staff" and "burden." So Alisoun made for her fourth husband a burden of that burdoun, by taking herself, and her charms, away from him by going on a pilgrimage. She has already stated that she had previously tried to make him jealous by flirting with other men, and that she would not use her body to get even with him. So, the fact that she goes on a pilgrimage, "quitting" him for a pilgrimage with the patron saint of pilgrims, St. Joce, and leaving him "in his owene grece I made hym frye" (487), seems an appropriate punishment for him, and a much needed break from his philandering for her.

        Husband number five, Jankyn, however gorgeous his legs may be, is a clerk, and clerks have been taught in school, through their religious readings, to be misogynistic. Jankyn is no exception. Palomo remarks that the readings from his book of "’wikked wyves’ are all of a special sort—lethal" (310), and that it is Jankyn’s intention to play upon Alisoun’s guilt in the death of her fourth husband by reading them to her. Then, because of Alisoun’s professed inability to keep a secret from her best friend and her niece ("To hir biwreyed I my conseil al," l. 533 and "I wol han told his conseil every deel," l. 538), Palomo argues that Jankyn "is proclaimed guilty of murder, a deed that costs him his life. And so, Alisoun is rid of husband number five." This is not true, however, since nearly half of the tales he tells her from his book, though still misogynistic, are not about murder. Simplicius Gallus left his wife for looking out the window, another Roman left his for going to a summer game without asking his permission, Samson lost both of his eyes, Socrates had piss poured on his head, and Pasiphae had an unnatural desire to have sex with a bull. These tales are not meant to remind Alisoun of her complicity in murder. They are meant to make the rich, experienced forty-year-old wife of the twenty-year-old Jankyn more amenable to do his bidding. As for Alisoun’s inability to keep a secret, that fact really testifies more to her innocence than to her guilt. One of the stories Jankyn read to Alisoun didn’t actually come from the book, but was of a more contemporary date:

                    Of latter date, of wyves hath he red

                    That somme han slayn hir housbondes in hir bed,

                    And lete hir lecchour dighte hire al the nyght,

                    Whan that the corps lay in the floor upright. (ll. 765-68)

Mary Hamel has traced this story to an event in 1388, in which a woman was having an affair with a priest. The two killed her husband, and were found in bed together the next morning with the husband’s corpse on the floor: "the priest was thrust into prison where he was tortured to death, while the woman was burned at the stake near Bermondsey" (133). Hamel tells of other cases of adultery contemporary to Chaucer and the Wife:

In Middlesex in 1379 a cordwainer was murdered by his servant and his wife in the middle of the night; the servant pleaded guilty and was drawn and hanged, while the wife pleaded not guilty but was convicted by a jury and burned at the stake. In Hampshire in 1387 one Andrew Walton of Hinton Daubney was slain by his chaplain and another servant, who lay in wait for him in a certain field almost every night for two weeks before they succeeded in ambushing him. Walton’s wife Elizabeth was also indicted for "giving consent and aid" to the murder. All three were convicted: the chaplain, because of his clergy, was handed over to the Ordinary for Church disposition; the servant was drawn and hanged; and the wife, after a delay of some months until her pregnancy could be brought to term, was burned at the stake in early 1388. One might also mention the simpler and later case of Agnes Cran, who was convicted and burned in 1400 for killing her husband with an ax-blow to the skull while he was asleep in bed.

It is clear from these stories that, far from ridding herself of husband number five by implicating him in murder, Alisoun herself would have been in far greater danger by intemperate speech than would Jankyn. Each of the wives mentioned above was burned at the stake, whether they professed guilt or innocence. This was not a society that took husband killing lightly, a fact which would not have escaped Chaucer when he decided to add it to his story, and one which would have been clear to the Wife of Bath.

        One final note: Palomo points to the fact that in the Wife’s reference to the number of husbands the Samaritan had, she asks why, when Jesus said,

                    ‘Thou hast yhad five housbondes,’ quod he,

                    ‘And that ilke man that now hath thee

                    Is noght thyn housbonde,’ thus seyde he certeyn.

                    What that he mente therby, I kan nat seyn;

                    But that I axe, why that the fifthe man

                    Was noon housbonde to the Samaritan? (ll. 17-22)

that the fifth was not her husband. She suggests that Alisoun was uncertain about the legality of her marriage to Jankyn because a marriage is invalid if the two people involved have conspired against the life of the husband of the adulteress, or if she has promised to marry the adulterer in the case of the death of her husband. If Alisoun understands the situation to be that the Samaritan is still married to husband number five, rather than living with a man after the death of husband number five, the question is perfectly understandable. Her next line indicates her interest in the Samaritan story: "How many might she have in marriage?" Some people in the religious establishment have declared that not only are virgins superior to wives, but that the more husbands a woman has, the worse of a person she is. It is this that Alisoun wants to argue against.

        Palomo has failed to convince me that Alisoun of Bath possesses a murderous personality. She gives Alisoun an overly sentimental, two-faced, vicious character that Chaucer did not. The verdict: The Wife of Bath is not guilty of the murders of husbands three, four and five.

Works Cited

Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3^rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

        1987.

Carruthers, Mary. "The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions." PMLA 94 (1979):

        209-22.

Davis, Norman, et al. A Chaucer Glossary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.

Hamel, Mary. "The Wife of Bath and a Contemporary Murder." The Chaucer Review

        14.2 (1979):132-139.

Haskell, Ann S. "The St. Joce Oath in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue." The Chaucer

        Review 1 (1966): 85-87.

Kennedy, Beverly. "Cambridge Ms. DD.4.24: A Misogynous Scribal Revision of the

        Wife of Bath’s Prologue?" The Chaucer Review 30.4 (1996): 343-357.

Palomo, Dolores. "The Fate of the Wife of Bath’s ‘Bad Husbands’." The Chaucer

        Review 9 (1975): 303-19.