The Wife of Bath and Patriarchal Discourse

In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, we witness one of Chaucer’s most complex and provocative characters: Alison. Her story does not just reveal personal experiences, it challenges the patriarchal mindset that dominates medieval society.

A telling moment comes when Alison describes her fifth husband, a man obsessed with reading a book filled with stories of “wicked women.” She says: “All bound together in the same volume. / And night and morning it was his custom, / Whenever he had leisure and freedom / From any other worldly occupation, / To read in it concerning wicked women: / He knew more lives and legends about them / Than there are of good women in the Bible.”

This book, which categorizes and condemns women, is a direct representation of patriarchal ideology. Her husband’s obsession with it mirrors the societal need to control and define women through negative stereotypes.

Alison, however, refuses to accept this passively. In a striking act of rebellion, she reacts: “When I realized he’d never make an end / But read away in that damned book all night, / All of a sudden I got up and tore / Three pages out of it as he was reading, / And hit him with my fist upon the cheek / So that he tumbled back into our fire.”

This moment is symbolic; tearing the pages becomes an act of tearing apart patriarchal narratives. Alison is not just reacting emotionally; she is resisting the control of a tradition that defines women through male perspectives. As one critic rightly puts it, “Alison herself is the exemplum of the feared autonomous woman, turning patristic and popular misogynistic arguments against the perpetrators of those same arguments and making no apologies for doing so.”

Still, the text leaves us with a question: Can she truly escape these norms?

While she is rebellious, her language sometimes echoes patriarchal stereotypes. For example: “As long as they live / God has granted women three things by nature: / lies, and tears, and spinning.” She even says, “There’s one thing I can boast of: / in the end I’d gain, in every way, the upper hand / By force or fraud.”

These lines show that while she resists patriarchy, she also internalizes some of its beliefs. Her identity as “the Wife of Bath” rather than “Alison” reminds us how women in medieval literature were often defined not by profession or personal traits but by marital status. As one critic notes: “The duties and failings of the estate of women are often seen from the standpoint of the male moralist.”

So, while Alison breaks ground as an early symbol of female autonomy, her rebellion is not entirely free from the structures she challenges. She represents a crucial step toward feminist thought, but not its endpoint.