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About Misogynic Literature in the Middle Ages:
The Wife of Bath''s complaint that literature is antifeminist because it is written by men has more recently been made a literary history. Feminist criticism has pointed out that literary history, though not outspokenly misogynist like some medieval literature, has nevertheless presented female experience and creativity from a predominantly male point of view. Because traditional literary history excludes many women writers from the canon and because it starts chronologically with periods when only a few highly privileged women could write at all, which did in fact prevail until very recent times, that authorship is essentially a male prerogative.
The ideal of virginity and antifeminism:
Medieval literature reveals two diametrically opposed stereotypes of women, one represented by Eve, who caused the Fall of man, and the other by Mary, sometimes referred to as the Second Eve, who bore the Savior of man. The Latin Ave, the angel''s salutation to Mary (Ave, Mary), it was noted at that time, is "Eva" spelled backward; and as the Fall was associated with Eve''s sexuality, so salvation was associated with Mary''s virginity. The medieval cult of the Virgin is closely connected with the ideal of chivalry. The image of Mary is pictured on the inside of Sir Gawain''s shield (I, lines 648-50), and he is "her knight" (I, line 1769). Her power is a function of her purity: virginity is the force that enables the weak to control the strong. The mystery and idealism that surrounded virginity is very much in chivalric culture. At the other extreme, woman is seen as the seducer and betrayer of man. In the first shock of shame, when the Green Knight confronts Sir Gawain with knowledge of the green girdle, Gawain bitterly accuses the ladies who have tricked him and launches into a diatribe against women, starting with eve. Although the speech is a typical example of antifeminism, we need not take it at face value because, in the case of sophisticated writers like the Gawain poet or Chaucer, characters and even narrators don''t necessarily speak for the author. The very existence of the extreme views, moreover, creates opportunities for irony that cuts in more than one direction. By making Sir Gawain, hitherto the model of chivalry, churlishly condemn women like a medieval clerk, the poet, with humor and understanding, lets us see his hero''s human imperfections and the instinct of even the best of knights to blame his failure on a woman, just as Adam did. Sir Gawain, it should be noted, recovers his poise and accepts the blame for his own fault along with the green girdle as a reminder of it.
Complex irony also qualifies the antifeminism in the "Wife of Bath''s Prologue." We can easily see the irony that, by her own account, the Wife is herself the domineering, lustful, and calculating shrew painted by the antifeminist writers. That portrait, though, has been humorously exaggerated, in part by the Wife herself, whose intention, she tells the pilgrims, "nis but for to pleye" (line 198). In addition to her less admirable traits, Chaucer has endowed the Wife with humor, generosity, an irresistable zest for life, and, not least, a stubborn refusal to let herself be exploited in a world where women have no education and few rights, and where rich old men acquire young girls as property. Her "Prologue" can be read as an indictment of the culture that caricatures women and denies them any human dignity. In the Wife''s marriage to her fifth husband, the former Oxford clerk who torments her with anecdotes from his "book of wikked wives" (line 691), Chaucer humorously, but also with much poignancy, portrays the clash between Woman and "Auctoritee," the clerical establishment that condemns her.
Fabliaux such as "The Miller''s Tale" stereotype women as cunning and faithless. At the same time, the comedy creates sympathy for them, and their male victims usually deserve their fate. Like Alison and the Wife of Bath in her first three marriages, fabliau heroines are often spirited young women coupled with old husbands, and the authors sympathize with their natural impulses and desires for a freer life.
In The Second Shepherd''s Play (which I did not assign your class to read), the Wakefield Master has created a delightful counterpoint between the two types of womanhood. Gill''s and Mak''s constant breeding keeps the family poor and hungry; when Mak steals a lamb, Gill, with typical female cunning, devises the scheme of disguising it as her newborn baby. The plot of the stolen lamb is followed by the Nativity scene with Gill''s counterpart, the Virgin, and the true Lamb of God, the Christ Child. This juxtaposition has none of the stern opposition of "Eva" and "Ave." In the context of Christmas play, Gill and the Virgin share a common humanity with each other and with the male characters that draws our sympathy.
Noble or gentlewomen:
When the noble or gentle widow happened to survive her husband or children who had died through violence and disease and lived herself to and advanced age, she had exceptional opportunities and motives to pursue a more consistent life of seclusion, reading, reflection, and prayer, approximating to that of a nun or a solitary, sharing their circumstances and even taking their vows.
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