Essay: The Wife of Bath's Carnality

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Essay: The Wife of Bath's Carnality

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저자 : 이풍호 Paul Lee     시집명 : Collected Essays
출판(발표)연도 : 1995. 1. 30     출판사 : Eastwind Press, Los Angeles, California
Paul Lee
Professor Dr. Calabrese
English 340 - Writing the Critical Essay (2nd Essay)
30 January 1995
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The Wife of Bath's Carnality


One of the key points in D. W. Robertson, Jr.'s A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives was mentioned by the author as the wife of Bath is a literary personification of rampant 'femininity' or carnality. To interpret her carnality and the spiritual significance of marriage, Robertson seems already to be investigating all the scriptural matters such as the Old Law, the New Law, Ten Commandments, church and the Christ. His interpretation of the Wife's performance in Chaucer's The Prologue and The Tale leads us to understand her real position in the fourteenth-century. He declares that Alisoun of Bath is not a character in the modern sense at all, but an elaborate iconography figure designed to show the manifold implications of an attitude. She is, in some ways, typically 'feminine,' but the femininity she represents was in Chaucer's day a philosophical rather than a psychological concept (Robertson 330-31). The another critic Carolyn Dinshaw also pointed out the same issue regarding the Wife of Bath's 'carnality' to femininity in her Chaucer's Sexual Poetics. As Dinshaw recognizes the Wife, we meet with her who represents independent feminine will and desire (Dinshaw 114). Dinshaw acknowledges that the Wife's desire is conforming to the desire of the men"c (Dinshaw 114). Unlike Robertson's generally favorable explanation of the Wife of Bath's sensual desire, Dinshaw furthermore categorizes the Wife, Alisoun, in the feminist circle which is limited with more narrow vision into the patriarchal discourse:
She makes audible precisely what patriarchal discourse would keep silent,
reveals the exclusion and devalorization that patriarchal discourse
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performs. Speaking as the excluded Other, she explicitly and affirmatively
assumes the place that patriarchal discourse accords the feminine. . .
the Wife of Bath, I argue, convert[s] a form of subordination into an
affirmation. . . (Dinshaw 115)
And Dinshaw advocates Luce Irigaray's critique of Alisoun that the Wife of Bath mimics the operations of patriarchal discourse. . .As Irigaray has characterized it, such mimesis functions to reveal those operations, to begin to make a place for the feminine. But Dinshaw finds that the Wife of Bath is crucially unlike the woman Irigaray describes" in her words quoted by Dinshaw herself. At this moment, I can say that I am little much confused with Dinshaw's point of view on Alisoun's memesis. So I do not agree with her interpretation of the mimic performance for the feminine desire of the Wife.
For me as one of the readers, the definition of Robertson has no doubt. Although his critique amazingly begin with a number of exegetes in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, most readers will accept his definition easily. Robertson may not write his point of view on the wife of Bath's carnality if he did not professionally study her personal characteristics in Chaucer's The Prologue and The Tale. Robertson's descriptions on the Alisoun's carnality easily reminds me of my first essay, which is called The Wife of Bath's Desire in Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Prologue and The Wife of Bath's Tale. The concept of the desire was much closer to Robertson's 'carnality' than merely 'femininity' as Dinshaw mentioned like carnality to femininity. I therefore, favoring Robertson's point of view in carnality, consider that this essay is to justify my expanded point of view on the wife of Bath's fourteenth century attitude of the desire toward marriage and life [wealth].
For Robertson, as he calls her a hopeless 'carnal' woman, I regard she, indeed, is full of 'desire' to make herself passionate and wealthy, and wins her five husbands' love:
To win their love, or treat them with respect.
They all loved me so much that, heavens above!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Since I got them in the hollow of my hand,
And they'd made over to me all their land. (Chaucer 206-212)
As Robertson mentions, I am convincing that Alisoun simply searches for her pleasures and wealth by dealing with her husbands in "hardly virtuous" ways, and finally gets fortunes and sovereignty over the men (as I concluded in my first essay).
Robertson opens Chapter 2 (Chaucer's Exegetes) in his essay, introducing the wife, Alisoun, who is hailed by the pardoner, St. Jerome, as a noble prechour (Robertson 318). As Robertson defined her empirical attitude, she is a carnal woman, who has simply married five husbands like the Samaritan. As far as we concern the Bible, they have to marry only once in the Scriptural marriage. Studying Thomas Ringstede, who was an English exegete of the fourteenth century, Robertson explains the wife of Bath's point of view in marriage: "Since she is quite happy with this situation and sees nothing wrong with it, we may reasonably conclude that she has little regard for the sacramental aspect of marriage" (Robertson 319). Also, reminding us of Christ's words to the Samaritan, Four thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband, Robertson advocates her, saying that she has failed to understand the spiritual significance of marriage (Robertson 321). Although we may say that Alisoun's key point of view in marriage is not to generate children but to multiply her pleasures, the 'carnality' of the Wife can be called as a merit to help herself survive in the male dominated fourteenth century medieval society. According to Robertson's interpretation, her carnality is rigorous and literal so that she can argue about the Scriptural marriage. There are many kinds of critique on the Wife's point of view. My essay was written by finding that the 'carnality' was, after all, central in the Robertson's essay which favorably reviewed the Wife's characterization as I have mentioned about the Wife's desire in my first essay.


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Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and The Wife of Bath's Tale.
Robertson, Jr. D. W. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives. New
Jersey: Princeton UP, 1962.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. Chaucer's Sexual Poetics. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1986.

- Paul Lee 이풍호 시인
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