Chaucer on Sex & Marriage

1. Chaucer on Sex & Marriage The Pilgrimage The Aristotelian View The Three Tales

2. The Pilgrimage • Image of Life: a company of pilgrims, “who happened together in fellowship.” • Represents society -- in reality, not idealized. • Many ranks, types. Mixture of believers & hypocrites, saints and sinners.

3. Some -- relatively positive • The Knight: gentle & courageous. A model of chivalry. • The Clerk of Oxford: disinterested love of learning. • Is the Knight perhaps too chivalrous (so many battles)? • Is the Clerk too extreme in his dedication, neglecting his financial needs?

4. Perfect Types • The Parson and the Plowman -- are without question ideal pastor & layman. • The Franklin: described as a hedonist (“Epicurean”), yet a generous, hospitable and wise landowner. He may represent earthly (natural) happiness and virtue, as opposed to the supernatural virtue of the parson & plowman.

5. Fiction and Reality • Chaucer cleverly interweaves fiction and reality: • Chaucer himself is one of the 30 pilgrims. • The tales are stories within a story. • In the Merchant’s tale, the characters refer to the Wife of Bath, one of the characters in the larger story. • Chaucer may be suggesting that we are like characters in a divine drama.

6. Aristotle on Sex • The difference between man & woman is a deep one, but not one of essence. • Sex differences intensify as one moves up the chain of life: • In plants, each organism typically has both sexes. • In animals, male and female sexes are in different organisms, who must use perception and movement to find each other.

7. Aristotle didn’t know about asexual reproduction among lower animals (protozoa, sponges): if he had, it would have strengthened his case. • According to Aristotle, the process of sexual differentiation reaches its peak with human beings: our rational souls are suffused with maleness or femaleness. • In humans, the two sexes must come together not only physically, but also rationally.

8. The two sexes complement each other not only physically, but also soulishly, psychologically. • For Aristotle, marriage is a kind of friendship, the most important kind. • Husband and wife have distinct, complementary spheres of authority: the wife over the internal management of the household, the husband over external relations.

9. Chaucer’s Marriage Tales • The Wife of Bath • The Merchant • The Franklin

10. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue • The woman of Bath characterizes marriage as involving a kind of economic exchange involving sex & property. • She also identifies a number of psychological and rhetorical factors that influence the balance of power (especially control of joint property). • Represents insights of experience, folk wisdom (“she knew the oldest dances”)

11. Rhetorical & Psychological Factors • The asymmetry of desire for intercourse. Unavailability increases desire, worsening the asymmetry. • Manipulation by guilt and blame (used on the first three “good” husbands) • Stories and proverbs (the book used by the 5th husband). • Violence and victimhood/remorse (5th husband).

12. The Prologue vs. the Tale • The Prologue displays gritty realism: depicts marriage, warts and all. • On balance, positive? The Woman staunchly defends the married state. Fifth marriage ends happily: mutual kindness, feminine authority. • The Tale begins roughly -- with a rape, and the rapist on death row. • But then it transmutes into a charming fairy tale.

13. The Point of the Tale • The question: “what do women really want?” (Stumped Freud.) • Note the profound change in the character of the rapist: he ends by yielding sovereignty to his wife. • Note too that the sovereignty is voluntarily yielded by the husband: not taken by force or trickery.

14. Courtly Love & Marriage • The answer: women want the selfsame authority over their husbands they enjoy over their lovers. • The tradition of courtly love: ordinarily quite separate from marriage. The lover seeks to please his beloved above all else. • Chaucer is recommending, in effect, the incorporation of courtly love within marriage.

15. The Merchant’s Tale • “January” decides to marry “May”: a not-too-subtle use of names. • January’s reasons for marriage are entirely self-centered: concern for his soul, desire for a beautiful young wife, who will satisfy his needs with a minimum of trouble. • In effect, he treats the acquisition of a wife as the purchase of a property.

16. January’s Folly • January selects a woman without property or status, thinking that this will ensure his control over her. • For Aristotle, it is the mark of the “barbarian” that the husband treat his wife as a piece of property, like a domesticated animal. • January is consistently foolish: foolish in getting married, foolish in choosing his mate (without thought to her character), foolish in trusting Damien.

17. Folly vs. Virtue • This folly inheres in January’s lack of virtue. Lacking virtue himself, he is unable to recognize its deficit in others. • Note that the queen of the fairies gives a bold answer to May, but is not responsible for January’s credulity. • Like the wife of Bath’s first 3 “good” husbands, January is easily manipulated and scolded into submission.

18. The Franklin’s Tale • The Franklin is a wonderful character: this-worldly, no saint, but good and wise, an ideal landowner and citizen. • The story is marvelous: poignant, plausible in characterization. Depicts an ideal marriage, characterized by mutual sovereignty.

19. Dorigen & Arveragus • Arveragus vows never to exercise his authority against Dorigen’s will. • He will preserve his authority only in name, for the sake of his honor. • A synthesis of the dynamics of courtly love with the form of marriage.

20. Similarities to Aristotle • The wife rightly exercises authority over all matters internal to the household. Only a foolish, tyrannical husband would seek to interfere with his wife’s legitimate authority, rooted in her natural aptitudes. • The husband’s role: generating income, managing the external relations of the household, including civic politics.

21. The Point of the Tale • “Lovers must be ready to obey one another, if they would long keep company.” • Ideally, we look for “lordship set in servitude.” This reflects Christ’s teaching that the greatest Christian is the servant of others. • Patience is the “conquering virtue”. True power is rooted in self-mastery. • The role of “nobleness” (code of honor) as a source of virtue.