A Little Confused

I am not sure what this Wife is trying to transmit. She starts by justifying that she has had five husbands. She talks about Jacob and Abraham having many wives and God encouraging procreation. She talks about virginity and how to have sex is not a sin, and she supports all her arguments from the Bible, and they all seem to be valid “Al nys but conseil to virginitee.” (Prologue, line 82) She argues that, indeed God talks about virginity as something divine and pure and recommendable, it is only an advice and that therefore she is in all her right to marry whoever and how many she desires and obviously sleep with who ever she wants to. But she, such a gentle and… classy… wife was not sinful but clever and a wise wife.

But, why is she so persuasive in justifying her actions if she knew she was innocent, or pure of sin? This kind of argumentation and use of rhetoric is usually applied by people that feel that are guilty and need excuses for their actions. I imagine a murderer telling a judge why his crime should be justified. The murderer may very likely be sure that what he did was completely valid, and that he should not be accused for committing a crime. The judge and everybody else know he is guilty, and he himself may know too, but the arguments can even be plausible. The Wife is a lustful, gold-digger, gossiper and clever women indeed.

I feel a little sorry for her. She is not aware that what she is saying is not really making people be amazed by how right she is and how intelligent but feel pity for her, and maybe that is what she wants, to have pity. While telling her tale, by her own, she gets tangled up and contradicts herself. She talks about how money and pleasing a wife is so important and then, talking about her 5th husband, which appears to be the one she loved, the only one she loved, she seems to not care so much about his status, “My fifthe housbonde -- God his soule blesse! --Which that I took for love, and no richesse,” (Prologue, lines 525-526) So… she is confused.

The tale is her reality. It is a fixed, edited, and dramatized version of her real story. The Wife is just like the queen, she seems to have it all, she appears to be the master on marriage and on how to handle a man to get what she wants, but she doesn’t. The answer to the queen’s question, what the knight finds out, “"Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee As wel over hir housbond as hir love, And for to been in maistrie hym above.” (Tale, lines 1038-1040) is what she needs! She wants to have control! Not to be the one controlled, she depends on men, and gossip, and money. She is poor and lonely. Her only way to be satisfied is taking advantage that she is a women, her sexuality and manipulation. She has become a pro in rhetoric, it is her necessity. The whole prologue is rhetoric, justifying her actions.

I feel a little sorry for her. Her intense desire to have control demonstrates that in that time, wives were no more than…housewifes. Wives were below the man, and this Wife refused to be.