debates about the nature of that term. More problemati-
cally, the Wife is a character constructed by a male
author—Chaucer. If she is a proto-feminist, does that,
then, make him one? Along these lines is the idea that
Chaucer, though a medieval man steeped in his own era,
at least allows a glimpse of feminine desire and perspec-
tive. Another common approach sees the Wife as a sub-
versive character but relies on her “pathetic” qualities to
evoke sympathy and compassion. In this view, Chaucer
is credited with a consciousness-raising effort, produced
by demonstrating the monstrous qualities of misogyny.
Perhaps most intriguing is the tendency for critics to
dismiss charges of misogyny and forgive Chaucer’s
lapses. Even many feminist critics who point out fl aws
in Chaucer’s “feminism” or see limitations in his
approach tend to excuse him somehow. Is this the
hallmark of Chaucer’s infl uence? Or is it a reluctance
to give up the Wife as a symbol of early feminism?
More recently, feminist critics have begun question-
ing this complacency and the standard approaches.
Elaine Tuttle Hansen, for example, effectively demon-
strates how the Wife is actually silenced, though she
speaks a great deal. Throughout most of her prologue
and tale, the Wife says very little on her own and
instead relies on the words of male authorities—
reshaped, certainly, but nonetheless present. More-
over, the apparent rewarding of a rapist-knight is
troubling and points to the overall ineffectiveness of
the Wife’s apparent feminism. In creating such an out-
rageous example of “feminism,” Chaucer subtly and
effectively undermines her apparent success, thus rein-
forcing the male status quo.
Other critics have begun examining the role of vio-
lence in the Wife’s prologue and tale as a measure of
misogyny, certainly, but also contextually as domestic
violence and economic violence. In this way, too, the
Wife only appears to be free from male control while
actually serving to reinforce patriarchal standards.
FURTHER READING
Amsler, Mark. “The Wife of Bath and Women’s Power.”
Assays 4 (1987): 67–83.
Colmer, Dorothy. “Character and Class in the Wife of Bath’s
Tale.” JEGP 72 (1973): 329–339.
Delany, Sheila. “Strategies of Silence in the Wife of Bath’s
Recital.” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 49–69.
Dinshaw, Carolyn. Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics. Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Justman, Stewart. “Trade as Pudendum: Chaucer’s Wife of
Bath.” Chaucer Review 28 (1994): 344–352.
Martin, Priscilla. Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives, and Ama-
zons. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990.
Straus, Barrie. “The Subversive Discourse of the Wife of
Bath: Phallocentric Discourse and the Imprisonment of
Criticism.” ELH 55 (1988): 527–554.“WIFE’S LAMENT, THE” ANONYMOUS
(before 1072) A short (53-line) poem in Old En-
glish, found in the EXETER BOOK, “The Wife’s Lament”
is generally treated as an ELEGY, though it is also referred
to as a Frauenlied (women’s song). However, since lam-
entation was women’s responsibility, the two genres
overlap.
As the poem opens, a lone female speaker is mourn-
ing her exile, which is the greatest trauma she has faced
in her life. Her lord, perhaps her husband, sailed away.
Worried, she decided to make her position more
secure. Meanwhile, her lord’s kinfolk plotted against
her, conspiring to keep them apart. She has no friends
where she dwells and remains only because her lord
commanded that she do so. She has been alone before,
but then she met her lord, and they had each other.
Now she cannot bear the loneliness. She has been cast
out of her home, sent to live in a cave. She looks out
over the dark and friendless landscape, longing for her
lord and mourning her losses.
Traditional scholarship has read the woman as a
peace-weaver, sent to live among a hostile tribe and
thus exiled from her friends and family, but also exiled
within her new society. Based on this perspective, there
has been a great deal of speculation about the nature of
the husband-wife relationship. Clearly the wife misses
her husband. Some scholars believe that the husband
does not (or no longer does) reciprocate her feelings—
he has turned against her, possibly because of his fam-
ily’s hostility. Another perspective is that she and her
husband share the same feelings and that he is just as
devastated as she is, though the poem refl ects only her
perspective. The general intimacy and tone of despair
lend credence to this perspective. Linguistic support470 “WIFE’S LAMENT, THE”