Feminism In The Canterbury Tales

Feminism is the belief that everyone should have equal rights and opportunities, regardless of their gender, but the feminist movement did not begin until the twentieth century. When Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, the term of feminism would have been unknown, even if the concepts feminism is rooted in were prevalent in Chaucer’s time. These ideas and beliefs can be identified in writings from before the twentieth century and considered proto-feminist. However, The Canterbury Tales is a story of contradicting ideas when read through a feminist lens.

In the Wife of Bath’s prologue readers begin to see a glimpse of how strong-willed this woman is, especially as she speaks about her beliefs regarding the Bible. At line 35, she says “Lo, here the wise king daun Salomon:/I trowe he hadde wives many oon,” indicating that she is well read and able to defend her five marriages using evidence from the Bible. The Wife is also sex-positive as she believes that if God had not wanted people to have sex, then they would not have the parts for it and she can find no evidence in the Bible

that indicates she should not have sex. She also demands respect from those around her and when her fifth husband attempted to get her to submit to him, she refuses. In the Wife of Bath’s tale, there is a dramatic decrease in feminist ideas, but some do exist. The King is willing to let his Queen make a decision regarding the life of one of his knights and her court is made up entirely of women. There is nothing to suggest that the Queen’s court’s decision would be considered less than because no men were involved.
Despite the examples above, to call this long text proto-feminist would be to ignore all the textual evidence to the contrary.

In the Wife’s Prologue, she speaks about wanting men to be her slaves, which is not equality between the sexes, but just flipping the rhetoric on its head. The Wife is unwilling to treat her husband with respect, which can be seen at lines 547-548 when she says “… and blamed himself for he/Hadde told to me so greet a privetee.” In the Wife’s tale, there are many generalizations of women: they cannot keep secrets (something that she demonstrates in the prologue), all they want is power, and beautiful women cannot stay faithful. The Queen of the story spares a rapist’s life, but offers no explanation as to why. The knight is ashamed of marrying the woman who saved his life because she is old and ugly. The moral of the story is that men should submit to their

wives.
There is enough textual evidence to call The Canterbury Tales proto-feminist, but to do so would be ignorant of the evidence to the contrary. There are passages within the tales that seem to grasp the concepts of feminism quite well, but then are followed by lines that are no better than the ideas that modern feminism are trying to abolish.