Wife Of Bath Mouses Herte Quotes

The Wife of Bath’s “mouses herte”

There is a passage in the ‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue’ wherein the Wife explains and justifies her early relationship with Janekin. For some critics, like Mary Hamel and Dolores Palomo , this is where the Wife entices Janekin to murder her fourth husband in order to wed her. However, whether this occurred is not the argument here. Instead, discussion shall draw attention to a specific stylistic choice that is often overlooked when focusing on the Wife’s murderous intent, despite it raising some interesting questions about the Wife’s character.

The stylistic choice in question is the proverb used by the Wife to justify finding a potential fifth husband whilst still married to her fourth: ‘I holde a mouses herte

nought worth a leek /That hath but oon hole for to sterte to, /And if that faile thanne is all ydo’ . The ‘moral’ being that to reduce the risk of being caught, it is better to have several ‘holes’ to escape through in case one should fail, thus Janekin is her backup in case something should happen to her fourth husband, which it does. However, closer consideration suggests the proverb is not just so simple. The proverb implies that it is better to have several options, however if Janekin is one of these then by extension so is her current husband. If her fourth husband was the ‘oon hole’ then all would be lost, but because Janekin is an alternative option, the Wife is safe. This thus raises the question of from what ‘cat’ the Wife needs her husbands to escape. Given the Wife’s need for ‘sovereinetee’ and that the only way for her to get this, as well as money and sexual pleasure, is through her marriages, it may be a single life she wishes to escape.
Additionally, the proverb becomes more complex when considering Chaucer’s use of ‘mouses herte’, rather than simply ‘mouse’.

Whilst possibly meaning a literal mouse’s heart, the Middle English Dictionary (MED) defines ‘mouses herte’ to mean a coward, and as also used in Troilus and Criseyde to refer to a shy or weak man , it is likely Chaucer is using it in a similar way here. As this is her justification, it is strange that the Wife should refer to herself as a coward, for this is not how she is conveyed throughout the rest of this passage. Instead, many of Chaucer’s stylistic choices display the Wife’s confident and open manner in her dealings with male-female relations. The use of French vocabulary (‘daliaunce’, ‘bobaunce’) could be an attempt to raise the register of her tale, as French is usually associated with wooing scenes in Romances, whilst she demonstrates her dominant nature by telling Janekin he should marry her with the declarative ‘I spak to him’ . The further seemingly nonchalance displayed through the iambic pentameter and syntactic coordination ‘And al was fals’ shows she has no qualms about lying to Janekin, or admitting to it. Furthermore, despite claiming that her narrative is for ‘no bobaunce’ , the Wife’s emphasis through repetition that she found Janekin through her skills of ‘purveyaunce’ or foresight show her to be boastful and proud, not

cowardly.
However, there are elements of the diction used in the passage that could hint at the Wife’s insecurities. The Wife’s decision to describe her relationship with Janekin as ‘swich daliaunce’ , or a ‘flirtation’ seems somewhat of an understatement given that Janekin is supposedly the only husband she loved. Her attraction is complicated; she wants power, but she likes Janekin’s ‘ability to manage her’ . Although perhaps not quite the ‘mouses herte’, it is plausible that the Wife wishes to downplay how much she fell in love with him; unlike her openness about her sexual desires, this is possibly too personal a topic to fully reveal.
Thus, what a close analysis of Chaucer’s stylistic choices suggests is that the Wife herself is not so simple a character. Whilst the tone of the passage demonstrates the Wife’s bold and unapologetic role as narrator, the decision to use the ‘mouses herte’ proverb seems to suggest something different. Yet given the parallelism of the first and last lines, with the Wife opening with ‘I woll tellen forth what happed me’ but similarly finishing with ‘I have my tale again’ , it is not surprising that this passage may not be as straightforward as its chronological content structure may first seem. The ambiguity of the ‘mouses herte’ is perhaps not easily answered, and criticism on this passage that focuses on the Wife’s murderous intent does not provide enlightenment. However, it does suggest, along with the other stylistic choices made by Chaucer, that the Wife is more than just a stereotype, but is instead a complex character worthy of critical analysis.