Carter, Susan. “Coupling the Beastly Bride and the Hunter Hunted: What Lies Behind Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale.” The Chaucer Review 37.4 (2003): 329-345.
Susan Carter’s article entitled, “Coupling the Beastly Bride and the Hunter Hunted: What Lies Behind Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale“, explores gender, more specifically that a central theme of the Wife’s Tale is it’s “liberation from gender role restriction” (Carter 329). The hag is described as a very unattractive person, with green teeth and thick ankles. She therefore uses trickery and magic to lure in the knight and offers him help so he may keep his life. Ultimately, she becomes dominant to the male sexually as well as mentally. Carter designed her article around three main point: heterosexual relationships, the feminization of King Arthur’s court and the female power.
In relation to heterosexual exchange, Carter examines the control of power, through desire, pleasure and frustration. The hag, naturally, represents the female presence in the text where the knight stands to represent male domination. The knight is in trouble with King Arthur’s court because he committed rape and is now facing punishment. The court hands the punishment over to the queen, who tells the knight if he can answer her question correctly he will not face death. The queen asks him what women want and is given one year to come up with the correct answer. The knight goes in search of this answer, and on his journey comes across the hag. She lures her to him with the illusion of beautiful ladies dancing on a lawn in the forest. She appears and offers him the correct answer if he will in turn do whatever she asks him to do. The knight agrees and thus gives up his male domination, giving the hag the upper hand. “When the knight surrenders to female ‘maistrye’, he surrenders not to the romanticized woman projected by male desire, but to the woman conceived in the pessimistic terms of anti-feminism” (Carter 332). The hag offers the knight what he needs so that she can make him do whatever she wants, giving her dominance and power over him. She uses illusion to lure him to her and ultimately uses him for her own pleasure.
In her depiction of the Wife’s tale, Carter also touches upon the feminization of King Arthur’s court. The knight is a member of the court and the tale begins with his rape of a woman. King Arthur’s court is known throughout the kingdom as “an elite military system of justice” (Carter 334) and even though the knight is a member of the court he still must be punished. The queen requests the punishment be given to her, and Arthur concedes. “Although Arthur is named and Guinevere is not, and although his household loses the ‘lusty bacheler’ into the countryside, it is women who people the Arthurian court interior” (Carter 334). This is brought up again when the knight returns to the queen with his answer to her riddle. The final judges of the knights response are women, putting the fate of his life in their hands, thus giving them complete control. “For the purpose of this tale, the court is represented by what women want…As well as creating a sense of authentic feminine subjectivity in the Wife’s assessment of the Arthurian court, her regendering is sympathetic to the Sovranty Hag’s ultimate jurisdiction over the male court” (Carter 335).
The main theme of Carter’s article is the gender role reversal and the switch of power over to the female. The scene in the forest where the knight and the hag first meet each other is a fine example of this. The knight is lured to the hag by the illusion of dancing ladies, who he hopes to seek wisdom and an answer to his riddle. The illusion is then shattered when the hag appears before him. The hag sets up a temptation for the wandering knight. “Yet the dancing ladies prefigure the hag, and would seem to be her chosen representation of herself: a roadside attraction designed to ensnare the knight. It works” (Carter 336). The hag becomes the hunter and the knight the hunted, thus giving the female power.
In conclusion, Carter addresses the end of the tale, where the male is finally rewarded. The hag has him where she wants him and offers him a question as to how he wishes her to appear on the outside, The knight’s response, that the choice should be up to her, shows how well the dominance of the female presence worked. “The closure of the Wife of Bath’s Tale, in consistency with other loathly lady tales, shows that female control rewards the male once he is willing to step outside the stricture of role play” (Carter 345). The hag’s domineering role and the knight’s submissive role lead each of them to getting what they want or being rewarded. However, the female dominance throughout the Wife’s tale is uncommon for medieval literature.
I agree with the concept of Carter’s article. Although she confused me at some points with the examples she tied into the theme, her depiction of the Wife of Bath’s Tale was accurate. The shift of power is an obvious theme of the tale and Carter lays out examples from the text in an organized manner. Carter’s argument is backed up with appropriate examples from the text which gives her argument more credibility.
