Rebellious female characters in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
So, where do these limitations leave the rebellious women of The Canterbury Tales ? It has become clear that a feminist criticismof the work raises issues regarding its author’s inability to construct an identity for women that is not in part dependent onmen, a key tenet of Davies’ more positive reading of the text. Therefore, the label of a text that is truly pro- female in this way is difficult to apply. While Chaucer’s more rebellious women find ways to manipulate the system in which they are trapped, it is still a trapping system; however, this is only to an extent. The Tales do have redeeming features, and this largely comes in Chaucer’s use of form. One first key element is that of the Narrator, who, while they are a masculine voice imposing upon women, is at least giving women a voice: it is certainly significant that the Narrator commands the Miller to ‘tel on’ during his prologue, conceding that he tell his tale first instead of letting ‘some bettre man’ speak first and thus ‘lat [the order] werken thriftly’. In this, the Narrator indulges the transgressive, drunken Miller and his disregard for the ‘proper’ order of storytelling, something exemplary of the pluralistic attitude that runs through the text and is so posit ive in how it allows women a degree of representation: in contrast with Chaucer’s key source text, Boccaccio’s ‘ Decameron ’ , which features only young gentlemen and women, the Tales embrace a wider range of society. Indeed, simply by creating a text in which every walk of life, from Knight to Cook, is represented, Chaucer does, to some extent, aid a feminist cause in raising interest in female voices: regardless of how we critique her depiction and tale, the Wife of Bath is a developed female character, cruc ially possessing the independence that Boccaccio’s female narrators, who cannot even leave Florence without some men to guide them on their journey. Furthermore, in the two more rebellious female characters discussed here, characters like the Wife of Bath are not explicitly criticized: we are left to judge her for ourselves. Similarly, in the Miller’s Tale, Chaucer focuses any morals that the tale contains around the Distichs of a Dionysius Cato, about whom little else is known, a figure removed from the Christianity and medieval society that seek to oppress her sexuality, reminding us throughout of his warning against a disparity in ages in marriage, reiterating often that ‘youthe and elde is often at debaat’. In his Tales, Chaucer creates a kaleidoscope of voices and leaves the reader to judge them; however, this pluralism is limited by an inability to stray far beyond established power dynamics. Chaucer’s Tales may give a documentary -like focus to these women but are still impacted by the scope of his lens: he can invert and critique, but he cannot conceive a true alternative. To conclude, it is problematic to label characters such as the Wife of Bath and Alisoun as successfully rebelling against their society; however, it is not correct to disparage Chau cer’s depiction of women in the Tales either. What it really seems to be is a proto-feminist work, insecure regarding its portrayal of fully developed women, but at least moving towards this: pragmatically speaking, it is a strong positive that he has given a voice to a group to which his world generally did not, although arguably his perception of women is limited in its depth by an inability to forge a ‘separate’ voice and identity for them, instead constructing them as imitations of men, trapped in an oppressive system he recognizes but cannot escape.
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