Chaucer's 'Marriage Group' Revisited: The Wife of Bath and Merchant in Debate
- Author / Editor
- Haahr, Joan G.
Chaucer's 'Marriage Group' Revisited: The Wife of Bath and Merchant in Debate
- Published
- Helen R. Lemay, ed. Homo Carnalis: The Carnal Aspect of Medieval Human Life. Acta 14 (1990, for 1987): 105-20.
- Series
- Acta 14 (1990, for 1987)
- Description
- The Wife of Bath (the female counterpart of the "senex amans") stands in opposition to the Husband-Merchant in MerT. They are "mercantile figures of similar status and class," the Wife involved in production, the Merchant in export. Each sees sex as a commodity; each is skeptical of clerical doctrine.
- Undercutting "traditional marriage theories," each addresses "questions left unanswered by clerical theoreticians." Though she is a promiscuous, tyrannical stereotypical Archwife, the Wife gains sympathy through the sincerity of her effort to accomodate her natural sexuality within "the hostile framework of the medieval church." The Merchant, by contrast, is repulsive.
- Contributor
- Lemay, Helen R., ed.
- Alternative Title
- Homo Carnalis: The Carnal Aspect of Medieval Human Life.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Merchant and His Tale.