"If women hadde written stories": Gender and Social Change in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" and Jane Austen's "Persuasion."

Author / Editor
Michoux, Anne-Claire, and Katrin Rupp.

Title
"If women hadde written stories": Gender and Social Change in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" and Jane Austen's "Persuasion."

Published
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert, eds. The Challenge of Change (Tübingen: Narr, 2018), pp. 101-21.

Description
Suggests that Jane Austen may have known WBPT and argues that there are similarities between Chaucer's Wife and Anne Elliot in Austen's "Persuasion," in that both characters "note that male authoritarian writing delimits women's social standing," and that each "offers textual alternatives [textiles and texts] that challenge the hegemony of male writing" and urges social change in order to inscribe women in literary tradition.

Contributor
Rupp, Katrin.
Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret, ed.
Hilpert, Martin, ed.

Alternative Title
The Challenge of Change.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion