Freedom and Choice: Postnuptial Negotiation, the Flitch of Bacon Custom, and the Woe of Marriage in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" and "The Book of Margery Kempe.”

Author / Editor
O’Neill, Rosemary.

Title
Freedom and Choice: Postnuptial Negotiation, the Flitch of Bacon Custom, and the Woe of Marriage in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" and "The Book of Margery Kempe.”

Published
Sharon M. Rowley, ed. Writers, Editors, and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 101-24.

Description
Explores marital struggles and "postnuptial renegotiation of marriage obligations" in WBPT and "The Book of Margery Kempe." Presents "contemporary feminist theories of contracts, consent, and choice" to reveal limitations of "choice" and negotiations for married couples in late medieval England.

Alternative Title
Writers, Editors, and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale