The Wife of Bath's Tale

Cite some variations in the loathly lady fabula across the three tales in your reader. Focus on the conditions by which the lady is either beautiful or ugly, and the actions of the knight/king/”hero”

Chaucer

When Chaucer’s lady is first introduced she is referred to as a woman (line 998), ugly creature (999), old wife (1000) and a mother (1005). However as we read further on, this lady voices her desire – to be wedded to the knight. He had no idea this was coming! This lead to him exclaiming “Alas and woe is me!... Take all my goods and let my body go”. The one thing that the lady desired was the one thing he wanted to avoid. He was grateful for a moment that she had given him his answer that saved his life BUT to be married was another story in itself – he objected “for God’s love, choose another request” (1060), this was because of her outward appearance.

In lines 1067-1072 the knight doesn’t necessarily say anything about her looks, rather he talks about the shame that will be brought to him and his family now that he has to marry her - “Alas, that any of my family should ever be so foully degraded!” This indeed didn’t need any description of her looks because the statement was self-explanatory. It was shaming to be seen with her and to marry her would bring shame to the family name. After their marriage he “hid himself like an owl, so woeful was he, his wife looked so ugly.” (1081-1082).

Throughout the whole tale he is bitter about the situation he’s in - trying to find the answer to the question put forth by the Queen “what thing is it that women most desire” (905). After finding his answer through the woman in the forest – “women desire to have sovereignty as well over her husband as her love, and to be in mastery above him” (1038-1040) he was even more startled that this woman desired to be his wife and wanted nothing to do with her. This goes to show that he was clearly selfish, self-centred and cared about himself and no one else which takes us back to the beginning of the tale where we learn of his selfish desires of raping the innocent maid. He isn’t very ‘knightly’ throughout the whole tale.

Hahn

The difference between Hahn’s and Chaucer’s ladies is that Hahn’s text goes into a lot of detail in describing how ugly this woman is. She was ‘that’ ugly that “King Arthur surely marvelled.” He goes on to describe her ugliness by saying “her nose running, her mouth wide, her teeth all yellow…her teeth hung out of her lips.” It’s no wonder why he marvelled so much! He even said “she had ugliness to spare”.

So she basically gives King Arthur an ultimatum, ‘listen to me or you’ll die’. The king’s life was in jeopardy so he had to talk to Gawain (the knight), in which Gawain’s loyalty to his king is something to remember. The knight knew his obligation and loyalty to the king, hence he’d do anything for him, even marry someone he’d never seen before - who was ugly! “You are my honoured king and have done me good many times. Therefore I hesitate not to save your life, my Lord. It is my duty”. The king’s response was that of praising and honouring the knight for saving his “life and reputation forever”. I think this is the difference between Hahn’s knight and Chaucer’s – one knows his role to the king and was willing to do anything for him. The other took advantage of his role as a knight and raped an innocent maid and later on paid for it by marrying someone he didn’t want to.

Span

I find Span’s version rather interesting, it is however the shortest of the three texts (well, that we’ve been given) and he describes her as a “grisly ghost trampling on the floor”. Was she even mortal? Anyway, it goes on to say that when she entered the house she must have been that ugly or scary looking that huntsmen “fled the hall”. Now we know that when we hear the name huntsman we think of someone that is not scared of anything, and then we hear this description which only leads us to think that this ‘grisly ghost’ was disturbingly inhuman.

Describing her, Span says that “her teeth were like the tether stakes, her nose like club or mell, and nothing less she seemed to be than a fiend that comes from hell”. She demands, so to speak, king Henry to do whatever she wanted and he obediently follows commands because he was the only one left in the room. His actions/courtesy was eventually rewarded as she had a physical transformation.