What women want?

If what men want is to replace (or embrace) their mothers, and what women want is to supplant them, their respective ambitions can be caught by the narrative analogues of Lacan’s Discourse of the Master and Discourse of the Analyst respectively, namely $ → S₁ → S₂ → a and S₂ → a → $ → S₁. Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella if you like.

The respective narrative types are not confined to male and female protagonists, but nevertheless may be thought of as embodying stereotypical gendered aspirations. It is interesting, then, to see how they are treated in two of the Canterbury Tales where Chaucer seems to subvert the apparent message.

The texts I have in mind are the Wife of Bath’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale. In the first we have a knight who finds himself in the wilderness ($) when he is reprieved from sentence of death for raping a girl encountered by the riverside; the queen and the ladies of the court dispatch him to find the answer to the question what women want.

After a long and fruitless search the knight falls in with an old woman (the Donor), who provides him with the answer on condition he will agree to perform the first task she asks of him.

             ‘Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee

             As wel over hir housbond as hir love,’

is the answer provided, and when he returns to the court (the city), the ladies have to agree that he has satisfied them (and for those who want a point by point deconstruction of the narrative, this is the easy task).

The Hero must now, however, encounter the Villain: the role now taken by the ‘olde wyf’ in her insistence that the knight marry her: he protests

            But al for noght; the ende was this, that he

            Constreyned was, he nedes moste hire wedde;

            And taketh his olde wyf, and gooth to bedde.

(the easy journey).

Now he is in the new place, where the ‘olde wyf’ has the role of King: that is, she explains what true gentillesse consists of, and faces the Hero with the difficult task to choose

                                    oon of thise thynges tweye:

            To han me foul and old til that I deye,

            And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf,

            and nevere yow displese in al my lyf:

            Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair,

            And take youre aventure of the repair

            That shal be to youre hous by cause of me ...

The knight finally leaves the choice up to her: his reward is to find himself at last in the garden (a), where the woman, now his Princess, has made the choice not only to be young and beautiful, but faithful as well.

What women want? To help an abusive male live out his gendered fantasy? Couldn’t the fairy bride have done better for herself? Let’s compare this story with the Clerk’s Tale. Once again, the transition to the new place (for Grisilde) is connected with a wedding – here, by the surprising revelation of the marquis Walter’s desire to marry her.

Then he, in the role of King, faces her with the difficult task, or difficult ask, at least, of agreeing to submit without question to whatever he requires:

            I seye this, be ye redy with good herte

            To al my lust, and that I frely may,

            As me best thynketh, do yow laughe or smerte,

            And nevere ye to grucche it, nyght ne day?

Having sworn, Grisilde is now in the garden; Walter is her Princess. This completes the second part of the tale.

Parts 3, 4 and 5 are laid in the wilderness, and concern the trials put upon Grisilde by Walter in the character of antagonistic Donor. She is first made to believe that her daughter has been done away with, then her son, and finally that her husband is repudiating her in favour of a younger woman (the daughter, now twelve years old). All of this Grisilde bears without question or complaint; which brings about the ‘happy ending’:

            And whan this Walter saugh hire pacience,

            Hire glade chiere, and no malice at al,

            And he so ofte had doon to hire offence,

            And she ay sad and constant as a wal,

            Continuynge evere hire innocence overal,

            This sturdy markys gan his herte dresse

            To rewen upon hire wyfly stedfastnesse.

It is an easy task, it seems, for her to fall in with his change of heart, and we are back in the city, the polity restored:

            Ful many a yeer in heigh prosperitee

            Lyven thise two in concord and in reste ...

In both tales an abusive male gets what he wants, in the wife of Bath’s Tale as Hero, in the Clerk’s Tale as Other; however the narrative is gendered, it seems the women can’t win.