"He Nedes Moste Hire Wedde": The Forced Marriage in the "Wife of Bath's Tale" and Its Middle English Analogues.
- Author/Editor
- Glasser, Marc.
- Title
- "He Nedes Moste Hire Wedde": The Forced Marriage in the "Wife of Bath's Tale" and Its Middle English Analogues.
- Published
- Glasser, Marc. "'He Nedes Moste Hire Wedde': The Forced Marriage in the 'Wife of Bath's Tale' and Its Middle English Analogues." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin de la Société Néophilologique /Bulletin of the Modern Language Society 85 (1984): 239-41.
- Review
- This brief article compares Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" with three Middle English analogues: Gower's "Tale of Florent" in the "Confessio Amantis," "The Marriage of Sir Gawayne," and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell." In Gower's version, and the two other analogues, the central male character agrees to marry the loathly lady as a condition of her revealing the secret to him, and all three men--more or less happily--carry out their side of the bargain without disputing it. In Chaucer's version, the nameless knight accepts the lady's offer of help without prior knowledge that marriage to her will be the "quid pro quo." Once he has been saved, and she demands that he pay up, the knight denies ever consenting to the union and tries to argue his way out of it, but he is ultimately forced to marry her. The theme of coerced marriage is especially suited to the Wife of Bath as narrator, as she has experienced five marriages where verbal abuse and physical brutality were experienced on both sides. The Wife is unable to imagine marriage except as a contest "in which one spouse must forcefully struggle to dominate the other" (241). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 1984
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations