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General comment on answers to Wife of Bath questions.

These notes were offered to students after their Year 12 'mock' exam.

The main essay title explored here is: "A talkative, man-eating monster of a woman." Comment on this description of the Wife of Bath as she is portrayed by Chaucer.

In general questions were sensitively answered. Candidates were particularly good at exploring the text, using it to support proposals and reflecting thoughtfully about elements of the questions. Few answers were irrelevant.

The most popular question was (a):
"A talkative, man-eating monster of a woman."
Comment on this description of the Wife of Bath as she is portrayed by Chaucer.

i) Almost all candidates recognised the elements of the question. "Talkative" is clearly there to be explored, and "man-eating monster" as well. All students tackled these elements of the text and "commented" as requested. However, few students seemed to know how to tackle the issue of how the Wife of Bath is "portrayed by Chaucer". This weakness should be worked on. A thorough and methodical approach should underpin answers to this common element in questions.

ii) The issue of the wife's "talkativeness".
Candidates were lulled into a false sense of security here. It seems almost to easy. Yes, the wife talks a lot; in fact, that is all some candidates could say. No-one challenged the word. Some candidates explored the sense of her monologue being speech-like in character. In the end, however, most candidates struggled here.

Some points to consider:
Yes, the wife is talkative in the following senses:
a) Her prologue is by far the longest in the entire Canterbury Tales; it is twice as long as the tale itself.
b) She is talkative in the sense of being a "gossip." There is material in the text that allows us to explore the wife as a gossip, with her references to Alisoun and her "nece". Yes, this is a woman who enjoys talking, more accurately, dramatising herself in words.
c) Chaucer has established an elaborately authentic speech style for the wife. Her language is often that of the casual conversation in its colloquialisms, expletives, insults, swearing, vulgarities and rhetorical questions, as well as in its digressions. So, explore the wife's style of speaking and you will find some support for the proposal that she is "talkative" and that, to some extent, her style can be so described.

However, "talkative" is a weak verb. There is something vapid and empty-headed about it: it has no force and fails to speak of the sheer energy of this particular speaker. It is also a very poor description of the variety of speech acts the wife deploys in her prologue. A good answer must recognise the wife as PREACHER. She delivers a SERMON for a large part of the beginning of
the text. She LECTURES her audience too, a trait no doubt picked up from the scholarly fifth husband. Her prologue must also be seen as a CONFESSION, in which she gives account of her past loves, her tricks as a woman and wife. She harangues her fellow pilgrims, she bullies them, she hectors and dominates them. Rather than her just being talkative, she can be argued to be delivering a "self-revealing SOLILOQUY" or DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE. The Canterbury Tales is arguably a drama and this a dramatic poem, delivered by a speaker on a metaphorical stage - and it can be seen as a form of AUTOBIOGRAPHY, full of self-revelation and the joys she offers as she allows us into her private world and, however unknowingly, into her psyche.

Exploring some of these issues will show that you are aware of the variety of the wife's prologue and show that you can analyse her style of delivery which is NOT just that of the gossip. Merely demonstrating that she is "talkative" would be a weak answer.

iii) The wife as "man-eating monster". Most candidates were much better on this, with a variety of points of view emerging. However, there are one or two major issues here, and it will not be good enough to casually comment on what you feel. Your arguments will have to be scholarly too.
You could propose she is not a monster:
a) You could take a Marxist point of view and propose that the wife represents a revolutionary desire of the time, to overthrow "patriarchy and clerical oppression". She recognises that money is power.
b) You could take a loosely feminist line and argue that the wife is in revolt against social conformity. If the wife doesn't play by the rules it is because the rules are stacked against her. She challenges the limitations put upon people by church and social convention.
c) You could take a much more sympathetic line: you could see her as a child-bride, married young (at 12 years of age initially) to old men, who grows up not knowing what love is, who sees abuse and power as the heart of marriage, not the act of love between equals. There is arguably an element of tragedy about this: the great energies and qualities of the wife are lost in this sterile war of the sexes. Flaunting herself and her power makes her, at one and the same time, an impressive figure and a shallow one. In her verbalisation of her sexual energy - her boasts, rather - she is entertaining, raises an ongoing human theme, and demonstrates the limited range of her emotional vocabulary.
d) Yes, a woman of her time, and a great, bawdy, human soul of any party/pilgrimage!

You could argue otherwise, though:
a) The mediaeval satirical tradition. You could argue that Chaucer has exploited in the Wife of Bath a tradition of representing `low-life' characters for comic purposes. In this tradition characters often embodied social vices or corruption, they displayed weaknesses of character, morality and `sensibility'. Is the Wife of Bath a satire on the wife and her absurd self-aggrandisement? After all, she isn't a scholar and her `scholarly arguments' about Biblical interpretation are more often than not comic in their wilful waywardness. Her mimicry of scholarly exegesis is surely fooling no-one!
b) Is not the Wife of Bath very like the wives and women of the misogynist literature that her fifth husband continually reads to her? Isn't she the shrew described here? According to the wife a woman's finest quality is her ability to lie. Yes, just what men have been saying age upon age, according to the literature!
c) Yes, the wife eats men! Even when she claims to love one - Jankin - it is SEX she loves. And wasn't it terrible! To be fancying someone else at the funeral of your late husband?! (Or was it so terrible given the husband she had?!)
d) Isn't it the case that Chaucer is offering us a figure full of psychological contradictions? She loves and hates men; she seeks marriage but hates it in practice. Are we are working here with a "dual personality", one half of which is a (comic?) monster?

So: explore the possibilities. However, it will not be good enough to just `think about it all' in a scholarly vacuum. You must be aware of the ISSUES in any question. Your thoughtfulness and sensitivity alone cannot get you all the marks.

Some things you must do for some of the marks:
a) Be able to offer or explore alternative points of view/ `critical discussion': see above.
b) Be able to explore the `context' of a work: see above.
c) Be able to use a critical vocabulary: see above.
Few candidates got marks for these aspects of a good answer. So, do know the six examination board criteria and target the criteria in your answers. Unless you do this you cannot get all the marks. KNOW what you are trying to do. (If you are not sure about the criteria, see my Internet English web site which offers material on the exam board criteria).

iii) Analysis of the wife's character. One point: avoid oversimplifications. Many students wrote about the wife's "honesty'" or "truthfulness". You will have to be much more precise about what you mean here, given that the wife is a self-confessed liar, and proud of it! Some critics have wondered if we can believe anything the wife says... The use of "intelligent" is a similar problem. You would be better being more precise (`intelligent' can mean many things and, sometimes, nothing at all in its vagueness) - consider `wily'; `devious'; `cunning'; `ingenious', etc. Finally, this leads me to a lack of precision in general in your vocabulary. You really must not be using a colloquial vocabulary now you are in the Upper Sixth: avoid `put across'; `comes across'; `sticking to the tale'; `wants to have fun'; `loses track of what she is saying'; `on the surface', etc. Linguistic accuracy speaks of a finely-honed mind: examiners are looking for precisely that.

iv) Finally, do make sure that you write your ideas in good sentences. Avoid muddle or long, complicated statements. You may have a good idea in there but if it is in a muddle you will often not get the marks you deserve. So be precise and accurate in your statements. Again, good English speaks of a well disciplined mind and a well disciplined mind will DO BETTER.


SJB Jan. 98