POST #157: CHAUCER UPDATED or Whores Are Not Bores

A friend lent me his precious modern translation of Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” a few years ago because I wanted to do a blog about The Wife of Bath.  (Post # 80) Why is she so intriguing? I think it’s because her modern counterpart kept turning up in my life (relatives, friends) and now she’s on TV all the time. They are the lusty goddesses/ temptresses I loved to paint. My alter egos? The adventuress I would or could have been if I had had the guts (and the measurements.) 

Anyhow, the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s tale (now married to her fifth husband – the previous four died) is a very modern woman. In fact, she is so modern she recently dominated television news in the re-incarnated form of a tart turned tactician with the nom de plume “Stormy Daniels.” She refused to be a victim, instead, using her ‘know-how’ and her natural (or un-natural) equipment to equalize the gender gap, telling the men who lusted after her: “If you want to use my body, I will control you.” Chaucer makes no bones about her methodology, allowing her to brag about her endowments and skill in utilizing them.

Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath” lived during the Late Middle Ages, a time when women were chattel; upon marriage their bodies as well as everything they owned became the property of their husbands. First married at thirteen, four husbands pre-deceased her leaving her their worldly possessions, plus what they had acquired from her at marriage. In the Prologue to her story, she makes it very clear that while the New Testament may have encouraged chastity, church leaders soon realized this policy wasn’t going to provide them with a lot of followers. It didn’t take our Wife of Bath more than a couple of husbands to learn how to manipulate men, keep herself from being a victim and get them to do what she wanted. Sound familiar?  $130,000? Not bad for a couple of hours of fun and games!

Every time I read a Stormy Daniels interview, I think of the Wife of Bath and how ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same.’ We are supposedly in an age of liberation and sexual freedom where women will no longer have to subjugate themselves to the whims of the men in their lives, I heartily approve of this brave new world, but women like Stormy surely make for interesting art. Where would Titian and Rubens be without them?