The Second Sex and The Final Quit: Part II

Another Perspective on Sex and Rhetoric

Hello, dear Reader.

Welcome to the second installment of my newest series, a collection of posts interested in analyzing Chaucer’s tales in order to glean some insight into an early commentary on women’s rhetorical power.

If you missed the first one and want to read it in its entirety, it’s linked here.

Let us begin!

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Previously, I had constructed my initial inquiry by examining the Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale through a critical lens provided by a French philosopher (and real-world example of lasting and influential female rhetoric) named Simone de Beauvoir.

In her piece of theoretical criticism, The Second Sex, Beauvoir had argued that women were up against a mythic construction known as the Eternal Feminine, which aims to enforce women into a certain rigid idea of femininity that excludes the diversity or natural variability of individuality. With women placed in opposition to man as an Other, anything that fell outside of the prescribed myth, instead of deepening or pushing the boundaries of the definition, would not be seen as feminine.

I posited the Wife of Bath as a proto-feminist because of her insistence on breaking down her own contemporary boundaries, constraints which medieval society (specifically the anti-feminist rhetoric associated with the clerical) had placed around her.

But to me, something of even greater significance than her rejection of societal impositions was the Wife of Bath’s rhetorical ambitions and Chaucer’s subtextual commentary on the strength of a woman’s voice.

In my last post, I called her fiercely unapologetic in her rhetorical ambitions and covered numerous ways in which her utilization of physical space and audacious viewpoints and methods on matters of sexuality, Church, and women’s speech’s inherent powers throughout her portion of the third fragment was influential and raw as a tribute and paving of societal mobility for women to embark on when seizing rhetorical ability.

As promised, I was interested in continuing this exploration of Chaucer’s commentary on the importance of women’s sexuality and rhetorical power through a different tale from his work.

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The Manciple’s portion of The Canterbury Tales is a fraction of the Wife of Bath’s. In fact, its line count, totaling both his prologue and his tale, come out to be almost 50 words short of just the Wife of Bath’s tale.

But there is not any space wasted.

Within the frame of his prologue, the Manciple actually has a fight with the Cook and steps up in his place to tell a tale because the Cook is physically unable to due to his drunken state.

The tale’s set up is similar to many we have been exposed to throughout Chaucer’s fabliaux. Within it, we find ourselves following the relationship of Phebus and his wife and, in this case, its eventual dissolution as things take a turn for the worse.

And though there is important connections to be made between what the Manciple might be trying to do with the narrative in order to address the Cook and the events that had preceded the tale’s onset, the point of view that I wish to offer you, Reader, is that the Manciple’s tale serves as the ultimate quitting of the Wife of Bath’s prologue, despite their distance within the fragments.

The Manciple quits the Wife of Bath’s two major lines of discourse:

1. The nature of women’s sexuality

2. The rhetorical power of a woman’s voice

Within this post, we will explore how the Manciple quits the Wife of Bath on women’s sexuality.

The Manciple

Within his tale, the Manciple includes a long section that discusses three specific animals and their immutable wild tendencies. The list increases the ferocity of the bestial nature with each new inclusion, replacing the initial example of the captive bird with a house cat before then shifting outside of the domestic to present a she-wolf.

The section spans from line 163-186, but though the descriptions are rich alone, the context from which the bestial list begins is important for accessing the Manciple’s subtextual intentions (Lawton).

After discussing Phebus’ loving labor on behalf of his wife–

This worthy Phebus dooth al that he kan

To plesen hire, wenynge for swich plesaunce,

And for his manhede and his governaunce,

That no man sholde han put hym from hir grace. (lines 156-159)

–the Manciple forebodingly interjects that Phebus’ work in effort to retain her fidelity is a hopeless endeavor, for “God it woot, ther may no man embrace / As to destreyne a thyng which that nature / Hath natureelly set in a creature” (lines 160-162).

With a linkage struck between Phebus’ wife–and thus women as a whole–the concept of a bestial creature, the list of animals succeeding this assertion invites a multitude of new implications to be made about the second sex.

The Manciple’s treatment of the captive bird paints an image of ungratefulness and imprudence about Phebus’ wife and women that is harsh in its demonstration of the bird’s rejection of civility and provided comfortability;

Taak any bryd, and put it in a cage,
And do al thyn entente and thy corage
To fostre it tendrely with mete and drynke
Of alle deyntees that thou kanst bithynke,
And keep it al so clenly as thou may,
Although his cage of gold be never so gay,
Yet hath this brid, by twenty thousand foold,
Levere in a forest that is rude and coold
Goon ete wormes and swich wrecchednesse. (lines 163-171)

The criticism escalates with the house cat, which experiences similar refined comforts, such as “milk / And tendre flessh” as well as a “couche of silk” (lines 175-176). Despite its perceived domesticity, “lat hym seen a mous go by the wal,” the cat will forget “every deyntee that is in that hous,” forgoing these blessings in order to pursue his “appetit [ ] to ete a mous” (lines 177-180).

The diction used in the cat’s section are important for us to begin tracing the Manciple’s quitting of the Wife of Bath; the word appetite is multifaceted and is often used in reference to an individual’s libido (the Wife of Bath employs it herself 3 different times within her prologue in reference to fleshly, sexual desire).

The concluding lines state the word “appetite” again, but it is clustered with other words that not only evoke associations with sex but are relevant to the tale’s plot and also call back to moments from the Wife of Bath’s prologue.

The Manciple writes: “Lo, heere hath lust [the cat’s] dominacioun, / And appetit fleemeth discrecioun” (lines 181-182).

Lust’s connotations are self-explanatory, and the Manciple’s tale is about a married woman who’s carnal appetite leads to a loss of discretion.

But the idea of domination is a more subtle connection that is heavily involved in the Wife of Bath’s prologue.

The Wife of Bath is open in her discussion of coital relations and especially the power dynamics of bed affairs. Arias points out that the Wife of Bath refers to her vagina as an instrument in line 149 of her prologue, which implies its usefulness as “a tool” (4). The text states that she “In wifhode wol I use myn instrument / As freely as my Makere hath it sent” (Lawton line 149-150). The line following this transforms her sexual organ into more than just a tool; she says “If I be daungerous, God yive me sorwe” (line 151).

The footnote tells us that a woman who is “daungerous” is one that rejects her husband’s sexual advances (206). The Lawton translation connects the word “daungerous” to “standoffish”, but Harvard’s line by line translation, as well as Arias’ scholarship likens it to “stingy”. For my own interests, I too will take my stance upon the translation of “stingy,” for the Wife of Bath does develop the idea that a woman’s dominance within a relationship is sourced in her marital currency: sexual pleasure, its coinage being the vagina.

She pushes the idea of women’s ability to dominate and take power in a relationship through sexual economics as her prologue continues, saying:

Myn housbonde shal it han both eve and morwe,

Whan that him list come forth and paye his dette.

An housbonde wol I have, I wol nat lette,

Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral,

And have his tribulacion withal

Upon his flessh whil that I am his wif.

have the power during al my lif

Upon his propre body, and nat he:

Right thus th’Apostle tolde it unto me,

And bad oure housbondes for to love us wel. (line 152-161)

This passage is rich in its inversion of the “traditional narrative of males being the confident and dominant partners in bed” forcing them through her rhetoric to become the “submissive [, positioning them] under female dominance” (Arias 5).

Through sex, she has her husbands–who she likens to “debtors” and “slaves–pay their “debt” to her; in this way, she will wield “power” over him “al [her] lif” through commanding “his propre body” (Lawton lines 155-159). Notice also a concept I discussed in my previous post: how she uses the Scripture to support her position– “thus th’Apostle tolde it unto me”–that extra aspect of clerical-rhetoric subversion, which is so distinctive of the Wife of Bath’s approach towards bolstering feminine progression through her language and argumentative style.

Where the Wife of Bath sees this avenue of domination as a powerful tool for elevating women in their societal relations, the Manciple perspective finds distaste in this “appetite”, and thus posits it as a loss of civility.

He seals his criticism, and this half of his quitting of the Wife of Bath, with the she-wolf. The most condemning of his examples, he does not hide his disdain, which is explicit in the context and diction of his description. He states directly that “A she-wolf [or woman] also hath a vileins kinde” (Lawton line 183).

A final jab at the erroneous judgement of women, he essentially says that the wolf has no standards and will even seek out “The lewedeste wolf that she may finde, / Or leest of reputacion” in the “time whan hire lust to han a make” (lines 184-186).

This eventually reflects and parallels the events surrounding Phebus’ wife, who the narrator–and the crow later to Phebus–has taken a lover of “litel reputacion” (Lawton line 253).

However, something I appreciated from the Manciple’s harsh views is his acceptance of carnality as a dimension of femininity.

Instead of upholding a mythic construction of a chaste woman, the Manciple–if we set aside his less than positive perspective for a moment–has actually been arguing for its natural existence within women. More than that, he finishes this section by proposing that it is in all of us, including himself. He states that “Flessh is so newefangel (with meschaunce!)”, implying that we are all victims of wordly appetites (Lawton line 193)

Here, I will conclude my analysis of the Manciple’s treatment of women’s carnal appetite as well as his quitting of the Wife of Bath on the topic of sex and the argument for its economical weight between women and men.

In my third and final installment, we will finish this series with a look at one more aspect of the Manciple’s quitting of the Wife of Bath.

Thank you for sticking with me throughout this series!

Until the next, dear Reader <3

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Arias, Rosana M. "Is that Sexual Innuendo?: How The Wife of Bath Displays Female

Intelligence through Euphemism." Embodied: The Stanford Undergraduate Journal of

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 9 June 2022, Stanford University

Archives. ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/sjfgss/article/view/2091/1467.

Lawton, David, editor. The Norton Chaucer. E-book, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Leitch, Vincent B., et al. “Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex.” Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Third ed., Norton & Company Limited, W.W., 2018.