Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index



  • Title: The Wife of Bath, from the Ellesmere Chaucer
  • Creator:
  • Description: "This folio from the Ellesmere Chaucer, one of the earliest manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, contains the text of the Wife of Bath’s prologue and the beginning of her tale. In her prologue, the Wife regales her fellow pilgrims with recollections of her five marriages and her unusual mastery over her husbands. The Wife, named Alisoun, unapologetically tells how she acquired money, property, and marital power from her husbands through calculated deployment of her abundant wit and sexual charm. A miniature illustration of Alisoun appears beside the first few lines of her prologue in the Ellesmere Chaucer. She sits astride her horse, brandishing a whip and wearing spurs. The illustration hearkens back to Alisoun’s first appearance in the general prologue of the Tales. Chaucer introduces the Wife of Bath as an attractive, well-traveled woman in the cloth business who displays her affluence and trade in the clothes she wears. Alisoun has gapped teeth, good hips, and wears “ten pounds” of fine kerchiefs beneath a very wide hat. Her bright red stockings add to the flamboyant image. The illustrator of the Ellesmere Chaucer chose not to portray the most sexually alluring elements (in the medieval understanding) of the Wife’s appearance, her gap teeth and red stockings. Yet Alisoun’s fur-trimmed red tunic recalls her sensuous red stockings, a golden belt that cinches her waist draws attention to both her wealth and her wide hips, and a thick netted wimple beneath a broad black hat reminds the viewer of her material success and the travels she undertakes as a result of her singular independence. Her riding position and her whip reinforce the Wife’s dominance over her husbands and role-reversal in her marriages. Illustrations of the Prioress and the Second Nun in the same manuscript show the women riding side-saddle, while in contrast the Wife of Bath rides astride her horse. This choice of posture not only distinguishes the secular Wife from her monastic counterparts; Alisoun’s stance also evokes the strong sexual appetite that has afforded her control in marriage and life in general. Her whip humorously reinforces the notion of the Wife of Bath as a subverter of natural order and bears strong resemblance to popular images of Phyllis dominating Aristotle. The illustration of the Wife of Bath in the Ellesmere Chaucer subtly presents elements of “maistrye,” or the upper hand within marriage, that Alisoun describes having achieved in her own life and champions in her subsequent tale. "
  • Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Subject (See Also): Chaucer, Geoffrey, Poet- Canterbury Tales- Wife of Bath's Prologue Marriage Pilgrimage Travel Widows Wife of Bath (Literary Figure) Wives Women Merchants
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 15
  • Date: c. 1410
  • Related Work:
  • Current Location:
  • Original Location:
  • Artistic Type (Category): Digital Images; Manuscript Illuminations
  • Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Vellum (Parchment); Paint
  • Donor:
  • Height/Width/Length(cm): 39.4/28.4/
  • Inscription:
  • Related Resources: Blamires, Alcuin. "Refiguring the 'Scandalous Excess' of Medieval Women: The Wife of Bath and Liberality," in Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees. Palgrave, 2002, pp. 57-78; Carruthers, Mary. "The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions," PMLA 94:2 (1979), pp. 209-22; Rosenblum, Joseph and William K. Finley. "Chaucer Gentrified: The Nexus of Art and Politics in the Ellesmere Miniatures," Chaucer Review 38:2 (2003), pp. 140-157; Stevens, Martin. "The Ellesmere Miniatures as Illustrations of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," Studies in Iconography 7-8 (1981-82), pp. 113-34; For further analysis of the Wife of Bath, see entries in Feminae.