【Peer & Share】Shift of Power in The Wife of Bath's Tale

Narrated by the Wife of Bath, women seem to have a more dominant position in the tale than men do. After the knight raped a maiden, power appears when the maiden 「pursute unto the kyng Arthour」 (890). When the king is delivering his power in justice, the queen intervenes and prays the king for grace. 「The queene thanketh the kyng with al hir myght」 (899) after she acquires the power. From the king’s behavior, we can deduce that he allows the queen do the things that she likes. Actually, in the latter part when the old woman says, 「my sovereyn lady queene / Er that youre court departe, do me right」 (1048-49), we know that the queen must have acquired the power from the king. Moreover the magic power in the old woman reinforces the validity of the fact. After the queen obtains power, what she wants from the knight is 「what thing is it that women moost desiren」 (905). On my part however, the answer she desires is not what women desire, and her whole act is exactly what she wants. Everyone has her own answer, what the knight should find is the answer that satisfies the queen and the maidens. It is totally a joke just like what Chaucer has said in the prologue that 「For myn entente nys but for to pleye」 (192). What the queen does is to choose whether she would save knight or put him to death. She is actually doing what satisfies her but she wants the man to prove it. It is the feeling of control and dominance and power over the man, which has already given by the king, her husband. At the same time however, the knight’s final answer satisfies the queen, which means that the queen also wants the sovereignty over her husband. She will desire only when she does not really acquire the true sovereignty. Therefore, what we can conclude is the queen’s power is a confined to the king’s power.