The Uneasy Institution

Abstract

Chapter 2 addresses the idea of male lineage as a stable, intergenerational source of authority for medieval men. Continuing the argument of the book as a whole, it argues that Chaucer seeks to shake men’s faith in such modes of earthly power, deploying the Wife of Bath to undermine the system of lineage itself. The Wife intrudes into typical models of male heredity, criticizes the linear male temporality upon which lineage depends, and has the hag of her Tale offer a speech against the very mechanisms of male descent and likeness. This chapter also contrasts the Wife of Bath’s Tale to the ballad, the Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter, arguing that while the scene of rape in each is very similar, the Wife of Bath renders her narrative deliberately less procreative in its orientation. Finally, the chapter argues that Chaucer also has the Wife of Bath attack modes of poetic genealogy, alienating poets from their literary forebears.