Tracing the emergence of the notion of ‘Other’ may seem a difficult task for the theorist of the 21st century. It may be tempting to begin the search in the lands beyond, however, one does not need to go that far at all, one would probably not even need to leave the house to find the original Other — the woman. In the god-fearing society of the late middle ages women who did not adhere to the conventional gender rules of society — spinsters, widows, childless, poor and even old women were a mystery to the men of the Christian church. Because they were thought to deny the need for husbands, they were also thought to have been preoccupied with something else — worshiping the devil, and thus were not spared the title of ‘witch’.
The witch craze in Europe began around the late 15th Century. The course of action then was clear — find them and destroy them.[1] As time passed the witch hunt became more and more fierce and more cases of alleged witchcraft were found. By the 17th Century the Christian society became paranoid thus the inquisitorial activity had escalated to genocide not only towards women, who up until that time were the majority accused of witchcraft, but even men taking up high positions — lawyers, judges, the clergy themselves and that is when a step was finally taken back.[2] Why had the craze stopped only when men also became targets of the inquisition? Why was the persecution of women not enough? In this essay, I would like to discuss why the fear of a female which fell out of the conventional rules of the church caused such paranoiac pursuit and purge. I will be juxtaposing the Renaissance witch to a female’s place in Medieval society by referring to Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’.
‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ was written in the late Middle Ages — the end of the 14th Century — at a time when the Christian church had just established itself in pagan lands, when the mere belief in something taking action outside of God’s will would class you as a pagan in the eyes of the Christian church. The witches’ Sabbaths were not believed to be true, for only believing in witches as such would consider you a disbeliever in God, therefore, it could not be possible within the clergy.[3] Furthermore, practice of burning witches was seen as pagan activity, for burning something was seen as sacrifice to the pagan gods. Thus, we must understand that Chaucer could not and did not directly portray The Wife of Bath as a witch. Nor is she portrayed as an outcast, according to Trevor Whittcock, the Wife of Bath is not portrayed as a realistic woman — she is bigger than real women of the Medieval times.[4] She ‘embodies the female revolt against a male-ordered and male-centered civilization’.[5] The Wife tells the story of her life without holding back on details of the nuances of her sexual ventures. She states that women should have the right to happiness which to her is associated with the possibility of marrying more than once to a husband who is young, humble and good in bed.[6]
To understand this significance of the Wife of Bath, let us look deeper at the context in which the work was created. The Middle Ages are defined by the prevailing fear of sexuality that was quite clearly provoked by the dogmas of Christianity. The Wife of Bath could have been seen as an outcast from the church just by being sexually active, let alone a sexually active female. Karma Lochrie looks at the perception of the sexual norm in the Middle Ages, yet, comparing it with, and using the terms of the 20th Century when sex became first detached from reproduction and definitions for the sexual deviations were created. She does so to stress how certain terms have come about only to have a name in restricting them, however, how undocumented sexual activity in the Middle Ages (i.e. before Christianity) was. She explains that the now decaying, yet still existing binary of heterosexual as the ‘normal’ and the homosexual as the ‘deviant’ does not apply for the Medieval times. In fact, that which may seem incomprehensible to us now, in the Middle Ages was considered to be the norm: things as a ‘chaste marriage’ or a ‘willful virginity’ were common sights in the Medieval society.[7] The heterosexual asexuality of the Middle Ages became clear, when in the prologue for her tale the Wife of Bath has to defend marriage against virginity. This proves that the times she lived in, sex was seen as a taboo up to a point, where married couples were not expected to definitely practice it. Adding to this is the fact that the Wife of Bath has to stress, that in her understanding of St. Paul’s passages[8] he only recommends remaining a virgin, not commands it. The reason why this would seem to the reader of the 21st Century incomprehensible, is that remaining celibate, or chaste, is a trait that is conventionally specific only to people who have vowed their lives to asceticism and most definitely not ‘recommended’ to the majority of the public. An absolute ban on sexual activity was placed by the church, unless it was within a marriage and only for the purpose of procreation and not pleasure. Various restrictions were added: firstly, sex was allowed in only one position and then it was forbidden on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, later on, it was made illegal forty days before both Easter and Christmas, from the day of conception till forty days after birth. No one was allowed a second marriage, even if left a widow or widower.[9] All of these laws were made by the clergy who saw the sexual act as an ungodly sin. Therefore, it is noticeable, that active sexuality is perhaps something leftover from before Christian laws, thus a leftover of paganism, a lack of God, or merely something that the devil inspires within the person.
The prologue Chaucier gives the Wife of Bath’s story is longer than the actual tale is. This is because the author uses the prologue as satire aimed towards such ‘sex-obsessed and guilt ridden attitudes of Medieval Christianity’.[10] In the prologue, the Wife of Bath defends sex quite viciously. Firstly, it seems absurd to her to deny sex from the physiological perspective for the female and male genitals were created to suite each other so well, therefore only using them for urination and determining sexes would be foolish — they are made for pleasure as well as for bodily functions.[11] She understands, that God allows marriage as a factor for procreation, however, not every sexual act is successful for conception and that does not mean she cannot try as much as she wants with her husband and if nothing works at least she shall feel the pleasure of it. She continues on criticizing the allowance of one marriage, by using the bible itself as an example, for it was never stated how many partners one is allowed, in fact, stories, such as King Solomon promote polygamy, moreover, men such as Abraham, Lamech and Jacob had more than one wife. Therefore, why should she or anyone else be restricted to only one partner? The Wife, however, does not oppose religion or people who tend to stay virgins or married only once. She believes this life of abstinence is for people who want to be perfect and fear death and what awaits after it. She does not think of herself as such a person — she wants to live her life joyously and freely. The Wife of Bath was not afraid to express her sexuality within times where sexual activity was a denouncement, therefore did not fit in with the conventions of the perfect Christian.
As Lochrie states, the being female meant even more sexual suppression within the heterosexual patriarchal norm of the church in the Middle Ages.[12] She had to be completely sexually passive. One example Lochrie gives of the heterosexual act that was considered contra naturam — a female being on top during a sexual act.[13] The ‘against nature’ can be explained by looking deeper into what Medieval theologians thought to be natural. The natural was believed to be not the norm, but the ideal. The nature of a human being was believed to be Godly — it stood for everything that was good, perfect and pure — this was the nature that man possessed before the Fall of Man.[14] During this collapse of nature, however it was the female — Eve — to be the first one to give into the temptation and persuaded the male — Adam — to follow her. She was believed to be led by animalistic instincts before her virtues, therefore, her sexual desire is against the Christian Godly nature, which the man still possesses. She was the one who followed temptation — the devil. Because of the believed female animalistic nature her sexual desire is seen voracious and therefore insignificant[15] — the female could not limit herself to sexual acts only for procreation purposes.[16]
This Medieval image of the instinctual nature of a woman, and the trope of Eve giving into temptation, was passed to the Renaissance and is the main cause of the genderization of the witch. It was thought that witches would attend Sabbaths which were the celebration of the Devil. Evidence that was gathered from ‘confessions’ of thousands of women that they had made a pact with Lucifer in order to help him recover his lost empire. The more women came to confession the more frequent the Sabbaths appeared to be. It was said that the devil himself appeared in these Sabbaths ‘sometimes as a big, black bearded man, more often as a stinking goat, occasionally as a great toad’.[17] The witches danced around the Devil, kissing him under the tale if it came as a goat or on the lips, if it had come as a toad. It was also thought, that outside of Sabbaths the witches had frequent sexual intercourse with the devil as to show their loyalty.[18] The devil would appear as an incubus — possessing a male form – to a female witch and a succubus — a female — to a male. Incubus directly means ‘the one who lies above the sleeping one’, while the succubus is ‘the one who lies below’. This image of the devil taking up a form as an active male and a passive female are clearly taken directly from the Christian sexual laws of the Middle Ages. Kathleen Biddick states, that it was believed that when having intercourse with the devil, the female witch would be impregnated by the semen that was transferred by the incubus from the male thus making the man the father and not the devil.[19] In ‘The Devil’s Anal Eye’ she also elaborates on the inquisitors’ role in creating the image of the witch. She says that the inquisitor uses the devil as an optical device to have an insight of the witches Sabbath and other activities, which do not only include sexual relations with the devil, but with animals and other women as well.[20] It can be concluded, that the devil was thought to only use these women who already are involved in sodomy, he did not possess them in any way, these women were already of truly corrupted nature, or as Biddick puts it ‘the sin of witches is even greater, according to the inquisitors, to than the original sin of Adam and Eve’.[21] In the view of a theologian of the Renaissance the corrupted postlapsarian nature is true to the female and within witches it manifestation is the most apparent — that makes it easier for the devil to abuse it.
In the eyes of a Renaissance Christian, the witches bring threat to the sacramental marriage. Firstly Biddick speaks of the depopulation of the Christian society, for witches were thought to kidnap and eat children of married couples and could undo the ‘sacramental, procreative sex’.[22] Procreation for witches was possible without a male partner, as they got the seed via sexual relations with the devil. Therefore, to the female witches marriage became unnecessary. Furthermore, witches were thought to take part in same sex orgies during the Sabbath. This element may have been introduced courtesy of the rediscovery of the clitoris. For with this rediscovery came the image of the tribade, a theme which was widely represented in the Renaissance. According to Katharine Park, in the mid-16th Century Dalechamps was the first one credited to have noticed a connection between a hypertrophied clitoris and homosexuality within a female. He believed that it, like a male penis, would erect when the woman became aroused. Supposedly, she could use it in the same way a man could when ‘playing’ with other women.[23] It was believed that the clitoris was the source of homosexual desire within the female. The clitoris was also realized to be a source of sexual pleasure and it was completely independent from heterosexual acts. The image of the tribade became more popular and likely, thus it seeded fear that the male is going to become unnecessary for sexual acts, and of course, this image was placed on the females men feared most — the witches.
Emitting a man out of sexual relations was not the only reason that this paranoid attack against females came to being in the Renaissance. Witches were believed to hold the power of demasculinization, which the inquisitors kept insisting was a fundamental threat to the sacramental marriage. They were thought to have the power to make men sterile, thus worthless in marriage.[24] As witches conceived the semen transferred by the incubus, this happened without the knowledge of the male donor, thus making him unaware of the kin he might have.[25] This conception was a threat to the male as the ruler of the smallest social construct — the family and on a wider scale could be seen as a threat to patriarchy as the hegemonic system. Furthermore, the witches were thought to see no trouble in chopping of the penis of the male. In one case that Biddick speaks of, the inquisitor tells of what he had witnessed: a young man that was trialed said that his member had disappeared and that it was the work of witches. The inquisitor testified that there was nothing where his penis was supposed to be.[26] The threat to lose the phallus without even coming into contact with a witch is a terrifying one in the direct sense and metaphorical — for without the penis a man could not impregnate a woman and leave kin and he would lose that which symbolizes power. In the belief of Renaissance, witches had the ability to physically destroy the most important part of the human anatomy and take the full right of power form the man.
Here I would like to come back to the Wife of Bath. As the witches demasculinised men physically, she represents the rise of the notion by doing it morally. Firstly, even though she was created by Chaucer, her story is told by the first person, from a female perspective. That alone states her independence from her husbands and as a female, however, with the text she takes her rebellion against the Medieval conventions of a female even further. I have already discussed her unashamed free expression of sexuality as a whole, now I would like to look at her behavior within the social construct of marriage. The Wife begins by stating that the husband has to pay sexual debt to the wife. She carries on telling the story of her first three husbands who were all very old and rich — all of them were not very capable in sexual activities. The wife says that it was not very hard pleasuring them, furthermore, there was no need, for she had already gotten everything she wanted from them, and as she says: ‘A wise woman will focus on pleasuring the men who don’t already love her’.[27] Therefore there was no need working hard for these men; on the contrary, they had to work hard for her, for she demanded being pleased first so she could get some benefit from the sexual act. She confesses pretending to be jealous and accusing her husbands of affairs just to make them vulnerable and more dependent on her. The wife completely demasculinizes her husbands as she is the one who is in charge of money and their sexual life and forces her husbands into be morally dependent on her — she gains complete power within the marriage. As Lochrie says, ‘The Wife of Bath thus fashions a masculine ethos for herself out of concepts of sovereignty, mastery, and governance, all of which are not so much essentialized gender qualities as they are socially and politically conferred ones, and therefore capable of being reassigned’.[28] The reassignment in The Wife’s life story is quite clear: as she starts talking about her later two husbands we find out that they were ‘bad’ — they were young and poor, but good in bed. Here Chaucer seems to be drawing a parallel between the Wife of Bath and her old husbands. She becomes the provider in the marriage and is a target to young men who seek her money. Within the small society she lives in, she takes up the role of a ‘patriarch’. The Wife becomes a threat to male patriarchs, as does the witch in the Renaissance, for she is an example of a female that can easily take control over the men.
Even though ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ was written before the European witch-craze, it clearly corresponds to the traits ascribed to the witches. The Wife of Bath was portrayed as a brave woman, not afraid to express her sexuality within an asexual Christian patriarchal system of the Middle Ages, even though it was thought to go against nature. She had the ability to take over men morally — taking control of their money and sexual life, therefore, ending up as the ‘patriarch’ in the family. This was a threat to the patriarchal society — there was a possibility it could be overthrown by women. The portrayal of the witch has the same threatening qualities; the only difference is that when speaking of the witch these qualities are extremely magnified by the male Christian inquisitors to justify the persecution and killings. Another factor that may be the reason of this exaggeration is that Renaissance was a less pious period than the Middle Ages — the concept of Sexuality and the slightly constrained powers of the church gave space for this portrayal to get more threatening and spread fear within society. The exaggeration got out of control and caused a craze — getting rid of witches meant protecting the male-centered order in Europe. As the European-Christian ethos spread beyond its borders this similar fears and traits were ascribed to those we in the 21st Century theory call ‘the Other’.
Sources Used:
Biddick, Kathleen, The Shock of Medievalism, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988)
Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ and ‘Prologue to The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ from ‘No Fear The Canterbury Tales’ ed by John Crowther, Sparknotes LLC. 2009. < http://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/lit/the-canterbury-tales/> (accessed January, 2015)
Lochrie, Karma, Heterosyncrasies: Females Sexuality When Normal Wasn‘t, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)
Trevor-Roper, H. R., The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, (London: Penguin Books, 1984)
Whittcock, Trevor, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968)
Footnotes:
[1] H.R. Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, (London: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 14
[2] Trevor-Roper, p. 19
[3] Trevor-Roper, p. 13
[4] Trevor Whittcock ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’ in A Reading of the Canterbury Tales, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 119
[5] Whittcock, p. 119
[6] Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, from ‘No Fear The Canterbury Tales’ ed by John Crowther, Sparknotes LLC. 2009. < http://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/lit/the-canterbury-tales/> [accessed January, 2015], p. 14
[7] Karma Lochrie, ‘Introduction‘ in Heterosyncrasies: Females Sexuality When Normal Wasn‘t, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) p. xv
[8] 1 Corinthians 7:39 and 7:25
[9] Whittcock pp. 119–120
[10] Whittcock, p. 121
[11]Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘Prologue to The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, from ‘No Fear The Canterbury Tales’ ed by John Crowther, Sparknotes LLC. 2009. < http://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/lit/the-canterbury-tales/> [accessed January, 2015], p. 4
[12] Lochrie, ‘Introduction’, p. xx
[13] Lochrie, ‘Introduction’, p. xvi
[14] Lochrie, ‘Introduction’, xxii
[15] Lochrie,‘Introduction‘, xx
[16] This is also a trope seen in colonialist outlook — seeing the Other, usually, a non-white colonial subject as more animalistic and incapable to control their urges than the white colonizer.
[17] Trevor-Roper, p. 16
[18] Trevor-Roper, pp. 14–20
[19] Kathleen Biddick, ‘The Devil’s Anal Eye’ in The Shock of Medievalism, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), p. 115
[20] Biddick, p. 115.
[21] Biddick, p. 110
[22] Biddick, p. 110
[23] Karma Lochrie, ‘Before The Tribade’ in Heterosyncrasies: Females Sexuality When Normal Wasn‘t, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 72
[24] Biddick, p. 110
[25] Biddick, p. 116
[26] Biddick, pp. 113–114
[27] Chaucer, ‘Prologue to The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, p. 7
[28] Lochrie, ‘Before the Tribade’, 99
