The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks
Genre: historical fiction
I read it as a(n): paperback
Length: 541 pp
Her Grace’s rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Eleanor is the daughter of a brogger, the mediaeval term for broker, in 1380s England. Her mother dies when Eleanor is a baby and her father when she is about ten. She goes into service for the local gentlelady and from there, proceeds to have men ruin her reputation, her joy, and her sense of self. She’s married off when she’s 12 to a man who is in his 60s and, to modern audiences, it goes downhill from there. However, Eleanor finds her joy in her many marriages and the found family she gains in her long life. Her friendship with a man of the merchant class, one Geoffrey Chaucer, ensures that she remains known and beloved for all time, living as his (in)famous Wife of Bath.
Or at least, this is the fictional take on how a real-life woman might have become the Wife of Bath.
Replete with vivid images, sights, and sounds of mediaeval England, The Good Wife of Bath takes readers on a pilgrimage through this turbulent period of history seen through the eyes of an equally turbulent character!
It’s been a long time since I read The Canterbury Tales, but this made me want to read them again. It would have been fun to do a side-by-side readalong sort of thing. Eleanor is, of course, modelled on the Wife of Bath, but other figures in the story are also modelled on other characters from the Tales. A new interpretation of them would be fun for this book nerd.
I loved the insights we got into Eleanor’s character in the chapters that were written as letters to Chaucer while she was on one pilgrimage or another. We got to see glimpses of this woman throughout the book anyway, but much of that was the public mask she put on. Her letters revealed her innermost thoughts and they were quite something! She would be fun to have drinks with for sure. The letters showed an irreverent, irrepressible person who found a way forward regardless of what misfortunes came her way and took absolutely zero shit in the process. She really took to heart the idea that if life gives you lemons, then squirt the juice into the eyes of your enemies!
The differences in her various marriages were really intriguing, more so because of how Chaucer’s actual Wife was written. Brooks’s Eleanor marries three times for convenience and twice for love. The love matches were hot, stinking garbage fires of a relationship and the marriages of convenience were the ones that actually resulted in a good and pretty happy life for her. In particular, I loved her first husband, Fulk Bigod, and third, Mervyn Slynge the best. The second, Turbot Gerrish, was ok in the end, though he himself was a ridiculous caricature of a man. But Fulk allowed her to tell him what to do and as a result, they got significantly wealthier. Mervyn became a genuine friend to her and, although he had other issues, was a wonderful husband. I sometimes wish a kind old rich gay man wanted to marry me for beaver cover and then leave me all his piles of money when he died.
Her convenient marriages allowed her to have the control over her own choices that she desired. Her love marriages were far more restrictive and made her a slave in more than one way. She had far less freedom in those. It’s an interesting point and one that would make for an excellent group discussion.
Ultimately, what I think Chaucer’s Wife wanted wasn’t control, or mastery, as he wrote it, over men. What she wanted was control over her own choices, her ability to choose for herself. Sovereignty over one’s choices, one’s body, one’s relationships, one’s money, was not something most women had in 1300s Europe. Really, it is a pathetic commentary on men and modern society that a very great many women still lack these things. The ones who do have them are either single, managed to find a truly feminist partner, or are old, rich, and widowed. Not a whole lot has changed in the 700 years since Chaucer wrote the Tales. Stop the ride, I want off.
Overall, I highly recommend this to anyone who loves mediaeval historical fiction, and especially to those of us who hold a special place in our hearts for Chaucer.
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