Karen Brooks
The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks is a retelling of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Karen Brooks re-tells it in the first-person voice of Eleanor/Alyson, the wife of Bath, giving her the opportunity to speak in her own voice and present her version of the story.
The narrative opens in 1364 when a twelve-year-old Eleanor is forcibly married to a Fulk Bigod, a man old enough to be her grandfather. Much to her surprise, Bigod turns out to be a kind, considerate husband. Their marriage ends with Fulk’s death in 1369. Enter husband #2, Turbet Gerrish. Theirs is an economic alliance. After his death, his children inherit the properties, and Eleanor is left with nothing. Enter husband #3, Mervyn Slynge, many years her senior. He respects Eleanor’s business acumen in managing a sheep farm and overseeing a spinning and weaving industry. This is a marriage of convenience to camouflage the fact Slynge is gay. The two share a mutually respectful relationship. After his death, Eleanor marries Simon de la Pole who is unfaithful and extravagant with her money. He meets a violent end to his life, after which Eleanor marries husband # 5, Jankin Binder. All too soon, Eleanor discovers Jankin is violent, abusive, and a murderer. The novel ends in the year 1401 with Eleanor/Alyson as the proprietress of a brothel.
Weaving in and out of her life, her many marriages, and her lovers is Geoffrey Chaucer. He makes his first appearance as the poet partially responsible for her marriage to Fulk Bigod. Eleanor and Chaucer form a life-long friendship that transcends all other relationships and lasts until his death. As her friend and confidante, Chaucer assists Eleanor through her many trials and tribulations. She is credited with encouraging him to write about the lives of ordinary people, which, in turn, leads to his composition of The Canterbury Tales using Eleanor as his model for the Wife of Bath.
Karen Brooks gives Eleanor/Alyson the voice of a lusty, medieval feminist. Eleanor/Alyson rails against the abysmal position of women in the Middle Ages. Viewed as property, women were used, abused, marginalized, discarded, and held responsible for male violations against their bodies. Eleanor repeatedly voices her anger at the injustice of male privilege, claiming women want control of their own lives and their own decisions. She is not averse to using her feminine wiles, including her “queynte,” to get her way with men.
The narrative moves at a rollicking pace as Eleanor bounces from one marriage to another. Her many pilgrimages in England, Italy, and Jerusalem are described in vivid detail, as is the devastation caused by the plague. The extensive historical research that went into the novel is apparent. Eleanor/Alyson’s desire to embrace and support women is commendable. But her constant refrain against patriarchal injustices and rampant misogyny becomes tedious, repetitive, and stretches plausibility. Can an illiterate 14th Century woman, steeped in the culture and socialization of her time, be that strident in her demands for gender equality?
Although the occasional lapse into modern idioms and perspectives detracted from its authenticity, and although some of the narrative threads, including the miraculous survival of Jankin Binder, seem highly improbable, on the whole, this is an engaging and entertaining read.