Race Relations in \"Disgrace\" Live Without Them

race relations in "Disgrace"

Live Without Them

It is extremely natural for scholars of literature to compare The Wife of Bath, who was a character in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and Monna Giovanna, one of the leading characters in Giovanni Boccacio's short story "Federigo's Falcon," to one another. Both characters are examples of women during the medieval period, and as such, represent females during that period quite well. However, a number of key distinctions can be found between these two characters, particularly in their attitudes towards the institution of marriage, love, and their opinions about men. These differences are perhaps most eminent due to the fact that these women hail from relatively the same class, that of nobility or gentry.

In fact, other than them both being medieval women in literature written during this historical epoch, the one of the principle similarities between both of these characters is that they are noble women, who have access to money and its physical comforts. Both women are relatively well off in terms of economics, and are property owners as well. Furthermore, the source of their wealth and property stems from men (which is not surprising, considering they were both married during the time period in which women could primarily make a living by marrying well). Another quite tangible similarity between these characters is that they are both widows at various points during their tales (Monna eventually remarries at the end of "Federico's Falcon").

However, it is largely due to these similarities that the differences between both of these women are so pronounced. Some of these differences can be considered surface-level or cosmetic, such as the fact that physically, The Wife of Bath was highly unappealing whereas Monna was considered quite beautiful. Yet in many ways, these external differences reflect the internal differences that are highly distinct from one another. Mona was emblematic of the conception of a beautiful, "virtuous" (Boccaccio) wife -- who dearly loved and cared for her first husband (who died) and eventually felt the same way about her subsequent husband. The Wife of Bath, on the other hand, primarily viewed men as a means of making a living and a way to achieve an end of comfort and wealth -- which is strongly alluded to by the fact that she had been married on five separate occasions and none of her marriages lasted.

The way that each character related to men and the male species was extremely different from one another. In keeping align with Monna's representation of a virtuous woman, she was quite faithful to her first husband and initially ignored Federigo's advances because she was happily married. The Wife of Bath, however, never had any sort of positive or virtuous relationship with any of her husbands and makes this fact quite clear in her prologue and tale that she tales on the way to Canterbury. She made a point to complain about all of her husbands, and was never satisfied with the way that any of them treated her, largely because she was insatiable in terms of wealth and in terms of men.