#ChaucerIsOverParty by Fatima Guettatfi

It’s generally safe to say we live in a world of cancel culture. A lot of people with some form of a media and social media presence have spoken out against cancel culture being toxic, but it’s important to understand why cancel culture exists, because people are tired of being problematic and getting away with it! At this point, we are all exhausted of watching people with some form of power and privilege getting away with problematic actions with barely a slap on the wrist. While cancel culture can be excessive at times, it’s the internet’s retaliation from this exhaustion. If the law/society won’t hold these people accountable, then the internet will. Which leads to the point of this post, I want the internet to retaliate against the Father of English Literature, Geoffrey Chaucer. Therefore, to commence the #ChaucerIsOverParty, these are 4 aspects of the Wife of Bath’s Tale that earned Chaucer a moment under the umbrella of cancel culture.

Writers have full creative freedom to express the events of their plot in any fashion, but when something as traumatic as rape is used to advance the knight’s plot that ultimately ends in him marrying a beautiful woman, there is a major problem. In the Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath tells a story of a knight who sexually assaults a woman, and instead of paying for his crimes, the Queen sends him on a quest to find out what women want (905). Fast- forward through the plot, an old “hag” tells him the answer, and he marries the old hag who magically turns into the most beautiful woman. The issue here is that the attack had no narratological purpose aside from getting the knight from a point of criminal trial to his happy ending. Which leads me to my second point

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired of seeing this result, both fictionally and in real life. I understand that art has the capacity mimic the realities of life, but sometimes I just want to escape that reality, and the Wife of Bath’s Tale was not a focal point of escapism for me. The only part of the plot that I enjoyed was King Arthur being the voice of reason in the entirety of the narrative. He wanted the knight to pay for his heinous crime, but unfortunately instead of having an empowering female badass like Detective Olivia Benson who would’ve thrown that knight in prison, we get the queen. The queen asks King Arthur for the clemency on the knight’s behalf and is therefore the main reason why the knight gets a happy ending. The worst part about this hard-to-read storyline is that we are to believe that he deserves a happy ending because he changed. Chaucer paints him as “sorweful” and expects the reader to just instantly feel sorry for the knight (986). Drumroll, we don’t feel bad for the knight because he never changed! Yes, Chaucer did in fact pull a Bryce Walker from 13 Reasons

Why narrative on us. But instead of a dead knight, we get a happily married one.

This part of the text is one that doesn’t sit well with me at all. We are told about the event, but we never hear the victim’s narrative, the victim is silenced by a plot that is centralized on the violence subjected to her. I want this to be a life lesson to everyone reading this, don’t be a Chaucer. Don’t silence a victim. Instead of erasing their voice, listen to their story, and always believe victims.

The Wife of Bath’s Tale is difficult to unpack because Chaucer narrates the plot through the

Wife of Bath who is a survivor. We learn in her prologue that one of her husband’s is physically abusive towards her. This complicates a major theme of this tale, that women want sovereignty over their husbands and lovers because the sequence of events never allow a woman a chance to achieve sovereignty over their significant other (1037-40). At the end of the day, the one who achieved sovereignty over everyone and everything in the tale is the knight since he gained a happy ending. The abuser is the winner in a narrative told by a survivor of domestic abuse, and if that doesn’t land Chaucer in the list of people Twitter needs to cancel, I don’t know what will. The manipulative aspect behind his intentional use of a women’s voice to narrate a triggering and anti-woman plot is haunting, he used a female voice to make the plot palatable to readers. In Chaucer’s view, using a female voice to narrate sexual violence against women makes the event digestible to various readers. That is a problem and that is a toxic way of writing.

The scariest part about TheWife of Bath’s Tale is that its contents occur every day. Sexual assault victims are silenced, and the assaulters get away with their actions. Chaucer may be the Father of English Literature, but he needs to be held accountable for the toxic messages portrayed in his writing. Hopefully, #ChaucerIsOverParty is a never-ending event, and thank you for attending. Stay safe, believe survivors, and hold problematic people accountable.