Rape Culture in the Middle Ages

While reading Canterbury Tales, a lot of questions came to mind. It is an interesting and different approach to literature. I was drawn in on one of Chaucer's tales, which was the "Wife of Bath's Tale." This tale sparked my attention being a female and because of the tale's overall main idea focusing on rape culture in the Middle Ages. The tale is about a knight raping a young woman (who the audience never hears from), receiving a small punishment for his crime, and then being rewarded for his behavior with a new, beautiful wife. His punishment is to answer a question the queen asks. While trying to find the answer, he runs into a old woman who transforms into a beautiful version of herself to teach him a lesson, but also rewarding him. Before reading the Canterbury Tales, I had little to no knowledge regarding rape in the Middle Ages. But, clearly there was something that I needed to know because I was shocked by the way the rape was ignored and the knight was actually rewarded. This was all very new to me, but as I read more into the tale it became more and more apparent that rape was a normalized act rather than a crime during the Middle Ages. From that moment on, I knew that I wanted to focus my research on rape and equality for women in the Middle Ages.

The young, beautiful wife.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-wife-of-baths-tale-in-the-canterbury-tales-theme-analysis.html

Within my research, I focused on the way Chaucer normalizes rape. He does this by focusing the tale on the knight rather than the maiden who was raped. It became evident that this was occurring more often than it should have in the Middle Ages. Women were left to deal with the repercussions of rape by themselves, while the men lived their normal lives. Emma Lipton discusses in her article that the maiden is a representation of all women in the Middle Ages, dealing with rape on a day-to-day basis. This time period was known to be dark and I believe this is the reason behind that stereotype. Instead of women having a normal life, they feared walking in the streets alone. Lucia Akard's essay, "A Medieval #MeToo," describes the real life of women in the Middle Ages. She focuses on the effects rape had on women, the struggles of being heard, and how women were constantly discriminated against. The maiden in the "Wife of Bath's Tale" does not have any lines in the tale as she is seen as 'voiceless' by the audience. The fact that the maiden does not speak, makes it obvious that women were alone and scared. The tale can also be viewed as a cry for help from women in the Middle Ages. 

This tale is important and relevant to today's world because rape is still an ongoing issue that people are facing. The only difference is women are being heard today regarding rape whereas in the Middle Ages, they were not. Thomas Van, in his article "False Texts and Disappearing Women in the 'Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale,'" writes that the rape was a major issue in the text but was left to be very vague and not important at all. This is a problem in itself because a hatred act like rape should not be ignored, but it was. Women struggled to be heard and the maiden is the representation of those women struggling to be seen, heard, and have justice. Akard also expands on this idea of women in today's society still finding a way to be heard by stating, "The #MeToo movement was started in 2007 by feminist Tarana Burke as a way to show solidarity with black women and girls who had experienced sexual assault."  This topic is something that I became very interested in due to it being an ongoing issue people are experiencing to this day. After doing my research, it showed the differences in the Middle Ages and today's world. The biggest difference was women were not heard back then because men were the superior race whereas today, women from all over have joined forces to put an end to rape and to have justice.