Wife of Bath vs. Fowles' Quaker Maid

7/29/2019 Wife of Bath vs. Fowles' Quaker Maid

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Chaucer's Wife of Bath and John Fowles's Quaker Maid: Tale-Telling and the Trial of PersonalExperience and Written AuthorityAuthor(s): Carla ArnellSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 102, No. 4 (Oct., 2007), pp. 933-946Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20467542 .

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OCTOBER VOL. 102 PART 4

CHAUCER'S WIFE OF BATH AND JOHNFOWLES'S QUAKER MAID: TALE-TELLING

AND THE TRIAL OF PERSONALEXPERIENCE AND WRITTEN AUTHORITY

Since the publication of The Ebony Tower in I974, literary critics have carefullyfollowed John Fowles's self-avowed interest in and affection for thingsmedieval. Like his postmodern contemporary Umberto Eco, Fowles claims to havefound inmedieval literature an especial source of debt and inspiration. In TheEbony Tower, for instance, he subtly integrates medieval tradition and moderninnovation by translating Marie de France's layEliduc and then refashioning itin one of The Ebony Tower's short fictions. In fact, in the 'personal note' thatprefaces liduc,he explicitly escribeshis debt tomedieval Celtic romancebywriting:The mania forchivalry, courtly love,mystic and crusading Christianity, theCamelotsyndrome, all thesewe are aware of-a good deal too aware, perhaps, in the case ofsome recent travesties of that last center of the lore.But I believe thatwe also oweemotionally and imaginatively,at least-the very essence of what we have meant eversince by the fictional, the novel and all itschildren, to this strangenorthern invasion ofthe earlymedieval mind.'Thus Fowles positions himself and, indeed, all modern fiction writers as theinheritors of an art form that is specifically, and at its root, medieval.Not surprisingly, Fowles's apology on behalf ofmedieval literature precipitated a small spate of literary criticism devoted tomedieval themes and ideasin The Ebony Tower. And some of Fowles's other early fictions have now alsobeen examined for evidence of medieval influences2-at times to the author'sown surprise. For instance, an essay about the influence of Chaucer's Miller'sTale on his novel The Magus earned Fowles's amused response in an extensiveinterview hathe gave severalyears ago.3 ndiscussingcontemporary riticismof his work, Fowles commented:People do see somany different things [inmy fiction], some ofwhich I never imagined.I've just had a paper yesterday on the influence of Chaucer's 'Miller's Tale' on The

1 John Fowles, The Ebony Tower (New York: Plume, 1991), p. 118.2Gian Balsamo goes so far as to assert that 'The whole body of Fowles's narrative may be seenas a sequence of variations on the medieval contes d'aventure et d'amour' ('The Narrative Textas Historical Artifact: The Case of John Fowles', in Image and Ideology inModern I ostmodernDiscourse, ed. by David B. Downing and Susan Bazargan (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1991), pp. 127-52 (p. 143)).3 Fowles does not mention the author and title of this essay, but it isprobably Richard L. Harris's'"The Magus" and "The Miller's Tale": John Fowles on the Courtly Mode', Ariel, 14.2 (April1983), 3-17Modern Language Review, I02 (2007), 933-46C Modern Humanities Research Association 2007

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934 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker MaidMagus. A very good case, truly. icholas andAlison-very good case, an excellent case.But I didn't read Chaucer at all tillabout six years ago.'4Fowles's commenthere is interesting orseveral reasons. In particular,hisremark about reading Chaucer discloses a trivial chronological fact that maynevertheless e significant nunderstanding thecompositionof his finalfiction, A Maggot (1985), a book that I shall argue bears striking similarities toChaucer's final fiction, The Canterbury Tales. In his comment Fowles revealsthat although he had not read any Chaucer at the time his novel The Maguswas written in the early I96os, he had finally read Chaucer quite recently. Infact, given thatKatherine Tarbox's interview with the author was first published in I988, Fowles's own dating suggests that he turned to Chaucer, forwhatever reason, in the early i980s, the period during which A Maggot wasbeing conceived. Thus, the author's incidental observation that he was readingChaucer at or just prior to the time he would have been conceiving A Maggotstrengthens the case for seeing the Canterbury Tales as a literarymodel forAMaggot.5Among themany similarities between A Maggot and Chaucer's CanterburyTales, perhaps themost obvious are to be found in the novel's firstparagraphor even in itshaunting first line: 'In the late and last afternoon of anApril longago, a forlorn little group of travellers cross a remote upland in the far south

west of England.'6 So begins Fowles's A Maggot, and so,with subtle variation,might amodern paraphrase of Chaucer's famous fictional pilgrimage.7 Bothfictions begin in themonth ofApril: The Canterbury Tales some time in the latefourteenth century and A Maggot in the early eighteenth. Both feature a diversegroup of characters travelling together in the south of England, Chaucer'scharacters wending their way from London towards the east and Fowles'stowards thewest. Chaucer's travellers are, of course, pursuing a pilgrimage tothe site of the holy Christian martyr Thomas Becket, and likewise, althoughFowles's travellers keep their purposes carefully veiled at the beginning of hisbook (a few do not truly know why orwhither they are travelling), the reader4 Katherine Tarbox, The Art ofJohnFowles(Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1988), p. 181.Further references to this book are given after quotations in the text.5The quest for a great model behind each new Fowles fiction is justified by Fowles's commentsin a 1986 interview with James R. Baker. Though Fowles says that he generally dislikes theacademic impulse to ferret out 'influences' inhis writing, he admits that 'Behind most ofmy booksI have some great model. I don't mean that in terms of any sort of direct "influence", but the onebehind Daniel Martin was definitely Flaubert's Sentimental Education': likewise, he cites AlainFournier's Le Grand Meaulnes as the model for The Magus (John Fowles, interview with James R.Baker, Michigan Quarterly Review, 25 (Fall 1986), 661-83 (P- 674)). In some cases, though, Fowlesis only retrospectively aware of a textual tradition that has been significant in shaping his ownwork. As Peter Conradi reports, Fowles later saw Dickens's Great Expectations as an 'unconsciousinfluence' on The Magus (John Fowles (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 43).6 John Fowles, A Maggot (New York: Plume, 1993), p. 3. Further references to this edition aregiven after quotations in the text.7Many critics have noted the echo of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the opening lines of AMaggot. These include Tarbox, p. 147, and Susana Onega, Form and Meaning in theNovels ofJohn Fowles (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Research Press, 1989), p. 141. The Chaucerianresonance is also noted by Pierre E. Monnin, 'Cumulative Strangeness without and within AMaggot by J.Fowles', inOn Strangeness, ed. byMargaret Bridges (T?bingen: Narr, 1990), pp. 15162, and Bo H. T Eriksson, The 'Structuring Forces' ofDetection: The Cases ofC. P. Snow and JohnFowles (Uppsala: [University ofUppsala], 1995).



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CARLA ARNELL 935gradually learns that some sort of religious pilgrimage is afoot in Fowles'sfiction, oo.8But beyond the similar premisses of each fiction, the general structure ofFowles's fiction also reflects that of The Canterbury Tales, again albeit withsubtle variation. For instance, the first section of The Canterbury Tales, itsfamous General Prologue, provides a 'general portrait' of all the fellow travellers, inwhich Chaucer depicts each pilgrim, one by one, detailing his or herprominent haracteristics. owles seems tofollow nthis tradition y offeringa general portrait-like sketch of his main characters in the first fifteen pagesof A Maggot, noticeably withholding any dialogue among the characters untilhe has first depicted each of them through detailed narrative exposition. Inaddition, thebulk of Chaucer's CanterburyTales isdevoted to fictional alesthat the various pilgrims tell for their entertainment during the pilgrimage.And Fowles's story also becomes a series of 'tales' told by various 'tale-tellers',as different characters try to offer their reconstruction of themysterious eventsthat transpire in the novel. As a result, each book ultimately forms an elaboratefictional dialogue among diverse characters, tales, and genres, with each character vying for a particular share of the truth by presenting a unique narrativethat expresses his or her own vision of reality.In addition to these similarities etween themythic form nd structuralframe f Fowles's modern text nd Chaucer's medieval one, Fowles's novelalso returns readers to some of the central thematic problems that structureThe CanterburyTales, especially theChaucerian tale-tellers'familiar ebateabout personal experience and written authority. In the rest of this articleI shall focus on how Fowles's female protagonist, the 'Quaker Maid' RebeccaLee, reopens theWife of Bath's debate about personal experience as a legitimatesource of knowledge. In showing how Fowles both echoes and transforms thismedieval debate, I hope todemonstrate one significant way inwhich A Maggotmay be seen as a modern metamorphosis of The Canterbury Tales: a visionaryvehicle for transporting key conceptual co-ordinates of thismedieval text to thefictional world of the eighteenth century and then to our own time.

Fowles's novel begins, as I have mentioned, with a prologue-like description that introduces readers to his mysterious band of pilgrims: Bartholomew,the aristocratic leader of the band; Dick, Bartholomew's servant; the prostitute,Rebecca Lee; the actor, Francis Lacey; and theWelshman, David Jones.9With the conclusion of Fowles's formal description of his characters, the problems of knowledge introduced in his 'prologue' shift from a question of whothe characters are to a question of what has happened to them. Moreover, ifA Maggot's 'prologue' is primarily about external knowledge how Fowles'stravellers come to be known from without-the rest of the novel might be saidto concern interior knowledge what various travellers say in their own voices8Monnin attests to the strange connection between Fowles's modern quest story and Chaucer'smedieval one in asserting: Any Chaucerian would feel tempted to see in the strange trip aningenious reversal of the pilgrimage to Canterbury, and Fowles's interest inMedievalia couldhardly be limited to introducing and translating Marie de France' (p. 153).9At the beginning of the novel the true names and professions of the characters are concealed,and several of the characters take on different identities in the course of the novel. For convenience,I shall refer to them according to the final identities they are given.



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936 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker Maidabout what they know of the events leading up to Thursday, I7 June I736. Onthis Thursday a dead body, later identified as that of the traveller Dick, is foundhanging from a tree in a wood near Barnstaple, and this discovery precipitates aquest to determine when, why, and under what circumstances he killed himself(if his death is in fact suicide, as the coroner concludes that it is). To resolve thismystery, several of Dick's fellow travellers are called upon to give their personaltestimonies in an inquisition led by the novel's man of law, Henry Ayscough,a barrister ommissionedbyBartholomew's father odeterminenot justwhyDick died, but where Bartholomew has disappeared to and what the nature ofhis association with Dick once was.Upon Dick's death, therefore, the narrative breaks into a series of depositionsdemanded by Henry Ayscough and supplied by those who know anythingabout the events just prior to the death, and it is through these depositions thatseveral of the characters become tellers of their own tales based on their uniqueexperience of the events leading up to the discovery of the corpse. In thisway,Fowles, like Chaucer inThe Canterbury Tales, becomes primarily a compiler ofhis characters' tales. But whereas theCanterbury pilgrims' tales are supposedto be told for the entertainment of the other pilgrims, in Fowles's novel thecharacters tell tales that purport to be true in the context of the fiction. Andunlike The Canterbury Tales, whose tales are loosely connected by a variety ofthemes, all of Fowles's tales are centred on a single question or 'debate': themysteriouseventssurroundingick's death.'0Because of the strange nature of the events that the characters report and theirconflicting stories about those events, the lawyer Ayscough must determine thetruthfulness and authoritativeness of each tale. And in judging such matters oftruth, he evaluates the characters' testimonies by the criteria that have authoritywithin his profession. Trained in the science of law,Ayscough wants facts anddistrusts 'story', yet story is all thatwitnesses such as Rebecca Lee have to offer.As a lawyer devoted to the rule of reason, Ayscough expects rational accountsfrom his witnesses; yet the stories they relate are full of irrationalities andimprobabilities. As a public prosecutor, Ayscough seeks objective and shareabletruth-the 'truth incontestable', as his clerk puts it (p. 345); yetRebecca and herfellow deponents have only private truth or 'the truth as one believes it' to offer.And finally, as a learned man, Ayscough is devoted to 'book truth', the sacredauthority of logos, yet Rebecca's stories ormythoi are 'of the spirit' and derivedfrom experience, not books. In fact, even though Rebecca's experience oftenconflicts with traditional authority as it iswritten in the Bible and inscribedin patriarchal culture, she stubbornly affirms the truth revealed toher throughpersonal experience.In this respect, Rebecca's insistence upon the authority of her experiencesuggests interesting parallels to one of The Canterbury Tales' most infamoustale-tellers, theWife of Bath." 'Experience, not authority, is enough forme tospeak' begins theWife of Bath's famous discussion of thewoes ofmarriage,

10As a series of tales that are all versions of one event, A Maggot bears a striking structuralresemblance toAkira Kurosawa's film Rashomon. My thanks toDr Barbara Newman for pointingout this contemporary parallel.11As individual characters, Rebecca and theWife of Bath are distinctly different. Therefore, it



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CARLA ARNELL 937

where she asserts forherself a privileged space of knowledge based solely on herexperience. In championing experience, theWife sets up a series of oppositions,between the practical and the ideal, between the private and the public, andbetween women and men. In particular, though, she establishes an oppositionbetween herself as an uneducated woman and book-learned church authoritiessuch as Saint Jerome; for the medieval term 'auctoritee' that theWife opposesto experience is glossed as 'written authority','2 making her pronouncementall the more provocative given the importance of textual authority or bookknowledgeinmedieval culture.The historical importance of written authority in theMiddle Ages is clearlyexemplified by the common practice among medieval writers of citing or gesturing towards a prior text as the source of their own text's authority. In hisfamous tory of the rail, for nstance, hretiendeTroyes introduces is newromance by assuring readers that 'This is the Story of the Grail, from the bookthe count gave him. Hear how he performs his task.'"3 Implicit inChretien'sstatement is the assumption that he should tell his tale as ithas already beenrecorded by another book or written authority. For writers such as Chretien,invoking the authority of old books is a way of empowering and legitimizingtheir own tales. Like Chretien, theWife ofBath's own author, Chaucer, testifiesto the authority of old books at the beginning of his Legend ofGood Women.There, he writes:Than mote we tobokes thatwe fynde,Thurgh whiche that olde thinges ben inmynde,And to the doctrine of these olde wyse,Yeve credence, inevery skylfulwise,That tellen of these olde appreved storiesOf holynesse, of regnes,of victories,Of love,of hate, of other sondry thynges,Of whiche Imay not maken rehersynges.And yf that olde bokes were aweye,Yloren were of remembraunce thekeye.Wel ought us thanne honouren and beleveThese bokes, therewe han noon other preve.(LGW, 11.17-28)

According to theChaucerian narrator'stestimony ere, old books possess thetrusted wisdom of the past, for which they demand special credence. Andhowever much Chaucer's tales of famous women ironically re-angle the storiesfound in old books, the Chaucerian narrator nevertheless claims to draw hisauthority for telling them from past tradition and 'old bokes'.The authority of old books seems to preoccupy Chaucer in an even moreexplicit way in theWife of Bath's Prologue, for in theWife's fictional worldthe authority of old books circumscribes her life.Her fifthhusband, a clerkis the nature of the debates inwhich they are engaged as women that I shall compare here, nottheir unique human personalities.12The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton MifBin, 1987), p. 105. Allfurther references to this edition will be cited in the text.13Chr?tien de Troyes, The Complete Romances ofChr?tien de Troyes, trans, by David Staines(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 340.



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938 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker Maidnamed Jankyn, buries his head daily in a 'book ofwikked wyves' (WBT, 1.685),an anthology of antifeminist tracts by authors such as Theophrastus, Jerome,and Tertullian. Many of Jankyn's texts attack the state of marriage in variousways, but they also typically vilifywomen as part of their attacks. These clerklybooks seem to shape Jankyn's imaginative attitude towards theWife, leadinghim to see her in the image of the 'wikked wyves' about whom he has read somuch. But textual authorities affect his physical relationship with theWife aswell as his mental images about her, for he regularly beats her as if she wereno better than an animal; as theWife puts it, though she loved him more thanany of her other husbands, 'he hadde me bete on every bon' (WBT, 1. 51I).And as ifphysical beating were not enough to control his wayward wife, heregularly uotes textual uthorities s criticalcommentary n herbehaviour.For instance, he cites stories fromRoman history and quotes proverbs from theBible to support his disapproval of her habit of roving about the town (11.64153). Thus Jankyn's clerkly authorities shape theworld in which theWife ofBath lives, from the freedom she has to move about town to the dynamicsof her most intimate relationship. As Robert Burlin puts it, 'In psychologicalterms, hers is a "battered" personality. Everything she does is an attempt toassert her independent reality in aworld where masculine dominance claimedauthority over her mind, body, and spirit.'"4It is in the context of such a book-dominated world that theWife of Bathmakes her remarkable assertion that she needs only experience, not writtenauthority, to know what she knows about marriage. Yet in her own way, theWife of Bath also legitimizes herself through textual authority. Despite herassertion that she does not need authority inorder to speak, she first affirms thetruth of her points by quoting written texts. For instance, in justifying multiplemarriages she points to the polygamous examples of Solomon, Abraham, andJacob as they appear in biblical scripture (WBT, 11.35-43, 55-58). And shedemands to see proof of where theword ofGod explicitly forbids marriage orfavours virginity (11. 59-62). Likewise, she quotes theApostle Paul to supporther practice of remarrying after one husband dies:

Whan myn housbonde is fro theworld ygon,Som Cristen man shal wedde me anon,For thanne th' apostle seith that I am freeTo wedde, aGoddes half,where it likethme.(WBT, 11. 7-50)In thisway, theWife seems to recognize that to establish herself as an authorityonmarriage, shemust in fact know and adduce the authority ofwritten tradition.Of course, many of theWife's interpretations of scripture depend upon herpractical, experiential sense of truth. She argues, for instance, that it isnatural,and therefore proper, formen and women to use their sexual organs toprocreate.And the climax of this argument is indeed drawn from experience, for she insiststhat her listeners simply consider why the 'membres [... .]of generacion' (1. i i6)were made, and she asserts that though some may claim they are simply for'purgacioun I f uryne' (11. I20-2I), 'The experience woot wel it is noght so'

14Robert B. Burlin, Chaucerian Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 218.



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CARLA ARNELL 939(1. 124). Yet as much as she leads her readers to a conclusion based on the truthof experience, she first establishes her point by invoking the 'gentil text' of theBook ofGenesis: 'God bad us for to wexe and multiplye' (11.28-29). Likewise,theWife draws homely images from everyday experience, pure wheat breadand barley-bread, to show that a household thrives by having both pure virginsand coarse wives within it (11. I42-44); but she authorizes this argument byquoting from the Gospel of Mark to support her assertion, adding 'And yetwith barly-breed, Mark telle kan, I ure Lord Jhesu refresshed many a man'(11. 145-46). Thus experience may be enough for theWife to know that thesexual organs exist for procreation or thatmarriage is a valuable estate, butexperience alone is not sufficient justification forher to speak publicly aboutsuch ideas. For all her devotion to experience, theWife ultimately relies uponthe authentication ofwritten authority to support her convictions.Moreover, even when theWife does ostensibly testify to her experience inher account of lifewith her five husbands, her experience itself turns out to be'writteny' textual uthority,articularly he uthorityfmisogynist iterature.She knows nd deniesmisogynist iscourse boutwomen, parroting isogynistcharges at length through an elaborate dramatic monologue between herselfand a husband whose censorious voice she imitates (11. 235-378); through thisimaginary dialogue, she locates the source of misogynist ideas about women inthemale voice. Yet theWife actually iswhat men have said women are; her lifefits the form of themisogynist texts that they have constructed. For example,when sheportrays erpersonalexperience, he describesherselfmanipulatingher husbands in order to get 'gaye thynges fro the fayre' (1. 221). She depictsherself as a scold who would regularly chide her husbands 'spitously' (1. 223),especially at bedtime. Even worse, she affirms thatwomen are by nature subtlydeceptive, laiming 'Deceite,wepyng, spynnyngod hathyive I o wommenkyndely, whil that they may lyve' (11.40I-02). And as living proof of this oldadage, theWife falsely charges her husbands with drunkenness or lechery,despite her knowledge that theywere 'Ful giltelees' (1. 385). Furthermore, sheboasts of her ability to prove falsely that her husband's judgement about her isunfair by swearing on her honour and calling her maid as a 'friendly witness'(11. 224-34). And she lies to her husband about the real reason for her manynight walks (11. 397-99). As a profiteer, a scold, and a habitual liar, theWifeembodies the qualities of Jankyn's 'wikked wyves' so that there is a seamlessfit between theWife of Bath's experience and the textual representations ofwomen in Jankyn's misogynist tracts. As Alfred David puts it, 'She adoptsthe stereotype of the virago that authority has created. She seems to be themonster of the anti-feminist myth incarnate'.'5 Thus as much as theWife usestextual authority against her opponents, she herself appears to be inescapablyconstructed by such authority. As David concludes, 'Her life is grounded onthe premises of antifeminism because the world teaches her no others, and theChurch teaches only abject submission. She is, in the last analysis, the creatureof authority' (p. I53).Fowles's female pilgrim, Rebecca Hocknell, is similarly 'a creature of au

15Alfred David, The Strumpet Muse :Art andMorals in Chaucer's Poetry (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1976), p. 146.



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940 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker Maidthority', haped in thetraditional emale magesofmisogynistdiscourse.Ananonymous text types her as the 'Quaker Maid' ofMistress Claiborne's brothel(AMaggot, p. I53). Bartholomew's confessional marks her as a latter-day 'Eve',aneighteenth-centuryncarnation f thebiblical fallen oman. And Ayscoughindirectlyssociatesherwith thewaywardyoungwomen depicted inthe PrettyMiss's Catechism', amisogynist textdepicting an irreverentleasure-loving,husband-using 'Mistress'.But just as Chaucer reveals the spoken source ofsuchmisogynist imagesthrough heWife's dramatic mitationfmale authority, o Fowles deliberately xposes thewrittensourceofAyscough's ideas aboutwomen by fully reproducing the 'PrettyMiss's Catechism' as a separate document withdistinctive ypographical eaturespp. 3 6-i8). Indoing so, Fowlesshows the wayward 'PrettyMiss' to be a textual creation, not an eternal femaletype, which, as a human artefact, can be destroyed as well as created.'6 Yetwhereas theWife ofBath's experiencefully onforms o themisogynist 'texts'she unmasks,Rebecca's experienceultimately oes not. Of course, formuchof the novel Rebecca mirrors theWife of Bath as an incarnation ofmisogynistdiscourse. She flouts her parents and her religion, she enters into prostitution, and she artfully tries to seduce both Dick and Bartholomew with herelaborate make-up, fashionable clothing, and practised passions. But Rebeccaalso ultimately breaks themisogynist mould, creating a rupture between theauthoritative texts that have hitherto defined her and the real woman who canfreely break out of such definitions. Indeed, in his introduction to the 'PrettyMiss's Catechism' Fowles stresses this gap between text and reality by announcing: 'Here [the Catechism] is, set in exactly the same form thatRebeccahas just broken' (p. 315).Rebecca succeeds in breaking the 'form' ofwritten authority because of theextraordinary nature of her personal experience. Whereas theWife's life isliterally written by Jankyn's 'book of wikked wyves', Rebecca's is ultimately'written by [. . .] an annunciation' (p. 392), an apparently divine experience thatfrees her from earthly forms of authority by giving her new knowledge abouther self and her place in theworld. According toRebecca's testimony, at theend of her journey with Bartholomew she enters into a visionary vehicle calleda 'maggot' and there receives a vision of a heavenly society; she names thissociety 'JuneEternal', for it is aworld inwhich men and women of all races andkinds work together chastely, joyfully, and harmoniously (p. 368). As part of hervision, Rebecca sees three particular figureswho shape her imagination anew:an aged man, a carpenter son, and a remarkable lady in silver. She recognizesthe twomale figures as God the Father and God the Son, saying that duringthe 'maggot' experience, 'There was I brought certain, most certain, withinthe presence of the Father and the Son' (p. 375). The lady in silver Rebeccarecognizes as 'Holy Mother Wisdom' or God theHoly Spirit (p. 375). She isregal in her bearing, but free and easy, too. Unlike the prostitutes or societywomen Rebecca has known till now, this woman wears trousers and riding

16As Frederick M. Holmes puts it in his discussion of A Maggot, 'What the juxtapositionof discourses highlights [. . .] is the textuality of history, the constructedness of any account inlanguage of theway things are' {The Historical Imagination: Postmodernism and the Treatment ofthePast inContemporary British Fiction {^English Literary Studies, 73 (1997)), p. 34).



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CARLA ARNELL 94Iboots, apparently for ease of movement (p. 350). She is 'gentle of face', butwears none of Rebecca's 'red' or 'ceruse' to paint her face (p. 352). And herhair falls naturally around her face, without the crimped curls common amongfashionable young women (p. 35 i). All in all, she demonstrates a 'freedom andan ease no Englishwoman knows of' (p. 353). And while this vision of femalefreedom provides Rebecca with a new notion of how women can be and act,'June Eternal' offers a vision of how to live as such awoman in the social world.Consequently, Rebecca's visionary experience issues in a radical change ofher life and character, a change that enables her to un-write the fate of womenas it is inscribed in texts such as the 'Pretty Miss's Catechism'.I7 After the'maggot' experience, Rebecca wholly renounces her former lifeof prostitutionand returns to the religious life of her Quaker family, albeit with theologicalconvictions that are very much her own. She marries a simple blacksmithand persuades him to livewith her in chastity, much as the medieval mysticMargery Kempe once did. Rebecca no longer dresses to please her brothelhouse patrons; instead, she wears a 'coarse grey dress and pure white cap'(p. 287), suitable for the hard work and simple pleasures of her new life. She ispregnant (with the child of Dick, she claims), and by the grace of 'some deepinner certainty' she intuits that the child she is about to bear will be a girl(p. 39I). And despite her husband's opposition, she insists pon the uthorityto name her baby girl, asserting that a divine covenant between her and the Lordrequires that the child should be named Ann Lee (p. 447). Behind such externalchanges, the narrator observes inRebecca 'a new self, defiant, determined bynew circumstance and new conviction' (p. 287). Though he speculates thatshe learnt such 'steadfastness' from her husband, John Lee, it ismore likelythat she learnt it from the silver lady and 'June Eternal'. For Rebecca's divineexperience seems to free her from traditional forms of authority and empowerher to change her life according to her own sense of God's will.And yetwhen Rebecca, like theWife of Bath, tries to speak publicly of thisknowledge, her word based on experience alone lacks authority. For like themedieval world of theWife of Bath, the early eighteenth-century world asFowles portrays it is one inwhich the authority to speak the truth is linked tobook learning. Ayscough is perhaps themost obvious character who invests authority in old books. His chamber inLincoln's Inn vividly reflects the authoritythat books hold in his life:One wall of [his chamber] ismostly taken up with cased tomes of precedent, rolls andparchments; before the cases stands a tallwriting-desk and stool, a sheaf of paper andwriting materials neatly laid upon it.Opposite gleams a marble mantlepiece onwhichsits a bust of Cicero. (p. 107)The viewwithinAyscough's innroom s f old books, suggesting hat exts uchas these entirely define his philosophical view. And indeed, Ayscough uses thecontents of old books to legitimize his own authority. For instance, he peppershis letters to the Duke with all manner of Latinate phrases and mythological

17Eriksson notes that 'existence as writing' is a persistent Fowlesian motif through which hestresses 'the importance of not letting oneself be written by anyone else or some system but ofusing one's creativity towrite one's own story and eventually become amagus' (p. 225).



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942 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker Maidallusions, s if ithout such learned rnamentation he imple truth e reportswould lack uthority.Yet it is not just the learned Ayscough who invests old books with the authorityf truth. hen the eventeen-year-oldervingmaid, Dorcas, isasked to'speak truth' in her deposition, she affirms her intention to do so by agreeing,'Book truth, sir' (p. 77), as if, n the tradition theWife of Bath ostensibly rejects,the highest and most authoritative form of truth is thatwhich is found inbooks.Ironically, though, book truth is just what she cannot offer since she is illiterate;later, hen Ayscough questions her about thepapers Bartholomew reads inhistavern room, she must decline to explain what kind of papers they are, saying,'I could not tell, sir. I has no alphabet' (p. 77).Like Dorcas, Rebecca is 'a simple woman'-female, lower class, and relativelyuneducated. She does not have the literate resources with which to challengeauthority that even theWife of Bath somehow has, and she recognizes theposition of powerlessness inwhich that experiential knowledge alone puts her.As she acknowledges to her Welsh fellow traveller, David Jones:I know thegreat of thisworld better than thee.They would rather do murder than letlive thosewho can bring scandal on theirname. And scandal I have, such as theywouldnever bear, nor believe belike even itwere told. For whowould takemyword, or thine?(p. 242, emphasis added)

Rebecca recognizes that to a large extent her word lacks authority simply because she is a woman. As she observes toAyscough:We may not saywhat we believe, nor saywhat we think, for fearwe be mocked becausewe are woman. Ifmen think a thingbe so, so must itbe, we must obey. I speak not ofthee alone, it is sowith allmen, and everywhere. (p. 417)And Ayscough does indeed 'mock' Rebecca's ability to know what she claims toknow.'8 For instance, when Jones describes how Rebecca 'forgave' his Lordshipeven as she asserted thatGod would not, Ayscough splutters in indignation,'What right has a brazen strumpet to forgive her masters and to know God'swill?' (p. 266). Quite apart from the eccentricity of Rebecca's tale, Ayscoughreveals here that he distrusts Rebecca's 'divine' truth simply because he believesthat some people do not have the 'right' to knowledge about God: those whoare poor or female or not English have no warrant to 'speak truth' because theirtruth is based on experience alone.Ayscough's doubt about Rebecca's credibilityis further omplicated bythe fact that the tale of her strange experience seems to depart from thecherished truths found in his old books. In particular, Ayscough condemnsthe story of Rebecca's experience as 'blasphemy' because it seems to contradict traditional Christian theological doctrines and written scripture. DespiteAyscough's charges of heresy, Rebecca quietly persists in her belief that the18Baker has noticed inAyscough's very name a pun on thismocking, sceptical disposition. Inhis interview with Fowles, he proposes that the name Ayscough is 'a pun on thewords "I scoff"'(pp. 669?70). But as appropriate as this pun is forAyscough's character, Fowles admits that itwasunintentional: 'I hadn't really thought of it as s-c-o-f-f. I had thought of it as seeming to say "yes"and then coughing, as if he doubted what he was doing. But this is not serious tome; I chose itbecause it's a solid, North Country name' (quoted inBaker, p. 670).



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CARLA ARNELL 943Christian trinity includes Holy Mother Wisdom, trusting from her divine vision of the silver woman that a trinity without a female figure could not bedivine. But when she describes the silver woman as the generative side of God,Ayscough rebukes her, "Tis writ clear in the Book of Genesis thatEve came ofAdam's seventhrib' (p. 375). To defendher theological blasphemy', ebeccaadduces thewarrant of natural experience: 'Were thee not born also of amother?Thee's nothing without her, thee are not born. Nor was Eden born, nor Adamnor Eve, were Holy Mother Wisdom not there at the firstwith God the Father'(p. 375). Ayscough,however, gnores his videncefrom xperience, nable tosee her trinitarian tale as anything but the fruit of disobedience against biblicalauthority. e argues:I do not believe thee a new-born woman, no, not one tittle,beneath thyplain cap andpetticoat. Thou hast found a new vice, that is all. Thy pleasure's now tofly in the ace ofall our forefathers ave in theirwisdom toldus we must believe. (p. 424, emphasis added)

But not only does Rebecca try to defend her theological convictions on thebasis of human experience, she also tries to demonstrate that the Bible itselfonce originated from human experience. When Ayscough disputes her assertion about the equality ofmen and women by referring to the second Genesiscreation story, Rebecca refers him to the first creation story and the Gospelpassages that attest to the equality ofmen and women (p. 424). To explain thediscrepancy between Ayscough's text and her own, Rebecca points out thatthe Bible is human 'witness', and often 'witness from one side alone. Whichfault lies inman, not inGod nor His son' (p. 424). Here Rebecca acknowledgesthat biblical scripture is composed by human hands, almost always male ones,suggesting that theBible isnot the infallible authority Ayscough takes it to be.JamesWardley, amember of Rebecca's religious community, makes a similarpointduring yscough's interrogationfhim. In response oAyscough'squestions about whether or not the Bible is 'sacred truth' and 'infallible' (p. 396),Wardley asserts thatwritten scripture holds only partial authority forhim andhis fellow elievers:We say 'twaswrit by good and holymen, they lied not by their lights.Such were of theirunderstanding then; in some things,not certain truth. 'Tis but words, thatare fallible intheirseason. The Lord was never beholden to letters,nor theBook His last testament;for that is to say,He now is dead. (p. 396)Katherine Tarbox explains Wardley's view by observing, 'Wardley sees thatthe Bible is testimony, precisely akin to the voluminous testimony in this novel,which ismetaphorical in nature' (p. I63).Given this understanding of written scripture, it follows thatRebecca's personal witness may be seen as another important chapter in the continuouslyunfolding testimony, both written and unwritten, about divine action inhumanlife. For likeWardley, Rebecca seems to believe that the Lord speaks throughliving xperience, ot just through ead letters. hrough thisfaith npersonalexperience as a vehicle of knowledge about God, she fulfils theWife of Bath'sprophetic cry, but she also foreshadows the convictions of a religious movementthat, as of I736, isyet to be. For Rebecca's faith in experience looks forward tothe faith of the Shakers, of whom her daughter, Ann Lee, is to be the historical



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944 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker Maidfounder. ccording toRobleyWhitson, theShakers uniquely connected thevalidity f beliefwith personal experience: hakers 'believe ecause they hemselves have seen'.'9 And indeed, for the Shakers, personal experience carries anauthority that is usually granted only towritten authority. As Whitson explains:The fundamental constituents of Shaker spirituality are those rooted directly in theexperience of individuals and communities, rather than indoctrinal formulations, socialstructures,and the like.All these latter are derivative of thedirectly experiential as itsexpressions. Shaker spirituality isessentially themystical experience ofpersonal UnioninChrist. (p. 5)Even biblical authority, hewrittenword that mbodies authoritative ruth ormore orthodox forms ofChristianity, is subordinate to the truth of human experience verunfoldingthroughout istory. sWhitson defines the relationshipbetweenexperience ndwritten uthority or heShakers:Shakers responded to the truth f theSpiritwith any formwhich would effectivelygivehuman shape to it.They freely rejected formsno matter how hallowed by tradition,even Biblical, which did notmanifest their actual experience. (p. io)ike the Shakers, therefore,ebecca affirms he truth f spiritualexperience,even when such experience departs from the letter of biblical scripture. Andthrough ebecca, Fowles seems toexpresstheShaker-like onvictionthat theevolution of truth depends upon the accumulation of new human experiences,some ofwhich will affirm, some of which will challenge, the testimony of oldbooks.20It is curious, then, that the figurewho leads Rebecca on this pilgrimage of discovery ishimself deeply attached to the authority of old books. Like Ayscough,Bartholomew is legitimized by his book learning, as Nicholas Saunderson, the'fourthLucasian professor' atChrist's College, Cambridge, testifies inwriting:'[Bartholomew] has most pertinaciously continued his studies in the mathematick science and in all towhich it pertains. I have found him always wellread, and a most excellent practiser' (p. I87). Indeed, when Asycough asksLacy how Bartholomew spends his time, Lacy confesses that he does not know'Unless itwas with his books. For he brought a small chest with him, thathe did call his bibliotheca viatica' (p. I39). And just as Bartholomew's philosophical authority is confirmed by his book learning, so he invests his bookswith a kind ofmetaphysical authority. Bartholomew once mentions to Lacy a'hypothetick person [who] trulyknew what was to happen in time to come, andnot by superstitious ormagical means, but by learning and study' (p. I69). Andlike this 'hypothetick person', Bartholomew searches his books and papers forthe direction of his quest. Just as Lacy always carries a pocket copy ofMilton's'great work', which he asserts is a work inwhich 'the book and story of thisworld' is clearly laid out (p. I45), so Bartholomew's books and papers seem tohold complete knowledge of past, present, and future.19The Shakers: Two Centuries of Spiritual Reflection, ed. by Robley Edward Whitson (NewYork: Paulist Press, 1983), p. 3. All further references to this edition will be cited in the text.20As Tarbox puts it, 'While Fowles repudiates traditional ways of knowing, he sees in theShakers' notion of revelation aworthy epistemology. In their search for truth, they are not circumscribed by the Bible, as Ayscough is [. . .] he Shaker faith is organic. It lives, grows, and changes,and is therefore the antithesis of the stasis Ayscough champions' (p. 163).



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CARLA ARNELL 945

Yet as valuable as these books are at first,he has his servant Dick burn themat the Black Hart Inn. In this respect, Bartholomew's relationship with hisbooks recalls that f Prospero inShakespeare's Tempest.2' rospero loseshisdukedom largely because he has come to live so entirely in his books, and likeProspero,Bartholomew has set aside his aristocratic ife nd responsibilitiesto immerse imself n the 'secret tudies' ofmedieval numerology.22ndeed,ProfessorSaunderson criticizes the extent towhich Bartholomew immerseshimself in book learning and the 'phantasies' to which his learning seems togive rise p. i88). Saunderson explains:Imust believe also that [. . .] he did suffer, hough throughno faultof own, fromhisaristocratic place in society, viz., thathe lacked daily commerce of aworld of commonlearning and discussion upon it; and thus suffered fromwhat may be called a dementiain exsilio, ifyou will forgiveme. Or as it is said here, In delitescentia non est scientia,thosewho lie hidden, or live far,fromknowledge, may never fullyhave it. (pp. I88-89)Perhaps, then, Bartholomew himself realizes that books alone will not acquainthim with the knowledge he seeks. They may provide a partial path to suchknowledge, but living experience must lead the rest of the way. Therefore,prior to the consummation of his quest, he has Dick, his Caliban-like servant,burn his books, suggesting that he has fully consumed that path to knowledge.But to continue his quest, he secures the help of living human beings, Rebeccaand Dick in particular, implying that the kind of knowledge-wisdom-thatBartholomew seeksmust be experienceddirectly. artholomew's entire uest,therefore, charts the supplanting ofwritten authority by experience. And inprivileging personal experience as the highest form of knowledge its quest'send-Fowles's story ffectivelyeverses raditional ierarchies f knowledge.But where Bartholomew ultimately entrusts his pursuit ofwisdom toRebeccaand the fruits of her personal experience, Ayscough does not. Although heconcedes in a letter to the Duke that Rebecca seems to be telling the truth in sofar as the 'nature and meaning' of her beliefs are concerned, he still thinks that'her evidence is false in the substantial truth of what passed' (p. 435). Even tothe end, he does not believe her personal experience to be a reliable source oftruth. artly, yscough resists he uthority fRebecca's personal experiencebecause she is 'unlettered' and therefore incapable of reason (p. 436).23 Partly,as we have seen, he resists it simply because she is awoman. But partly also, he

21 Fowles has long been imaginatively and philosophically preoccupied with Shakespeare's Tempest, reworking its fictional material in various forms in The Collector (1963), The Magus (1965),and The Ebony Tower (1974). Fowles also analyses The Tempest as a parable of the imagination inhis non-fictional work Islands (1978). Apropos of Bartholomew's Prospero-like character, RobertJ.Begiebing has argued that Bartholomew clearly fits into the 'literary tradition of themagician' inrespect to his double-sided nature, his trickster's disguises, his many subterfuges, and his interestin hidden knowledge (Toward aNew Synthesis: John Fowles, John Gardner, Norman Mailer (AnnArbor: University ofMichigan Research Press, 1989), p. 47).22 Eriksson notes that forBartholomew, 'Life's golden meridian [. . .] is hidden in the [numerological] series thatwas discovered in theMiddle Ages by an Italian monk, Fibonacci' (p. 221); seealso Tarbox, pp. 157-59, for a discussion of Bartholomew's interest in the Fibonacci series.23 Frederick Holmes puts Ayscough's unrelenting rationalism in perspective by concluding,'What A Maggot implies about Ayscough's rational empiricism is not that ithas no place in lifebut that there are areas of experience which it is powerless to illuminate [. . .] he novel shows thatAyscough is so intent to discover the objective facts of the case that he is blind to other dimensions



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946 Chaucer's Wife ofBath and Fowles's Quaker Maiddoes so because itopens a door to the very political, religious, and social changehe so fears. As Katherine Tarbox puts it, 'He fears Rebecca's vision becauseit represents issent, which in turn onjures in hismind the "rabid political"mob. He needs reality to conform to his expectations, as his wall of "cased tomesof precedent" [. . ] indicates' (pp. I54-55). And indeed, Rebecca's Shaker-likecommitment to the truth of experience ultimately permits a gospel of changeand transformation that ispolitical aswell as personal, for her experience quietlyinspires er tooppose the njust realities fthe urrent ocial order and insteadshape her world according to the egalitarian vision seen in 'June Eternal'.Of course, long before Rebecca, theWife of Bath presciently dissented fromwritten authority and announced a way of knowing the world based on thefruits of personal experience. But the limitations of her 'real-world' experienceconstrained er from ulfillinghis nnunciation, reventing er from ringingforth a truth thatwas personally or politically transforming. Rebecca's fantastical maggot, on the other hand, enables her to experience her world in entirelynew ways. Indeed, the experience of themaggot bears the authority of the divine Logos forRebecca. It speaks toher in her nature as a daughter ofGod. Itspeaks of her as awoman in relationship to the divine. And it speaks for her,empowering her to rewrite her life as a free soul.LAKE FOREST COLLEGE, ILLINOIS CARLA ARNELLof experience which are ethically and existentially important' ('History, Fiction and the DialogicImagination: John Fowles's A Maggot', Contemporary Literature, 32 (1991), 229-43 (p. 235)).

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Wife of Bath vs. Fowles' Quaker Maid