Into the Queen’s Court, Granny: Crones and Coalitional Possibilities in the Wife of Bath’s Tale

Abstract

In the Wife of Bath's Tale, after a knight commits rape, he confronts a court filled with ladies twice: once, to mete out his punishment, and again, to fulfill the terms of his plea deal. The outcomes of these two encounters, wherein justice and mutual aid is mediated through a group of women, result in drastically different levels of practical success. This essay explores the figure of the crone, who appears in the second courtly encounter, as an agent of speculative possibilities that enables successful mutual aid and coalition-building.

Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin's 'Space Crone' and Dean Spade's Mutual Aid, this essay argues that the old woman takes on speculative possibilities due to her status as a person who has 'acted the entire human condition--the essential quality of which is Change' (Le Guin 6). Her presence as a change agent enables coalition-building and successful mutual aid efforts, as well as justice, to occur without being 'co-opted' by the dominant power structure. In performing this analysis, this essay not only examines the figure of the old woman, but investigates the possibilities presented by speculative bodies within middle English literature that result in practical outcomes of resistance enacted by coalitions of women.