Words of Innocence and Experience

Grace asked me why we have to study literature the other day, and I jokingly told her that it is compulsory and generally more interesting than linguistics. Moreover, I am relatively good at writing essays, knowing how to mislead people to jump to the conclusion that I really understand certain works. However, after having studied literature for one and a half year, I now admit that I actually enjoy literature, from which I have found solace, relation with real life, and inspiration.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gives us a bitter example of a man wearing a delicate mask of perfection. Even though we may not identify with Christian doctrines, people who disguise themselves expertly are omnipresent in society. When a fiendish person’s ego is revealed, we feel shocked and stricken. Yet we still wish to become or meet someone flawless, and therefore we feel sympathy for Gawain. Gawain’s case illustrates the distance between the appearance and the reality.

If the distance between appearance and reality is seen in a broader sense, The Wife of Bath’s Tale from The Canterbury Tales corresponds with the theory. The wife treated her three “good” husbands cruelly, scoling them all the time and manipulating their minds by deception. She pretended to love them and feigned jealousy, but the only thing she wanted from them was only money. How ironical!

However, again the wife wins the reader’s emphathy since she was forced to struggle with the adults’ complexions at age 12. In order to survive, she came up with some schemes and even started to enjoy the process. But we are very sure that if she had been endowed with a better life, she would not have needed to cheat people and engage in adultery. Here Professor Lei provided interesting guidelines for mediaeval women to thrive. Firstly, they must to reunite and cooperate. In addition, sex was a way to win power and wealth rather than the culmination of true love. These theories echoed what Dr. Wang taught us in the Natural History class about bonobo (The Second Chimpanzee) society. No wonder womainist groups advocate the lifestyle of bonobos and raise the slogan of “Sex, no war.” But the slogan is rather contradictory since isn’t sex a means to win the gender battle? Never mind.

Then the wife talks about her the other two “bad” husbands, whom she married for love. She cared for them so much that she no longer wished to steal things from them. In contrast, she longed to sacrifice and showered her ardor on them. And due to undeniable love, she eloped with her fifth husband while she was still married to her fourth. Anyway, what the wife experienced was folly human drama. Subsequently her story reminds me of Gone with the Wind, the book I breathe in. Scarlett treated her first two husbands bitterly, and in a marriage without love, she was obsessed with gaining power, whether she was aware of it or not. At the same time she had been mistakenly convinced that she love Ashley Wilkes, for whom she did a lot of stupid things yet the enthusiasm of devoting herself to him never ceased. At the end of the book she learned that her true love was Rhett Butler, and in order to win his heart, she lowered down nearly all her defenses and pride. It seemed to me that when it comes to love in ancient literature, women yields uncontroablly. I have always been so annoyed by the cliched scenario that I desire to write my version of sequel to GWTW, in which Scarlett enjoyed love without giving up her dignity. I don’t think love and dignity have to contradict. After all, there are some remarkable examples. Trudie Styler is married to Sting, and the couple conspicuously love each other, and they both enjoy impressive careers.

… Go back to the wife of Bath… She was a successful businesswoman, so why was she called “wife?” Was it a professional title? Well, sadly, women are defined by their marital status. Trudie is always referred to as “Mrs. Sting.” Nevertheless, I do not think it is necessarily a bad phenomenon. Well, girls hate to admit it but who does not dream of submitting herself to some irresistible male power? Also, women’s status has already risen to a great extent since there are numerous women who score much better than their husbands at their career, so their husbands have to be defined as “someone’s husband.” Unfairly, successful women are often avoided by men, so they end up being single, isolated, and misanthropic, like Professor Kuo.

The story she told about Gawain again reinforced the gap between appearance and reality, and Gawain’s excellence in speech was once again demonstrated. Certainly he wanted his wife to be both beautiful and faithful, but he chose not to let his real opinion defy the witch’s wish to take control. Thus, he won the battle. Even though the choice was made by the witch, Gawain was the one that reaped the sweet fruition.

So, the wife of Bath shared her precious experience in marriages with others, yet her accounts are very likely to be underappreciated if not for Chaucer’s writing them down. As the professor suggests, people tend to believe in the authority of the book in stead of real practice. This is similar to what I have been learning in sociology that “skills” in Taiwan are disdained. The accomplishements of workers are never written down, so people ignored them and even they disdain themselves. Therefore, Professor Wu was trying to correct the foul prejudice by trying to note down the achievements and the hard work required to create Taiwan’s now prosperity. If not for the books, I would not know about the obstacles and setbacks the former generation went through and managed to overcome. Consequently we should not be irritated if authors attempts to glorify themselves in their works because once they write the things down, they will really make a difference, as Shakespeare claims in Sonnet 55, Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

In sum, knowledge of all sorts are related, and we should put a gap between it and the reality. From literature we venture in an either idealized, authentic, or digenerated world, from which we learn to love ourselves and respect people.