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The Canterbury Tales
Geoffery Chaucer

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For well or for woe, she will not forsake him. She is not weary to love and serve him, though he may lie bedridden until he may die. And yet some scholars deny it, of whom Theophrastus1 is one. But what does it matter if Theophrastus wishes to lie? He says, "Take no wife, for the sake of your thrift, to spare expense in your household a faithful servant is more diligent than your own wife to keep your goods. For all her days she will claim a half. And if you are sick, God is my witness, your true friends or a faithful lad will care for you better than she that ever waits, and has waited many days, for your goods." This man writes this evil saying, and a hundred more--may God curse his bones! But heed no such vain opinions; reject Theophrastus and listen to me. [1310]

"Truly, a wife is God's gift. All other forms of gifts, such as lands, rents, pasture, common or personal property, all are gifts of Fortune, I declare boldly, which pass away as a shadow upon the wall. But without doubt, and, to speak plainly, a wife will last and abide in your house (longer than you would wish, perhaps). Marriage is a great sacrament; he who has no wife, I believe him to be a lost man, who lives helpless and desolate--I am speaking of lay people. [1322]

"And hear why--I don't say this lightly--it is because woman was created to be man's help. When he had made Adam, and saw him all alone, and stark naked, the great God, from his great goodness said, "Let us now make a helper for this man, like him." And then he made Eve for him. Here you may see and prove by this that a wife is man's help and comfort, his terrestrial paradise and his amusement. So obedient and excellent she is that they cannot do other than live in unity. They are one flesh; and one flesh, I would say, has but one heart in well and woe. [1336]

"A wife! Ah, Holy Mary! God bless! How could a man who has a wife feel any adversity? Surely, I cannot say. The bliss that is between the two of them no tongue can tell or heart can think. If he is poor, she helps him labor; she keeps his goods and never wastes a bit. 



1 Theophrastus Author of the lost book Liber de Nuptiis (The Book of Marriage), an anti-feminist tract that is mentioned in the Wife of Bath's Prologue (see note on this below) and that is used by St. Jerome in his Adversus Jovinianum (Against Jovinian), another famous anti-feminist tract.
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