The great philosopher, Plato, stated, “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” At first glance, this quote seems completely illogical and greatly exaggerated. However, when the concept of rhetoric is deeply analyzed, there is no way to better show how often rhetoric is used in everyday life. Webster’s Dictionary defines rhetoric as “the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.” This essentially means that rhetoric is using speech or writing to illustrate a point in order to either: change the audience’s mind to take the author’s idea as truth or confirm the thought process of those who already accept the idea. While both Geoffrey Chaucer and Christine de Pizan display strong use of the rhetorical appeals toward persuading their audience that women were mistreated, “The Wife of Bath” appears to present the use of rhetoric in a more compelling way than The Book of the City of Ladies.
“The Wife of Bath” was written around the year 1386 by Geoffrey Chaucer. This was a time period when women were viewed socially as essentially property. “ ‘And just as grubs and worms eat up a tree, just so a woman will destroy her husband; all who are chained to wives know this, you say.’ ” (Chaucer 228) They were expected to be loyal to one man no matter what and were looked down upon if they had sex outside of marriage or wanted other men. In order to illustrate how this social construct was wrong, Chaucer wrote “The Wife of Bath” as a part of his
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famous Canterbury Tales. One unique detail about this tale, is he wrote it from the perspective of a middle-aged woman. And knowing how difficult of a task it would be, Chaucer knew he would have to perfect his use of rhetoric in order to make this tale stand out and make society rethink the way they viewed women.
Chaucer’s use of pathos was far superior to any other form of rhetoric used in this tale. He put the audiences in the shoes of the woman who did everything she could to rebel against social norms. She had sex with multiple men and essentially did not care what anyone had to say about her actions. The success from his pathos is derived from his descriptiveness about how the woman felt and how she was being treated. When deeply read, you can feel the oppression that Chaucer is trying to illustrate to his audience. “With fury, and with purest jealousy. By God! on earth I was his purgatory, for which I hope his soul’s in Paradise.” (Chaucer 231) An emotional appeal makes the most sense for this tale, because the main point of this work was to make men feel the way that women feel when held to a strict social construct of what a woman should look and act like.
Although pathos was the most significant form of rhetoric in “The Wife of Bath”, Chaucer covered all of his bases with ethos and logos as well. Ethos, in this particular tale, goes hand-in-hand with the emotional appeal, because the exigence he is trying to show through his heavy use of emotion, is caused by an ethical issue. Therefore, ethos has to be prevalent as it deals with ethics and similar situations. As for logos, Chaucer took an interesting approach to the use of this rhetorical device. “How many lawful husbands could she have? All my born days, I’ve never heard as yet of any given number or limit” … “All I know for sure is, God has plainly bidden to increase and multiply—" (Chaucer 219) Instead of simply saying that women needed
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to be treated how men would want to be treated, he decided to take biblical context and quotes, and use them to drive his point in creative ways. Overall, Chaucer delivered his point in the most effective way possible. His heavy focus on the emotional aspect was the most intelligent way he could have delivered the intended message.
The Book of the City of Ladies was completed in 1405, only around nineteen years after the completion of “The Wife of Bath”, so the cultural views on women had not had enough time to correct after Chaucer’s work. “So many men—and learned men among them—have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behavior.” (Christine 394) In light of that, Christine de Pizan decided to add to the list of “feminist” works at the time with her work The Book of the City of Ladies. As stated, Chaucer seemed to aim his work toward the men of his culture to urge them to reconsider the way they viewed women. Christine, on the other hand had what can be thought of as two intended audiences each would receive a different interpretation of the text. The first would be the men of her culture. To them, the meaning would be that they need to show more respect for women’s abilities and how they are no more immoral than men. The second audience is the women of the culture. This could be more of a motivation for women to stay steadfast is their morality. The fact that it is almost a story of encouragement to women makes the depth of the story more complex than it appears at first glance.
As far as her use of rhetorical devices, in a modern culture, her ethos would be more effective, simply because at the time, she was writing about things that were not thought to be true at the time. Her presentation of this social problem, as opposed to Chaucer’s, was not as convincing that the issue had to deal with ethics as opposed to raw emotion or logic. However,
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her logos was the least effective method used. This is because she used little to no facts in this story, it’s more hypothetical as opposed to a genuine suggestion. Chaucer did not put a lot of emphasis in his use of logos or ethos either, but these are still more effective in “The Wife of Bath” as opposed to The Book of the City of Ladies. Also, similar to “The Wife of Bath”, Pathos is by far the most critical rhetoric used here. “Remember, dear ladies, how these men call you frail, unserious, and easily influenced…” (Christine 397) This is the most effective form of rhetoric used in this particular story. It was intended to make the men question the way that they have been looking down on women.
Christine excelled in her use of pathos throughout the story. And because of her skilled use of this rhetorical device, it could be utilized as a double-edged sword for the society of the time period. It could be considered as a metaphorical double-edged sword because of how well she spoke to her two audiences. One group of people, men, would see it as condemning
them to have a higher level of respect to the women that they were mistreating; the other group, women, would see this as inspiration to stand up for themselves and realize that they are worth far more than the way they are treated. “Come back to yourself, recover your senses, and do not trouble yourself anymore over such absurdities. For you know that any evil spoken of women so generally only those who say it, not women themselves.” (Christine 396)
When compared head-to-head, Geoffrey Chaucer seemed to be more persuasive overall toward achieving his goal of inspiring men to reconsider the worth of women. Many different things are factored into this decision: his more powerful use of all three rhetorical devices, the fact that he was a “pioneer” for openly talking about the mistreatment of women in this time, and his work is more well-known which means it must have been very influential to have survived
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this long and still be such an influential work. However, both Geoffrey Chaucer and Christine de Pizan delivered a message that was more critical, even 600 years later, than either of them could have possibly imagined.