Throughout the Wife’s tale, traditional values and headships, that is leadership and supremacy, are reversed or overthrown. At the beginning of the tale, King Arthur submits to the rule of Guinevere (thus abandoning both his headship of the state and his headship of the family); the ladies of the court, instead of the men, serve as justices; and the authority of books and scriptures gives way to experience. Furthermore, the knight, a rapist who has violated the sanctity of a young girl’s chastity, is redeemed by another woman, albeit a hag. Finally, in the choice the hag offers the knight, both choices are intolerable. Thus, when he lets her make the decision, he has abandoned the male’s sovereignty in favor of the woman’s rule, thus turning the medieval world-picture “up-so-doun.”
