There was a long tradition of preachers denouncing the fine clothing and the elaborate and excessive head-gear of women as snares of the devil, with English preachers being particularly prone to condemn those women who wore elaborate veils, kerchiefs, and wimples (Rigby 141). "WB is, of course, aware of such teaching, referring explicitly to St. Paul's advice to women to adorn themselves decently, modestly, and soberly (1 Tim. 2:9), but for such teaching she will not, she tell us, "wirche as muchel as a gnat"" (Rigby 142). As a result of this behavior, WB may be seen as a threat to the medieval hierarchy of power relations between the sexes because she violates the conception of what woman should be according to medieval tradition (Biebel 64). Taking Biebel's thought one step further, I suggest that she is a threat more because she embodies a mirror image of the typical medieval male by not following the stereotypes encoded for females. Stretching this analogy even more to say that the clerks prescribed the mold for medieval women did so to hide their own inequalities.
Chaucer further pushes the envelope with the WB's long-winded prologue. He allows her to express radical ideas on gender theory, demonstrate liberation from gender role restrictions, and defiantly rebuke "auctoritee" by playing with the slippage, ambivalence, and reversal of a female character into male traits. According to Margaret Hallissy, "Whatever her estate, woman needs rules. She needs them because she is fallen, fallen through Eve, whose punishment was to be subordinate to her husband, as are all her daughters to their husband in their turn, to the end of time" (9). This statement shows the attitude toward women in the medieval ages. Women were to do what they were told and if they did not then the man could punish them just as God punishes man. These attitudes were enforced by the "auctoritee" that WB rebuts.
