Compare And Contrast The Wife Of Bath's Tale

In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the audience is introduced to the Wife of Bath first by the narrator, but then discovers further about this character in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Directly following her prologue, the Wife of Bath begins to tell her tale about a knight and an old hag. As we read the Wife of Bath’s Tale, we start to notice there are some similarities between the two stories such as the women’s power over men, a few physical similarities, and then the similarities between Jenkin and the knight. Although the stories are not exactly alike, the morals of both remain consistent. In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the audience learns all about her five marriages. In summary, the dame was first married when she was 12, and she relished in the fact that she had complete control over the men in her first four marriages. She was very manipulative to these old men she married when she would distract them from her acts of adultery by accusing her husbands of …show more content…
Although we do not know about the life the old wife had before she meets the knight, we still see that she desires control of him just as the Wife of Bath did with Jenkin. The old wife even tells the knight that sovereignty is the thing that women most desire! The old wife is upset that the knight should act so upset that she is ugly, and she negates the knight and tells him every reason why it is a good thing. The knight literally says “I put myself in your wise governing” (1236). He gave her all the control in that situation and it pleased the old wife so much she gave him both a beautiful and faithful wife. Likewise, after Jenkin and the Wife of Bath had their big fight, Jenkin “gave me all the bridle in my hand to have governing of house and land…. After that day we never had debate” (820—829). So we see that both husbands ended up relinquishing their control, and that both couples ended up being very