Throughout history, women have struggled to have a place in male dominant societies, particularly in the fourteenth century. The most compelling and unrestricted character in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is the Wife of Bath. One can make this assumption because she is far from a typical woman of her time. A typical women of the Middle Ages main ambition…
In The Wife of Bath's Tale, Chaucer’s actual meaning for telling this story was to show how people can change if given a chance to. “And of that maiden, spite of all she said, by very force he took her maidenhead”(Chaucer Lines 33-34). “So much petitioning of the king for her, that he condemned the knight to lose his head by course of law”(Chaucer Lines 36-38). In the beginning the knight had raped a maiden and later was going to get his head chopped off for it by the king’s orders. The knight had made a grave mistake and was going to pay for it.…
The tale of the Wife of Bath, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is anti-feminist. It tells the story of a young knight that must go on a journey to avoid punishment for his crime. At the end of the tale, the Knight is rewarded with a beautiful and faithful wife. This story is anti-feminist because it avoids punishing the Knight for his crime and makes gross judgements of all women. The story begins with a knight raping a young woman.…
Chaucer, the poet, used his scapegoat to keep himself safe from the wrath of the aristocracy. When Chaucer wrote the “Wife of Bath,” his views of women’s rights were futuristic and drastically different from his time. In the “Wife of Bath,” Chaucer challenges the patriarchal condition by making his female…
Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” explores some of the generalizations that have been seen throughout history about women as well…
For one, “The prologue attributed to the Wife of Bath is longer than any other in The Canterbury Tales. It is also longer than her tale” (Crossref-it). Another point of interest is The method which Chaucer expresses a lesson through the Wife’s prologue: by exaggerating the Wife to be extremely promiscuous while also attempting to respect the idea of marriage, Chaucer is able to point out the flaws of the thoughts behind marriage at the time. “It is also longer than her tale. It is, rather, a device constructed by Chaucer to satirise abuses of - and by – women, through exposing them and presenting that exposure as if it is coming from one of the abusers” (Crossref-it).…
The moral of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” refers to equality of women and men, a concept not common in the time period of The Canterbury Tales. In the tale, the queen sends a rapist on a quest to find what women most desire. The man learns that women want the ability to make decisions, and as a reward, his ugly wife transforms into a beautiful women when he…
In the 21st century, it is evident that sexual innuendos do not have a place in religion and that fact was no different in the 14th century. The Wife of Bath is the enigma of every century when it comes to religion and sexuality, especially the one in which she exists. She manages to maintain both religious and sexual personas. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue includes both religious and sexual elements even though they are in direct conflict with each other. It also utilizes both religious quotes and sexual innuendos in an effort to better represent what the character is actually like and the paradox in which she defies some social norms while conforming to others.…
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.…
Several arguments from both the prologue and the tale support that the Wife of Bath is a feminist. As for examples, some of the arguments are women and men are equal, a wife should have the control over her husband, the husband should obey and follow his wife’s orders, and those men who did not follow the rule have to be punished by god. These claims show that the Wife of Bath is in favor of women. She believes and supports the idea that rights, power, and opportunities should be given to female, and therefore, she is considered a…
Jacqueline Murray, the professor of Department of History at University of Windsor, shows how women emerge in the thirteenth-century manuals as a ’marked’ category defined by their reproductive and sexual functions, viewed above all in terms of how their own sexual status (widow, wife, virgin, prostitute) contributes to the evaluation of males who commit sexual sin with them. ( 13) The Wife thinks that the virginity is not very important because our bodies were given us to use. She despises virginity but she does not tell anyone. The Wife speaks about sexuality in natural way which is very brave and unusual in her century.…
The outworkings of this can be seen in many works great and small. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” follows in this tradition by portraying women as inferior to men, unable maintain power and making it necessary for male supremacy. At the beginning of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” the relationship between the king and his queen shows…
For to be free, and do right as us lest, and that no man repreve us of oure vice, But seye that we be wise, and nothyng nice” (The Canterbury Tales 941-944). Chaucer was using the Wife of Bath as a symbol for all women who wanted to be free from male…
Inside Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, a reader finds their attention falling upon a rowdy, fair-faced woman, who has been married five times. She is open with her words, ideas, and sexuality. These features are simply unheard for women of her time. Her openness leads many readers to believe she is a woman beyond her time, a feminist even. However, upon further inspection one finds that the Wife of Bath is actually the embodiment of an anti-feminist, she is absurdly physically minded, and does not have an honest appearance..…
These ideas are similar to Chaucer’s poem, only with “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” the main character’s genders are switched. Here, there is a focus on the wife and her experiences with the male gender. She, also, manipulates the male counterparts in her life when she greatly focuses on how all five of her husband’s sexually please her. She specifically outlines how the male’s anatomy is there for her, and as Marvell’s male character did, she disrespects the male gender through her focus on her husband’s worth to strictly being their physical sex. Both Chaucer and Marvell use this focus on their gender counterpart’s sex to gain control over them; Marvell, to gain sexual control, and Chaucer to gain power and justification of her actions.…