Wife Of Bath's Prologue Analysis

First of all we have to think of the Canterbury Tales in a certain context, these stories are being told in the passage of a Pilgrimage to Canterbury. We see that these characters all live in the same world interacting with one another, but they all have different points of view in several topics. “The pilgrims are represented as affected by a variety of destructive and restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movement can be fully described only as mixtures of the loves that drive and goad and of the love that calls and summons.” (Hoffman 503) Their actions and their tales should be thought about in context, who they are, their age, their professions and their interactions with each other. One assumes they all have their own maistrie. …show more content…
Originally “The Tale of the Old Woman” was about a woman talking to her son about her experience in love so that she would “teach [him] of the games of love so that when you have learned them [he] will not be deceived” (De Meun 350-1). This was originally meant as a sermon to produce a reaction. Chaucer uses the Wife’s of Bath’s Prologue to start off this new topic of discussion. Her personality and experiences are the ones who give way to marriage as a theme. In a way her Prologue seems to steal the show more so that the tale in itself. The Tale only furthers her way of viewing marriage. She believes that women play an important role in marriage, the dominating role. More than just trying to indoctrinate, her tale kick starts the conversation on marriage during the Pilgrimage. But it is not the tale itself that seems to spark a discussion but more in the way that she tells it. Truly, “the Pilgrims do not exist for the sake of the stories, but vice versa” (Lyman 538), the tales exist for the sake of the Pilgrims and their interactions with one another. Their camaderie is what seems to be important, more than the tales themselves, it’s the exploration of their relationships with each other that seem to be utmost