The Five Husbands In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

For a person who died nearly 614 years ago, he is still well known today in the twenty-first century. In fact Geoffrey Chaucer has a crater on the named after him and has over 2,100 followers on Facebook. In Chaucer's literary work, The Canterbury Tales, there are 29 people on a journey heading to Canterbury and on the way there, all the people in the pilgrimage must tell an exclusive story. One character, known as "The Wife of Bath," tells us a story distinct from everyone else's. She has had five husbands and wants to tell everyone how to maintain a good marriage. It is ironic to everyone because if she knows how to have a good marriage, why has she had five husbands. The Wife of Bath's belief about marriage is depicted in the tale she tells. …show more content…
She believes that women should have all the power when in a relationship. In the Wife of Bath's "Prologue," she has five husbands, but she speaks mostly of the fifth husband. The fifth husband was abusive and he hit her because she tore pages from a book he was reading. When she took the blow from his fist she pretended to be dead. To get dominance from this particular husband, she pretends to be dead until he says that he will do anything as long as she is alive. This is when he lets her have all the power and make all the decision in their relationship. From that point on, they lived a happy marriage and she stayed loyal and faithful to him until he passed away. Since she has had five husbands who have let her take complete control of the marriage, she gets the ideal that if women have all the power in a marriage, it will lead to a happy