In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales religious authority is challenged when the Wife of Bath appropriates male language in the form of a mock sermon to argue against the typical religious ideologies outlined by 14th century anti-feminist literature. The Wife of Bath challenges the Bible by using scripture and employing the genre of a mock sermon - a satirical form that uses scripture to add weight to an argument that has a didactic lesson - to advocate “a message opposite to the kind that preachers usually advocate” (Riddell). By choosing to speak within this genre, the Wife of Bath challenges the authority of Clerics - male, religious leader that hold high authority within a Church as they are the teachers of their religion’s practices - who argue
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She comments on how women are condemned for marrying and having sex with more than one man, even though popular Biblical men do the exact same thing : “Lo, here the wise king daun Salomon: / I trowe he hadde wives many oon” (35-36). The Wife of Bath is successfully able to point out the hypocrisy within the Church, as it demands chastity for one sex and celebrates indecency for the other. Her transgressive look at the Bible gives her a fresh take on the events happening during the fourteenth century, and using scripture gives her the authority to make her subversive statements because the Bible is a respectable piece of literature. If someone can use a quote from the Bible and make it fit into their argument, their claim instantly gains more authority because they have used the word of God. However, the Wife of Bath disproves the authority of the religious patriarchy by using scripture to contradict their religious teachings: she emphasizes the hypocritical idea of virginity within the Church by using Solomon as an example in her argument. Overall, this creates a feeling of insecurity with the blind trust people put into scripture: if the Wife of Bath can use scripture to give authority to her transgressive ideas, whose to say that anti-feminist literature or other preachers don’t use the Bible to prove a point for their own agenda as
She comments on how women are condemned for marrying and having sex with more than one man, even though popular Biblical men do the exact same thing : “Lo, here the wise king daun Salomon: / I trowe he hadde wives many oon” (35-36). The Wife of Bath is successfully able to point out the hypocrisy within the Church, as it demands chastity for one sex and celebrates indecency for the other. Her transgressive look at the Bible gives her a fresh take on the events happening during the fourteenth century, and using scripture gives her the authority to make her subversive statements because the Bible is a respectable piece of literature. If someone can use a quote from the Bible and make it fit into their argument, their claim instantly gains more authority because they have used the word of God. However, the Wife of Bath disproves the authority of the religious patriarchy by using scripture to contradict their religious teachings: she emphasizes the hypocritical idea of virginity within the Church by using Solomon as an example in her argument. Overall, this creates a feeling of insecurity with the blind trust people put into scripture: if the Wife of Bath can use scripture to give authority to her transgressive ideas, whose to say that anti-feminist literature or other preachers don’t use the Bible to prove a point for their own agenda as