The Wife Of Bath's Tale Alyson Dichotomy

Self-confident, manipulative, and a duplicitous woman is how Chaucer, the great iconoclast of patriarchy, creates the portrait of the wife through the use of symbolism, metaphor, and paradox. In the “Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” and “Tale,” Chaucer’s deliberate satire upon marriage and women highlights the wife, Alyson, as a sexual desire. Depicted by the people as an idyllic woman, however there’s a dichotomy in her character for Alyson is not the person she portrays to be. In the general prologue, the usage of symbolism describing Alyson’s physical appearance help express her self-confidence. Alyson’s vivid attire is described as, “ Her hose were of the finest scarlet...Bold was her face,handsome, and in hue” ( lines 466-468). Alyson’s expensive and fancy attire symbolize her wealth and sense of importance. The vibrant color red demand and inquire attention in a comparable way to Alyson’s fearless attitude shown within her piligrim. She …show more content…
Simply, she is opposite from the way she represents herself. In other words, seen as beautiful and sin-free from the outside but grotesque in the inside. In the eyes of the people and to the Christian church she is viewed as a pure women since she has been married at the church door five times. Yet, a paradox is shown later in the passage when it states, “apart from other company in youth”. Chaucer places this line right underneath the line where he states Alyson five traditional marriages to emphasize marriage was her escape source for sexual desire, yet still be justified as a “worthy” woman. At first Alyson is seen as respectable for everything she does is right, however the next line is contradicting when it is known she had company. She was like a fake smile, everyone saw a genuine smile that was what she projected but only she understood it was fake. See the thing was no one was able to see through her, blinding them from alyson’s true