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Assess the character of the wife of Bath as portrayed by Chaucer in the prologue to the Canterbury tales
The character of the wife of Bath in the Canterbury tales
The Wife of Bath’s Tale features a character that seems to resemble a feminist
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Recommended: Assess the character of the wife of Bath as portrayed by Chaucer in the prologue to the Canterbury tales
In medieval England, society’s roles were dominated by men and women were either kept at home or doing labor work. Among the most famous medieval English literature, “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer, lies ‘The Wife of Bath's Prologue’ and ‘The Wife of Bath's Tale.’ Within, Chaucer shares his perspective of the Wife of Bath, the Queen, and the Crone. Through the use of symbolism and diction, Chaucer aims to change society’s expectations of women.
Chaucer characterizes the women in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” as wise. The wife of bath expresses wisdom through her experience with marriage, she informs the other pilgrims that “when {she has} finished telling [her] tale/ of tribulation in the married life in which [she has] been an expert
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her wisdom is evident when she says “I dare to guarantee/ your life is safe; I shall make good my claim. Upon my life the queen will say the same. show me the very proudest of them all in costly cover chief or jeweled Caul./ That dare say no to what I have to teach. Let us go forward without further speech.” (190-196). Having lived a long time, the crone understands human nature well and is willing to guarantee that she has an accurate assessment of what women truly desire. Like the queen and wife of bath, the crone is characterized as wise in Chaucer’s ploy to emphasize women’s capabilities regardless of society’s conventions. At the trail the knight comes forward with his answer; to have sovereignty and control over their husbands. The queen agrees that he is correct and lets him go. The crone then requests that the knight marries her and she doesn’t take no for an answer so they got married. While in bed, the knight tells her how upset he is about having to marry such an ugly crone. The old lady doesn't take this to offense and gives him two options on the kind of wife the crone can be: beautiful and unfaithful, or ugly but loyal to her husband. The knight realizes he is no position to choose for her and lets the crone decide for herself and in result becomes
Women are prizes to be won over in this tale. Competition for women is portrayed throughout the entire story. This competition leads to lies and deceit which overall creates an unstable conflict. But, because of the way of life, the people who don’t lie and deceit still lose out in the end. Therefore, Chaucer teaches us that life isn’t fair and that people don’t always get what they deserve.
...e struggle for power. She feels women should solely have maistrie over their husbands in marriage. As she does not believe they can be equal partners in the relationship in terms of power. In order to justify her actions, the wife uses her prologue and tale. The Wife of Bath shows such control in her prologue which summarizes her own life, the Queen in her tale who controls the knight, and the old hag in the tale who is able to manipulate the knight to achieve her desires. The women in the relationships exercise control over their husbands through sexual manipulation and guilt. Therefore, the Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a strong advocator of female maistrie within a marriage. The wife not only shares her opinions about maistrie with fellow travellers through her tale, but also proves her beliefs through her introduction.
The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale tells about a woman who’s been married previous of times. She is described as Chaucer’s most delightful creature, although the Clerk and Pearson found her to be the most outrageous. She believed the woman should be head of household, nondependent on a man, woman should have the same equal opportunities as the men, and as soon as the men saw it that way, men and women would be happier in their marriage. She begins to describe her positions in her tale “The Wife of Bath” to why she stands affirms by it.
Traditional female characteristics and female unrest are underscored in literary works of the Middle Ages. Although patriarchal views were firmly established back then, traces of female contempt for such beliefs could be found in several popular literary works. Female characters’ opposition to societal norms serves to create humor and wish- fulfillment for female and male audiences to enjoy. “Lanval” by Marie De France and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer both show subversion of patriarchal attitudes by displaying the women in the text as superior or equal to the men. However, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” also incorporates conventional societal ideas by including degradation of women and mistreatment of a wife by her husband.
In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the stereotypes and roles in society are reexamined and made new through the characters in the book. Chaucer discusses different stereotypes and separates his characters from the social norm by giving them highly ironic and/or unusual characteristics. Specifically, in the stories of The Wife of Bath and The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer examines stereotypes of women and men and attempts to define their basic wants and needs.
Where would society be today without the Wife of Bath? This is a question not commonly asked, but has had an underlying influence on women’s standards across the globe. With lack of moral value, the Wife of Bath became the most acrimonious character Chaucer had invented. While many other characters stirred up controversy as well, there lie no doubts that the Wife of Bath was written for a specific reason: to break the double standard between males’ and females.
The Wife of Bath is both the joke and the jokester herself within the text, which highlights Chaucer’s ulterior motive of calling medieval anti-feminist stereotypes into question. The reader can see this idea through a multitude of instances, mainly when speaking of her last husband and her story of the knight and his quest. Women of that time period were essentially powerless, and Chaucer simply highlights a woman who is tired of this notion and wants to change it. What Jankyn did of reading “that cursed book all night” and the actions that ensued show that not only is The Wife of Bath tired of the fact that only men were writing and recording stories that put women in a bad light, but that it also had to be pretty frustrating to put up with
One of the most interesting and widely interpreted characters in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is the Wife of Bath. She has had five different husbands and openly admits to marrying the majority of them for their money. The wife appears to be more outspoken and independent than most women of medieval times, and has therefore been thought to symbolize the cause of feminism; some even refer to her as the first actual feminist character in literature. Readers and scholars probably argue in favor of this idea because in The Canterbury Tales, she uniquely gives her own insight and opinions on how relations between men and women should be carried out. Also, the meaning of her tale is that virtually all women want to be granted control over themselves and their relationship with their husbands, which seems to convince people that the Wife of Bath should be viewed as some sort of revolutionary feminist of her time. This idea, however, is incorrect. The truth is that the Wife of Bath, or Alisoun, merely confirms negative stereotypes of women; she is deceitful, promiscuous, and clandestine. She does very little that is actually empowering or revolutionary for women, but instead tries to empower herself by using her body to gain control over her various husbands. The Wife of Bath is insecure, cynical towards men in general, and ultimately, a confirmation of misogynistic stereotypes of women.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story about a widow who took a pilgrimage to the town of Canterbury with an array of dynamic characters whose diverse backgrounds allowed them to share their stories with one another to make the long journey more interesting. The widow named Alisoun in the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” told the tale of her experiences with her five past husbands and a story about a knight and a witch. She truly believed that for a woman to have a happy life she would need to gain dominion over a man; however one could assume this was programmed into her by her influential mother and her own religious doctrines. Accordingly, Alisoun argued that the woman must control everything in order to have a happy marriage; however, her life experience and the story she shared should tell her otherwise.
Chaucer, in his female pilgrimage thought of women as having an evil-like quality that they always tempt and take from men. They were depicted as untrustworthy, selfish and vain and often like caricatures not like real people at all. Through the faults of both men and women, Chaucer showed what is right and wrong and how one should live. Under the surface, however, lies a jaded look of women in the form that in his writings he seems to crate them as caricatures and show how they cause the downfall of men by sometimes appealing to their desires and other times their fears. Chaucer obviously had very opinionated views of the manners and behaviours of women and expressed it strongly in The Canterbury Tales. In his collection of tales, he portrayed two extremes in his prospect of women. The Wife of Bath represented the extravagant and lusty woman where as the Prioress represented the admirable and devoted followers of church. Chaucer delineated the two characters contrastingly in their appearances, general manners, education and most evidently in their behaviour towards men. Yet, in the midst of disparities, both tales left its readers with an unsolved enigma.
The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale. Geoffery Chaucer. The Middle Ages, Volume 1A. Eds. Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Fourth ed. Gen.eds David Damrosch, and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2010. 375-408. Print.
For this reason, The Wife of Bath’s Tale is often praised; however, there are still glaring problems with this story and its conclusions about women. The main issue with this story is its conclusion where Chaucer uses incongruity to criticise the options society gives women in marriage. The positive and powerful message of a woman’s sovereignty over her life is contrasted and undercut by the old woman who bore the message. The end of the tale, seems to portray a man who has learned his lesson. Rather than making the choice of when his wife would be beautiful, he states, “I put myself in your wise governing;/ Choose yourself . . .” (Chaucer). The use of the word “governing” can be connected to the idea of sovereignty where the woman is the ruler of the relationship. This would suggest that the knight has heeded the woman’s lesson; however, the use of the imperative with the word “Choose” is commanding which suggests the knight still holds the power. The tone the knight uses changes from submissive to demanding within one line. Not only is this positive development of knight learning the value of a woman’s choice undercut by the tone of the knight, but it is also undercut by the ultimate decision of the Old woman. The Old woman decides to transform permanently into a beautiful and young woman. Rather than having to sacrifice anything, the Knight gets everything he wants because his will aligns with his wife’s. The reader can assume that the Knight’s choice would be for the wife to be beautiful always because he is repulsed by her when she is an old woman and he raped a young and beautiful woman, suggesting that that is what he wants and is attracted to in a partner. The knight gets both the honor of having a beautiful wife during the day and the gratification of having an alluring wife at night, all with the
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales provides valuable insights on the roles women, their experiences, and the strategies they embraced to appropriate their quota of socio-political influence available to them during the Middle Ages. The text exhibits various discourses on female status and how it is projected, specifically through the use of women characters. Chaucer illustrates a spectrum of feminine ideals during the Middle Ages, individuals who fall short of these ideals, and solutions of those who seek happiness. However, the context women are portrayed in varies, whereas they are either idealized and worshipped—or loathed and monstrous. For instance, in The Knights Tale, Emelye is a beautiful noblewoman who exists only
example of the complicated nature of Chaucer’s belief system. On the one hand, we have many strong female characters that despite still being extremely dependant on the men in their lives, know what they want out of life. From a contrasting point of view, readers see a group of men, including Chaucer as the writer himself, making fun of the very nature of women as a whole. Is this really how Chaucer felt towards women, or is the prologue of The Wife of Bath’s Tale simply a parody of the opinions of his time?
Women have the ability to get what they want, when they want it. Chaucer portrays the Wife of bath as the dominant person in her marriages. She looks at men as her trinkets to be used and played with. She moves from one man to another, always looking for more. The Wife of Bath is a control freak, wanting to have sex when she desires it and with whom she desires.