The wife's life with her first three husbands (lines 193-451)
The wife of bath begins this section by giving an account of her first three marriages. She treats her first three marriages as one marriage; talking about how she used the same techniques to control her husbands and does not refer to individual people but a combination of all her first three husbands which she refers to as her husband.
The wife begins, with a shockingly cynical statement, by informing her audience that her first three husbands were good, because they were rich and old and easily controlled. "The thre were goode men, and riche, and olde." This is very degrading to her husbands; she did not care about them at all and is more then willing to stand up in front of a crowd and degrade them. "How pitously a-night I made hem swinke!" Her degradation of her husbands continues as she goes on to tell her audience how easily she controlled them by forcing them to give her their worldly possessions, "And sith they hadde me yeven al hir lond." The wife then goes on to tell about how she used to cheat on her husbands and get away with it if anyone told by convincing them that the person who told them was crazy by getting her friends to convince them she didn't. "And take witnesse of hir owene maide." The wife was also able to get her husbands to buy her new clothes and make up and any item she wanted by taking advantage of their kind nature. She would tell them that she was not respected like her neighbour was because she has not got so many nice things. "I sitte at hoom, I have no thrifty clooth." The wife is very proud of her achievements at controlling her husbands and goes into great detail about how she makes up stories about her husbands getting drunk and insulting her. "Thou comest hoom as dronken as a mous, and prechest on thy bench, with ivel preef!" she also says they insult marriage to women in general, saying you cant marry a poor woman "To wedde a povre womman, for costage" and you cant marry rich women "And if that she be riche, of heigh parage, thane seistow that it it a tormentrie to soffre hire pride and hire malencolie." The wife also says that her husbands use petty arguments against her "Thow seist that dropping houses, and eek smoke, and chiding wives maken men to flee.
According to the Wife of Bath, sovereignty, or power, over their husbands is what women desire most in their lives:
The Wife of Bath was a plump, florid, jolly, bold, lusty, and voluptuous woman. She was the most valuable of women. The wife of bath cannot resist telling her companions about all of her sexual experiences. She has had five husbands. Her husbands fell into two categories. The first category of husbands was: rich, but also old and unable to fulfill her demands, sexually that is. The other husbands were sexually vigorous, but harder to control. The first three were rich, old, and jealous. She tamed them by accusing them of promiscuous behavior, that she herself practiced. Her fourth husband had a mistress, so she "gave him a real cause for jealousy" (Halliday 119). At the funeral of her first husband she fell in love with the legs of an Oxford clerk. Although he was half her age, he became her fifth husband. This marriage was unhappy because he beat her. To anger her fifth husband, the wife of Bath tore three pages from his book. After this he beat her again. She pretended to be dead and he felt so guilty that he threw his whole book in the fire. This gave her the upper hand for the rest of his life. She presently is looking for a sixth husband when her character is introduced (Halliday 119).
The wife of bath shows us greed throughout the whole play. She wants to gain sovereignty over her husbands. She believes a happy relationship is one where the wife
The wife says that she had five husbands and that’s all thanks to God (1-8). She is trying to make it seem like having five husbands is justifiable in her case and that of her five husbands they were all submissive to her. They may not have obeyed her at first, but eventually they all became submissive at one point in the relationship. She strongly believes that husbands should obey their wives, sort of in a feminist view. She is loyal to this belief and to herself, because this view does not change. Her loyalty is different in that of Beowulf, Gawain, and Lanval in that the loyalty is to the king, but instead herself as well as similar to Gawain in that he was also loyal to
In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer opens his story by telling about a certain amount of people who are going on a pilgrimage. The Wife of Bath stands out more compared to the other characters that are involved in these stories. In Chaucer’s “General Prologue,” the Wife of Bath was described as a woman who was talented and a flamboyant person who shows she is not fearful. She is also referenced as a woman who is powerful and gets anything she desires. She has a lot of experience in love and sex. She shows off her clothes with evident pride, her face is wreathed in heavy cloth, her stockings are a fine scarlet color, and the leather in her shoes is soft and fresh. In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” the Wife of Bath discusses marriage, power and sex. The Wife of Bath is an selfish an authoritative woman.
"An Homily of the State of Matrimony" presents conventional duties of husbands and wives. Its intent is "...to establish patriarchy, commanded by God and instituted in Paradise, as the foundation of family life" (Klein 13). Husbands are the "heads" of this institution, but should be sensitive to certain faults found in women: "For the woman is a weak creature, not endued with like strength and constancy of mind...and they be the sooner disquieted...more prone to all weak affections and dispositions of mind more than men be, and lighter they be, and more vain in their fantasies and opinions" (Klein 16). Women, according to the "Homily," are to submit to their spouses and withstand any form of abuse (verbal or otherwise) from these men with the notion that their perserverance will be rewarded in heaven. Desdemona takes heed to this testament accordingly when she tells Emilia, "Be as your fancies teach you..." and, referring to Othello, "Whate'ver ...
In the tale that Geoffrey Chaucer had wrote, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, a man was described as a Knight. This Knight wasn’t like any normal Knight, he messed up and raped a girl. This is a big mistake, giving a lot of Knights a bad name, and having those that look up to them start to be disappointed in them. Usually the punishment that is given to those that rape, or in general any other crime, is death or time in the slammer, however, the Queen says no because he is a good looking guy. Instead of death, he had find out what women most desire from men. He is given a year and a day to find out, and on the last day, when he nearly had given up all hope, he sees an old woman in a field who makes a deal with him. The old lady gives the Knight a choice: to have an old, but faithful, wife, or to have a drop-dead gorgeous woman, but to have her never to be faithful, before she tells him what the Queen wants to know. The old lady and Knight get married and she wants him to sleep with her, like husbands are supposed to do with their wives. They argue and she gives him the two choices again; to have an ugly wife, but she is faithful. The other choice is to have a drop-dead gorgeous wife, but is never faithful. With this, he learns a lesson, and sufficient punishment.
She loves men but hates them. She strives for marriage but sees it as a battleground. She seems to like her fourth husband but is ready for a fifth even before the fourth dies. She loves her fifth husband the best but is more abused by him than by any of the others. She sees one of the purposes of marriage as procreation but seems to have had, in five marriages, no children. She thinks women should have sovereignty but seems not to want it herself, or at least not for long” (100)
The Wife of Bath is a complex character-she is different from the way she represents herself. Maybe not even what she herself thinks she is. On the surface, it seems as though she is a feminist, defending the rights and power of women over men. She also describes how she dominates her husband, playing on a fear that was common to men. From a point of view of a man during that time period, she seemed to illustrate all of the wrongs that men found in women. Such as a weak parody of what men, then saw as feminists. The Wife of Bath constantly emphasizes the negative implications of women throughout the ages. She describes women as greedy, controlling, and dishonest.
The Wife of Bath is a wealthy and elegant woman with extravagant, brand new clothing. She is from Bath, a key English cloth-making town in the Middle Ages, making her a talented seam stress. Before the wife begins her tale, she informs the audience about her life and personal experience on marriage, in a lengthy prologue. The Wife of Bath initiates her prologue by declaring that she has had five husbands, giving her enough experience to make her an expert on marriage. Numerous people have criticized her for having had many husbands, but she does not see anything immoral about it. Most people established negative views on her marriages, based on the interpretation of what Christ meant when he told a Samaritan woman that her fifth husband was not her husband. To support her situation, the Wife introduced a key figure that had multiple wives: King Solomon.
Virtually everything the Wife of Bath does or says regarding different aspects of her life demonstrates that she is very insecure about herself. She begins her prologue by informing the travelers that she has the authority to argue about and discuss marriage because of her experiences: “Experience, though noon auctori...
“The life so short, the craft so long to learn” (Famous Quotes). The Canterbury Tales is enriched with humanistic merit that allows the reader to sharpen his or her own craft of life. Specifically, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Clerk’s Tale” are embodied with multiple struggles of life that pertain to life in the present. Despite seven centuries of society constantly evolving, the two stories’ plots can still be further analyzed through similar themes about relationships that pertain to modern society and how rhetorical strategy allows the audience to relate to the narrative characters.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is an important part of his most famed work, The Canterbury Tales. One of the most respected highly analyzed of all of the tales, this particular one is important both for its character development and its prevailing themes. It seamlessly integrates ideas on society at that time with strong literary development. This work stands the test of time both because of its literary qualities and because of what it can teach us about the role of women in late Medieval society.
In The Canterbury Tales Wife of Bath’s Tale, the author incorporates major events in the text that relate to power in many different ways. In addition, in the text the author illustrates the sovereignty that women have over man in various ways. Furthermore, there is power in knowledge because with knowledge there is freedom. Also, in the text a character loses power over the external events that occurring in their lives. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the author illustrates a woman’s power through authority, marriage, and punishment.
The Wife of Bath 's prologue and tale has a very personal authenticity to it. Although Geoffrey Chaucer is the author, the wife of Bath takes agency to talk about herself and her experiences. It is almost as if the wife speaks for him. The expectations of married women, at the time The Canterberry Tales were written, were to be modest, true and obedient wives. The wife of Bath, however, admits to using her own experiences as the source of her knowledge in marriage, and not the views of society. It is the fact that she relies on her internal thoughts and experiences that allows one to see her (and Chaucer 's) personal insight on the desires of married women. Although some may say that the wife of bath is simply looking for dominion over her husbands, Chaucer characterizes the wife of bath as a bold woman, and also uses the first person point of