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Marriage in the Canterbury tales
The canterbury tales analysis essay
The general prologue to the Canterbury tales analysis
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Towards the beginning of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the narrator introduces the reader to the loud and licentious Wife of Bath, Alison. In her prologue, she describes her five marriages—all ending with her widowed. While her marriages are not particularly healthy and harmonious, Alison managed to temporarily find love. The experiences of her marriages weave their way throughout her tale. In the Wife of Bath’s tale, the audience enters “the old days of King Arthur,” fairies, knights, and most importantly the strict chivalry code. At the beginning of the story, a knight rides into view and spots a maiden near the water. He proceeds to rape her— “He saw a maid walking ahead of him, From which maid at once, in spite of her protests, By sheer
Marie de France’s “Lanval” is a brilliantly witty and captivating narrative poem—one illustrating a knight’s unyielding honor and loyalty to his king as well as his enduring chivalric devotion to the woman he loves. Written in the twelfth century, amidst a time when women were looked down upon and considered useless and unnecessary, Marie’s portrayal of a knight needing to be rescued by his female lover breathes comic irony into this otherwise misogynistic and antifeminist world. In addition to this cleverly depicted romance, a further literary work, Geoffrey Chaucer’s early fifteenth century “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” extends its own explicitly satirical outlook
This might seem ironic coming from a man in this period, but it is not so ironic when one looks at the Canterbury Tales and acknowledges it as a fine work of parody. Chaucer attacks other traditions vigorously, a good example of which is his discussion of corruption in the church . His critical look at the standards for women which are especially enforced by the church add humor to the tale of the Wife of Bath while also making a political statement. Chaucer prepares the reader for the tale with his brief description of the wife in the Prologue. She is a skilled cloth-maker and devoted Christian pilgrim trips as well as several other shrines in different countries. The irony comes in when Chaucer adds that she is a gap-toothed woman in scarlet red leggings, who has been married five times. This description does not sum up with the image of a hard working, devoted Christian woman according to the doctrine of the church. Chaucer's physical description is important because it makes the Wife of Bath more acknowledged ; she reeks of feminine
Nelson, Marie. "Biheste is Dette: Marriage promises in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." 2001. Dept. of English, Wentworth University. 15 July 2003 <http://www.wentworth.edu/nelson/chaucer>
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.
The Miller's Tale and The Wife of Bath's Tale feature two characters that, though they may appear to be different, are actually very similar. They both seem to confirm the anti-feminine beliefs that existed at the time Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales. However, they go about it in different ways. Alison, the woman in The Miller's Tale, tries to hide the fact that she has a passion for men other than her husband, and keep her position as an upstanding citizen intact. The Wife of Bath, meanwhile, has no qualms about displaying herself as she really is. She is not ashamed of the fact she has married five times, and is about to marry again. She hides nothing. While Alison differs from the Wife of Bath in appearance and the way she conducts herself in public, inside they are more alike than Alison would probably care to admit.
Huppé, Bernard F. "Rape and Woman's Sovereignty in the Wife of Bath's Tale." Modern Language Notes 63.6 (1948): 378-81. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Though Chaucer showed multiple tales of various characters in The Canterbury Tales, the Miller’s and Wife of Bath’s tale surpassed them all on their concept of marriage and love. Both allow the reader to understand where they are coming from and their perception. While one does not seem to believe too much in love, the other does. However, both clearly believe that women control the game of love in their own respective ways.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.” The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2000. 87-98.
The Wife of Bath, with the energy of her vernacular and the voraciousness of her sexual appetite, is one of the most vividly developed characters of 'The Canterbury Tales'. At 856 lines her prologue, or 'preambulacioun' as the Summoner calls it, is the longest of any of the pilgrims, and matches the General Prologue but for a few lines. Evidently Chaucer is infatuated with Alisoun, as he plays satirically with both gender and class issues through the Wife's robust rhetoric. Scholars and students alike have continued this obsession with her, and as a consequence Chaucer's larger than life widow has been subject to centuries of scrutiny. Indeed, she is in the vast minority amongst the Canterbury bound pilgrims; apart from the in-vogue Prioress she is the only female - though she appears in no way daunted by the apparent inequality in numbers. It seems almost a crime to examine masculinity in her prologue and tale, but as I hope to show, there is much to learn both about the Wife and about Chaucer from this male presence.
The main character, Alison, or the wife of Bath, is representative of most of the feminist ideals in the work. She is strong, independent, and to be respected as a woman of great courage. Alison has suffered a great deal in her lifetime, indicative of life for women at this time. She has survived five husbands; some of whom beat her, others were unfaithful. She was married off at an early age of twelve and from then on knew what marriage was about: money. "Marriage is the key to survival, and that is what Alisoun seeks and finds" (Carruthers 214), argues Mary Carruthers, justifying Alison's five marriages. Alison equates money with power. With this power comes respect and honor.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is written in an entertaining and adventurous spirit, but serves a higher purpose by illustrating the century’s view of courtly love. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other pieces of literature written in the same century prevail to commemorate the coupling of breathtaking princesses with lionhearted knights after going through unimaginable adventures, but only a slight few examine the viability of such courtly love and the related dilemmas that always succeed. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that women desire most their husband’s love, Overall, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that the meaning of true love does not stay consistent, whether between singular or separate communities and remains timeless as the depictions of love from this 14th century tale still hold true today.
Moving towards the second tale “The Wife of Bath” love and death play a very large toll on the outcome of the story. We begin with a knight who rapes a woman and is given the death penalty. His “love” for her granted him a golden ticket to a death, but miraculously is spared to find the answer to question his life depended on. When introduced to the old woman, he is forced to pledge himself to her in order for help. She helps him and he lives but is now burdened with a woman he does not love. He has no love for her yet is forced to marry and remain miserable.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. Trans. R.M. Lumiansky. NY: Bantam, 2006. 184-192. Print.
“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.
... allows the present day reader to gain insight into commonly held beliefs regarding women during the 14th century. By allowing Alison to have a sense of humor and joke about aspects of her marriage, Chaucer was able to make numerous points regarding women that would not have been acknowledged had a female author created them. By making Alison a laughable character, Chaucer was able to make points about women such as the unfairness of double standards, the acknowledgement of female desire, and the reality of women marrying well to improve their economic situations. Chaucer also provides us with detailed examples of commonly held stereotypes regarding women that are still relevant approximately seven centuries later.