Misogynistic Characteristics In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

Now that we have that to think about, I would now like to suggest another thing that I think Chaucer is doing: pointing out some misogynistic characteristics of men in his society. In the prologue, Chaucer portrays the Wife of Bath as having controlling characteristics. We see that when she tells her audience about her husbands and how her various marriages went. The Wife tells us that during her first few marriages, she was the young, beautiful wife and she got what she wanted from her wealthy, older husbands. She tells her male audience that she controlled her husbands by mentioning that “[She] governed hem so wel after [her] lawe/ That ech of hem was ful blisful and fawe”, and that they always sought out ways to please her (219-220). With

her older husbands, it seems like everything went well. The twist of the story is when she got older and married her younger husband Jankyn out of love and not to pursue more wealth. When she was with Jankyn, she no longer had the controlling characteristics and that changed things, since he had control while she was the one who had to succumb to whatever Jankyn said. At some point, Jankyn did not really care for her and was very controlling of her and what she said. Of course, the Wife detested that and mention to us that she hated how he treated her and mentioned: “I hate hym that my vices telleth me/And so doo mo, God woot, of us than I” (662-663). To summarize what went on with both the Wife and Jankyn: she hated that he was now in control and was always telling her what to do and how a wife should behave. They got into an argument because she rips out a page from the book he uses to condemn her. He responds by hitting her so hard, she collapses. Scared to the bone, Jankyn then realize the bad he has done, and then she wakes up out of a sudden and they reconcile with each other. Why do we need to know that? Like I suggested earlier, it seems like Chaucer is setting up a plot to show some of the misogynistic characteristics of men in his society by portraying that in the Wife’s story line. He gives us a hint of it in the prologue, but then it proceeds to the Wife of Bath’s Tale. The next misogynistic characteristic of men is shown when the Knight in the tale rapes a lady.
Although there is also another component of this social ill being shown to us in the tale, I am now focusing on how violence and misogynistic characteristics is shown by the Knight and the other interesting twists that Chaucer adds to it to show how power in his society can cause damage when it is used wrongfully.

The Wife’s Tale begins by introducing the crime of the “lusty bachelor” in King Arthur’s court. The Knight saw a maiden and “By verray force birafte hire maydenhed” and the knight was to be dead because of his wrongful acts (888). Being that the Knight has some power here since he is a knight of King Arthur’s court, we can see how both being a male and having control or power ends up being a bad thing in some cases. The power and control are used in the wrong way and becomes very misogynistic because it causes harm to a woman in this case. To back up this idea, I would also like to suggest that Chaucer did not have the lady who was raped anywhere else in the Wife’s tale to show how power can sometimes be used awfully and the lack of it can make you prone to not getting the type of justice you want, and especially when you are a woman who lack power. Now—here comes the twist that I think Chaucer added to the tale to emphasize how power can be useful or sometimes not useful and can cause things like misogynistic behaviors to

happen.