The Ideal of Marriage

The Ideal of Marriage

In today's society most marriages have different perspectives of an ideal marriage. Some married couples are totally faithful, honest and respectful to one other, meaning the wife and the husband are together and living happy in there married life, other married couples may tend to cheat and disrespect each other, meaning that the married couple are not together or are separated may be there opinion of the ideal marriage. In the medieval period Chaucer, writes to his audience the ideal of marriage in his stories. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales he explains the medieval way of a ideal marriage In "The Wife's and Bath's Tale" and "The Franklin's Tale" suggest there own opinion on how a ideal marriage should be. In "The Wife's of Bath's Tale it suggest that a ideal marriage should be that the wife should have total master of her husband. In "The Franklin's Tale a ideal marriage is that the husband and wife should be faithful and honest to each other. These two tales suggest two different aspects of an ideal marriage.

In Chaucer's tale "The Wife's of Baths Tale" is a story about how the ideal marriage should be. In this tale the wife explains how she sees how an ideal marriage should be. The wife's view on marriage is to have mastery, and dominate the marriage. In other words let the wife run the show, she wears the pants in the house hole, and what she says goes. In her prologue she explains her beliefs and actions towards her many husbands. Her behavior may seem spectacular, but her needs and aspirations are difficult to explain. She likes men, and she dose not like sleeping alone (Chaucer 2). The wife felt the need to be loved and have mastery no matter what happened. During her four marri...

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...he be his lady. She has to go to her husband and confirm what she had done and he said since she has given her word she must keep it, but she is to tell nobody. She then goes back to Aurlius and tells him yes he is overwhelmed by Arveragus's generous behavior he releases Dorigen form her compact. She then turns to her husband and they live happily ever after. In this tale the idea that you have to choose your own destiny. That real love has to be chosen. She also states, that if you have chooses you have consequences that go along with it. Compared to the Wife of Baths Tale the wife was more faithful and honest. The moral of the story was to be faithful and honest to one another and you will have a wonderful marriage.

So in conclusion, both tales " The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "Franklin's Tale" focused on the ideal of marriage in two different ways.