The Wife Of Bath Feminist Analysis

Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem, The Canterbury Tales, contains a character that is read by some as “the epitome of the modern feminist,... takes on the men at their own game of name-dropping, and refuses to be silenced by the patriarchal powers that be” (Evans, Ruth, and Johnson 1). The Wife of Bath contains all the negative stereotypes of women portrayed by men of the Medieval time period, such as being a chatterbox and promiscuous. Which greatly contrasts the other fictional women of her time, who were silent and suppressed in literature. The Wife’s argument “offered a defence of women against their misogynist critics” (Rigby 137) of the Medieval Age. Presented as a critic who beats males at their own game, and gives her the authoritative stance

The first is the negative association of women and sex; the second was the structure of marriages hierarchy system which created both “master and slave” (Evans, Ruth, and Johnson 64) placing women at the bottom allowing men to be there dominate masters, while women were held as their compliant slaves; and the third was the physical and sexual violence men forced upon women. These are critical issues that were definitely not discussed by men publicly and without a doubt not by women. For the Wife of Bath to exhibit such weighty issues and an advocate for the benefaction of women in such a position was pioneering. “She views words, like sex and money, as strategic weapons in the war between the sexes” (Hansen 2). The Wife of Bath is slick in her delivery of speech in both the Prologue and Tale. Her Tale retells all of the subjects of sex, marriage, and violence that she first brought to light in her Prologue, and frames them with an entertaining style in order to make her message captivating to her audience, which at the time fundamentally male. It was very right-brained to construct these topics in such a suggestive way to bring