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Characters and their attributes in chaucer Canterbury tales
Characters and their attributes in chaucer Canterbury tales
Gender roles from 1200 to 1450
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The Wife of Bath is one of the most famous characters within Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. In her prologue, it is quickly made clear that she has had a lot of husbands and by a lot I mean five. Since she has all this experience with men, The Wife of Bath dedicates her prologue to describing how each of her marriages went. In her five marriages she has been accused of lusting too much, to being too controlling, and being abused. While some good husbands were good and some were bad, The Wife of Bath depicts a solid image of her feelings toward men. In her relationships, she must always have the upper hand. She is the type of woman who gets what she wants when she wants it. While describing one of her marriages, The Wife of Bath explains how …show more content…
And happed that, allone as he was born,/ He saugh a mayde walkynge hym biforn,/ Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed,/ By verray force he rafte hir maydenhed” (lines 885-888). The knight only gets to hold this power for a short amount of time before he is caught. For his crime, he presents himself in front of a court full of women who must decide his punishment. We can see why The Wife chose this story in just the fact that an unjust man must plead for his life in front of a court of powerful women. The head of the court, the queen, decides to show him mercy if the knight can find out what it is that women truly desire. The queen and her ladies decide to give him one year to find the answer to her question, if he does not find the answer then the knight will be killed. Not only do the women have power over the knight in this situation, but they have now extended their power over him for an entire year. His life is now dedicated to finding out what exactly women …show more content…
Going back to her prologue, The Wife seems to be criticized for something different she does by each of her husband 's. She can easily be seen as violent, demanding, too controlling, too lustful, and many other qualities. The Wife argues that no matter what women do or don’t do, they will always be criticized, “Thou seyst that som folk desiren us for richesse,/ Somme for oure shape, comme for oure fairnesse/ And som for she kan synge and daunce/ And som for gentillesse and som for/ daliaunce,/ som for hir handes and hir armes smale” (lines 257-262). While she makes a great point, she interjects these opinion’s during her tale as well. Interrupting the flow of her story to display her opinions in this way can lose the audience 's focus of the true meaning of the story. The story itself does a great job of bringing the role femininity into play without The Wife’s interjections. In the beginning of the tale, right after the queen orders the knight to go on his quest she gives him some hints. “Somme seyde wommen loven bset richesse;/ Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse,/ Somme rich array. Somme seyden lust/ abedde/ And oftetyme to be wydwe and weedde” (lines 925-928). This shows that women want more than materialistic things, contrary to popular belief. While these things aren’t bad to have, it means nothing if they do not have the power over their significant
Chaucer's Wife of Bath is the most fully and vividly realized of the characters in The Canterbury Tales and her lengthy Prologue and brief Tale have a force and vitality that derive from the perfect integration of character and message. The Wife's account of her own life and her tale are both, seemingly, directed toward establishing the principle that happiness in marriage results from the woman's "mastery" over her husband. Nearly everything she says runs counter to theological authority, ecclesiastical preaching, and conventional social notions regarding the relations between men and women. This has led everyone from Chaucer's fictional Clerk to many twentieth-century scholars to conclude that the Wife's opinions are heretical and shockingly unconventional. But her clash with the religious and social conventions of her own era was probably not so shocking as, superficially, it seems to be.
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.
Chaucer’s character, the Wife of Bath, grabs the reader’s attention immediately as she sets the stage for giving an account of her beliefs on love and life: “Housbondes at chirche dore I have had five.” Because of her blunt honesty at the very beginning of her Prologue, the reader senses that the Wife of Bath feels no shame and carries no regrets about her many marriages. This is confirmed when the Wife proclaims, “Of whiche I have piked out the beste.” She displays two attitudes throughout the piece: living life to the fullest and loving to gossip about her past.
It’s clear the wife enjoys hearing herself and fishing for a good argument, but she’s, rather, more clever than scholarly. This is because, when it comes to her feminist point of view, she believes her own experiences to be more accurate than a scholarly diatribe. Put simply, she finds that her experiences give her knowledge and knowledge is power. With this we can see a direct relation to the tales theme of power when the Knight seeks knowledge from the old hag. The Knight has the daunting task of answering the biggest question known to men. As Sigmund Freud has put so well, it is to answer "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'”(Sigmund Freud, 1953) And when the knight receives his answer and returns to court, the two themes are reinforced because “Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee” (line 1038). Looking deeper into the meaning of the prologue and tale, we see that this is in fact the
Clearly, throughout this entirety of the knights journey, it is clear of the views that Chaucer is trying to express through the tale. How women should be treated no matter what, how a gentleman should act not being born into his gentleman hood, or even to how his crime wasn’t punished accordingly but served its purpose.”So they lived ever after to the end In perfect bliss; and may Christ Jesus send Us Husbands meek and young and fresh in bed And grave to overbid them when we wed.” (Page 150 Lines 403-406).
In the Wife of Bath’s tale, it tells about a knight’s journey to receive a death pardon from the queen, by finding what women truly desire in a relationship. Eventually the knight succeeds with the help from an Old Hag, saying that women want power. But in exchange for the pardon he must marry the Old Hag and choose either to marry her as ugly and faithful or attractive and unfaithful. The Knight chooses wisely and is rewarded as the Old Hag becomes both attractive and faithful. From this story I learned of the message the author was trying to instill, that women truly desired power in their relationship between a man. This reflected a bit on the reality of that time in that men were often the superior ones in the relationship and that the
This genre of sexist ideals can be traced back to ancient biblical eras where it was believed that men were superior to women. By commencing in certain heroic quests, and proving their bravery medieval men were able to reinforce their dominance and masculinity. Women on the other hand seem to play a different role within society. Their roles consist in being adulterers, manipulators and deceivers, whose ultimate goal in life is to bring pleasure to men. Throughout the story there are several meanings concealed within the characters that allude to this male dominant culture. The Gawain poet slyly demonstrates what the consequences are of giving females too much power, by setting up The Lady’s and Morgan La Fay’s image to be that of a malevolent person. He explores several portrayals and roles of women in this male-oriented society, but fails to recognize the roles these men have played and how exactly they shape women. While all of the female characters are objectified and oppressed in one way or another, the author’s depiction is not to blame but overall society’s beliefs of the cultural views of women is. The women within this poem and women throughout the history of our time have been forced to live in a world where society tries to control them. This story is the first of many to try and depict women as men’s demise, and though it gives us insight to the medieval time
The Wife of Bath’s is a hypocrite with wisdom and advice that would be most helpful to her in her situation completely in control over her marriages and how they affected her. Even through her prologue she “hints at the erotic activity (Cox)” Which is strange, especially in a time when women only job was to keep their husbands happy and have children. So one must ask oneself how did Chaucer intend to portray the wife of Bath’s?
The Wife of Bath tells a story about a “lusty bachelor” who finds a maiden and “by pure force, he took her maidenhood” which results in him facing possible execution (Chaucer 223). The Wife of bath’s view on men seems to be that they are greedy but that they can change if they are given a chance to. The knight took advantage of the maiden without thinking of the consequences and then received mercy because the Queen and other ladies believed that he may have a chance at redeeming himself. The year that the knight spends seeking the answer to the Queen’s question gets him nowhere until he comes upon a group of young women that disappears and leaves only an old woman who tricks him into marriage. The Knight choses to let his wife decide if she
In the Middle Ages, the roles of women became less restricted and confined and women became more opinionated and vocal. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight presents Lady Bertilak, the wife of Sir Bertilak, as a woman who seems to possess some supernatural powers who seduces Sir Gawain, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale, present women who are determined to have power and gain sovereignty over the men in their lives. The female characters are very openly sensual and honest about their wants and desires. It is true that it is Morgan the Fay who is pulling the strings in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; nevertheless the Gawain poet still gives her a role that empowers her. Alison in The Wife if Bath Prologue represents the voice of feminism and paves the way for a discourse in the relationships between husbands and wives and the role of the woman in society.
During medieval years women were stereotyped as less than men and as a disadvantage for them. Similarly, in the story, women are seen as deceitful and seekers of beneficial sustain. Even her last husband Jankyn thought that women were misleading. Therefore, he read a book of “wicked wives”, which contained stories of manipulative and very bad wives. Annoyed by this, the Wife of Bath decided to tear the pages from the book and throw it away. Jankyn got extremely mad and hit her really hard on the head leaving her partially deaf. In particular, this part of the text shows the reader the lack of respect women receives and how little men value them.
The Wife of Bath is a seamstress, known for her experience in marriage and her previous relationships to many different men. She is rebellious in not abiding by normal social standards of marriage, a strong advocate for the use and control of sexual power, and critical of the concept of virginity and why
In a radically different world, “Game of Thrones” takes place in a medieval land, where kings, queens, lords, ladies, warriors, knights, servants, priests, priestesses and prostitutes all play a role in a political battle of wills, but its hard to ignore the harsh reality of life for women in Westeros. Both shows depict the struggle of women navigating their way through a male dominated world and the lose of their morals and virtues along the way. (Thomas)
Meanwhile, in the Wife of Bath’s tale, the struggle is reversed in a sense. The knight in the story is nearly executed, but is saved by Queen Guinevere. Though with it, she gets the knight on a quest to find what do women really want. And this, is an uphill struggle. So much that he requested for the old lady’s help in
The knight in the tale had no choice but to submit to the sovereignty of the old hag. If the knight was a little smarter and did his homework in trying to say, "Hey, how does this old hag know the answer to what women most desire? She’s probably never been with a man before!" The knight was ...