The Wife Of Bath In Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'

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Recommended: GENDER role in the Canterbury tales

Tilya Means
Dr. Devona Mallory
ENGL 2111.2
March 30, 2016
The Wife of Bath In Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” the Wife of Bath gives the audience a complicated representation of the role of women in those times. The Wife of Bath embraces her sexuality by using her body to influence men to give her what she wants. Some would argue that the Wife of Bath is strong and brave even a feminist, to which I can understand to a certain extent. However, by using her sexual power to manipulate men, isn’t she proving that women are cunning and devious and even verifying all of the negative labels that women have been fighting off for centuries not to be attached to? At first, it seems that her intentions are to inspire women not be controlled or told what to do by others, especially a man, but they soon start to do just the opposite by setting women back into the stereotypes that women are only good for sex, "In wifehood, I will use my instrument/ As …show more content…

She does not care about fighting for the rights of women; she is merely using what she has to get what she wants. In a literary character analysis the author states, “She has a choice of not giving in to the man, but she decides to let the man attain his sexual pleasure for his desire not hers because she has experienced sex before and she knows how much men enjoy it. This quotation obviously goes against feministic beliefs” (Wife of Bath-Character Analysis). She started off by preaching independence but later turns out to do the complete opposite. I don’t agree with her selfish and immoral actions. She is a shame to medieval and modern day women because everything that she does revolves around sex and money. Its hard to find any sympathy for her because she allows herself to be used for sex, abused, then goes back to the man who makes her permanently deaf in one ear. Even though she occasionally attempts to defend herself, in the end she is proven to be the same as every other

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