The Wife Of Bath Superego Analysis

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You’re not in control of your own actions. The developer of psychoanalytical criticism, Sigmund Freud, claimed that all peoples’ actions could are influenced by the psychological systems of the Id, the Superego, and the Ego. Sigmund Freud explains that the Id is a part of the sub conscious that controls the desires. Feelings such as thirst, hunger, anger and boredom are controlled by the Id. The id is part of our primitive desires; the Id acts only to create self-pleasure without accounts of outside factors. The superego is the part that controls how we apply our morals, and distinguishes what’s right from wrong. We are all born with an Id but our super ego is developed by our teachings from parents as to what is good vs. bad. The Ego is …show more content…

The audience can clearly see that she does not take well to sexual abuse and mistreatment of women by first condemning the rapist to death by the king. The wife further develops the illustration of her morals by allowing the rapist to in order to learn a lesson. Ironically, as punishment for rape, the queen proposes, “Yet you shall live if you can answer me: What is the thing that women most desire? Beware the axe and say as I require.” The Wife of Bath sends him on a mission of repentance, to change the knight’s ways which shows she wants him to understand. The Wife of Bath’s Super ego can be shown in the lessons of gentility, humility, and poverty that she illustrates in the Old Lady teaching the Knight during the course of their marriage. The Old lady says things like, “…arrogance is hardly worth a hen…” and “…No shame in poverty if the heart is gay…” which directly round-up the clear beliefs of the Wife of Bath disguised as the Old …show more content…

From what we learn about her through the story she tells and the underlying decisions she makes. The Wife’s Id is the desire for power and need of self-sovereignty. Her Superego is expressed as the lessons learned. The Wife’s full character is displayed through her storytelling; the Id drives her story through and underlying theme, the Superego expressed as the face value of the story and its display of morals, while the Ego finds a way to connect the two in the Wife’s expression of the marriage during the Wife of Bath’s

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