In the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”, the wife lusts for power over men and for independence, as well as contributes to the religious disputes that take place in the Canterbury Tales.
In the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”, the wife executes her right of power due to common mistreatment of women in The Canterbury Tales. Alison, the wife, intends to gain power through the use of her body. She essentially speaks for all women and their need of independence and subtle power over men, however she just takes it to the extraordinary extreme. She says, “what most mattered was that [women] be cosseted and flattered. That’s very near the truth it seems to me; A man can win [women] best with flattery. To dance attendance on us, make a fuss…” (Chaucer 283). This entails that women, as opposed men, deserve praise and flattery for their being. She (and implied other women) desire and crave attention that is believed to be sexual attention. There is a desire to obtain power over men and essentially make them fuss and flatter a woman in order for a woman to even think of quenching the needs of men. Alison utilizes her sophisticated and enduring personality to express these wishes of power and attention, keeping her relationships pragmatic in the process in that she uses her body to gain control over her husbands’ as she demands one of them to “cast up the curtain, husband! Look at me! In ecstasy he caught her in his arms…’And have I won the mastery?’ said she, ‘Since I’m to choose and rule as I think fit?’ ‘Certainly, wife,’ he answered her, ‘that’s it’ (292-293). When she gives her body up, she has achieved control over her husband, even triumphing in getting him to admit that she has “won the mastery”. With Alison acting sexual, she gains the attention of a m...
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...e does this in utilizing the Bible, which is associated with male authority, to back up her assertions. She works within the patriarchy of society, saying, “’Had God commanded maidenhood to all Marriage would be condemned beyond recall, And certainty if seed were never sown, How ever could virginity be grown?’” She is simply attempting to justify her unscrupulous behavior and her being married five times with her misinterpreted Bible verses. In her tale, Alison can be seen as confirming the misogynist ideals through her promiscuous acts. Instead of seeking a husband while keeping feminist intentions in mind, she merely seeks someone who will provide for her in exchange for lewd sexual favors, thus overthrowing the idea of being a strong, independent female.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Nevill Coghill. The Canterbury Tales. London: Allen Lane, 1977. Print.
The dominance of men in the Middle Ages is unethical, irrational, and dangerous; women are given few rights and the opportunity to earn rights is non-existent. The dictates to the dominance is formed by the internal combination of man’s personal desire and religious interference. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, the combined perspectives’ on a haughty Pardoner and non-subservient wife is the stronghold of separation in moral roles. The moral roles between men and women are exemplified in the rankings of religious hierarchy for men are at the top and women towards the bottom. Even prestigious women, ones with noble connections, are subservient to men, but contradictorily have religious affiliations. The “Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a perfect example of defying man’s dominance and the “Pardoner’s Tale”, a problematic reasoning of why selfishness connects moreover to the manipulation. The frailties of religious reasoning however, will cause The Pardoner and the Wife of Bath to be separated from society’s morals.
The most prominent female character in the novel, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, employs her sexuality, secrecy and mysterious nature when trying to gain more power and control throughout the novel. This can be seen easily in her description at the beginning of the novel. “She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow…The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red” (Hammett, 4). Her physical description gives her an air of sexuality and intrigue that can immediately be assumed will be beneficial to her throughout the story. However, it is not until later when her use of her sexuality can be interpreted as a desperate attempt to take power back from the leading male character. “‘I’ve thrown myself on your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost. What else is there?’ She suddenly moved close to him on the settee and cried angrily: ‘Can I buy you with my body?’” (Hammett, 57). The desperation, which is a common characteristic that can be seen among hard-boiled female characters, pushed her ...
The Wife of Bath is a complex character-she is different from the way she represents herself. Maybe not even what she herself thinks she is. On the surface, it seems as though she is a feminist, defending the rights and power of women over men. She also describes how she dominates her husband, playing on a fear that was common to men. From a point of view of a man during that time period, she seemed to illustrate all of the wrongs that men found in women. Such as a weak parody of what men, then saw as feminists. The Wife of Bath constantly emphasizes the negative implications of women throughout the ages. She describes women as greedy, controlling, and dishonest.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale." The Canterbury Tales. New York: Viking, 2009. . Web. Jan. & Feb.
Leicester, Jr., H. Marshall. "Of a fire in the dark: Public and Private Feminism in the Wife of Bath's Tale." Women's Studies 11.1-2 (1985): 157-78.
Leicester, Jr., H. Marshall. "Public and Private Feminism in the Wife of Bath's Tale." Women's Studies 11.1-2 (1985): 157-78.
In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a reader is introduced to a rather bizarre and heterogeneous group of people leaving for a pilgrimage. The Wife of Bath is the most interesting and lively character of the group. Her "Prologue" and "Tale" provide readers with a moral lesson as well as comic relief. The Wife's "Prologue" serves as an overture to her "Tale", in which she states a very important point regarding the nature of women and their most sacred desires. According to this character, women desire sovereignty, or power, over their men most in the world. This wish seems to be most appropriate for women of the time period in which Chaucer lived. However, women today no longer wish to dominate their men - sovereignty of women over men is not relevant in the twenty-first century. The reason is that women are no longer deprived of power and freedom.
One of the most interesting and widely interpreted characters in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is the Wife of Bath. She has had five different husbands and openly admits to marrying the majority of them for their money. The wife appears to be more outspoken and independent than most women of medieval times, and has therefore been thought to symbolize the cause of feminism; some even refer to her as the first actual feminist character in literature. Readers and scholars probably argue in favor of this idea because in The Canterbury Tales, she uniquely gives her own insight and opinions on how relations between men and women should be carried out. Also, the meaning of her tale is that virtually all women want to be granted control over themselves and their relationship with their husbands, which seems to convince people that the Wife of Bath should be viewed as some sort of revolutionary feminist of her time. This idea, however, is incorrect. The truth is that the Wife of Bath, or Alisoun, merely confirms negative stereotypes of women; she is deceitful, promiscuous, and clandestine. She does very little that is actually empowering or revolutionary for women, but instead tries to empower herself by using her body to gain control over her various husbands. The Wife of Bath is insecure, cynical towards men in general, and ultimately, a confirmation of misogynistic stereotypes of women.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story about a widow who took a pilgrimage to the town of Canterbury with an array of dynamic characters whose diverse backgrounds allowed them to share their stories with one another to make the long journey more interesting. The widow named Alisoun in the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” told the tale of her experiences with her five past husbands and a story about a knight and a witch. She truly believed that for a woman to have a happy life she would need to gain dominion over a man; however one could assume this was programmed into her by her influential mother and her own religious doctrines. Accordingly, Alisoun argued that the woman must control everything in order to have a happy marriage; however, her life experience and the story she shared should tell her otherwise.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The Norton Anthology English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Olson, Glending. "The Marital Dilemma In The Wife Of Bath's Tale: An Unnoticed Analogue And Its Chaucerian Court Context."English Language Notes 33.(1995): 1-7. Humanities Source. Web. 15 Dec. 2013.
Huppé, Bernard F. "Rape and Woman's Sovereignty in the Wife of Bath's Tale." Modern Language Notes 63.6 (1948): 378-81. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
The world-renowned Canterbury Tales by the great Geoffrey Chaucer aims to magnify the controversial social injustices of gender roles in the medieval time period that consequently flow into today’s current modern society. One of the greatest social standing issues addressed throughout the poem includes the institution of marriage, and the particular viewpoint held by the character named the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath is notably shamed by her potential suitors and moralist peers, for her devious actions of taking advantage of her former husbands throughout her lengthy five marriages. However, Chaucer actually invites the audience to give a closer look at the overall flawed instuition of marriage
In The Canterbury Tales Wife of Bath’s Tale, the author incorporates major events in the text that relate to power in many different ways. In addition, in the text the author illustrates the sovereignty that women have over man in various ways. Furthermore, there is power in knowledge because with knowledge there is freedom. Also, in the text a character loses power over the external events that occurring in their lives. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the author illustrates a woman’s power through authority, marriage, and punishment.
The parallels that have been presented show that there are not just similarities in the tale and the Wife’s life, the prologue and the tale are the real and the ideal way that the Wife sees her world. She, like many women of her time and ours, wants control over her husbands and will do what it takes to gain it. She tells us how she gained control over her husbands, even when it lead to the oldest trick in the book, withholding “pleasures”. Then she backed up her desire for sovereignty by telling us in her tale that it was not just herself who wanted this dominance, but every woman wants the same, even if they don’t know it. Finally she idealizes what she wants from a husband with the tale of the knight and the hag. If only it were as simple as the tale told.