Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is the story of a large group of men and women going to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. Each of the travellers introduces themselves and tells an interesting tale during their journey. One of the travellers, the Wife of Bath shares her views on social relationships between men and women. The fourteenth century is viewed as having a patriarchal dominated society. However, the Wife of Bath, Alisoun, is a strong believer in female maistrie, control in the marriage. She believes in female supremacy over husbands in marriage, and does not feel they can be equal partners in the relationship. Through her prologue and tale the wife justifies the actions she and other women make in their marriages. She exemplifies such control in her prologue which summarizes her life, the Queen in her tale, and the Old hag in the tale. In each case the women in the relationship exercises control over her husband. Therefore, the Wife of Bath is a strong advocator of female maistrie within a marriage, by not only believing in maistrie, but also practices it in her own life.
The Wife of Bath is a strong woman and knows what she wants from men. Alisoun is a promiscuous woman filled with sexual desires. She has been married five times and in each marriage she not only knows what she wants, but she also knows how to get it. Of her five marriages, the first three are very similar; in fact she describes them as one. She explains her reason for marry them by saying, “The thre were goode men, and riche, and olde;" (l. 203) Because they are old and rich it is easy for Alisoun to control them. Therefore, the wife knows it is easier to control older men than young men with animalistic desires. The wife uses the kind...
... middle of paper ...
...e struggle for power. She feels women should solely have maistrie over their husbands in marriage. As she does not believe they can be equal partners in the relationship in terms of power. In order to justify her actions, the wife uses her prologue and tale. The Wife of Bath shows such control in her prologue which summarizes her own life, the Queen in her tale who controls the knight, and the old hag in the tale who is able to manipulate the knight to achieve her desires. The women in the relationships exercise control over their husbands through sexual manipulation and guilt. Therefore, the Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a strong advocator of female maistrie within a marriage. The wife not only shares her opinions about maistrie with fellow travellers through her tale, but also proves her beliefs through her introduction.
During the medieval ages, women were described as evil creatures that would destroy anyone standing in their way to get what they want. People claimed that women's malicious intentions clouded their judgment from doing the right thing forcing them to be selfish. In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Malory’s The Death of King Arthur, both focus on women’s behavioral impulses through their dishonesty, manipulation, and their promiscuity.
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.
Regularly characterized as monsters, women were ridiculed for being sexually unappeasable, lustful, and shrewish, and they were regarded with condescension by the church authorities. Similarly, people in the medieval era regarded multiple marriages as highly questionable, and it is for this reason that the Wife of Bath carefully examines the words of God as revealed in scripture (revealing her to be more than a simple-minded woman: a knowledge of religious texts proves she is definitely educated and well-read). She confesses that nowhere can she find a stricture against her having more than one marriage, and her five husbands are therefore her choice and hers only. “He seith to be wedded is no synne:/ Bet is to be wedded than to brynne”, she remarks humorously, drawing on the fact that by God’s permission, finding a partner through marriage is a pastime with little consequences, for it is better than engaging in sin and burning for it (50-53. 301). This begins her analysis of the bible and the often “sinful” breakdown of a sexual relationship between man and woman, and introduces her repetitive idea of the
In the Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer illustrates the different perspective between men and women on the concept of marriage and love. In The Wife of Bath’s tale, it is shown the woman appreciating marriage and wanting to be able to love a man unconditionally as where in The Miller’s Tale, love isn’t anything, but sex with the man in the story. In accordance with Chaucer, the complication with marriage is that men are consumed by sexual desire and are easily abused by women like The Wife of Bath. As noticed, The Miller’s Tale is all about adultery. “Just like men, the wives have secrets, as does God”, says the Miller. Both have information that the other do not know about that are sacred and better left unsaid.
In the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue” and Margery Kempe women are empowered to make decisions regarding their own sexuality. This deviates from the gender constructs of the time period by allowing these women to dictate the course of their own lives: the Wife of Bath chooses to use her sexuality to acquire money and possessions, while Margery Kempe dedicates her sexuality to her spiritual beliefs. By working strategically to gain sexual independence both women move beyond the generally accepted position of a women at the time.
In the Middle Ages, when The Canterbury Tales was written, society became captivated by love and the thought of courtly and debonair love was the governing part of all relationships and commanded how love should be conducted. These principles changed literature completely and created a new genre dedicated to brave, valorous knights embarking on noble quests with the intention of some reward, whether that be their life, lover, or any other want. The Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, accurately portrays and depicts this type of genre. Containing a collection of stories within the main novel, only one of those stories, entitled “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, truly outlines the 14th century community beliefs on courtly love.
In Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", the Wife of Bath tells a tale that includes irony to her and Chaucer. She was considered a beautiful woman but today would be considered ugly. She is considered worthy but vulgar. The reader would think her title showed that she was a loyal wife but the reader will soon know that is not true. Her tale and she have some symbolism each other. Some aspects of the tale resemble Chaucer's life.
..., and learning his lesson on the nature of women, he conquered things that most men would just say “Take me, I don’t want to go through this kind of stuff”. Luckily for me I found a gal that is very beautiful and I can trust, and hopefully we will move on from where we are as of now. Unfortunately, she has probably read The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and is going to want the same thing all women want, but strangely I’m okay with this because if a big bad Knight and other men have done it, hey, why not go for it. I’m just in the position that the Knight was never in, and she isn’t old, poor, or ugly, so I don’t have to choose her or a beautiful unfaithful chick. But the sad part about this is,like the Knight, I need to be punished because I did something very bad on Wednesday that I am going to be punished for on Thursday, but a MIP is not as bad as raping a girl. HAHA..
“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.
Many critics throughout the years have given the Wife of Bath a title of that of a feminist. She is a strong-willed and dominant woman who gets what she wants when she wants it, by manipulating her husbands into feeling bad for things that they didn’t do, or by saying things that put them to utter shame. No man has ever been able to give an exact answer when she asks to know how many husbands a woman may have in her life...
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 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.
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
A woman who was gap toothed, was supposed as a woman who was bold and lecherous. In many ways the wife does honor to her stereotype, for she is indeed a bold woman, and expresses her sexuality in ways that aren 't considered “modest”. She proclaims,“In wyfhode I wol use myn instrument (sexual organ) / as frely as my makere hath it sent” ( Wife of Bath 's Prologue, 149-150). Although it may seem a salacious statement, it is through her outward sexuality that she expresses her internal want for independence. The wife of bath once again justifies her beliefs by referencing to Christian doctrine, specifically in God 's written laws of human procreation. However, she doesn 't simply want to have sex on a whim, after all she does qualify her statement by saying that only “in wyfhode” will she engage in sexual activity. What the wife of Bath is revealing, is that she wants the choice to use her body as she, and the lord, wills it it to be