“The Wife of Bath,” written during the Late Middle Ages, is one of a variety of stories which can be found in The Canterbury Tales. It is a tale which is told within the context of a larger story. Bath’s wife is atypical given the period of time in which she lived. She advocates for the institution of marriage by employing an unusual technique to convey her viewpoint.
Power as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “the possession of control, authority, or influence over others.” It connotes having the upper hand over what happens to somebody or something. In the book, The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, he talks about a kingdom that had a lusty knight who raped a lady, and was charged to find out what women loved the most. In the knight’s pursuit to answer this riddle, he discovers that women want sovereignty and power. Power is a very important theme in the book.
Through the structure of her speech, Chaucer characterizes the Wife of Bath as loquacious. Because she goes on many tangents during her dialogue, it is apparent that the Wife of Bath is a character that loves to talk. For instance, when she is telling her tale and digresses to talk about Ovid, she says, “If you wish to hear the rest of the tale, [...] When this knight whom this tale specially concerns.” (Wife of Bath Tale 126-127).
The Wife of Bath’s behaviors are questionable but are inherently aided by the social injustices that face women of this time period. The Wife of Bath discloses that for her first three marriages she sought out older wealthy men for sex and money. Her intentions included making her husbands fall in love with her and then making them have enormous amounts of sex until they die. In addition, the wife elaborates on her occasional tumultuous tirades of accusing her husbands of being unfaithful to her. Her uproars chided her husbands into persistently obliging into her every request.
Throughout the entirety of her lengthy Prologue, the Wife of Bath boasts of her experience and mastery in controlling the male sex. Rather than being characterized by her weakness, the Wife of Bath is portrayed as a dominant and sexually powerful woman, thus contradicting the stereotypical portrayal of women as inferior beings. Throughout the Middle Ages, women were expected to submit to their husbands. The Wife of Bath, however, expects her husbands to submit to her, “An housbonde I wol have, I nyl nat lette, / Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral” (155-156). The Wife characterizes her husbands as both her “debtor” and her “slave,” suggesting a severely unbalanced relationship in which the Wife has complete control.
She loses her place in the story momentarily, then resumes with her fourth husband’s funeral. She made a big show of crying, although, she admits, she actually cried very little since she already had a new husband lined up. By Chaucer 's time, it obvious how there were many anti feminist individuals and how it was a tradition to write texts about the dangers and annoyances of women and wives. The Wife of Bath refers to many of these texts in her Prologue. Her fifth husband, she tells us, owned a book that was an entire collection of such texts, from which he used to read to her every evening.
In the fourteen century, men were always the superior, head of the household, the breadwinner, but women were always inferior, they would stay at home, do the house work, cook, and never would have a job. Well, times have changed. Women are reaching an equal status to men in political, social and economic matters It’s part of the idea called Feminism. In many ways the Wife of Bath displays many characteristic of women in the 21st century. Instead of being directed by men, she views herself as an independent person.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale is a story to men about what women most desire. The man in the tale has to find out the answer to that question, or his life is at risk. After searching for twelve months and a day, he finally finds the answer: sovereignty. Women want the right to have power over her husband and lover. They want their freedom.
In the book of Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer shows the role of a woman being weak creatures while men are economically powerful and educated. Women are seen as inheritor of eve and thus causes
In the Wife of Baths tale, the wife herself states that she does not agree with women being beneath men. She wanted women to be above men, and in control. She says that the thing women desire the most is having power over their husbands and lovers. Not only will they have power, but they will also be higher in the chain of being getting closer to God. In the idea of courtly love, the women are the ones in control.
According to the story,the wife of bath’s. The narrator of the story is the character or voice that relates. The story events to the reader,Many narrators have distinct personalities that are revealed through the subject,matter,tone,and language of their stories. In this story the narrator is the wife of Baths. One of the most charsmatic character in the conterdeurry tales and arguedbly in all of as you notice what she reveals about herself and medieval.
She held herself up as a strong woman who could do what she wanted. The Wife of Bath was a cloth maker (high quality) of the middle class who had done very well at her job. She was known as being a business woman and very knowledgeable; wore colorful clothes and scarlet stocking shoes, and is a church goer. The woman has a specific figure that includes wide hips, skinny legs, and a gapped tooth also meaning she was “over-sexed”. The Wife of Bath travels plenty and has visited Jerusalem, Rome, Spain, Cologne, and Boulogne, and rides horses.
In her first three marriages, the wife of bath is not vulnerable because she sees her husbands simply as a source of money; when she allows herself to feel a real bond with the next two husbands, consequences follow. She is never interested in having an emotional connection with the first three men, so there is little risk involved with using them for her own benefit. Her fourth husband however is “a reveller- that is to say, he has a paramour; and [the wife of bath] [is] young and full of wantonness” (Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 453-454). As she becomes more confident with her manipulation skills, she makes herself susceptible to being taken advantage of by marrying for attraction. Lastly, the control of her final husband makes her admit “that even if he [beats] [her] on every bone, he could soon win [her] love again.”
Chaucer’s view of the wife of bath is disrespectful and rude. He
In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer opens the study by describing twenty-nine people who are heading for a pilgrimage. Each of these people have different personalities which are identifiable based on their behavior. The wife of Bath is represented in the story more than any other character. She is explicitly exposed in a provoking way in the General Prologue to reveal a shocking experience to the reader. She is seen as not the ideal person by how she handles herself during the pilgrimage.
