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Wickedness In Beowulf

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In the story of Beowulf, there are clear elements of monstrous activity going on, as well as the Canterbury tales. They give both a chaotic tone to the story as it appears in Beowulf first as he awards himself the fearless one of all. Beowulf displays a level of fearlessness that goes into his heroic role in fighting off Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. While with the Canterbury tales each character like the wife of Bath displays a sense of wickedness within her and her story. Which the Canterbury tales is telling a story on this pilgrimage promising the best storyteller will be treated to dinner. Though all accounts of each person telling the story is bizarre. However, it opens pathways for the reader to dive into each characters …show more content…

Her theme displays a sense of wickedness and sexual prowess to get her needs met. We know from account that she has 5 husbands and was married at the age of twelve which is bizarre. She does claim that it isn’t something regular and she questions God’s motives and the motives of her reasons for marriage. Stating that she had three “good husbands” and two “bad husbands” all of which she evilly took advantage of for her own personal satisfaction. I think the monstrous theme to point out would be just the Wife of Bath. She was a monster within herself and had evil tactics in which her mates never picked up on but were naïve to her wrong doings. For example, “I got the best of each one, finally, By trick, or by force, or by some kind of thing” (page 113). These monstrous tactics she did to lure her mates in by getting them drunk enough to be incoherent and then lie about all of the wrong things that were done to her. Which in turn she would use to her own advantage to get what she wanted out of them. Also, using her own body and sexual accounts to her own use. Which was pretty monstrous of a thing to do for a woman in this time period. Although Chaucer portrayed women of this time to be evil, unfaithful creatures most may say the wife of bath display’s all of those

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