Knights were so loyal to their king and queen that they wouldn’t have any other woman in their lives but their mothers. That means they were allowed no girlfriends, one-night stands or anything else that encouraged poor behavior from someone who is viewed of so highly. Knights back then were to treat all women with respect so they would always put a women’s needs before their own. If a knight were to be seen disrespecting a woman then he would go before the king and the king would give him a punishment proper to what he deserved. A man worthy of being a knight would do anything for his king and queen even if it meant killing himself in the process.
Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath's Tale” centers itself around agreements. The queen says, “‘I’ll grant you life if you can tell to me / What thing it is that women most desire’” (75). A knight agrees to this, which then holds his character until the deep is filled. See, if he fails then he will become a liar. If he becomes a liar, then no one would ever want to make an agreement with him.
The story talks about one knight's encounter after raping a woman, being given a lifeline by a woman, and being told the answer to the riddle by a woman whom he later married. The story seeks to paint how a kingdom where women are in full charge will look like and goes contrary to the trite “men-in-charge” theme. The pivotal question to ask then is- what exactly do women want? Is it love? Is it an alluring prince that can sweep them off their feet?
Prowess means the ability to fight well on horseback, a critically important quality in this society of warrior retainers. The measure of a chivalrous knight was his ability to fight and his willingness to subordinate his own will and interests to those of his sworn lord. The highest compliment that could be paid to a knight was to call him ‘’preux’’, a man of proved prowess . Chivalric values also reflect the needs of a courtly society. The court life reborn in the 12th century, which meant that the knight had to know how to conduct himself in the drawing room.
There are many similarities in the Wife of Bath and Pardoner Tale’s that bring them together. For example, greed, lust and issues with corruption that both tales have in them. This is important because these topics open the true meaning of the characters and unfold how the time period was at the time. The issues of corruption plays an important role in the tale’s the reason why is because many religious role models are corrupt. The Wife of Bath Tale’s has issues in it by the wife of bath not being perfect in her ways.
The knight in the tale, was said to have a reputation of being a “lusty liver” (282), hence the heinous crime of forcefully having relations with the maiden. To deem just women as lustful creatures as the book (Theophrastus and valerius and others (276).) insinuates does not only gives a single story but also an inaccurate representation of what the truth clearly is. The truth is even if women where lustful, men should have been equally represented in the same book. It would be to wrong to assume that the only perpetrators of lust where women, and since biblical references where made numerous times during the prologue, it would also be safe to say the knowledge of king Solomon, his many wives, mistresses and concubines was also lustful.
In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer uses the tale as a fable to reveal the human nature of shallowness by its plot and characters. The story begins from the ancient days of King Arthur, when the “hero” of the story condemned sexual assault, but then was saved by an ugly woman. Chaucer created characters that are lusty, greedy, materially desires, and amazingly shallow in order to compare and comment on the lifestyle of the higher classes at the time. From the start of the story, Geoffrey Chaucer illustrated how foolishly shallows the young Knight is in comparison to the upper classman. In an era of male domination, women have few political and legal rights; therefore, men tend to see women as properties and disrespect them.
As punishment he was given a year and a day to find out what it is to desire most. Everyone the knight asked gave him a different answer. One day an old woman met him and told him that woman desire to be in control of their partners. In the Movie Bianca the maiden takes control over the "knight" with her challenge. His entire career was in her hands.
In the Prologue, the Wife of Bath explains the encounter she had with five of her husbands. Three of the husbands were pleasant while the other two were not. On the other hand, in the tale she tells a story about a Knight who takes the maidenhood of a young girl which almost causes him to lose his life and about women gaining sovereignty. The Wife of Bath fifth husband, King Arthur, the Knight, and the Wife of Bath will be placed in Dante’s hell in the Inferno. The
For the Knight's punishment he is told by the queen to go and figure out what women want most, in the time of one year. Unfortunately the knight never gets a similar answer from a single woman. However the knight was running out of time, and while he was on his way back he came across an ugly old woman who asks if she could help him. Having no other option the knight accepts her help and she guarantees that his life will be saved if he pledges his life to her. The woman answers the question for the knight ,which was control over her husband, saving him and in return asks the knight to marry her.