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Chivalry in the Canterbury tales
Power relations between the sexes in the Canterbury tales
Chaucer and feminism
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Recommended: Chivalry in the Canterbury tales
Orest Voloshchuk
The Wife of Bath
Geoffrey Chaucer is a writer from the late middle ages who is most famous for his poetic narrative, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, however, was not writing simply to entertain his fans, but also to speak through his characters. During the Middle Ages freedom of speech was not a conceivable concept, if someone did not agree with either the state or the church their time on Earth would be quite limited. These were unfortunate circumstances for Chaucer as his ideas were not particularly welcome with the people of power in his country. To express his opinions and stay away from the gallows Chaucer wrote stories in which he used the characters to express his philosophy. One such character in the Wife of Bath who Chaucer uses to express his egalitarian views and critique patriarchy.
The Wife is an older woman who has had five husbands over the course of her lifetime, four of which she married for money. She is a skilled weaver, possibly one of the best in England, she is one of the best traveled pilgrims having made three pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and she is one of the best educated having read and interpreted the Bible. She is also sexist, believing that women should be the dominant sex. She got most of her wealth and accomplishments by marring, manipulating, and possibly killing old, rich men. She talks about having children despite never having any herself, leading to the possibility of her being guilty of abortions. She is also cherry-picking different Bible verses that support her claims instead of looking at the Bible as whole.
The complexity of the Wife’s character lead to a great deal of controversy about whether the Wife is meant to be a symbol of Chaucer’s egalitarian ...
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The Wife is perhaps the most complex character in the entirety of the Canterbury Tales. She at first appears to be the feminist superhero of the day, but soon reveals to be a quite controversial character. It soon becomes obvious that Chaucer is trying to expose a dark side to her by making her a hypocrite and pocking holes in her arguments such as hinting at the fact that she did not have any children but was talking about how having children justifies lots of sex. However, she is not asking for equal rights, she is asking for superiority. If one was to look closely enough at the text he would see that she is and exact replica of the average patriarch, just reversed. And because Chaucer is mocking her it is reasonable to assume that he is arguing that sex-superiority of any kind is ridiculous.
Works Cited
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
This might seem ironic coming from a man in this period, but it is not so ironic when one looks at the Canterbury Tales and acknowledges it as a fine work of parody. Chaucer attacks other traditions vigorously, a good example of which is his discussion of corruption in the church . His critical look at the standards for women which are especially enforced by the church add humor to the tale of the Wife of Bath while also making a political statement. Chaucer prepares the reader for the tale with his brief description of the wife in the Prologue. She is a skilled cloth-maker and devoted Christian pilgrim trips as well as several other shrines in different countries.
The wife of baths tale is a very lusty and boisterous women. She sees absolutely nothing wrong with having five different husbands. She feels as though her marriages are just giving her more experience. She obeys the bibles words by “going forth and multiplying” after each husbands passing. She feels as though the sexual organs are “made for both pleasure and functional purposes” and she is willing to have sex whenever her man wishes to. She doesn’t think sex is just for procreation.
Before the Middle Ages, women were societally submissive to male supremacy. As the Middle Ages progressed, one develops a sense that women sought a change in societal order. Upset that they are not able to share their beliefs due to their position, women began to become more vocal. In comparing two great poets Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, one sees a connection in their most well known works. Chaucer's view on women, demonstrated by the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” and the Wife’s belief that all women desire sovereignty, is welcomed by William Shakespeare but not achievable by Hamlet’s female protagonists, Gertrude and Ophelia.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are filled with many entertaining tales from a variety of characters of different social classes and background. The first two tales told, by the knight and the miller, articulate very different perspectives of medieval life. Primarily, The tales of both the knight and the miller bring strikingly different views on the idea of female agency, and as we will discover, Chaucer himself leaves hints that he supports the more involved, independent Alison, over the paper-thin character of Emily.
The use of euphemism and crudeness in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” is simultaneously unnerving and amusing, and begs the question of how a “wicked” woman like The Wife could ever actually progress in medieval society. Chaucer incorporates subtle allusions to female sexual organs and it is this bluntness (that would raise eyebrows even today) which establishes the Wife as such a powerfully outspoken character. Because courtship in Chaucer’s time was considered worthy of complete submission, the fact that the Wife places such emphasis on domination and even psychological power hints at her being an object of irony (and not a feminist figure “before her time”). It is for this reason that Chaucer’s delicate use of “queynte”- a term from which
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.
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.
In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the stereotypes and roles in society are reexamined and made new through the characters in the book. Chaucer discusses different stereotypes and separates his characters from the social norm by giving them highly ironic and/or unusual characteristics. Specifically, in the stories of The Wife of Bath and The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer examines stereotypes of women and men and attempts to define their basic wants and needs.
Are we to agree with the views that the Wife of Bath puts forward so strongly, or does Chaucer present her as a caricature of every negative quality women are traditionally guilty of? A great deal of the Wife's Prologue is spent in her narration of the tirades that she subjected her first three husbands to, largely a list of accusations made by anti-feminists of women, and the Wife's spirited responses. The Wife's replies defend women's behaviour -- if a husband has enough sex from his wife, she says, he should not care "How mirily that other folks fare". She attacks scholars who accuse women of all manner of vileness by asking "Who peynted the leon, tell me who?" and that because scholars (Mercurie) and women (Venus) are diametrically opposed, "Therfore no woman of no clerk is preysed. "
Chaucer, in his female pilgrimage thought of women as having an evil-like quality that they always tempt and take from men. They were depicted as untrustworthy, selfish and vain and often like caricatures not like real people at all. Through the faults of both men and women, Chaucer showed what is right and wrong and how one should live. Under the surface, however, lies a jaded look of women in the form that in his writings he seems to crate them as caricatures and show how they cause the downfall of men by sometimes appealing to their desires and other times their fears. Chaucer obviously had very opinionated views of the manners and behaviours of women and expressed it strongly in The Canterbury Tales. In his collection of tales, he portrayed two extremes in his prospect of women. The Wife of Bath represented the extravagant and lusty woman where as the Prioress represented the admirable and devoted followers of church. Chaucer delineated the two characters contrastingly in their appearances, general manners, education and most evidently in their behaviour towards men. Yet, in the midst of disparities, both tales left its readers with an unsolved enigma.
Throughout her entire prologue The Wife of Bath has been through several marriages all of them so far have been good until she married her fifth and current husband Jankyn. Jankyn had been reading to The Wife of Bath on a book about wicked wives. Throughout over twenty or more lines he tells her the horrific actions these women do their husbands. At some point these actions are taking a toll on The Wife of Bath as she cannot take the mistreatment that this book gives on women and furthermore, wives. The Wife of Bath finally begins to take the book away from Jankyn which leads into a violence
Chaucer uses The Canterbury Tales to bring to question the actions of the corrupt church and government systems. He satirizes the church and governments’ officials, by using the selfish and power-hungry nature of both the friar and the summoner. Chaucer also satirizes the corruptness of feudal lords, and their control over everyone though “The Friar’s Tale.” During the Medieval era, women were taught to be quiet and obedient to their husband and any man of power. Even though women were not even close to proclaiming their equality, Chaucer saw that someday they would. Chaucer was truly a man ahead of his time, and The Canterbury Tales teach readers of today how to support their own ideals and customs just as Chaucer
In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath is a strong woman who loudly states her opinions about the antifeminist sentiments popular at the time. Chaucer, however, frequently discredits her arguments by making them unfounded and generally compromising her character. This brings into question Chaucer's political intent with the Wife of Bath. Is he supportive of her views, or is he making a mockery of woman who challenge the patriarchal society and its restriction and mistrust of women? The Wife's comedic character, frequent misquoting of authorities, marital infidelity, and her (as well as Chaucer's) own antifeminist sentiments weaken the argument that Chaucer supported of the Wife's opinions.
It was very rare for a woman in the fourteenth century to travel as a pilgrim, talk about her experiences and thoughts in public and to be married five times. The Wife of Bath is an independent and powerful woman. She strongly believes in herself and in experience rather than in written authority, which are the texts written by men. She feels this way more after she marries her fifth husband. Her fifth husband always reads a book about wicked wives. He wants to control her; however, she doesn't like it. Therefore she takes a page out of his book that he always reads since the book affects him badly; then he hits her when he finds out about her disrespectful behavior. This is the reason for her deafness. She strongly believes she or women can write much better than men do.
Geoffrey Chaucer was a on a mission when he wrote The Canterbury Tales. That mission was to create a satire that attacked three major institutions. Raphel displays, “Medieval society was divided into three estates: the Church (those who prayed), the Nobility (those who fought), and the Patriarchy. The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is an estates satire.” Chaucer wanted to shed light on the institutions that were taking advantage of the everyday man. Chaucer does this by making up tales about certain people that she light to the undercover world of the institutions. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses satire to attack the Church, the Patriarchy, and the Nobility.