Analysis Of The Wife Of Bath

The wife of bath asserts a positive view of women even though social stereotypes of women in the time period were quite negative. By looking at the character of the wife I get the impression that she may have been a feminist even before the idea of feminism came to exist. By saying that she is a feminist I mean that she is a woman that is comfortable with being herself no matter what criticism comes to her. I believe this because she defends her sexual activities without letting the criticism she gets phase her in any way, she isn’t the stereotypical woman of that time period, and in some parts of the prologue she blames men for the stereotypes about women.

In the prologue of The Wife of Bath by Chaucer a woman (the wife of bath) is portrayed as promiscuous. Just as

Every woman is seen as not good enough and the wife sees this. She is also a first hand witness to seeing what men think of women. The wife’s fifth husband, “every night and day in his custume,/ whan he hadde leiser and vacacioun”(698-699), would read a “book of wikked wives”(691). She saw first handedly that men even wrote books about how ‘bad’ women are. The wife saw that men often spoke this way about women, so that could have brought the wife to the conclusion that men are the problem and the reason for all the women stereotypes.

The Wife of Bath showed many feminist views through the character of the wife. The wife’s character comes alive with her big personality and a lot of that has to do with some of the feminist views that she portrays throughout the poem. She shows that women don’t have to stick to the rules of society made for them by just being who she is, and she makes it known that she will not be like the average everyday women of that time. While reading the wife of bath we can see that the wife stands up for feminist views with no fear or shame of doing so no matter what the men and women of the town may say about