My main focus in the many books from the Canterbury tales was the one of: “ The wife of Bath’s prologue and tale “.
The wife of bath is meant not meant to contradict the misogynist of her time, but the scriptural rules of the church.
This woman was a “lady” of lust, and did not care to gain or lose love, but she loaned for power over men and woman. She was a woman who would turn men against other women so that she could have complete control over the man, and make them her husbands in which she had 5 of since the age of twelve. One she had complete control over the man she portrayed herself to be a woman of biblical stature. Contradictive right? That’s where this woman began to grow more and more interesting.
The wife of bath was said to have believed in God. To my surprise she was supposedly a strong believer, but one who only believed that man heard from god and not women. Once in her life she received a word from god through a woman prophetess, the woman told her that her fifth husband to be was not her husband. Receiving this information and quickly becoming furious, because she knew within her that it was her husband, the wife of bath took her husband alone and married him anyway.
The wife was a very headstrong lady who knew what she wanted. And if she didn’t get what she wanted out of her husbands she knew how to get it. She was one who rather than following authority she followed her the rules of experience instead. She could not understand, (even though she was a believer), why Jesus rebuked the woman at the well in the bible who also, like herself, had five husbands. So instead of taking that into perspective she chose the “ go on and multiply command”.
She compares herself to other men in the bible who had ...
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... men who were blinded by her true self. She wanted power and love, but the power she had over her men outweighed the love. It did not work out for her good She grew older realizing all that she had done to many men. She came to the realization that she is just old, and miserable. And anyone can come to the conclusion that she was a woman who couldn’t find true love.
Works Cited
W.W.Norton and Company. The Norton Anthology World Literature. Ed. Peter Simon. new york: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013.
Brewer, Gwen W. "What Women Want: The Wife of Bath and the Modern Woman." Human Quest Jul 2001: 3. ProQuest. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Arnell, Carla. "Chaucer's Wife of Bath and John Fowles's Quaker Maid: tale-telling and the trial of personal experience and written authority." The Modern Language Review 102.4 (2007): 933+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Wife of Bath's Tale." Canterbury Tales. McDougal Littell Literature British Literature, 2012. Print. 180-192.
Regularly characterized as monsters, women were ridiculed for being sexually unappeasable, lustful, and shrewish, and they were regarded with condescension by the church authorities. Similarly, people in the medieval era regarded multiple marriages as highly questionable, and it is for this reason that the Wife of Bath carefully examines the words of God as revealed in scripture (revealing her to be more than a simple-minded woman: a knowledge of religious texts proves she is definitely educated and well-read). She confesses that nowhere can she find a stricture against her having more than one marriage, and her five husbands are therefore her choice and hers only. “He seith to be wedded is no synne:/ Bet is to be wedded than to brynne”, she remarks humorously, drawing on the fact that by God’s permission, finding a partner through marriage is a pastime with little consequences, for it is better than engaging in sin and burning for it (50-53. 301). This begins her analysis of the bible and the often “sinful” breakdown of a sexual relationship between man and woman, and introduces her repetitive idea of the
Shead, Jackie. "'The wife of bath's tale' as self-revelation: Jackie Shead discusses how far the Wife's Tale perpetuates the picture we have gained of her from her Prologue." The English Review Feb. 2010: 35+. General OneFile. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.
It is first important to understand the background of both The Wife of Bath and Margery Kempe’s stories. The Wife of Bath was a character created by Geoffrey Chaucer who is radically different from the nonfictional character of Margery Kempe. The Wife of Bat...
Wife of Bath. Her character is noted to be strong and bold and we learn
Many critics throughout the years have given the Wife of Bath a title of that of a feminist. She is a strong-willed and dominant woman who gets what she wants when she wants it, by manipulating her husbands into feeling bad for things that they didn’t do, or by saying things that put them to utter shame. No man has ever been able to give an exact answer when she asks to know how many husbands a woman may have in her life...
The Wife of Bath, with the energy of her vernacular and the voraciousness of her sexual appetite, is one of the most vividly developed characters of 'The Canterbury Tales'. At 856 lines her prologue, or 'preambulacioun' as the Summoner calls it, is the longest of any of the pilgrims, and matches the General Prologue but for a few lines. Evidently Chaucer is infatuated with Alisoun, as he plays satirically with both gender and class issues through the Wife's robust rhetoric. Scholars and students alike have continued this obsession with her, and as a consequence Chaucer's larger than life widow has been subject to centuries of scrutiny. Indeed, she is in the vast minority amongst the Canterbury bound pilgrims; apart from the in-vogue Prioress she is the only female - though she appears in no way daunted by the apparent inequality in numbers. It seems almost a crime to examine masculinity in her prologue and tale, but as I hope to show, there is much to learn both about the Wife and about Chaucer from this male presence.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” From The Riverside Chaucer, Third Edition. Ed. Larry D. Benson. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
According to the Wife of Bath, sovereignty, or power, over their husbands is what women desire most in their lives:
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story about a widow who took a pilgrimage to the town of Canterbury with an array of dynamic characters whose diverse backgrounds allowed them to share their stories with one another to make the long journey more interesting. The widow named Alisoun in the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” told the tale of her experiences with her five past husbands and a story about a knight and a witch. She truly believed that for a woman to have a happy life she would need to gain dominion over a man; however one could assume this was programmed into her by her influential mother and her own religious doctrines. Accordingly, Alisoun argued that the woman must control everything in order to have a happy marriage; however, her life experience and the story she shared should tell her otherwise.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” From The Riverside Chaucer, Third Edition. Ed. Larry D. Benson. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
In the Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer illustrates the different perspective between men and women on the concept of marriage and love. In The Wife of Bath’s tale, it is shown the woman appreciating marriage and wanting to be able to love a man unconditionally as where in The Miller’s Tale, love isn’t anything, but sex with the man in the story. In accordance with Chaucer, the complication with marriage is that men are consumed by sexual desire and are easily abused by women like The Wife of Bath. As noticed, The Miller’s Tale is all about adultery. “Just like men, the wives have secrets, as does God”, says the Miller. Both have information that the other do not know about that are sacred and better left unsaid.
The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale. Geoffery Chaucer. The Middle Ages, Volume 1A. Eds. Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Fourth ed. Gen.eds David Damrosch, and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2010. 375-408. Print.
Everyone has a story. Certainly Chaucer believes so as he weaves together tales of twenty nine different people on their common journey to Canterbury. Through their time on the road, these characters explore the diverse lives of those traveling together, narrated by the host of the group. Each character in the ensemble is entitled to a prologue, explaining his or her life and the reasons for the tale, as well as the actual story, meant to have moral implications or simply to entertain. One narrative in particular, that of the Wife of Bath, serves both purposes: to teach and to amuse. She renounces the submissive roles of a woman and reveals the moral to her story while portraying women as sex seeking, powerful creatures, an amusing thought indeed. Through her didactic discourse and witty tale, the other travelers, as well as the reader, discover more about women than they have from any other person’s account. The women in Chaucer’s time were contradictory to that of the image of an ideal woman according to the Wife of Bath. In her prologue and tale, she presents the reader with a radical woman; one who takes pleasure and power in her marriage.
Geoffrey Chaucer used his characters in Canterbury Tales as a way to illustrate stereotype of medieval society. The Wife of Bath, one of the pilgrims in Canterbury Tales demonstrates an authoritative role in marriage The Wife of Bath’s unusual behavior and attitudes can be interpreted by two motives: feminist ideals or sexual indulgence. When considering feminist viewpoints, it can be concluded that the Wife of Bath’s behavior is motivated by sexual indulgence.