Hypocrisy In Chaucer's The Wife Of Bath

The Wife of Bath’s is a hypocrite with wisdom and advice that would be most helpful to her in her situation completely in control over her marriages and how they affected her. Even through her prologue she “hints at the erotic activity (Cox)” Which is strange, especially in a time when women only job was to keep their husbands happy and have children. So one must ask oneself how did Chaucer intend to portray the wife of Bath’s? Alisoun seems to defy any type of frame of a good woman during the 1300s. However, this is far from unusual in Chaucer’s writing, “Chaucer genuinely wished to write about good women, choose to adapt the biographies of women generally thought to be bad?” therefore even though he may have written the Wife of Bath in

Thus one might conclude that perhaps all the previous husbands were a lie and that through her theatre, she was attempting to fantasize about reclaiming control over her life rather than giving in to her husband. This possible character of the wife of bath is more tragic yet somehow has roots of hypocrisy. This is the root of satire, but like all comedy this had an inkling of truth in it. The Wife of Bath could be making fun of feminist of their time, but he does seem to acknowledge that they did have a cause but it was mostly futile. For the reason that even though they were fighting for the progression of women in their age. Some women did not wish to be removed from their place in society, because it was comfortable and easy. So really what was the point of the movement if even the women that were supposed to be advanced? This hypocrisy is shown through the wife of Bath pompous conquering of her previous husbands, yet only happy with her fifth husband whom abused her as a result of her

Yet Chaucer has been in himself representing something a little closer to egalitarianism. For the reason that he proves through both the fifth husbands actions, Alisoun’s selfishness, and the wife of bath’s tale that both women and men could be terrible. That through understanding that the women of this era were expected to be care- takers; he expresses this also through his interpretation of the prioress that holds the same cockiness of the wife of Bath. That although she thought herself to be high and mighty more educated than most she too was just putting up an image just as the prioress did by faking a French accent in order to appear more