Misogynistic Characteristics In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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Now that we have that to think about, I would now like to suggest another thing that I think Chaucer is doing: pointing out some misogynistic characteristics of men in his society. In the prologue, Chaucer portrays the Wife of Bath as having controlling characteristics. We see that when she tells her audience about her husbands and how her various marriages went. The Wife tells us that during her first few marriages, she was the young, beautiful wife and she got what she wanted from her wealthy, older husbands. She tells her male audience that she controlled her husbands by mentioning that “[She] governed hem so wel after [her] lawe/ That ech of hem was ful blisful and fawe”, and that they always sought out ways to please her (219-220). With …show more content…

The Wife’s Tale begins by introducing the crime of the “lusty bachelor” in King Arthur’s court. The Knight saw a maiden and “By verray force birafte hire maydenhed” and the knight was to be dead because of his wrongful acts (888). Being that the Knight has some power here since he is a knight of King Arthur’s court, we can see how both being a male and having control or power ends up being a bad thing in some cases. The power and control are used in the wrong way and becomes very misogynistic because it causes harm to a woman in this case. To back up this idea, I would also like to suggest that Chaucer did not have the lady who was raped anywhere else in the Wife’s tale to show how power can sometimes be used awfully and the lack of it can make you prone to not getting the type of justice you want, and especially when you are a woman who lack power. Now—here comes the twist that I think Chaucer added to the tale to emphasize how power can be useful or sometimes not useful and can cause things like misogynistic behaviors to

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