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Gender in literature
Literature and Gender
Gender issues and women in medieval society
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender in literature
Literature and Gender
Gender issues and women in medieval society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
William Thatcher is a peasant who forges papers with Chaucer a writer he meets in order to become a knight. Thatcher needs to "change his stars" like his father told him to do, when he left him with a knight. Thatcher participates in jousting matches to show his knightly prowess. He falls for a maiden, who seems to love him but needs prof of his love. She challenges Thatcher to lose every match of purpose and only then will she believe him.
Gloria Steinem once stated, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” This quote is saying that women don’t need men, but the world has made the impression that they do. In the Wife of Bath’s Tale, women desire power over their husbands. In Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, in lines 214 and 215, it states, “A woman wants the self-same sovereignty Over her husband as over her lover, And master him; he must not be above her.”
Chaucer uses both the tales of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner to display similar morals which lead to the common theme that the best way to resolve a flaw is the realization and correction of faults. The Wife of Bath’s Tale demonstrates the theme that the recognition of a flaw is the best way to resolve it. The Pardoner narrates a story of a knight who has been punished for his lustful crime to a young woman. In order to be forgiven, he goes on a search to find what a woman most desires. He finds a woman who tells him that “a woman wants the same self sovereignty / over her husband as over her lover” (214-215).
The Wife of Bath believed that women should take mastery over their men (Pg. 914). She had five husbands and thought she knew how to control men. She also believed that experience, not authority by gender, should be respected in society. She also believed that members of the church who could not marry or consummate, knew less of sex and therefore, not as experienced or educated on sexuality as she.
The Wife of Bath and her tale are the most similar out of all the tales because they both share a domineering outlook over others. In the general prologue she is told to have had five husbands and is described as a looker, “Her face was bold and handsome and ruddy,” (Chaucer 39). In her prologue she goes more in depth of her time spent with her five husbands. Wife of Bath talks most about how she gains control over her husbands. For instance, her fifth husband was the controlling force in their marriage until he made the mistake of hitting her and telling her he would do anything to keep her with him and said, “My own true wife, do as you wish for the rest of your life…” (335).
The Wife of Bath’s behaviors are questionable but are inherently aided by the social injustices that face women of this time period. The Wife of Bath discloses that for her first three marriages she sought out older wealthy men for sex and money. Her intentions included making her husbands fall in love with her and then making them have enormous amounts of sex until they die. In addition, the wife elaborates on her occasional tumultuous tirades of accusing her husbands of being unfaithful to her. Her uproars chided her husbands into persistently obliging into her every request.
In the Tale, the Wife of Bath relaxes her perspectives of charity and love however proceeds with the subject of independence and power. Alisoun reworks the conventional story of the "Loathly Lady" with a positively women's activist turn, setting the witch in a place of control and demoting the Knight to a place of accommodation. Three of the wife's husbands were great and two were awful: the three were great, rich and old and they gave the Wife all their property, which brought about her withholding sex from them keeping in mind the end goal to get precisely what she needed. The Wife's fourth husband was a reveler and had a mistress as well as a wife.
In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, Chaucer’s message was to teach men to respect women more and let women also have power in a relationship. The reasoning behind this message is because society in the medieval era did not respect women and Chaucer was attempting to teach that through poetry. The man in the story raped a woman and before being sent to death he was saved and given the opportunity to learn about what he did wrong. People don’t get second chances in real life, so writing a poem about the impossible and showing true enlightenment is Chaucer’s way of being a hero. The man learns from the old women about control and how he should love her and respect her for her and not her looks.
Gender role refers to those behaviors and attitudes that are considered to belong to one sex. Gender role is based on femininity and masculinity that differentiate women and men by giving men some roles and women which results to gender inequality. There some work in society that is regarded to belong to women such as cooking, taking care of children and other less important roles while men are given roles that makes them superior than women. Most of the gender roles associated with women makes them inferior and creates a room to be oppressed. Gender roles are constructed by society and attributed to women or men.
There are four marriage stories in the Canterbury Tales and each one is very unique. They are The Wife of Bathś Tale, The Clerkś Tale, The Merchantś Tale, and the Franklin's Tale. What separates the Franklinś Tale from the rest is that it is a story of equality. Arveragus and Dorigenś marriage is one of mutual agreement. The tale shows us that marriage should be about love, honesty, and compassion between you and your partner.
Primarily, a woman by the name of Alisoun, joined a group of pilgrims traveling on religion sacrament to Canterbury, the location of a history murder within Canterbury. Following along with the game, the woman, also named The Wife of Bath, agreed to tell the tales that would be told during the venture. Her tale, set in the time of the mystical medieval times of fairies and elves, followed a knight faithfully searching for the "perfect woman", so to speak. The Knight, King Arthur was on a journey to break a curse put on him by the queen when he stumbles upon an old hag.
In her first three marriages, the wife of bath is not vulnerable because she sees her husbands simply as a source of money; when she allows herself to feel a real bond with the next two husbands, consequences follow. She is never interested in having an emotional connection with the first three men, so there is little risk involved with using them for her own benefit. Her fourth husband however is “a reveller- that is to say, he has a paramour; and [the wife of bath] [is] young and full of wantonness” (Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 453-454). As she becomes more confident with her manipulation skills, she makes herself susceptible to being taken advantage of by marrying for attraction. Lastly, the control of her final husband makes her admit “that even if he [beats] [her] on every bone, he could soon win [her] love again.”
The Wife of Bath is a tale which belongs to the work called Canterbury Tales and his author Geoffrey Chaucer, which was written in 1387-1400. This Tale and his Prologue tell the story of a woman, Allyson, who talks about her life and this work represent the tradition of a distinguished woman that a man is forced to marry. The author relates many controversial aspects in order to do an analysis of the vision of the women in marriage, which is considered an economic contract between two families or the vision of women in the society compared with objects. Taking into account all these features, this paper is going to perform a Feminist Criticism in order to analyze its main important ideas, and its main literary sources, as the Conde Lucanor
Throughout her introduction of the tale, and the story itself, we see the Wife of Bath as an experienced, intellectual woman, who despite living in a world of patriarchal power, provides for herself financially, emotionally, and physically. As a feminist icon, she confronts serious social issues that illustrate the subjugation women faced. During her prologue and her tale, it is very clear that the Wife of Bath is proud and not ashamed of her sexuality. She views sex as a good ideal, and argues it, using references from the Bible, that God’s intentions
The Wife of Bath: An Analysis of Her Life and Her Tale The Wife of Bath’s Prologue stays consistent with the facts that experience is better than the societal norms, specifically those instilled by the church leadership. Chaucer uses the Wife of Bath to display the insanity of the church, but through switching and amplifying their view of men and chastity onto the opposite gender. The church doctrine at the time held celibacy in an idolized manner, forgetting the inability for humans to ever reach perfection, or live up to this standard. They also did not hold women in a high regard at all, again this is where Chaucer flips the role, as the Wife of Bath describes her five marriages in her prologue, essentially describing each as a conquest, where the result is her having all control.