ipl-logo

Desire In The Wife Of Bath's Tale

220 Words1 Pages
The Wife of Bath’s Tale is a story to men about what women most desire. The man in the tale has to find out the answer to that question, or his life is at risk. After searching for twelve months and a day, he finally finds the answer: sovereignty. Women want the right to have power over her husband and lover. They want their freedom. Women want their husbands to view them as equal in the relationship and not above them. As the story explains, “A woman wants the self-same sovereignty over her husband and over her lover, and master him; he must not be above her” (lines 214-216), that is what women most desire. The man in the tale is given a choice of who he would like his wife to be. She asked him if he would rather her be faithful but
Show More
Related
140 Words | 1 Pages

In Story 8, Bornet’s wife, makes a plan to teach her husband a lesson about his unfaithfulness after learning that her husband is enamored with the chambermaid. The maid tells her mistress, “that she could not stand being badgered by him any longer.” (The Norton Anthology World Literature, pg. 276) The mistress replies, “Be nice to him dear…make a date to go to bed with him…

Read More
352 Words | 2 Pages

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.”

Read More
689 Words | 3 Pages

In the second-to-last stanza, it appears that the woman had decided that the knight had fully learned his lesson, and they were able to have a happy relationship. The last stanza seems to be an ideal that the Wife of Bath holds. Instead of wives being, “meek and young and fresh in bed,” the Wife of Bath wishes for men to be held to that same standard. She also prays that any man who, “won’t be governed by their wives” to be killed, meaning that she wants men to hold the same amount of respect for their romantic partner as anyone else, otherwise they should be punished. These stanzas offer a satisfying conclusion, while also adding in the Wife of Bath’s ideas of gender equality and respect.

Read More
249 Words | 1 Pages

Chaucer characterizes The Wife of Bath as controlling and powerful. The Wife of Bath was a complete contradiction of the typical female, during this time. The average woman was submissive and reserved. Whereas, The Wife of Bath possessed character traits that one would associate with men. Chaucer emphasizes this trait by describing her in such ways one would describe a man.

Read More
207 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
399 Words | 2 Pages

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).

Read More
206 Words | 1 Pages

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.

Read More
996 Words | 4 Pages

Misogyny in The Female We all enjoy the freedoms we have as American citizens and part of it is expression of oneself. Today we are so busy with self image and politics one may forget how fortunate and privileged one might be. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the society is misogynistic and women are oppressed. The sexism and misogyny within the society has pressured women to internalize the and truly believe in an unequal society.

Read More
1333 Words | 6 Pages

Beowulf and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are both narratives in which gender acts as an important theme within their individual communities; both have underlying meanings when it comes to defining what the role men and women in a good community should be. Or in other words, both stories paint a vivid picture of the role of women during the medieval time period, by suggesting that one gender had more power over another. However, these two narratives take alternative paths when expressing their views; Beowulf conveys its message through what is missing, while “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” incorporates satire and uses explicit narrative when telling the experience of a woman that is highly different from other women in her time. Furthermore, another difference that is appealing to the reader’s eyes, besides the way the two narratives reflect to women’s role in medieval times, is that men become the hero in Beowulf, while “the wife”, so a woman, becomes the authority figure in the story of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” I want to first introduce the two main differences between the two narratives and then I will explain how regardless of the differences, both of these narratives’ main goal is to show that women had less power and a good community back that time was male dominated.

Read More
975 Words | 4 Pages

The women in Othello and Chaucer's Wife of Bath differ, but in the end both want their husbands to love them. In Othello there are only three women displayed in the story, but the statements that were said about these three women were the belief that all women in that society were all the same- evil, whores who were temptress to the men. The three women; Desdemona, the wife of Othello, Emilia, the wife of Iago, and Bianca, perceived as a prostitute who is a “customer” (l. 138. 4.1) of Cassio. Iago is one of the main characters who degrades and slanders all women including his wife Emilia.

Read More
775 Words | 4 Pages

In the book of Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer shows the role of a woman being weak creatures while men are economically powerful and educated. Women are seen as inheritor of eve and thus causes

Read More
196 Words | 1 Pages

Two of the greatest philosophers in modern western philosophy came out of the 17th century. Rene Descartes and John Locke made huge contributions to the world of philosophy that we know today. They attempted to find answers to the same questions. Using their knowledge on epistemology – the branch of philosophy that studies nature, sources, and the limits of knowledge – they concluded some very interesting concepts and many of those ideas clashed with the ideas of Aristotle. Rene Descartes was born on March 31st, 1596 in La Haye en Touraine, France, known today as Descartes, Indre-et-Loire, France.

Read More
1060 Words | 5 Pages

In the fourteen century, men were always the superior, head of the household, the breadwinner, but women were always inferior, they would stay at home, do the house work, cook, and never would have a job. Well, times have changed. Women are reaching an equal status to men in political, social and economic matters It’s part of the idea called Feminism. In many ways the Wife of Bath displays many characteristic of women in the 21st century. Instead of being directed by men, she views herself as an independent person.

Read More
1052 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
910 Words | 4 Pages

Also in the story the part where the knight commits the crime that propels the rest of the story, “He saw a maiden walking all forlorn ahead of him, alone as she was born. And of that spite maiden, spite of all she said. By force he took her maidenhead” ( 61- 64). In the first quote the knight learns a valuable lesson that when finding a woman to wife and love, you must evaluate her on how she will treat you and love you.

Read More

More about Desire In The Wife Of Bath's Tale

Related Topics

Open Document