The fight for dominance is the constant battle for The Wife of Bath throughout Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. The Wife of Bath believes that her power to speak about marriage has come from experience, and she speaks much of her desire and ability to obtain “maistrye” or mastery within all of her marriages. The Wife of Bath demands to have complete control over herself, all possessions and her husband and is not willing to rest until she does. She is eager to fight daily until she gains full mastery. Mastery can be short lived or nonpermanent, like winning a battle in a war or it can be permanent, like have power over somewhere, something or someone. Mastery is first defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “1a. Superiority or ascendancy in battle or competition, or in a struggle of any kind; victory resulting in domination” (OED 1). In order to obtain mastery, the Wife of Bath frequently captures the moral high ground over her husband by accusing him of insulting her, cheating and almost killing her for her possessions.
For the Wife of Bath, gaining mastery is an on going
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While mastery can be about superiority in a battle, it is also defined as, “2a. More generally: the state or condition of being master, controller, or ruler; authority, dominion, control” (OED 1). After an argument between the Wife and Jankyn, he declares her dominance by saying, ““Myne owene trewe wif do as thee lust the term of al thy life; keep thyn honour and keep eek myn estate,”” (Line 825-827). She gains power over not only her own life, but also his. The Wife of Bath goes on to say, “After that day we hadde nevere debate” (Line 828). The wife demonstrates that she was willing to fight night and day until she won complete freedom. She states that once she had that, as well as control over her own affairs, she had no reason to fight with him