The Wife of Bath is possibly the most interesting character in The Canterbury Tales. With her blunt personality and intriguing past, The Wife of Bath has been able to catch the attention of everyone who reads her tale. It is not just the story itself that makes people interested in her but the themes that come with her story. Power and marriage are just a few of the many themes that are found in The Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale. These two main themes are able to connect the prologue and the tale together.
Power is one of the main themes in the “Wife of Bath’s tale”. The Wife of Bath states that what women want is to have complete control of their husband. In the prologue, she explains how she uses her body to control and to gain power in her marriages. She would hold sex over her first three husbands, all of whom were old and rich, in order to gain their property and money. She uses these men’s natural weakness to make them give in to her desires, which makes her the more powerful person in the relationship.
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The knight was able to avoid execution as long as he was able to discover what women wanted the most which he discovered was power. One interesting thing is that in the tale, the knight ironically finds himself giving up the power to his body, just as he made his victim give up the power. He gives up power to his body when he decides to let the Queen decided what his punishment. While on his quest, he meets an old poor lady who gives him the answer he was searching for, in order to receive the answer, he must promise to do whatever she asks of him. By promising this, he once again loses power because he is now at the old lady’s will. The knight loses power once more when he keeps his promise and marries the old