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Representation Of Medieval Women In Chaucer's The Wife Of Bath

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The representation of medieval women in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales certainly passes by The Wife of Bath. Her autobiography and speech not just make evident her personal experiences as a married madam, but also show some incongruities and issues that this character represents as a social group’ type. That happens mainly because the Wife of Bath lives in a patriarchal and religious society, where voice and decision-making are not given to women, according to Gestsdóttir (2010). Through the Prologue of The Wife of Bath, Chaucer allows the reader to depict some points of view and thought lines of that character, how she relates to her social context and how deeply she absorbs or represses that culture. Even though can be argued that the Wife of Bath speaks and acts contradictory in some moments of her Prologue, those are more related to lapses of personality - when she tries to perform a different social type that is not hers particularly. That is to say, the character is coherent with her own thoughts and decisions, save moments when she performs beyond her own personality.
As means to analyse in which points The Wife of Bath is coherent with her own personality, it is relevant identifying when she allows contradiction by performing. The text promptly starts with the woman exalting herself as an authority in marriage based on her personal experience, for she has been married five times (“I have had five husbands at the church door” - verse 6). Also, she adds that experience is
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