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Literary analysis on the wife of bath's tale
Wife of Bath as a feminine view
Literary analysis on the wife of bath's tale
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Questions: 2.) In this section, the Wife of Bath comments on the different answers given to the Knight, and her comments give insight to her opinions and views of women. For example, the text states, “Others assert we women find it sweet when we are thought dependable, discreet and secret, firm of purpose and controlled, never betraying things that we are told. But that’s not worth the handle of a rake; women conceal a thing? For Heaven’s sake!”
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.
The wife of bath is an admirable woman. She thinks about herself and the love she deserves. The wife of bath encourages women of today to not let men control us a property and to be treated equal. The wife of bath doesn’t understand why women are treated differently in Bible and society. Wife of bath still marries five men to find the perfect one she only finds money and looks.
In the Wife of Bath’s, she broke all the stereotypes Medieval society thought a wife is. She tells the people that being married intercourse is part of marriage and God has made privates parts to make generations, not to waste in doing nothing. Being categorized or stereotyped in Medieval society was hard for married women in the Medieval era because often they were portrayed as disloyal, uncontrolled sexual beasts because of the lack of marriage
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).
She leaves the reader surprised and wanting read more. By using examples throughout her tale the Wife of Bath enforced her moral, woman deserve dominance over men and it’s in their best interest to listen. The Wife of Bath kept her tale interesting, keeping the reader’s attention. She supported her moral message with examples that can be related to today’s world. For those reasons she definitely had the better
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.
The Wife of Bath’s Tale is from the Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer, it is a tale about the battle of the sexes. The narrator is a woman who has “been an expert as wife” who has a tale “of the tribulation in the married life” (Chaucer 155). The Wife of Bath conveys the theme of power in which humans desire to hold over one another. This theme is shown throughout the tale as characters exhibit control over others, recurring images of power over the knight and ideas illustrated by the narrator.
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 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
The Wife of Bath does not have good marriages because she is very selfish. She will marry anyone as long as it will benefit her. The major gain of marriage, for the Wife of bath is the marriage debt, or sex, which is why she's so strongly in favor of marriage. She also is all about marriage because appears the ability to gain property, wealth, and a comfortable living situation through a husband. The Wife Of Bath is constantly lying to all five of the husbands she has
The Wife of Bath is displayed as strong, independent, and unconcerned with any social standards she may or may not be held to. When explaining the Wife of Bath Chaucer details,“Bold was her face, and handsome; florid too. She had been respectable all her life, And five times married, that’s to say in church, Not counting other loves she’d had in youth”(Chaucer 14). Multiple clothing items add onto her attitude of self-determination and power, as she is described as wearing a hat that resembled a shield, and sharp spurs on her feet (Chaucer 15). With the Wife of Bath being described as a mistress with multiple husbands, one would expect her to be characterized as a scheming harlot that men should be wary of (as was common in medieval misogynist tales).
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.
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.
A story that reflects a timeless issue of equality, morals, and lesson on what women really desire. The Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story in The Canterbury Tales that expresses multiple moral lessons and an exciting dialogue that provides an entertaining story. The two stories that will be examined today are the “Pardoners Tale” and “The Wife of Bath”, after much evaluation I believe that “The Wife of Bath” is the better story. This is the better story because it’s more entertaining and also has more morals with better quality.
