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The Wife Of Bath Literary Analysis

471 Words2 Pages

As so eloquently said by Andrew Carnegie, “Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” This quote is asserting the fact that in order for a healthy marriage to be successful, one spouse cannot have dominance over the other. The Wife of Bath was a well travelled woman who had a past of having several different husbands. Therefore, she had a noticeably refined view of marriage. What women long for but rarely have in their marriages is reflected quite exceptionally in her tale. In the beginning of the tale, the Wife of Bath clearly portrays how men behaved towards women in her day and age. Full of lust, the character of the King’s knight “by very force he took her maidenhead,” (line 64). This development of the tale might even expose something about the wife herself, possibly that one of her husbands was forceful or controlling concerning their marriage. Although she proceeded the tale with the knight’s punishment, she makes it seem as if men treating women rather poorly in the second century was not terribly uncommon. Due to a common Code of Chivalry among knights, those who would sexually assault women would be condemned to death. Although the knight violated the code he swore to uphold, he had pity taken upon him. Contrary to the conventional verdict of this type of atrocity he would have …show more content…

In a sense, I believe her main theme is valid being what women most desire. Due to the constant oppression of women by their partners, many people, in addition to the Wife of Bath, believe sovereignty over their spouse is the perfect resolution to their complications. However, marriage is mostly about teamwork and support as the two people journey on through life. In the present day, it seems that we have made impressive progress as strong partnerships are much more prominent in marriages compared to the time period of the Canterbury

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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.

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