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Wife Of Bath In The Canterbury Tales

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What social group and its typical features does the Wife of Bath represent, and what idiosyncratic characteristics does she possess?

The Canterbury Tales, a famous work by Geoffrey Chaucer, narrates a story of pilgrims’ travelling to Canterbury Cathedral. The author depicts the characters from all social classes with a satiric insight to their virtues and faults, which is a distinctive feature of medieval genre: estates satire. The fourteenth-century English society was divided into three classes: the clergy, the military and the laity. One of the pilgrims, the Wife of Bath, is a member of the laity, a representative of wifehood.
Medieval people were judged based on their external physical beauty as well as on their garments. A clothing was …show more content…

Stereotypically, if not saint, the woman must be deceitful, manipulative, dangerous for men and it is possible to interpret the Wife of Bath in this way. However some may say that she is a feminist heroine, expressing her feelings and desires openly, rebelling against the domination of men. This interpretation has some evidences, for example, she evokes arguments with her last husband over a book Valerie and Theofraste which contains a stories about the most untruthful wives in history. Frustrated Alisoun wants to destroy the book, she provokes Jankyn and in a result of the fight, she loses hearing in one ear. Nevertheless, her behaviour cause laugh rather than admiration for her attitude to life and marriage.
The Wife of Bath stands for the portrayal of the middle class fair sex in the 14th century England. Even though, there are presumptions that Chaucer is a proto-feminist, the gender divisions presented in The Canterbury Tales are clear and it is difficult to consider Alisoun a revolutionary female character. Definitely, she stands for sexual freedom, yet despite of the fact that she is a woman, she does not see that her situation wrong, contrarily she is eager to find next husband to bring him to submission. Her attempts to dominate men are aimed at her personal profit, she has no feminist

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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.

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The Wife of Bath believed that women should take mastery over their men (Pg. 914). She had five husbands and thought she knew how to control men. She also believed that experience, not authority by gender, should be respected in society. She also believed that members of the church who could not marry or consummate, knew less of sex and therefore, not as experienced or educated on sexuality as she.

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Stereotypes of Women in The Canterbury Tales Stereotypes of women have not changed throughout the years of history. Throughout the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer portrays women through negative stereotypes. Women are portrayed as selfish, lustful and immoral. In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue women are portrayed as selfish.

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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

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Chaucer writes The Wife of Bath as a character who is superior to her husbands and as a woman who embraces her sexuality to the fullest extent. Through this characterization, she is able to defy the patriarchal society that is threatening to oppress her. She breaks the chains of ownership and finds a way to reverse the gender roles, by instead “chaining” her husbands. Yet, despite all of this, The Wife of Bath still succumbs to the idea that women are only relevant through their physical attributes by not only herself, but Chaucer as

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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.

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The anatomy of draft horses are not necessarily the easiest to remember. There are roughly about 43 main parts that vary in every person. Since most people do not call certain parts the exact same thing even if there is a correct term there can often be some confusion. Even if there is a little bit of confusion most of the names for the part of a draft horse are very similar. Even though there are many parts in the anatomy of a draft horse lots of people still learn to memorize all these parts or at least most of them.

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“Come on, come on! You are pictures out of door, bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens, saints in your injuries, devils being fended, players in your huswifery, and huswives in your beds.” (l.122-125. 2.1) Iago states that women only have two jobs- take care of the home, and give pleasure to their husbands in their beds. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's, “The Canterbury Tales”, is a successful cloth maker, “At making cloth she had so great a bent she bettered those of Ypres and even of Gent.”

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The Wife of Bath Alisoun first introduces the work of art using a prologue which she uses to justify her numerous marriages; she gives examples of prominent men who had several wives and argues that living a virtuous life does not always apply to everyone; she questions what the genitalia was made for. Alisoun states that the genitalia was created by God solely for procreation and comfortably sates that she will use her instrument as freely as her maker had sent it (Chaucer 150). Alisoun paints quite a negative image of women, she implies that chastity should not be observed but women should be solely driven by their sexual desires. This is not the reasoning from the feminist school of thought.

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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

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The Wife of Bath is a tale which belongs to the work called Canterbury Tales and his author Geoffrey Chaucer, which was written in 1387-1400. This Tale and his Prologue tell the story of a woman, Allyson, who talks about her life and this work represent the tradition of a distinguished woman that a man is forced to marry. The author relates many controversial aspects in order to do an analysis of the vision of the women in marriage, which is considered an economic contract between two families or the vision of women in the society compared with objects. Taking into account all these features, this paper is going to perform a Feminist Criticism in order to analyze its main important ideas, and its main literary sources, as the Conde Lucanor

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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.

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“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute” (West). The Oxford Dictionary defines feminism as, “The advocacy of Women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” The Wife of Bath is viewed as one of the most popular, early feminists to occur in literature; however, is she truly feminist? Her views on women’s sexuality and rape, although ideas that go with the feminist movement, are not for the right reasons, almost giving feminism a bad reputation. She puts herself among the likes of great religious figures, such as: Abraham and Jacob; but, The Wife of Bath belongs nowhere near that category,

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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.

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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.

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