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Wife Of Bath Magic Power

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One inference I can make about the Wife of Bath in “The Tale of the Wife of Bath” by Chaucer is that she has magical powers. The author provided multiple places in the story where she was aided with magical powers. To begin, once the knight had spent his year of traveling and seeking truth he walked back to the castle in shame because he knew he was going to be killed for not having the correct answer. On his way he saw a few ladies dancing and carrying on around a fire. He figured it would not hurt to ask these ladies for the truth he had been searching for. But when he grew close to the ladies they disappeared and left an older woman in their place. The Wife of Bath made the other ladies disappear; she knew how to draw the knight in. This was a prime example of magical powers, making someone disappear. …show more content…

In addition to the fire scene, once the knight and she are married she gives a second appearance of an enchantress. The Wife of Bath makes an offer to the knight. She tells him she can be beautiful and unfaithful or stay ugly and remain faithful forever. The knight tells her to be whatever she pleases, which was the right thing to say! When he gave her authority over him, she transformed into a beautiful girl who will also be faithful. In lines 392-396 of “The Tale of the Wife of Bath” readers witness this example first hand, “Do with my life and death as you like best. Throw back the curtain and see how it is. And when the knight saw verily all this, that she so very fair was, and young too, for joy he clasped her in his strong arms two.” Overall, the Wife of Bath possesses some sort of magical powers in this story of the knight and

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The Wife of Bath’s Tale is a King Arthur romance based on the theme of the frog prince, but, with an unlikely twist. A knight commits a wrongful deed and when he is caught, the king turns his punishment over to the queen. The queen decides that given the crime, the knight will have the challenge of answering the question “what is it that women desire?”. He has exactly one year and a day to find the answer to this question, which proves to be harder than he thought. Alas, when the day arrives, he is tested by marrying an old woman who gave him the answer to the queens question.

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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!”

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Chaucer’s Portrayal of the Wife of Bath The Wife of Bath presents the reader with a woman who compiles to the stereotypes corresponding with the negative misogyny of women during the medieval times. Wife of Bath is viewed the same as this stereotypical woman. Some can agree with Chaucer’s choice of these negative traits of The Wife of Bath, but the same conclusion is always met. Chaucer chooses to display the Wife of Bath as a misogynistic symbol of negative traits in order to use her as an object of mockery.

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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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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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In the Tale of the Wife of Bath, the reader can infer that the wife of bath is rather promiscuous. In the general prologue, she was described as wearing very tight, scarlet red hose to church on a Sunday. The color red is traditional the color of seduction and it’s not a color most would wear to their Sunday church service. In the text it also states, “With five churched husbands bringing joy and strife, not counting other company in youth,” which reveals that she has had many husbands and she has shared with multiple other men in her youth. The author also states that she has very open gapped teeth which can be inferred by the reader as a metaphor to how open her legs are to other men.

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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).

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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 character the wife of bath, is used as a tool for satire. Chaucer uses the irony of how she freely speaks of sex, the description of her character to be gap-toothed, and her personality being honest, witty, and funny, to challenge the church’s corruption. Before The Wife of Bath tells her story, she goes through stating her prologue. Within her prologue she describes each of her husbands, how she viewed them, and how they treated her.

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On the other hand, in the tale she tells a story about a Knight who takes the maidenhood of a young girl which almost causes him to lose his life and about women gaining sovereignty. The Wife of Bath fifth husband, King Arthur, the Knight, and the Wife of Bath will be placed in Dante’s hell in the Inferno. The

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Back in time it was a matter of course to get married, people did it because of tradition and maybe because everyone else did it. It wasn 't as special as it is today, back then you were much better at compromising. Today most of us think it’s a big deal to get married and get committed in such way to another human being, because we know it’s can go the other way around too. Many people are having a divorce, and when we hear that, we don’t get as surprised as we should, because it happens all the time and we know that almost every marriage ends up in a divorce. We change all the time, and our generation is a lot different from the generations before.

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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).

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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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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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910 Words | 4 Pages

The Wife of Bath states, “You have two choices; which one will you try? To have me old and ugly till I die, but still a loyal, and humble wife that never will displease you all her life, or would you rather I were young and pretty and chance your arm what happens in a city where friends will visit you because of me, yes, and in other places too, maybe. Which would you rather have? The choice is all your own” (395-403).

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