Wife Of Bath Tale Research Paper

Response Essay for The Wife of Bath’s Tale

“The Wife of Bath's Tale” is a book written by Geoffrey Chaucer, and often regarded as the best book in the collection of the Canterbury Tales. The book tells the story of a young knight in the land inhabited by elves and fairies during the days of King Arthur. This young knight rapes a young maiden in the King’s court and the King passes a judgment of beheading the knight’s head. However, before his execution, Queen Guinevere intervene and gives the knight a chance to go out and seek what women want upon which he will be spared. The knight seeks this answer from women, but it is all in vain. After a year of bad luck, the knight is on the way when he meets an old woman who promises to tell the Queen

As the story opens, we see a maiden being deprived her power of self when she is raped by the knight. The knight comes across a lovely maiden and, “and it happened that he saw walking ahead of him a maiden, whom he ravished, in spite of all her resistance,”(898) and after this heinous act, the King is forced to pass judgment over the knight, his beheading. However, at this time we see the Queen and her ladies intervening and reverting this punishment by giving the young knight a new assignment to tell her “what thing it is that women desire most” (912) and if he fails his punishment will be reinstated but if he succeeds, his life will be spared. It is clear from this illustration that King Arthur’s power has been taken away by the Queen who further directs the knight to seek that which women desire most. And upon the knight’s return with the old woman, the queen is told that “women wish to have sovereignty as well over her husband as her love and to have mastery over him,” (1042) and again here we see the subject of power coming up. Now after all is done, and the knight is spared, the old lady and the knight marry, and the old lady makes one prayer to Jesus to send all women, “And may Jesus Christ send us husbands meek, young, and lusty, and grace to outlive them that we wed.” (1260) All these illustrations from the beginning to the end portray a power struggle between the two genders. It is interesting to

Every gender wants to wield power for their own advantage and in this novel, we see how each party uses power for the general good of the society. Even though there is a power struggle, this war is very silent and does not seem to be a big deal and hence portraying how genders wars spare no institution even the