...The Role of Marriage in "The Wife of Bath" Canterbury Tales In most modern marriages today, both men and women contribute to the same relationship roles such as being the provider, communicator, negotiator and so on. In the 14th century, most marriages were arranged and the woman had to obey her husband’s commands. During this time, Geoffrey Chaucer's wrote The Canterbury Tales. His stories demonstrate a variety of attitudes toward the perceptions of marriage, with some of these ideas being extremely conservative while others are wildly liberal. While several of these tales are rather comical, Chaucer gives us a representation of his attitudes toward marriage at that time in history. When addressing the question of who has correctly identified the proper roles in marriage, it is The Wife of Bath, a tale that satirically demonstrates the wife's overall desire for mastery within the marriage by her manipulation of the husband's weaknesses of both the flesh and the mind. It is these peculiarities of the Wife of Bath's tale that uniquely answer the question of who deserves the mastery in marriage. The Wife of Bath's prologue introduces the pilgrim who narrates this tale, Alison, a gap toothed, partially deaf seamstress and widower of five husbands, claiming to have great experience in the ways of the heart by remedying whatever might ail it. Alison, unlike the other tales in comparison, describes marriage as a miserable experience. The Wife of Bath's tale sets itself apart by...
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...Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer is a book filled with tales and prologues during the late medieval time period. Chaucer was born in 1342 in Paris. Chaucer lived the majority of his life privileged and on the kings’ (Richard II until 1399 then Henry IV) payroll. Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales in 1387, and worked on it throughout the 90’s. Of the few tales that I read (“The Prologue”, “The Miler’s Prologue”, “The Miller’s Tale”, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale Prologue”, and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”), it seems clear that love and marriage are underlying themes throughout. But, love and marriage are two separate things during this time period. What the characters perceive to be love is actually lust. This will become evident throughout the tales. “The Prologue” is where Chaucer introduces all of the characters that will be prevalent throughout The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer describes the season as being April, and goes into detail about each character. It should be noted that the 29 characters that Chaucer mentioned were brought together by chance and did not plan this meeting. Each character had stopped at Tabard Inn, while waiting to embark on the pilgrimage to Canterbury. The night before the pilgrimage was to begin, the host offered a proposition to the pilgrims. He suggested a simple task: Now listen for your good, And please don’t treat my notion with disdain. This is the point. I’ll make it short and plain. Each one...
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...The Wife of Bath’s Tale; Chaucer’s Early Feminism When the knight from The Wife of Bath’s Tale is to be put to death for taking the ”maidenhead” of a young maiden, he is offered a chance to live, if he can find out what women really want in life. He finds out that women just want to be in charge of their relationships, and have the freedom to make choices on their own. The knight eventually gets married, and shows his true understanding of what women really want. This suggests that, for his time, Chaucer has progressive feminist views. The Wife of Bath’s Tale displays these feminist values through three major events in the tale. The knight’s sentencing, was a major event in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and in which, a female was in a high place of power, which displays progressive views towards woman in power. King Arthur lets his queen decide what punishment to give to the knight. The king normally made this decision, but the queen requested to make the decision and “ceaselessly, he [King Arthur] gave the queen the case.”(72) This willingness to let his wife make decisions shows feminist intention from Chaucer. The question asked to the knight: “What is the thing that women most desire?” (81) is a feminist one, for it’s a question not asked too often in that time. The decision of the king to allow his wife to decide, and the penalty decided upon by the queen, both allude to the feminism in The Wife of Bath’s Tale. When the knight meets the old hag, he swears his life to her...
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...In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath presents her bold views throughout the course of her narration. Her prologue provides insight into her real-life experience with marriage, which she seems to view more as a game than as a consecrated relationship. Per the Pardoner’s request, the Wife of Bath shares her stance on marriage through a captivating tale, in which she highlights the idea of gentillesse in her vision of an ideal relationship. However, even though the Wife of Bath’s tale seems to go against the patriarchal society of the Middle Ages, further analysis of the text supports the fact that she views marriage as an opportunity for personal profit and not for equality. Thus, her tale and prologue not only support...
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...The Canterbury Tales Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. "The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam." Women's Studies 15.4 (1988): 399-416. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 26 Oct. 2015. Hansen has two facets of her argument about The Wife of Bath from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The first explains how important the Wife is to the feminist critic, while the second paradoxically argues that she can be looked at as antifeminist based on the fact that she is a speaker that in reality is the voice of a man. Her views are manipulated and characterized by a man, therefore they do not allow a true woman's voice to be heard. In part one of her argument she is in favor of the idea of the Wife of Bath...
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...The Wife of Bath is perhaps the most remarkable figure in The Canterbury Tales. Particularly interesting is the difference between her Prologue, in which she brashly and lustily gives the details of her five marriages, and her Tale, which is both moral and quite charming. Address the difference between the Wife's Prologue and her Tale. How do the two relate and lend meaning to one another? The Wife of Bath ha the longest prologue in The Canterbury Tales. Why does she feel the need to share this personal information with the pilgrims before she begins her tale? The Wife's prologue is unique in that it is longer than the tale itself. The Wife of Bath uses the prologue to explain the basis of her theories about experience versus authority and to introduce the point that she illustrates in her tale: The thing women most desire is complete control ("sovereignty") over their husbands. The Wife speaks on behalf of women everywhere discusses her five marriages and her tactics for gaining power and financial independence through the use of her body. Bawdy, lusty, and strong willed, she refuses to allow men to control her existence and she takes measures to shape her own destiny The Wife’s narrative opens with a defense of her many marriages, all legal, as she points out, i.e. recognized by the Church even though some churchmen frowned on widows re-marrying. The Wife challenges anyone to show her where the Scripture sets a limit to the number of successive legal marriages a person ...
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...and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” showed good and bad qualities when considering the codes of chivalry. The knight in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” showed loyalty to King Arthur. He showed his loyalty by taking the place of King Arthur’s challenge to the Green Knight: Gawain by Guenevere Toward the king doth now incline: “I beseech, before all here, That...
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...The Wife of Bath's View That Sovereignty is a Woman's Virtue in Marriage In The Wife of Bath's Tale, Chaucer focuses on a woman who desires to be independent in her marriage as she believes that a woman should play an influential role in the decision-making that takes place inside a marriage. The Wife of Bath is a domineering figure as she takes advantage of men's lust in order to exercise her dominance over the men she marries. In his treatment of The Wife of Bath, Geoffrey Chaucer has Alison claim that women should be able to do as they please without the interference or opposition of men. I will argue that Chaucer presents the perspective of Alison, the Wife of Bath, in such a way that the reader is inclined to agree with her, rather than to ridicule her. The Wife of Bath believes that she embodies love and commitment, but her lack of femininity also reveals how paradoxical and imbalanced her world view is. She wears the letter "A" that stands for "Amor Vincit Omnia" (love prevails over all), but she displays a lack of female qualities such as compassion. The Wife of Bath views herself as embodying female virtue, but her exterior reveals only an unattractive, ferocious appearance. The conflict between her internal and external appearance reveals how her view of marriage is inherently contradictory. She views marriage as a means for commitment but also a vehicle for women's independence. The Wife of Bath perceives marriage as based on virtue, and yet her unusual...
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...statement, analyse the role that power plays in a text you have studied. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the role of power is widely explored through Alyson, The Wife of Bath. The Wife’s ability to manipulate and gain dominion over her husbands can be a result of her sexual and libidinous nature, as she uses this attraction to gain pecuniary and societal power. Furthermore, marriage is portrayed as a crucial tool in the gaining of power, as it plays an extremely important role in Alyson’s “wynning” of status and money, as without her husbands one would be without these fortunes. However, the Wife’s dominance and power is questioned by the raw youth of her later husbands, as one experiences the endearing aspect of her fifth husband, Jankyn, as he represents the power left in the patriarchal hegemony of the era, withdrawing all the previously gained power the Wife had obtained. Firstly, the gain and control of power in the Wife of Bath can be seen through the role of sex within the tale, as sex not only secures money and land for the Alyson, but also rewards her with great dominance within the patriarchal hegemony: “I wo lde no lenger in the bed abyde, If that I felte his arm over my syde, Til he had maad his raunson unto me; Thanne wolde I suffre hym do his nycetee. And therefore every man this tale I telle, Wynne whoso may, for al is for to selle.” Here, the Wife explains that whenever one of her husbands displayed some sort of misconduct, she would refuse to give him...
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...Divine Hypocrisy (A literary analysis of Chaucer’s use of satire to reach his audience) As you go through life you learn that many times most people do not agree with what you do. They all have their own interests as we have our own. People of all denominations perform many different jobs some even the same jobs, but others out do the others in their field. Chaucer is considered to be one of the greatest English poets of all time. Many refer to him as the father of the English language. Chaucer wrote one of the best known books titled Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s literary work is one of the most famous books to ever be written. Within his book there are many smaller stories told by different characters told within it. All of the smaller...
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...from the fourteenth century, wrote a framed story called The Canterbury Tales. This work is made up of a General Prologue, which is a description of all the individual pilgrims going on the pilgrimage, followed by several tales told by these pilgrims. He describes several knight’s in this work through a chivalric code of honor. Through his description of the Knight in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, as well as the “Knight’s Tale” and the “Wife of Bath’s Tale,” Chaucer suggests that although chivalry...
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...A Conjecture on the Wife of Bath's Prologue Author(s): Richard F. Jones Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1925), pp. 512-547 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27702906 Accessed: 17-08-2015 10:45 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 182.69.107.77 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:45:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A CONJECTURE ON THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE of Bath's the Wife When for the first reading Prologue time, I remember my surprise upon reaching line 193 to find continued for several hundred lines, whereas that the Prologue a tale to follow. With I had expected each reading since, I in adjusting my expecta the same difficulty have experienced found. This repeated experience, ...
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...There was once a writer named Geoffrey Chaucer. He is mostly considered to be the father of English literature. His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of twenty-four stories each allegedly told by a different pilgrim on their journey to the shrine of Thomas Becket. One of the most controversial stories is "The Wife of Bath's Tale" which contains many of the characteristics commonly associated with fairy tales including a moral. "...Hundreds of years ago, in days of yore." Most tales begin with introductory sentences such as once upon a time, or even that it happened in the long long ago. The Wife also helps illustrate this common element in her story of the knight and the maiden that she tells the other pilgrims as they...
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...In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer shows the faults through the rights and wrongs of how to live of both men and women in the Wife of Bath, Miller’s, and Merchant’s Tale. Geoffrey Chaucer shows the liberal perspective of women in the “Wife of Bath's Tale.” The liberal perspective is shown in women in the beginning of the tale by the king granting the Queen the power and decision to whether the Knight would live or die. Unlike most women during the Middle Ages the Queen had a mind and a voice of her own. Even though the Queen intimidates people by the power she possess, Chaucer depicts her as what men don’t want. The Queen has the power over life or death “And suretee wol I han, er that thou pace, thy body for to yelden in this place,”...
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...In the time period between 1066 and 1485, better known as the medieval age, a set of standards and how people are placed into order of importance in society is known as feudalism. In this caste system there are four groups; Kings, Barons, Vassals, and Serfs. The main individual of focus comes from the vassals, better known as the knight. Knights from this time period start out around 7 years old and are taught a code of chivalry (code of conduct) and the basics of knight hood. The knight in the Wife of Bath’s tale forcibly violates a young madden and punished with execution by decapitation. He is saved by the queen but is sent on a twelve month and a day quest. The knight in the Wife of Bath’s Tale doesn’t display chivalry by his actions of violating an innocent woman and continues to dishonor this code by being demeaning and crass to an old woman who helps save his life yet at the end allows the old woman to make a decision regarding his life. At the begging of the story a young knight comes across a beautiful madden. Overcome by lust and power he rapes her. The court is defamed by his actions and they condemn him to death. He was going to be executed but “the queen and the other ladies too, implored the king to exercise his grace so ceaselessly, he gave the queen the case and granted her his life, and she could whether to show mercy of refuse.” (70-74) His actions are unchiviric because he forcibly violates a young lady. Any code of conduct should say that rape is unjustified...
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