Canterbury Tales The Woman of Bath

The Wife of Bath's tale is a tale about a knight who rapes a woman and has to be punished by the queen instead of the king. Instead of the queen killing him or jailing him she gives him a chance to go find out what do women desire the most. So he embarks on his journey and never finds the answer, until he runs into an old, ugly woman. She gives him the answer, only after he pledges his troth to her. So, when he tells the queen that most women desire sovereignty and control over their husbands and relationships he is set free and has to marry the old lady. He is distraught later that night so, the ugly woman gives him an ultimatum. She could remain ugly and be faithful to the knight, or she could be pretty and unfaithful. After being torn, he lets her decide, and she decides to be both pretty and faithful. After that, they live happily ever

In Chaucer’s novel The Canterbury Tales each individual tale has a well suited character to tell the tale. Meaning that based on what is learned in the general prolog about each character, it is easy to draw connections between the story teller, and their story. The Wife of Bath’s Tale is told by Dame Alison. She is not only a seamstress but also a very experienced wife. The Wife of Bath’s tale is extremely fitting for Dame Alison to tell because the moral of the tale, as well as Dame Alison’s own morals are the same. They ultimately draw the conclusions that all women really want is power over men in their relationships.

The story The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is about a set of pilgrims traveling to a town called Canterbury. To entertain one another along their journey, each of them tells four total stories: two on their way to Canterbury and two on their trip back home. Of all of the pilgrims making this journey, many of them represent some bad qualities.

The Canterbury Tales were written and pieced together in the late 1380's, early 1390's.  The author of the book is Geoffrey Chaucer.  When considering the structure of the tales, one can deduce that they were put together using Framework Narrative, a very unique style of writing.  The opening prologue speaks of 29 pilgrims, including Chaucer, who are all on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. All of them are seeking a certain shrine for spiritual cleansing, and relief.  The journey was to be long, but in the end it would all be worth it.  Chaucer's social views and prejudices are revealed through his description of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.

Often at times people can feel disconnected from themselves, from the world, or even friends and families; Therefore, causing tension in relationships. Which was displayed in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” when the knight searches all over the world to find out what women most desire in a man. Also in “One Amazing Thing” there are various stories from different characters that have had trouble with personal stories and how one gender or religious belief can be more dominate than the other.

The Canterbury Tales were written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. This masterpiece is one of the greatest classics of English Literature, it was and continues to be still very popular. Many manuscripts survived and it was the first work to be printed by William Caxton. It is a story about pilgrims travelling together, who tell stories on their journey to Canterbury, to pay tribute to Saint Thomas Becket. As it is a collection of tales, it varies in genre (there is beast fables, romances, fabliaux, saints’ lives…), subject, mood, length (some tales are 80-page long whereas some are much shorter), form (in verse –several verse-form are also found- or in prose). For this

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of more than 20 stories, written in Middle English around the 1380s, during the Hundred Years' War, by Geoffrey Chaucer. Within a narrative about a pilgrimage,(from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral) Chaucer sets a series of stories. These collection of stories are built around a frame narrative, which was an already established and common genre of the 14th century. (The tales are in verse, except The Parson's Tale and Chaucer's own story of Melibee which are in prose.) Chaucer's collection of tales differs from other story compilations, since most story collections are focused on a theme, usually on a religious one. In Boccaccio's Decameron (which contains more parallels

“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story about a widow who took a pilgrimage to the town of Canterbury with an array of dynamic characters whose diverse backgrounds allowed them to share their stories with one another to make the long journey more interesting. The widow named Alison in the The Wife of Bath’s Tale told the tale of her experiences with her five past husbands and a story about a knight and a witch. She truly believed that for a woman to have a happy life she would need to gain dominion over a man; however one could assume this was programmed into her by her influential mother and her own religious doctrines. Accordingly, Alison argued that the woman must control everything in order

Elizabeth IniguezMrs. Alana HaughabooSenior English September 15, 2015Annotated Bibliography Shead, Jackie. " 'The wife of bath 's tale ' as self-revelation: Jackie Shead discusses how far the Wife 's Tale perpetuates the picture we have gained of her from her Prologue." The English Review 20.3 (2010): 35+. Literature Resource Center. Web. (SUMMARY) The story centers on marriage roles and powers. Men do not want to be governed by their wives. The knight lets the poor and unappealing lady decide for them. From the beginning of the story, it shows that women have a power in their marriage. (ASSESSMENT) This article was found in AVL. (REFLECTION) This article fits into the research paper because it deals with the role of a woman and want she wants. The source was helpful to me it helped me understand the story better. I could use this source describe how the women is the head of the marriage, even though she was old and unappealing. QUOTES: 1. The Tale therefore demonstrates from its beginnings a concern with female power and control over men, such as we see in the Wife 's Prologue. It is less interested in punishment of sexual transgression than with male submission to female witches. The quest, and its outcome, is a salutary lesson to males about not overriding women. This is further emphasized by the way the knight must seek help from females, who are defined, by the very nature of the quest, as 'the experts. 2. She used her body to control her husbands and to gain

The Canterbury Tales, begun in 1387 by Geoffrey Chaucer, are written in heroic couplets iambic pentameters, and consist of a series of twenty-four linked tales told by a group of superbly characterized pilgrims ranging from Knight to Plowman. The characters meet at an Inn, in London, before journeying to the shrine of St Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The Wife of Bath is one of these characters. She bases both her tale and her prologue on marriage and brings humor and intrigue to the tales, as she is lively and very often crudely spoken. Her role as a dominant female contrasts greatly with the others in the tales, like the prim and proper Prioress represents the

In her tale a handsome young knight is charged with rape and is sentenced to death by the king. The queen gives him a year and a day to spare his life if he can answer the question "what is the thing that women most desire?" (Chaucer, l. 81) On the last day he meets an elderly woman who gives him the answer and he promises her that when all of it is over he will give her whatever she desires if it is in his power. The knight goes before the queen and presents the answer that was told to him by the elderly woman and the answer is correct. When he asked the woman what she wanted she replied "to be your wife." The knight refused to marry the old woman, he pleaded her to ask for anything else but that. The old woman said that she would only settle for marriage and so they got married. On their wedding the knight expressed his feeling and how he thought that he was to good for her because she was too old, ugly,and poor. The woman then told him that although she was old, ugly, and poor she would be a faithful wife. She then proposed to him a choice would he want her to be old, ugly, poor, and faithful or young and beautiful and risk that when his friends came over to visit they would visit for the sole purpose of seeing her. The knight then told her that she could choose and the woman told him " does this mean i will be in control of this marriage?" The knight told her "yes, yes, yes." She then became young beautiful and

2A). The Wife of Bath, was a very outstanding character portrayed throughout The Canterbury Tales. She has a lot of experience under her belt, on the basis of marriage, love and sex. She uses her body as a bargaining tool, withholding sexual pleasure until her demands are fulfilled by her husbands. This says a lot about who she is as a character and Chaucer does an excellent job in describing her character in "The General Prologue," through her own prologue, and though her tale.

The wife of bath’s prologue is much longer than the actual story. The wife is what the medieval church saw as a wicked woman. Her prologue is important because it shows how she took control over her five husbands. The wife of bath could be considered one of the earliest feminist characters in literature.

Everyone has a story. Certainly Chaucer believes so as he weaves together tales of twenty nine different people on their common journey to Canterbury. Through their time on the road, these characters explore the diverse lives of those traveling together, narrated by the host of the group. Each character in the ensemble is entitled to a prologue, explaining his or her life and the reasons for the tale, as well as the actual story, meant to have moral implications or simply to entertain. One narrative in particular, that of the Wife of Bath, serves both purposes: to teach and to amuse. She renounces the submissive roles of a woman and reveals the moral to her story while portraying women as sex seeking, powerful creatures, an amusing thought

In the Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer the story tells about men and women going on pilgrimages, among them the Wife of Bath in search of her 6th husband, who go on a journey to pay their respect to Sir Thomas á Becket. During the story the Wife of Bath strongly expresses herself as a very strong woman and knows what she expects with the men shes with. As well as this, with all her beauty and respect she was given in life the Wife of Bath displays herself highly. Finally, she ideals her actions with the knowledge she knows from the Bible. Therefore, because of her control, beauty, and knowledge the Wife of Bath is a woman that most women would look up to.