Comparing Relationship between Teller and Tale in The Merchant’s Tale and The Wife of Bathe

At this point, the Pardoner interjects the Wife of Bath explaining to her that he is arranging to marry shortly and fears that his future wife will manipulate his body like her. The Wife tells the Pardoner to have a little patience and pay attention to the entire tale to see if it discloses the truth about matrimony. Of the wife's five husbands, three have stayed "good" to her and two had been "bad." The very first three were good because they were wealthy, old, and obedient. She laughs and recalls the torment she put all her husbands through on a daily basis and remembers a discussion that she had with one of her husbands. She would blame her husband for having an affair with her launching him into an outrage, and she would accuse him with many different accusations putting him into a tither. Eventually, she would make them feel guilty and give her whatever she had wanted. She held these claims on her husbands to provide them with grief and worse, yet she admitted to teasing them with her sexual power until they sub missed to her will. She goes on further and explains how she began to get power over her fifth husband, Jankyn. Because women always desire what they can never have and what pursues them in any way they will still run away from it.

She believes that women should have absolute power over their marriage. Sovereignty is one of her significant values. Throughout the tale it is apparent that the storyteller still has those same beliefs. During the knight’s quest to acquire the answer, he finds an old lady. This older woman holds the answer he had been searching for. She will tell him the solution if, he promises her one thing. He is to do as she says, if she is ever to need anything. After presenting the answer that the old lady gave him, his life was spared. As a result the old lady asks the knight to marry her. Disgust filled the knight however, he had no choice. In this case the older woman had the power over the knight. The knight had to abide by her request. His negative attitude towards the old lady does not go unnoticed. A preposition if then offered to the knight. The old lady can stay old and loyal or become beautiful and treacherous. Power is rooted in the woman and not the man. The knight has the choice but no sense of ability to change her. The Wife of Bath’s made it clear that she believed women should be in command. It is decided that the old lady will turn beautiful and remain

The merchant’s tale from The Canterbury Tales may be one of the more versatile tales, as the relationships the merchant holds is common throughout both life and in literature. The tale opens with a prologue, and the merchant’s open objection to marriage. He voiced his anger and said that all married men are morose, and complains about his wife’s qualities. He also said, “‘I have a wife, the worst possible; for though the devil were married to her she would outdo him, I’ll swear… She is a thorough shrew… How well off I’d be if I were only free again’” (Chaucer 224)! Here, the prologue ends and the rest of the story opens up. The story explains that the merchant was a worthy and wealthy knight who lived in Lombardy. He had been single for 60 years, and “had always satisfied his physical desires for women

This quote sets up the entire book. It explains how every marriage was socially advantageous to one or both sides of the party. Society restricted women’s options to either marriage or nothing. Women were looked upon as arm candy and men flocked to the most beautiful. He would show his fortune by the type of woman he married. Women were also very superficial because they would only have eyes for the richer men.

In the prologue The Wife of Bath, is not an admirable woman because she had five husbands and she only picked them by their looks and for their money. The way she treated men was so bad that she thought she was getting used. She also wanted to show women how to take their selves in a relationship and be in control without loving someone.

The Wife of Bath’s tale sets up the story of a young knight that is given they key to life from an ugly elderly woman. This key coming in the form of the ideology that what all women want is control over their husbands or boyfriends. An ideology that is exemplified in the end of this tale when the woman offers the knight a choice of either being married to a loyal woman who is old and ugly, or a young woman who is beautiful, but disloyal. This choice perplexes the knight, but in the end he allows for the woman to decide, thus fulfilling the ideology. This pleases the woman who responds by granting him a wife who is both loyal and beautiful. These are the overall main points of the novel, which bring about the moral lesson as described in the

First is the stereotype that it is deplorable for a woman to marry more than once. The Wife of Bath begins the tale with a prologue that sheds light into her life and what she has gone through as a woman. “Experience … would be quite sufficient for me, to speak of the woe that is in marriage …I have had five husbands at the church-door” (NeCastro, The Wife of Bath’s Tale: A Modern English Translation). She married five times with each marriage being different from the last, so she had to constantly adjust to each of her husbands.

In this tale, the difference in power reinforced Pertelote’s dismissive attitude. Shown in two of Chaucer’s tales is the idea that the inequality of power leads to an ineffective relationship. Therefore, it is evident that there needs to be a similarity of power held by each partner for a relationship to flourish.

“The Merchant’s Tale” on the the other hand is not so clean. This story depicts the marriage of an old knight named January, and his young and beautiful wife, May. Throughout the entirety of the story many aspects are not clean. The first example of this is shown the night of the wedding.

We see the view of the time that women can be married young, must only be married once and everything must go to their husbands. We also see the Wife’s view that marriage is a tool in which you are allowed to have sex and do as God wanted us to, and have children.She says that it is better to be married more than once than it is to have sex outside of marriage. The Wife also gives us the views that because it never says how many marriages you are allowed to have then, you can have as many as you want without any reasons for it. Another view we see from the wife is her contesting the idea that women and everything they have must go to the man once they are married. She asks why can’t her husband go to her. The Wife’s dominion and ideas of submission from a man in marriage are ideas that we see recur throughout the

The Merchant responds to his unhappy marriage by describing how marriage is a trap. Even though he has only been married for two months he claims that if his wife was to marry the devil, “[s]he would him overmatch, I dare well swear” (Chaucer 371). His quick confession about his unhappy marriage contrasts greatly to the reserve the Merchant had when speaking of his financial difficulties (Delahoyde). Because of his unhappy marriage, the Merchant intends to tell a story that illustrates how a husband is affected by a wife’s cursedness but claims that the story has no connections to his own life.

Chaucer also demonstrates acts similar to these in many of his other tales within this novel. In the Miller’s Tale Alison and a young male student trick her husband into believing that a flood is going to hit, and then sneak out to be together while her husband is in hiding. The two create an elaborate plan to fill each other's sexual needs and desires. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue involves stories the Wife of Bath’s tells of her deceiving her husbands to get what she wants whether it be money, power or beauty, she lies and bribes her husbands into doing things for her. It is also significant that Chaucer decides to name the characters in this tale “January” and “May”. A relationship when one spouse is significantly older than the other is called a May-December relationship. It is somewhat humorous that he names his characters these names because it foreshadows that this will be a relationship where one is significantly older than the other. The age difference was a very significant part of this tale. The age difference between May and January, is why May was unsatisfied, which led her to cheat on him and then lie to January about the affair. The Merchant’s Tale argues that unsatisfied women will play their spouse to get what satisfies

The wife ridicules the performance of her husband in bed so they give her everything she wants. By ridiculing her husband’s and telling them they are bad in bed she convinces them to give her more money to make up for their sexual incompetence. Therefore, the Wife of Bath shows the travellers how she uses her sexuality and forcefulness to gain maistrie over each of her husband’s.

“Wife of Bath” Tale provides insight and understanding of the women change and their view mainly in matters of family, marriage, authority and marital affairs. The Prolog is double the size of her Tale, a lot of information about marriage group is given, the position of women in the society and their quest for control and authority. “Wife of Bath” can be said to be a very progressive woman (Minnis, 2008). To start with, her own Prolog has been displayed being twice the size of Tale. The length Prologue is a clear indication of how much she is being focused upon and holding a lot of attention and control in the whole Tale. Wife of Bath shares her information showing that she is a woman of progress and activities as well as the change in her Tale. She announces about herself that she has already have had five husbands near the holy grounds of the church place. Giving information and description of how she has mastered the art of engaging men and handling them in bed and love affairs, The Wife of Bath does not see anything wrong with having the list of men in her life. Her view on biblically, marriage and family is about procreation and pleasure in the course of multiplication.

One question that comes up in older novels such as Northanger Abbey and The Vicar of Wakefield is that of the economy of love or more specifically marriage. Today, people take for granted that people get married for love and little else. The idea of marriage as an economic decision is a foreign and fascinating idea in today’s society, but it was very prominent in Goldsmith’s and Austen’s times and that is reflected in their novels.