Misogynistic Ideals Of The Wife Of Bath

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he introduces a character known as the Wife of Bath. It is her turn to tell the stories, and her tale begins discussing her past marriages in the prologue. Married five times, the Wife of Bath tells us about her own marital issues, and the way she was able to manipulate the gender roles to her own advantage. As interesting of a character as she is, I find Chaucer created the Wife of Bath to deliberately introduce the issues gender roles play in our society. I believe that the role the of the Wife of Bath in the tale was purposely written by Chaucer to twist the traditional gender roles of the time, satirizing how gender plays in society.

The Wife of Bath character is a woman who had married five times. Of these five husbands she only loved one. On line 195 of the story she stated, “As three of them were good and two were bad. The three men who were good were rich and old.” She did not marry them for love. She was the

The Wife of Bath exceedingly explains in her prologue of how God supports her behavior and that no formalities of the time discord with her actions. She justifies her situation by telling of how King Solomon, “...Had more than one wife, and I wish to God it were lawful for me to be refreshed half as often” (50). She gave a multitude of quotations and scripture lines that she twisted into supporting her non-religious motives of deceiving men for her pleasure. One of these instances occurs with her correct yet out of context claim that “I know Abraham … and Jacob as well,

"The Wife of Bath", in the collection of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, illustrates the stereotypical image of a women in medieval times ("The Portrayal of Gender in The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.") The tale characterizes women as lustful and greedy burdens on men. However, to readers today, "The Wife of Bath" represents a strong minded feminist woman who is confident and open about her sexuality. Narrated by a character called Alisoun, "The Wife of Bath" reveals an insight to a woman’s point of view in medieval times. Alisoun begins her long prologue by declaring that she follows the rule of experience; announcing that she’s a self–proclaimed women. Throughout the her tale Alisoun questions and challenges the idea of power and authority in medieval society. Through Alisoun, Chaucer gives women a voice to express their call for equality and their need for power. By using description and characterization, Chaucer gives readers an insight to a society in which women are starting to express their desire to have power ultimately arguing that in order for men to be happy women need to have sovereignty in medieval times.

The story the Wife of Bath tells is of a knight who rapes a young lady and subsequently is condemned to death by King Arthur. Chaucer then satirizes the male patriarchy by having the queen take ability to pass judgement on the knight, not King Arthur. This exhibits the power of women over men. This act foreshadows the course of events, manifesting the knight as merely a puppet on a string. The queen gives the knight the choice between a year long quest or to be put to death. The quest the knight must complete is to find what women most desire by the end of the year or he will put to death, “I’ll grant you life if you can tell to me / What thing it is that women most desire. / Be wise, and keep you neck from iron dire!” (Chaucer 910-912). With one of the

In “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” she stated that women were treated as if looks were the only thing important. Many women were not very educated and when beauty fades they are left uneducated and old. Women are not treated as well as men only thought of as objects of lust. They are treated as less than men because they are physically weaker than them. The fact that men are physically stronger than women is the only thing that is justified as true. Men and women did not really completely understand each other. Men thought of themselves as better than women and they did not want women who were educated. They did not think of them as wives or mothers but as just a woman not like the rest of them. She sees that man is her counterpart and respects them as part of the human race but with women being stripped of many of their rights that things are not equal

The Wife of Bath apparently attempts to emphasize female dominance over men. She contradicts many of the harsh customs and declares her own haughty assessment of women’s function in society and in relationships. In the story, Chaucer explains that what women want is sovereignty over their husbands. According to the tale, women desire to be treated as masters over their love. The story also suggests that

The prologue of this tale showed that the Wife of Bath was not seen as an upstanding woman, nor did she desire to be seen as one. She portrayed feminism, almost as soon as she began speaking in the prologue, she explained that she had gone through five husbands, and she was on the look out for a sixth. She also admitted that she married for money:

In view of the fact that the Wife of Bath herself does seem to behave in the manner women are accused of behaving by the anti-feminist writers, it is not impossible that the Wife of Bath's Prologue could be considered a vehicle for the anti-feminist message under the guise of a seeming "feminist" exterior, since her confession is frequently self-incriminating (e.g. her treatment of her husbands, her tendency to "swere and lyen") and demonstrates the truth of the claims made by the anti-feminists even while she is disparaging them and making them look bad -- as in her claim that anti-feminist writers (specifically the "clerks", i.e. learned scholars) are revenging themselves on women because of their own sexual impotence that prevents

Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale” focus on the story telling of a woman who has experienced her fair share of marital issues. She is depicted as a promiscuous woman, married five times and had plenty of male suitors, the Wife was not like any other woman during this era. Although her reputation was how most perceived her, she was not a fan of being scrutinized for what she considered as her duty as a woman; to not remain single. This is seen through the depiction of women in society, how marriage ought to be in the eyes of religion, and how men were to view a woman like her. The language that is used throughout Chaucer’s prologue and tale allude to the evolution of women as well as how they struggled to gain any recognition in

In The Canterbury tales, Chaucer uses The Wife of Bath as a representation of what it was like for Women in the Middle Ages to be striped of equality and bow to the otherwise male dominated society. For the representation of women Chaucer uses the Tales of “The Scholar”, “The Second Nun “The Reeve’s”, and “The Franklin” and many others in a very dry, pretentious manner to steer readers into the view of how a women of the Middle Ages should be as a so called “virtuous” wife or woman. The concept of marriage plays a major part in manifesting the idea of the issues of inferiority of women. The perception rendered as women having to be obedient and inferior figure to their husbands or male counter parts. Chaucer

The Wife of Bath contains three issues that were pretty extreme for the women of the time period. The negative connotation linked with the women and sex is the first one, the second is the position of husband and wife in marriages that leave the women submissive and the men in control, and third is the violence done by men to women. The seriousness of these issues were not discussed at all by men and most certainly not by women. The fact that the Wife of Bath brought up such issues and promoted the ideas of women in these situations was profound. The wife is smart in her delivery in both the Prologue and Tale. The Tale restates all of the subjects of marriage, violence, and sex that she first brings up in the Prologue, and

The wife continues on with details of her five marriages to say that she previously had three unfit husbands and two fit husbands. Focusing less time telling about the unfit, she simply focuses her tale to tell of how she believes one should go about marriage- much like a business transaction. “By accepting the reduction of female sexuality to an instrument of manipulation, control and punishment” the wife gets what she wants through withholding sex. (Aers 148). The wife’s character in The Wife of Bath ultimately argues for Chaucer’s skewed representation of love, sex and marriage as seen in the Canterbury Tales.

The Wife of Bath uses bible verses in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.” Further, she employs the verses as an outline of her life to find reason in God to justify her actions. Nevertheless, the purpose of the verses differs within each stanza of the poem. The Wife of Bath is a sexually promiscuous, lustful, and manipulative woman. She marries men one after the other as they get older and die. In order to combat and overthrow the speculation and criticism being thrust upon her by societal norms because of her marriages, the wife turns to specific bible passages to find reason in life and support for her actions (Article Myriad.com). When the wife is having sex quite frequently and with different men she is said to be fruitful and multiplying. According to the wife, this is what she is told to do in the bible passage, which she has misinterpreted. Ironically, The Wife of Bath is using a predominantly male dominated book to back up and support her reasons for women being equal to men (Article Myriad.com). Not only has she referred to the benefits of adultery through the bible, she has also attempted to undermine the power of men in the very same way she has attempted to prove that the genders are equal. From this, it can be interpreted that although the wife claims to be providing evidence for women being equal to men, she is actually saying that women are better than men. She misinterprets the readings of the bible and male written passages on purpose in order to suit her needs.

The investigation into whether or not Geoffrey Chaucer was ahead of his time in terms of his views on feminism has been up for debate for hundreds of years. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is just one solitary