The Wife Of Bath Deviant

Beginning with the prologue, the Wife of Bath makes an argument for why she believes sexuality is the key weapon to use against men to achieve her goals. Doing such, she twists the typical gender roles of the time; that women are dependent upon their husbands and need a partner for protection and wealth. The Wife also shows in her stories how she was able to falsely accuse men and continuously hold the upper hand with them, which goes against traditional gender roles of the time of women being helpless without a husband.

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

that he never went to hell (272). She clearly valued sex as the most important attribute of a husband for, “…in our bed he was so fresh and gay….Heaven knows whenever he wanted it- my belle chose-, thought he had beaten me in every bone…”(272) Even though her final husband had beaten her, because he was good in bed with her she felt she loved him the best of them all (272). Clearly, The Wife of Bath valued three things in her marriages, sex, power, and money. In her tale we find that power is an important role to women in marriage. A knight, after raping a women is spared by a queen (282) but in order to save his life, he has one year (283) to find, “What is the thing that women most desire”(282)? After searching, he finds no answer but on his way home finds an old women who promises she will save him, he must promise to do what she asks of him after however, and he agrees (285). When he and the old lady meet with the queen, he exclaimed, “A women want’s the self-sovereignty over her husband as over her lover, and master him; he must not be above her” (286). This answer is perfectly inline with The Wife of Baths views, she always wants to be more powerful than her husband. When the old lady says he must marry her, he protests but soon she offers him two choices, he can have her be old and ugly till she dies, but loyal, or she can be young and pretty and take chance that she might not remain faithful (291). He gives his answer to be that she may choose, thus giving her the

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 stands up for women equality and does not let men push her around. She had five husbands, with each of them she used a technique to get what she wanted. She would blame them for things they did not do, she would make them buy her things and have complete mastery over all of them. With her fifth husband things become rocky with her having the upper hand in the relationship. This is shown through the book that her husband reads which in that book degrades women. She snaps back into this mode of control and stands up for women by tearing the pages out of this book. The wife of bath thinks women should always have mastery in a marriage,this leads her to realize with her fifth husband women get taken for granted and have a bad

The Canterbury Tales are an accumulation of many pilgrims’ stories as they make their journey to the site of Sir Thomas a Becket’s shrine, as he was the martyred saint of Christianity. There are many stories included in The Canterbury Tales. Of these many tales, one of them is the story of the Wife of Bath, whose real name is Alisoun. From her appearance and behavior, to her political and religious views, there is much to tell about the Wife of Bath, for her prologue and tale are quite long. The Wife of Bath is a very interesting character. In addition to Alisoun as a person, her story is fascinating as well, with a surprising and compelling end to the story. (SparkNotes Editors)

The Wife of Bath pursued husbands in a way that did not benefit both sides of the marriage. She clearly admits that she does not show shame from having sexual relations with many different men, as she simply desires sex and riches from wealthy men. Medieval civilizations did not consider this behavior appropriate, as it conflicted with ideas of courtly love and God’s word. She states that, “I am dominated by the planet Venus in my senses, and my heart is dominated by the planet Mars” (Chaucer 626). This statement supports that her body and desires only seek pleasure, while her true soul remains conflicted, unable to truly love. At the end of each marriage she appears as the one who reigns victorious and still willing to remarry: “I boast of one thing for myself; in the end I had the better in every way” (430). The Wife does not have respect for her multiple wedded spouses, and would rather remain happy when they leave her than to flood herself with emotion of sadness.

The wife of baths tale takes place during a pilgrimage in the mid-14()0s, during such a time when not all women were ladies but being polite, noble and kind was fundamental at the time of this stories portrayment. The wife of bath's tale depicts a not so spoken element of a widowed women that's in an endless pursuit of pleasure. The first line of the first page states that "Experience, though no authority." Her many men she's wedded has given her a seasoning of knowledge that can't be learned from

How much of a difference was it that the Wife was not even beautiful? "'...I was forty then, to tell the truth. But still I always had a coltish tooth. Yes I'm gap tooth, it suits me well...(Bath 274) '" The Wife when describing herself says she was old and ugly. Her bright clothes and detailed cover chiefs are fake rather than graceful. Her hat is as broad as a small shield. Her clothes are of good quality "fine scarlet reed" and her shoes are "moist and new." She did this to advertise herself and her wealth. The Wife of Bath also made it known that she was not solo on this philosophy. She also believed that women, if they know what’s good for them, could lie twice as well as men can and that all women basically behave the way she does.

In The Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath gives an in-depth look on her life and understanding on the world as she perceives it. During her Prologue, we learn that what she calls experience stems from her first three marriages, but during her last two there is a shift in power. The Wife of Bath demonstrates her understanding and power throughout her first three marriages both physically and emotionally and the contrast of her lack of control in her last two, thus revealing the true meaning behind what she believes is experience during these marriages. The Wife of Bath’s authority can be viewed as realist when paralleled to the chain of being because of the emotional control she has over her previous husbands and the simple fact that she

When reading the wife of Baths prologue and then her tale one can not help but to see the parallels present. The major parallel that exists is the subject of sovereignty. Who has it, which wants it, which deserves it and what will you do to get it? First we see that the Wife claims to have sovereignty over each of her husbands even though some were harder to gain dominance over than others. Then there is the tale where we find the answer to the question, “What do women want?”, sovereignty over their husbands. Finally we see the Wife’s idealized version of marriage in her tale. The hag gains control over the knight by forcing him to marry her, then giving him control to decide

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's actions also stem from her strong greed and need for control. That particular husband, her fifth one, was the only one she could not control. The desperate guilt he feels after hitting her, puts her in an excellent bargaining position. While lying on the floor she puts on a dramatic act of self-pity to make him feel even worse, and later describes: "He gave the bridle completely into my hand" (219).

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 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.