The Wife Of Bath Research Paper

The Wife of Bath is one of the most distinct, wild characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The way that Chaucer has drawn the character the Wife of Bath is very sexual, self-confident, feminist woman. Her

Being the most interesting character The Wife of Bath has a unique way of doing things and taking things in the matter of her own hands. She has had five different husbands and transparently confesses to wedding the larger part of them for their cash. The spouse has all the earmarks of being more blunt and free than most ladies of medieval circumstances, and has in this manner been thought to symbolize the reason for woman 's rights; some even allude to her as the primary real women 's activist character in writing. Perusers and researchers most likely contend for this thought on the grounds that in The Canterbury Stories, she interestingly gives her own knowledge and sentiments on how relations amongst men and ladies ought to be done. Likewise, the importance of her story is that for all intents and purposes all ladies need to be allowed control over themselves and their association with their spouses, which appears to persuade individuals that the Wife of Bath needs to be seen as some kind of progressive women 's activist of her time. This idea, however, is incorrect. The truth is that the Wife of Bath, or Alison, only affirms negative generalizations of ladies; she is tricky, unbridled, and undercover. She does next to nothing that is really engaging or progressive for ladies, however rather tries to enable herself by utilizing her body to pick up control over her different spouses. Within this paper, I am going to discuss the way Wife of Bath thinks, what she thinks

The Wife of Bath had five husbands and justifies it by using the Bible. She believed that it was okay to marry more than once, because the Bible never said to just marry one person and one person only. Solomon had more than one wife. “But wel I woot expres, withoute lye, God bad us for to wexe and multiplye: That gentil text can I wel understonde” (27-29). The Bible says “to be fruitful, and multiply” (King James Bible, Gen. 1:28). The Wife’s husbands were all good men, and she was on the search for a sixth husband. She states that Jesus was never really specific about virginity. She also stated that we have the parts for sex and should use them as such: “they were nat maad for noght”

By analyzing and comparing the text, her characteristics are not in favor of only one side. The Wife of Bath is an independent and dominant woman who challenges patriarchal norms. However her actions speak otherwise; perpetuating the negative stereotypes of women that were widely portrayed by men in the Middle Ages. Although both arguments have valid points, the Wife of Bath is indeed a feminist. She is shameless about her sexual exploits by speaking her mind and exceeding the expectation of rearing children. Although she may not be considered an activist, her actions are a rebellion against a male dominated society. The Wife of Bath is ahead of the Medieval time, perhaps leading the way to a revolution. Without early feminist approaches, no one would be inspired to advocate the need for equality and thus, changing our lives

In The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Chaucer satirizes many concepts, among them are love, romance, marriage and women. In the prologue, we learn about The Wife of Bath’s ideals when it comes to relationships. The Wife of Bath’s idea of romance is having all the power in the relationship having her way with her husbands. Having been married five times she only considers three of her husbands “good”. This is based on the fact that they were submissive to her authority. In short, she uses men to get what she wants from them.

Chaucer’s tales were theoretically depicted to intrigue the readers. However, one of the important relationships in the tale was the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath is a marvelous example of the female voice being witnessed. While most of his female characters were presented as obedient, the Wife of Bath had domination

During the Middle Ages men were on top of the world in every aspect of life. They were kings, rulers, knights, and heroes and every woman would gladly forfeit her will for whatever they wanted, at least this was the socially accepted norm. Quite often, however, this was not the case as seen in the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue” written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Wife of Bath was an unconventional woman who acted like the men of the age in multiple ways. The male pilgrims in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales were uncomfortable with her behavior because she was manlier than they were.

Certainly, one of the most controversial characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for she represents a concept not declared in literature of the time, that is women superiority over men. This is a notion that goes against cultural and religious misogynistic norms of the time, making the Wife of Bath a woman of the Middle Ages that can be compared to a woman of the 21st century. At a time in which women were subjugated by a patriarchal system of thought and beliefs, there is no question that the Wife of Bath stands out in her defiance to social norms through independence, knowledge, and experience.

Having read Chaucer’s work: “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, and the prologue, there have been many critical works that suggests opinions and thoughts about how to interpret both the tale and prologue. There have also been questions asked─one being, “so, did we actually figure out what women really want”, and the answer to that varies from person to person. One may say, I thought it was sovereignty, and another might say, no it is not because of how contradicting the tale and prologue can be. Now, to add my two cents to the rest that already exists, I would like to add that in the tale, Chaucer seems to be criticising social norms of men and women. He cleverly does that in a way you might not necessarily capture what is going on, unless you think deeply about what is actually happening. Chaucer is questioning the social ills of his society by low key criticising men and women, by shaping and using the Wife’s character into the narrator of his own views. However, he also makes suggestions on how he think things should be, which lead to complexities.

“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a frame story found in The Canterbury Tales, a poem written during The Black Death in Europe by Geoffrey Chaucer. The narrator, the Wife of Bath, is a seamstress who has been married five times all in which her husbands have died. She traveled to pilgrimages often, was red-faced, gap-toothed, and slightly deaf. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a story of cowardice knight who raped a young maiden. For his punishment, the queen sends him on a quest to find the answer to her question or else he will be beheaded. Historians often refer to the Wife of Bath as a feminist even though the idea of feminism did not emerge until later. Feminism is the advancement of the women’s movement based on the idea of equality of the sexes. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” illustrates Chaucer’s idea of feminism by contradicting the popular genre of courtly love and also the roles of women in the medieval time period which shows that Chaucer wants his audience to emulate the Wife of Bath’s independence rather than the elegance and passiveness of courtly love female.

Comparatively The Wife of Bath's and The Pardoner both are best effective when describing Chaucer social commentary. In Both poems they show how society in today's time and in Chaucer’s time have individuals who take pleasure in rich attire, socializing, and arguing. In The Pardoner Chaucer characterized him with long, greasy, yellow hair and is beardless. Which make these characteristics associated with shiftiness and gender ambiguity in Chaucer’s time. In The Wife of Bath the women has been married five times and had many other affairs when she was young, so she was well accustomed to sweet talking people within her love life. These characteristics are relative to today’s society people will fall in and out of love to gain some type of advantages

Although the Wife of Bath offers a controversial image of women at the time, she plays a far more important role in Chaucer’s criticism of the aristocracies of his time. Within both her prologue and

This was a tough one to read. At no point did I see The Wife of Bath as a strong feminist character. Maybe in her day and time, her behavior as a woman was viewed as somewhat independent and strong. However, after reading this story, it seemed to be somewhat of a joke. Chaucer appears to be making a mockery of women. He takes a real issue that women face and turns it into a comedy. I’m sure that women of her time desired to be treated with respect and as equals. But he magnifies the negative stereotypes associated with women. He portrayed “our spokeswoman” to be ignorant, aloof,manipulative, deceitful, greedy and domineering (if given any authority). At no point did she prove herself to be empowering or show the ability to lead the charge

The Canterbury Tales were written in the middle age time period. It was wrote be Geoffrey Chaucer. There was a lot of conflict during the middle ages that caused things to not go as people planed. The Wife of bath was the more interesting tale to me. The Wife of Bath is a lady that really likes her rights, but wants her choice to matter too. I chose the Wife of Bath because it was more entertaining to me. Wife of Bath does not like how all of the decisions are left up to the men. She wants to have choices just like men. She thinks that women have the right and should be treated just like the men. In the following paragraphs, there will be a short summary, why the Wife of Bath was so entertaining to me, and the lesson that was learned. The Wife of Bath just wanted to have right’s, along with having a life like men where women get to make choices.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s literary works, The General Prologue and The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer questions misogynistic ideas of the time. Within the General Prologue, Chaucer uses each tale to convey how some people of the time did not act as they should, most of them were corrupt and question the ideas of the church. The Wife of Bath’s Tale is mostly about a Knight who rapes a young woman, and learns his lesson by listening to the women around him. One of his characters, the Wife of Bath, is portrayed to be confident, sexual and independent, which is the opposite of what women were expected to be. They were expected to be timid, dependent solely on men and were unable to voice their own opinions. Within his literary works, Chaucer portrays women to be powerful and manipulative, but all for the common good.