Chaucers The Wise Wife of Bath Essay - 1385 Words

Chaucers The Wise Wife of Bath The Wife of Bath, in my opinion, is one of Chaucers wisest characters. I am somewhat surprised that he made up such a character, as he was writing these tales in the early fourteenth century. She took what she did have, which was wit and wisdom, and used it to her advantage. Although she was assumed to be an ugly old woman, she had five husbands all of whom she had mastered only to have them die. She personifies the character that women of her era secretly aspired to, however because of the restrictions imposed upon them by society, they could not be the Wife of Bath. She is obviously a very strong woman and knows what she wants.†¦show more content†¦The reason why the Wife of Bath tells this tale, it seems, is to take the audience into her own way of seeing the world. She tells this tale with many parallels to her own life in hopes to make the listeners see that women are meant to be heard. They have good insight into the world. The wise, old woman obviously has gained a wealth of knowledge from her years of experience to be deemed a reliable source of information and, fatefully the knight takes her advice without question. The Wife of Bath is pleading the emancipation of women and the inaccurate perception of beauty. She is able to create a tale where the womans voice is heard and she gets what she wants. The beauty part comes in only because after the old woman tells the knight that her request is for him to take her hand in marriage, with the promise that she will be faithfully devoted. The knight agrees but is disgusted with her ugliness. She explains to him that it is better to have a wife who is good on the inside and will virtually do anything for him, than to have a wife whom other men will leer at, with more of a chance that she will be unfaithful to him. He sees her point, but still unsure of how he feels about the situation, he tells her to choose, of course she wants him to have her, ugliness and all. The Wife of Bath includes this part because even though she isShow MoreRelatedEssay on Comparing the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale569 Words   |  3 PagesIn Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem The Canterbury Tales a young Chaucer tells of the people he meets on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett in Canterbury. One of the most vivacious characters on the pilgrimage is The Wife of Bath. Both the Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale share a common theme of a woman’s control in a relationship with a man. The Wife of Bath and the old hag in her tale share a similar perspective on what women want most in life. In the prologue and tale the reader is exposedRead MoreChaucer s Canterbury Tales And The Wife Of Bath s Tale1167 Words   |  5 Pagesliterature always tries to improve a part of society in a moral basis. 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The reason why Chaucer made this story was because he had an agenda he wanted to make a point to his given audienceRead MoreWomen During The Medieval Era Essay1535 Words   |  7 PagesUnfortunately, without the knowledge of how women found ways to exert their power, we are experiencing a deficit of knowledge in this period. Through the close examination of the primary sources: The Gospel of Mary, Dhouda’s Liber Manualis, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the creative means of female force are displayed. In the Gospel of Mary, circa 120-180 AD, Mary Magdalene displays that women exercised agency by being a vessel of God and finding favor with the Lord. Beginning in the first paragraph