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The Wife of Bath's Tale

Introduction

The Canterbury Tales was written by the late fourteenth-century English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. It is a collection of stories written towards the end of the 14th century. "The Wife of Bath's Tale" is one of the contents of Canterbury tales. Chaucer gained great fame in the ranks of great English poets through the Wife of Bath's Tale. He developed a deep sense of attachment towards this tale as he goes on to mention this tale in two other poems he wrote. It is a lengthy narrative that contains 856 lines and Chaucer offers his apologies for the lengthiness by making the Friar say the following words:

“This is a long preamble of a tale”

The plot of "The Wife of Bath's Tale" focuses on the power struggle of females to gain an advantage over their husbands. It shares three examples depicting such a power struggle, in which it is shown that conceding power to the wife or woman results in a happy and a peaceful marriage. Control and domination in the hands of men is portrayed as resulting in a negative outcome. It also results in severe repercussions for women. The female quest for domination over the husband is also justified on the grounds that it would guarantee them their rights and save them from misery. However, the central female character does not demonstrate this justification. Rather her character reveals the negative ways in which women influence their men.

Discussion

The Wife of Bath's Tale in the Canterbury tales depicts the power and dominance that a woman desires (www.123HelpMe.com). The power of the male is represented in a negative light by showing how a knight overridden by his lustful desires rapes a young maiden to deprive her of power over her own body. The power exhibited by the females; the queen and her court are one of the ways in which the females continue to exercise control over the males. The knight's punishment for having raped a woman comes in the form of yielding power over his body to the queen and her court, and the task which they set him upon. He then must yield to the old “hag” by marrying her. Powers in “The wife of bath's Tale” lies exclusively with the women who administer the punishment and justice by sending the knight on an agonizing query of what woman desire the most in the world and then forcing the knight to keep his promise of marrying the old woman.

Geoffrey Chaucer initiates his tales with portraying the description of twenty-nine people who are on the way to their pilgrimage. Each of the twenty-nine people is defined as having a unique and different personality from the other characters which relate to the behavior of the people today. Out of all these characters, “The Wife of Bath” is represented to be the most distinct personality in comparison to the rest of the characters. The Wife of Bath evokes a shocking response from the readers due ...