Wife of Bath1
Sexual relations between men and woman have created issues of life and death from the beginning of time. In most classic Western beliefs it began when Eve with the help of the Devil seduced Adam thus leading the downfall of humanity into an abyss of sin and hopelessness. This issue arises in all literature from Genesis, Chaucer and into modern day. Authors, clerks and writers of all types have aided stereotyping women throughout history and Geoffrey Chaucer is not an exception in most cases. However, in Chaucer's Wife of Bath we can find the beginnings of a new type of woman arising from the dark ages of the post-Roman era. And of course at the center of his character's struggle is sex. As this topic develops, we shall take a brief look into sex, women, the Middle Ages and Chaucer's Wife of Bath as an example of Middle Ages reflections.The woman of the Middle Ages tended to be pawns of men in religion, politics and economics (Gies). "Although a woman could hold land, inherit it, sell it or give it away and plead for it in law courts, most of a woman's life was spent under the guardian ship of a man" (Gies 41). These set standards for the
"Women and Jews together came to be viewed not just as the spiritual inferiors of the Christian male, but more specifically and perniciously, as the embodiments of carnality and sexual peril, with all that implied for the damnation of one's eternal soul" (Gregg 85). Of course the tale is a tale of rape and life and death. The knight is morally raped when he is forced to relinquish his power to the queen (Williams). This again shows the forcible removal of power for men and the fear that it reaches as high as nobility. We also see that a woman in the form of the Queen has been given all of the power. As the tale unfolds we see the wife is the rapist knight herself. The wife having created the knight and using rape as a thematic device becomes a perpetual self-rapist (Williams 66). Her tale thus unfolds as anti-feminist cliche: all women want to be raped (Williams 67). Throughout her The wife of Bath raises many valid points throughout the prologue, but Geoffrey Chaucer voids her opinion because of her questionable background. It is as if her intelligence is over-shadowed by the fact she had five husbands thus making her discernible. Women are depicted as untrustworthy and tempter of men.
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Approximate Word count = 1415
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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