Wife Of Bath's Prologue And Tale example essay topic

In Chaucer's General Prologue we are introduced to a very colorful character, the Wife of Bath. She is a feisty woman with much experience in life. She has, according to her description, had five husbands, who have all preceded her in death, and the experience of several others we are to conclude. Her clothing does not seem to match a woman of her day. She is well adorned with many scarves, richly clothed and had new shoes. She wears bright red stockings not befitting of a solemn widow that one would expect her to be.

She is very comfortable in her own skin and with her sexuality. She has a hint of masculinity as she takes control of her life and her situations, taking on a more common role of male authority in her own life and marriages. She becomes the dichotomy of how a woman is expected to look, act and behave in her day. A woman of the middle ages would not be expected to be strong, independent, or be sexually aggressive.

Instead we see a picture painted of a woman who is bold and a little bit brazen. She knows what she wants and has no problem going after it. This is not the manner in which a respectable woman of the middle ages would have behaved. The Wife of Bath tells her in own prologue that through her own experience, not authority, she can tell of then woes of marriage. This is not something that a woman would usually do.

She chooses scriptures from the Bible and uses them both in and out of context to justify her position on marriage, remarriage and sex. She is quite proud of her "education" by five husbands. She says virginity is perfection and she is not perfect nor does she wish to be. Her attitudes are so far fetched for a woman of her time.

She tells of her first three "good" husbands and then her last two "bad" husbands. Her first three husbands allowed her to do pretty much whatever she wanted and she ruled the roost, they were all older men. Her last two husbands were younger and they thought they should have control. Her fifth husband, in particular, she handed over control, by signing over her property and money to him.

During their marriage she doesn't get what she needs out of the relationship because he wants to control her and reads her stories of "bad" women all throughout history from biblical times on. He would beat her to try to emphasize his points. Finally she had enough and ripped his book and hit him one night, during this course of events, they fought and she gave as good as she got. He told her he would never hit her again and he gave her control of the marriage, and governance of the house and land. Once she had all this she was the most wonderful wife she could be to him and they lived in peace and harmony until he dies.

As the Wife of Bath tells her tale, we see the story of the knight and the old woman unfold. We see him go from very un-knightly behavior as he rapes a maiden in the land and goes through a trial. By the grace of the queen he is given an opportunity to save his life by going on a quest to find what women want most. Amazingly through his yearlong search, he finally finds an older woman, who tells him what women want, and in an interesting turn of events when he reports back to the queen that, "Women desire to have sovereinetee As wel over hir housbonde as hir love, And for to been in maistre him above". (Ln 1044-1046, The Wife of Bath's Tale, Chaucer) These lines state that above all women want power and control over their men or lovers. This statement alone brings the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale full circle.

It only goes to reinforce the statements she made about her own life, in her own marriages. All of her experiences combined, but especially as wife to her fifth husband, flipping the tables on him and regaining control of her assets and her marriage, makes her wonderfully well suited to be the teller of her tale.