The Tale of The Wife of Bath

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The Tale of The Wife of Bath

• Brianna Boland
• Laurel Lorber
• Melissa Markowich
• Shelly Sodhi

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The Prologue

• This autobiography fills the readers in on the
  Wife of Baths life before her tale begins. The
  Wife of Bath first marries at age twelve. She has
  four more husbands later in her life and tells
  briefly of her experiences throughout these five
  marriages. She tells the reader that three of her
  husbands have been good and two of them have
  been bad. The Wife of Bath says that virginity
  is left to the perfect and that the others should
  use their gifts. Her gift, of course, is her
  sexual power, as she controls her husbands in
  every way that she can. She teases them and
  expects money after being in bed with them. The
  Wife of Bath is portrayed as unfaithful and full
  of sin, but she is proud to tell her story.

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The Tale

• The tale begins in the days of King Arthur, where
  elves and fairies were replaced by lustful people
  such as friars who harmed women. The story goes
  on to tell of a knight who rapes a young maiden
  and is given one chance to save himself from
  decapitation. The queen challenges the knight by
  giving him a year to figure out what women most
  desire. The knight learns that every woman he
  asks has a different answer to his question. Some
  women would love to have money, some want fame,
  and some desire to be beautiful. Others told the
  knight that they would like to be viewed as
  trustworthy.

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The Tale

• The Wife also tells Ovids story of Midas to
  prove that women cannot keep a secret. In this
  story, Midas shares a secret with his wife and
  trusts her not to tell anyone. When his wife is
  unable to keep keep the secret to herself any
  longer, she goes to a marsh and tells it to the
  water. Later on, as the knight rides through the
  forest, he asks another woman to tell him her
  greatest desire. The woman tells him that his
  life will be saved and that women want to be in
  charge of their husbands. The queen agrees with
  this and the woman asks the knight to marry her.
  He is not happy and his wife finally realizes the
  reason for this. She asks him why he treats her
  poorly if she is his true love and if she is the
  one who saved his life. His wife gives him a
  choice to be with an ugly woman that is loyal to
  him or to have her, young and unfaithful. She is
  told to choose for him and she becomes beautiful
  and loyal and good to him as well.

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• Title The Wife of Bath
• Author Chaucer
• Narrator the Wife of Bath
• Protagonist the Wife of Bath
• Genre Arthurian Tale
• Conflict Man vs. Society
• Theme the empowerment of women
• Setting During the reign of King Arthur in
  England

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Methods of Characterization

• The author creates the character of the wife in
  the prologue through the use of the direct
  description
• Her kerchiefs were of finest weave and
  ground Her hose were of the choicest scarlet
  red. Bold was her face, and hair, and red of
  hue.
• Chaucer used the color scarlet red to intensify
  and show the wealth of the wife. The wife of
  bath does not seem timid like the women of that
  time. In fact it can be understood that the
  color scarlet red when worn is used to illustrate
  someone who is opinionated and confidant. Also
  the Wifes clothes illustrate extravagance her
  face is wreathed in heavy cloth, her stockings
  are a fine scarlet color, and the leather on her
  shoes is soft, fresh, and brand newall of which
  demonstrate how wealthy she has become.

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The Wife

• The Wife of Bath has her own views of Scripture
  and Gods plan.
• She says that men can only guess and interpret
  what Jesus meant when he told a Samaritan woman
  that her fifth husband was not her husband. With
  or without this bit of Scripture, no man has ever
  been able to give her an exact reply when she
  asks to know how many husbands a woman may have
  in her lifetime.
• The Wife carelessly flings around references as
  textual evidence to support her argument, most of
  which dont really correspond to her points.
  Many of her errors convey Chaucers mockery of
  the churchmen who often misused Scripture to
  justify their devious actions.

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The Wife

• She says God bade us to wax fruitful and
  multiply. She admits that many great Fathers of
  the Church have proclaimed the importance of
  virginity, such as the Apostle Paul. But, she
  reasons, even if virginity is important, someone
  must be procreating so that virgins can be
  created.
• Leave virginity to the perfect, she says, and let
  the rest of us use our gifts as best we mayand
  her gift, doubtless, is her sexual power. She
  uses this power as an instrument to control her
  husbands.

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The Wife

• The wife exerts power over men.
• She uses words to manipulate her husbands
• She claims she will accuse her husband of having
  an affair and charge him with a bewildering array
  of accusations. If one of her husbands got drunk,
  she would claim he said that every wife is out to
  destroy him. He would then feel guilty and give
  her what she wanted.
• The Wife of Bath tells the rest of the pilgrims
  that what she told her husbands was a pack of
  lies. Her husbands never held these opinions,
  but she made these claims to give them grief.
• She teased her husbands in bed, refusing to give
  them full satisfaction until they promised her
  money. She admitted proudly to using her verbal
  and sexual power to bring her husbands to total
  submission.

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Was the Wife the First Feminist?

• Some question whether the Wife of Bath was the
  first feminist in literature.
• Because the statements that the Wife of Bath
  attributes to her husbands were taken from a
  number of satires published in Chaucers time,
  which half-comically portrayed women as
  unfaithful, superficial, evil creatures who were
  always out to undermine their husbands, feminist
  critics have often tried to portray the Wife as
  one of the first feminist characters in
  literature. The wife of bath has been
  interpreted as Chaucers deliberate moral satire
  upon the human, especially female, sexual
  appetite.

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Symbol

• The knights decision to allow the old woman to
  choose to remain ugly or to become beautiful is
  symbolic of the transfer of power from the male
  to the female.

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Motif
Feminism, the empowerment of women One example
of the recurring theme of womens empowerment is
when the king allows his wife to determine the
fate of the knight. Another example is when the
knight lets the old woman decide whether she
would rather be devoted and ugly or beautiful and
independent. Since the knight gave the woman
sovereignty, she decides to be loyal and
beautiful at the same time. The feminist motif
is also evident when the knight announces that he
has learned that what women truly desire is
sovereignty over their men.
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Simile

• Similies help to better describe certain people,
  objects and events. They give the reader a more
  vivid picture of what an object looks like or
  what something sounds like.
• Examples
• As thick as motes are in a bright sunbeam
• As bittern booms in the quagmire
• The knight did not stand dumb, as does a beast

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Satire

• There is debate over whether or not The Wife of
  Bath is an object of satire or an instrument of
  satire. The character of the wife could be a
  stereotypical feminist who Chaucer uses to poke
  fun at womens empowerment. On the other hand,
  Chaucer could have used the characters vitality
  to promote feminism

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Allusion

• The tale of The Wife of Bath makes references
  to
• writers such as Dante and Ovid.
• Well does that poet mise of great Florence,
  called Dante, speak his mind in this sentence
• Think how noble, as says Valerius, was that
  same Tullius Hostilius, who out of poverty rose
  to high estate Serieca and Boethius inculate
• Ovid, among some other matters small,said
  Midas had beneath his long curled hair

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Foreshadowing

• In the prologue, Chaucer uses the technique of
  foreshadowing to describe the way in which the
  Wife of Baths fifth husband, Jankyn, treats her.
  
• Who- sad to say was deaf in either ear

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Why include The Wife of Bath in The Canterbury
Tales?

• The character of the wife is responding to a
  debate that had been going on for centuries
  regarding the place of women in the universe and
  society. Through her experiences with her
  husbands, she has learned how to provide for
  herself in a world where women had little
  independence or power.
• In the Medieval times woman were looked upon as
  property. They played no role in society other
  than child bearing. The wife's tale is one of a
  struggle for power. In her relationships, the
  wife enjoyed having the power and control of her
  husbands. The knight discovered what women desire
  most, and that is power.