"The Wife of Bath"

Paper Summary:

Women during author Geoffrey Chaucer's time were both oppressed and sacred. Men prized women for their beauty and frailty, but treated them as chattel in the everyday course of their lives. This paper concentrates on the "Wife of Bath" and women in Chaucerian times. The "Wife of Bath" is a bawdy, outlandish woman not typical of most women in Chaucer's time, yet she is a major character in the "Canterbury Tales." The paper shows that "The Wife of Bath" illustrates the diversity in women even in Chaucer's time and gives new (and old) meaning to "do your own thing," even as she illustrates how life was so incredibly difficult for women at the time.

From the Paper:

"This woman who speaks her mind is amusing and alluring at the same time. Her tale is one of the longest in the book, along with being one of the most humorous, and even the most outrageous. While the Prioress shows us the piety and goodness of womanhood, the Wife of Bath shows us more the lewd, bawdy side of women. Clearly each type existed during Chaucer's time, and he relished each one for what they had to offer. However, the women of the time had a difficult life at best. Underlying the Wife of Bath's delightful tale is the real life of women in the middle ages. They worked hard; they were often treated merely as chattel, a workhorse to keep the house running. "Lies, tears and spinning are the things God gives / By nature to a woman, while she lives" (Chaucer 285). This is more true about women's lives than any of the Wife's other boasts and brags. Women did not have the options or the freedom men enjoyed, and most of them suffered dearly if they dared to speak out the way the Wife has to her fellow travelers."

More papers on "The Wife of Bath":

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• Book Review # 122340 : "The Wife of Bath"
• Analytical Essay # 16232 : "Sovereinetee" in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale"
• Argumentative Essay # 65297 : "The Wife of Bath" as an Anti-Feminist"

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