Women in "The Canterbury Tales"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the similarities between the Wife of Bath in the "General Prologue" and the the carpenter's young wife in "The Miller's Tale" in Goeffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales". It looks at how they are both named Alisoun and how their identities are arguably defined by their wifehood. Both wives are wealthy by default but not of noble class standing, rather they married their way up. Both can also be considered lascivious and both may be said to defy gender stereotypes and expectations of the time. The paper also discusses how the physical descriptions of women in "The Canterbury Tales" often seem to mirror their characters and how this sets up the two wives on the opposite spectrum of physical appearance.

From the Paper:

"Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, is best described as an old hag. The first thing the narrator notes about her is a sign of physical decay, her deafness on one ear, saying that "she was somdel deef" (446). Only she herself later reveals that this is not due to senility. Thus, she is immediately situated her as an older, if not elderly woman, though she may, in truth, be no older than forty. In the passage I studied in detail, this assumption is further underlined by the description of her five marriages and the multiple pilgrimages she has made to far-away places: "She had been three times at Jerusalem... at Rome, and at Boulogne, In Galicia at Saint-James (of Compostella), and at Cologne" (462-466). Since traveling in the Middle Ages was a lengthy, exhausting and dangerous process, the conclusion lies near that the Wife of Bath has lived a long, diverse life and is none the more attractive for it. "

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