Wife of Bath's Feminist Identity

Paper Summary:

In this paper, one can see in Chaucer's 'The Wife of Bath's Tale and Prologue' an educated woman who knows her Bible, but she also knows through experience how men behave in a society that allowed men to deviate from marriage vows without penalty. The writer points out that by allowing herself to validate her own sexual liberation through the Bible, surely, she is a modern woman that is able to defy the male patriarchal society in medieval England.

From the Paper:

"This study identifies the feminist sentiment in 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale' by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer uses the Wife of Bath to defy the patriarchal institutions that were present in medieval society. In this manner, the Wife of Bath is rebellious by dominating her husbands, and revealing a wide variety of rationalize as to why she rejects male superiority in her culture. The Wife of Bath was the great female character in old English Literature. The medieval world was a patriarchal society, how she justifies her life on her basis of experience, her right to interpret the biblical scriptures, and that she is assertive of her freedom and articulate in her feminist defense. The patriarchal society that allowed sexual promiscuity for men while married is a clear problem for the Wife of Bath."

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