Transcript The Tale of The Wife of Bath - Watchung Hills Regional

The Tale of
The Wife of Bath
Brianna Boland
Laurel Lorber
Melissa Markowich
Shelly Sodhi
The Prologue…
This autobiography fills the readers in on the Wife of Bath’s 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.
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.
The Tale…
The Wife also tells Ovid’s 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.
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
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 Wife’s 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 new—all of which demonstrate how wealthy she has
become.
The Wife
The Wife of Bath has her own views of Scripture and God’s 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 don’t really correspond
to her points. Many of her errors convey Chaucer’s mockery of
the churchmen who often misused Scripture to justify their
devious actions.
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 may—and her gift, doubtless, is her sexual
power. She uses this power as an “instrument” to control her
husbands.
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.
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
Chaucer’s 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 Chaucer’s
deliberate moral satire upon the human, especially female, sexual
appetite.
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.
Motif
Feminism, the empowerment of women
One example of the recurring theme of women’s
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.
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”
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 character’s vitality to promote feminism…
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”
Foreshadowing
In the prologue, Chaucer uses
the technique of foreshadowing
to describe the way in which the
Wife of Bath’s fifth husband,
Jankyn, treats her.
“Who- sad to say – was deaf in
either ear”
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.