The Wife of Bath’s Tale - Mr. Davis' Beach House on the
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Transcript The Wife of Bath’s Tale - Mr. Davis' Beach House on the
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
Prologue
Contention:
The Pardoner
mocks the wife
“I was about to take a
wife…There’ll be no wife for
me this year”
This is in response to the
Wife’s mentioning her desire
for a sixth husband
Prologue continued
Shows
that not all members
of the group get along
Underscores Chaucer’s
admiration for the Wife by
the Pardoner’s opposition
The Tale
Theme:
marriage
Theme: “What women want”
Character: Chivalry (the knight)
Comments on the general
treatment women received from
other men, especially their
husbands
Background
Religion
is set up to “fall”
Friars have displaced spirits in
lines 31-56
Women had been ravaged by
spirits, but the wife suggests
that friars are even worse
Scathing commentary on the
“morality” of the friars
Background
Chivalry is set up
59: “There was a
to “fall”
knight who
was a lusty liver.”
64: “By very force took her
maidenhead”
These examples are directly
contrary to the values espoused
by chivalry
Irony
The
knight was to be beheaded,
but Fate intervenes: the queen
The knight is saved by the
queen and her court
His next task is Herculean:
discover “what women most
desire” in a year
What Women want
Honor
Jollity and
The
variety of
answers
suggests that
pleasure
there is no
Gorgeous clothes
answer
Fun in bed
Suggests that
To be oft widowed women are
and remarried
impossible to
Pampered and
please
flattered
Midas’ Wife
Line
119-120: “…vicious we may
be within/ We like to be thought
wise and void of sin.”
Women have an image to keep
up
Pertains to men only—women
know their true natures among
themselves
Midas’ Wife
Vicious:
though Midas “loved her
best,” his wife’s vicious nature
superceded her own love
Of Midas’ ears transforming:
“she thought she would have
died keeping this secret bottled
up inside”
Wife must gossip
The Secret’s Out
The
Midas story prefaces the
secret to what women want
The knight finds fairies who
disappear, leaving an old hag
Note that fairies are mentioned
favorably
Secret
The
hag gets the knight’s promise
to give her whatever she asks in
exchange for the difference
“And then she crooned her gospel in
his ear”
Crooned suggests intimacy; gospel
means truth
Secret Revealed
A
woman wants the self-same
sovereignty/ Over her husband
as over her lover,/ And master
him: he must not be above her.”
Women want equality in the
relationship
The Bargain Met
The
old hag takes he knight to
be her husband
This is the woman in
“sovereignty”
This is ironic for the knight, who
ravaged a maiden at the
beginning of the tale
The Bargain Met
Line
248: “He takes his ancient
wife to bed”
At this point, the old woman
teaches the knight “chivalry”
The Arguments
Line 276-277:
Old
Ugly
Poor
Low-bred
These
are the
Knight’s reasons
for not loving
his wife
They reinforce his
character as not
chivalrous
Rebuttal: Low-bred
Lines
285-293
The hag says that the idea of
noble birth guaranteeing
“gentility”
The hag claims that deeds make
a nobleman (gentleman)
Rebuttal: Poverty
355
Hag
mentions that God approves
of poverty
This appeals to Chaucer’s
audience, who would have been
familiar with this Christian
concept
Rebuttal: Poverty
Claims
that poverty is not
shameful—indulgence and
avarice are
The poor are not missing what
counts: being happy
Rebuttal: Old and Ugly
The
hag claims that these two
attributes ensure that she is
chaste
The old hag will still satisfy the
knight’s “worldly appetites”
Submission
The
knight finally submits
He has a “loyal, true, and
humble wife
At the time of submission, he
finds his wife young and
beautiful
‘The Moral to the Story’
“cut
short the lives of those who
won’t be governed by their
wives”
Request by the Wife for all
husbands
The wife displays her real world
intelligence