'How are gender relationships depicted in Chaucers “Wife of Bath”?\r'

'The wife of bathtub’s Prologue and Tale is one of the twenty-four stories which cast off up The Canterbury Tales pen by Geoffrey Chaucer towards the end of the fourteenth century. The premise for The Tales is that of a group of pilgrims individu only(prenominal)y k with divulge delayledgeable relation stories in order to win the prize of a free meal, the primary narrator is a naïve pilgrim who is not described. The Canterbury Tales is written in Middle English, which bears a close visual resemblance to the English written and spoken today. The Tales were unfinished as Chaucer died before their utter approximately and the order of the stories has been disputed due to the frag handsted genius of his work. This essay will be looking at sexuality relationships in The wife of toi permit’s Prologue and Tale and in gallant Literature as a whole.\r\nChaucer’s married charwo gentlemans gentleman of Bath is a middle-aged muliebrity from the west count ry, who strides into The Canterbury Tales on a large horse with her spurs jangling and riding in the fashion of a man rather than the fount saddle that was typical of wo hands, ready to assert herself in the compe really of pilgrims made most altogether of men. bounteous and elaborate in design, the married woman’s clothe reek of extravagance, her stockings â€Å"weren of fyn scarlet reede” and â€Å"on hir feet a paire of spores sagaciouse” in lean how wealthy she has become from her conquests of men. In the General Prologue where each of the char work oners is described in terms of their profession she is subjectly a ‘professional wife’ who has travelled to a greater extent than almost all of the other pilgrims making her a b ageing, adventurous and sociable compositors case.\r\nMen were the ones who travelled to nonadjacent lands in search of adventure, this challenges the accepted ideas ab fall out grammatical sexual practice of the time. This portrait of a woman is very curious for a piece of medieval literary productions, men tend to take a bearing the starring role and women atomic number 18 unremarkably featured as pulchritudinous ladies in inconvenience or as ne off the beaten track(predicate)ious gray-haired hags. The married woman of Bath is neither a helpless damoiselle in distress nor a typical old crone. She is the beginning(a) of her kind in English literary works.\r\nThe wife of Bath’s Prologue is the liveliness story of Alison who has get hitched with five times, this in itself is unusual for a woman in medieval literature as it is ordinarily the rogue masculine who has quaternary l everyplaces. Chaucer certainly informs us of Alison’s backstory to a higher degree than he does the other pilgrims. There atomic number 18 many pieces of literature which condemn women, from the highest class to the lowest, Chaucer does not ignore this with his icon of the married woman however rather embraces it to make her who she is. The Wife is noisy and bossy, she torments her husbands and has a large enough sexual appetite to compete with the most sexual of men. except Chaucer has also made her capable of love, assailable, optimistic and quarrelsome against medieval anti-woman ideas. It is not clear whether Chaucer wants us to read with the Wife and teach her as the introductory womens rightist and defender of women’s rights or if we atomic number 18 to see her as an elaborate joke of what would happen if a women were to ever have as much license as a man.\r\nThe Wife of Bath’s Prologue is different from any literature which had been encountered, as is her Tale. The male lead is not a typical venturesome buck yet a rapist, the main effeminate role is an ugly old woman and the suck up of sincere in the story is a courtyard full of decently women. All the standard ideas of gender relationships are both turned on their heads and brought into sharp focus.\r\nThe Wife conforms to a number of anti-female classs of the medieval period, stereotypes which were created by men for the purpose of a patriarchal society. She claims that she has a great sexual appetite whilst also swash that she uses sex to gain wealth. The Wife also tells of how she controls her husbands through and through the use of her body, a fear which is common of villainous females in medieval literature and which males dread.\r\nThe Wife points out that there are many husbands and wives in the Bible. most of the greatest men in the Old volition were not only married that had triple wives.\r\nâ€Å"Lo, heere the quick of scent kyng, daun Salomon;\r\nI trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon.\r\nAs wolde perfection it leveful were unto me\r\nTo be refresshed half so ofte as he!” (35-38)\r\nThis is a double standard in that these men have multiple lovers but that women on the face of it shtup’t. By calling King Solomon â€Å"wi se” she is conveying that wise men have multiple marriages. The Wife successfully gives examples from the Bible of people whose marriages were lucky by God despite the polygamous nature of these marriages.\r\nThe Pardoner who is shocked by the Wife’s revelations so far interrupts her story, he says that he was close to to conjoin but is now not so convinced(predicate) that it is a good idea.\r\nâ€Å" instantaneously, dame,” quod he, â€Å"by God and by Seint John!…\r\nI was much than or lesse to wedde a wyf; allas!…\r\nWhat sholde I bye it on my flessh so deere?\r\nYet hadde I levere wedde no wyf to-yeere!” (164-168)\r\nThe Wife and then tells a brief story about a medieval pardoner who worked for the Church collecting donations from those sorry for their sins and anxious to take care forgiveness. His manhood is called into question throughout the canterbury tales and his talk of fetching a wife is probably an empty boast. This is a continuation of Wife of Bath’s al-Qaida of male impotence, she regularly taunts her celibate male adversaries in this right smart throughout the prologue. It was unheard of for a woman to speak this way about such matters, regular a man would think before outright insulting men of the Church.\r\nThe first three husbands the Wife had were rich old men who were financially secure. The Wife treated each of these husbands badly and in a very dominating way. By cosmos argumentative and eager to mystify trouble she ensured that they would be prudent to please her.\r\nâ€Å"What sholde I taken keep stitch for to plese,\r\nBut it were for my profit and myn ese?” (213-14)\r\nHere the Wife of Bath uses a rhetorical question, it is clear from the note that she doesn’t think she needs to care about her husbands. The misogynists classed all women together as bad and all wives as nothing but trouble. Chaucer both confirms this stereotype here with the way the Wife treated her first three husbands but also turns it around so that the woman is in control for once and the men are indistinguishable without even a virtuoso name between them. Chaucer makes us pity the husbands but it also come ons us how unfairly women are normally treated.\r\nChaucer outlines the Wife’s general techniques on how she handles marital trouble which are lying, dishonesty and accusing the opposite member gender before they accuse you. Lying and cheating were the things that medieval literature always acc utilize the villainous women in a story of doing. The Wife is so acting in a very stereotypically artful way, and comes very close to becoming the old villainous hag which was a staple of medieval literature. Chaucer makes it clear that the Wife is a complex character and that our chemical reaction to her as readers should be one of uncertainty. He makes sure we see the good aswell as the bad.\r\nThe Wife of Bath goes on to describe the lies she would u se to keep her first three husbands in line. She’d accuse them of sexy demeanour and of chasing after the neighbours or servants and then unfairly accusing her about her relationship with her ‘friend’. She uses unchewable but offensive imagery towards woman in order to get her point across.\r\nâ€Å"For as a spanyel she wol on hym lepe,…\r\nBut folk of wyves maken noon assay,\r\nTil they be wedded — olde dotard shrewe!\r\nAnd thanne, seistow, we wol oure vices shewe.” (267-292)\r\nThe Wife of Bath uses simile’s to compare women first of all to animals, which should be tested by men before they are bought. They are then reduced even further being compared to ordinary objects such as basins, washbowls, spoons and stools. The men did not say these things and this paints the Wife of Bath in a very negative light for her deceit but at the same time other men during her period are guilty of thinking such things.\r\nThe Wife boasts about how she lied to her husbands about what they express whilst drunk in order to make them olfactory perception guilty. This extract is some of the Wife’s most blatant deceit and if all women were to be equal this in medieval times it would be move if men and women ever managed to live together at all.\r\nâ€Å" molarity liknest eek wommenes love to helle,\r\nTo bareyne lond, ther water may nat dwelle.\r\nThou liknest it also to wilde fyr;” (371-372)\r\nThe Wife doesn’t see the offense of her ways as is obvious when she states â€Å"Yet tikled I his herte, for that he Wende that I hadde of hym so greet chiertee!” The higher-ranking of verb is an interesting one be manage it is much lighter than the overtaking as a whole.\r\nThe Wife claims that either her or her husband must give in if they are to live in peace, and she says â€Å"And sith a man is moore resonable” he should be the one to give in more easily. She then slyly puts in a discover a bout how she is his alone, implying that this could easily change at any moment. She is exploiting male and female stereotypes here, using a man’s image of themselves as reasonable and superior against them. She is manipulating by saying that if women are so senseless and emotional, clever men should just let them have their way in order for there to be peace.\r\nThe Wife of Bath’s youth may have now passed her by but she has no regrets. Her stern husband however was not a very happy memory for her. She even goes on to tell us about his unfaithfulness â€Å"This is to seyn, he hadde a paramour”. Her dominance and power over her first three husbands now gives way to the more melancholy story of her next husband. Old women in medieval literature quite often show bitterness and loathing when they remember their youth but the Wife has no regrets. Her optimism and her grace in the way that she accepts the passing of her youth shows a softer and more vulnerable side to this manipulative and domineering woman.\r\nWith the death of her fourth husband The Wife then falls in love with a man named Jankyn who was half her age. inside a month she had married him and as an act of love she signed over all her keeping to him. However, Jankyn was typical of a medieval gender role. He was a dominant man who won’t be told what to do by a woman. He demands her to stop going on pilgrimages, stop gossip and to generally stop all the mischievous behaviour from her past. He beats her for tearing pages out of a book and tells her of husbands who left their wives because the wives would not do as they were told.\r\nâ€Å"And me of olde Romayn geestes teche;\r\nHow he Symplicius Gallus lefte his wyf,\r\nAnd hire forsook for terme of al his lyf” (642-644)\r\nThe Wife now has to be on the receiving end of the debase that she has up until then caused, she is the one being rule and controlled. She has previously been at a distance from the anti-women literature of the period, even used it to her advantage against her past husbands. Now she must endure the stereotypically male dominated home she has avoided for so long.\r\nThe reason the Wife of Bath is deaf(p) is because she was struck by Jankyn for tearing out a few pages from his favourite book. It consisted of stories by the best know authors of the middle ages which condemned women.\r\nâ€Å"For trusteth wel, it is an impossible\r\nThat any clerk wol speke good of wyves,” (688-689)\r\nShe hated this book as Jankyn used it to cause her a great deal of grief, she stated that these men don’t down the stairsstand women yet they are the ones writing these stories. What’s quite interesting is that all the literature she used to control her past husbands was now coming at her in a very real sense. The Wife of Bath asks the question â€Å"Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?” which points out that medieval women existed in a world where everything inclu ding art, religion, work, family life and literature was controlled by men.\r\nChaucer pointing this out is well frontward of his time in terms of social gender commentary. The Wife’s ripping of the book could be seen as a symbolic gesture. The Wife used this literature against her past husbands, she had it used against her by her fifth part husband. The tearing of the book is symbolic of the Wife touching away from medieval stereotypes.\r\nAfter finally stopping point the prologue to her story the Wife of Bath moves onto her Tale. The story opens with the blow of a young maiden, the rape is described very casually as though it is somehow entirely natural that a woman is violently attacked this way.\r\nâ€Å"He saugh a mayde walkynge hym biforn,\r\nOf which mayde anon, maugree hir heed,\r\nBy verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed;” (886-888)\r\nThe word ‘raft’ means he took her ‘maydenhead’ which is not a very violent verb but it still has powerful imagery because of how casual a word it is. This can be seen as an extreme example of the way in which women are regarded as mere property. The sawhorse’s offence was against a woman so it is therefore ironic that women should step in to fork up his life. They don’t do this out of ruth or mercy though, he is to be primed(p) in a powerless position in which the fate of his body is in the hands of another, like to when a woman is raped.\r\nAfter a course of instruction of searching for the dish to the question of what women want the knight rides back to the court in despair, this is when he encounters an super ugly old woman who agrees to give him the answer to his question if he agrees to do something for her. After answering with â€Å"”Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee” the old hag asks the knight to marry her. Because our knight did not know what the condition would be he is placed in a far more vulnerable position. He is completely under the old woman’s dominance, a retroversion of the normal male female relationship. The â€Å"lusty bacheler” from the start of the story now â€Å"hidde hym as an owle”, no yearlong dominant and in control or a stereotype of medieval man.\r\nThe old woman then gives the knight an ultimatum, she can either be beautiful and unfaithful or faithful and ugly. The knight considers for a moment but decides in the end to let her make the decision which results in her being both beautiful and faithful. With the mastery handed over to the old lady, there is a switching of gender roles with the knight also getting what he wants. The knight is no longer the misogynist monster he was at the start of The Wife of Bath’s Tale.\r\nIt could be argued that the Wife of Bath is giving a office to the excluded women of medieval society. Through her voice we hear and see all the devaluation and oppression which is always silent in medieval literature due to the authors being almost entirely male. The Wife could also be construe as a representation of stereotypical medieval fear by men about women as cruel, emotional and sexually deviant. It is not clear in what way Chaucer meant for her to be conveyed, it is clear however that he wanted her to become a complicated character with many different layers whose gender was a driving force force for the story.\r\n'