The tale that the Wife of Bath tells on the way to Canterbury embodies the belief that a happy

match is one in which the wife has sovereignty. The tale is unique in the way that the prologue
of the tale and the tale itself reveal totally opposite female characters. In the prologue, even if
she is oversexed, greedy and fickle, the Wife of Bath is a determined, dominant, independent
and free woman to some extent in the way that she makes her own decisions and marries many
husbands despite of Catholic Church and social norms. But still, she is deceitful and
manipulative. However, in the tale, a knight always seeks an answer to the question “what do
women most desire?” to live. Many give different answers to that question. Even if The Wife of
Bath’s Tale seems to reveal that women should have control over men for an endless happiness
in the relationship and that knowledge lies inside women, it actually has many anti-feminist and
misogynistic references that women should be completely obedient to their husbands, always
beautiful, good, true and wise and that women have a weak spot for men -even if he is rapist-
which makes readers shape a negative stereotype of women in their minds.
In the prologue, the Wife of Bath is shameless about being sexually charged. She tries to obtain
whatever she wishes by using her sexual power, which she calls as “gift”. She marries a couple
of times to make money and to be satisfied sexually which is not approved by the Catholic
Church. About her husbands, she says: “they’d given me their land and property I’d no more
need to be assiduous to win their love, or treat them with respect.” For her “advantage” and
sexual satisfaction, there is nothing she wouldn’t do according to her speech in the text, she
does not need to be respectful after she gets what she wants, that’s why she calls herself “a wily
woman”.
As for the tale, it seems that the tale argues for the domination of women but indeed it draws a
weak image of women. For example, there are ladies in the court instead of men, but the knight
that rapes a woman “would have lost his head had not the queen and many other ladies
importuned the king so long for mercy.”. Women are supposed to protect their fellows against
males, but here women in the court help the rapist knight live without any reasonable cause,
which again makes readers think about women’s weaknesses. Again, when the knight seeks an
answer to the question “what do women most desire?” “fine clothes, pleasures of the bed” are
some of the answer people give. Women are portrayed as materialistic and sexually charged
people. Last but not least, the knight evaluates the woman that will save her life just according
to her appearance. In the beginning, the speaker canalizes the knight’s thoughts and says: “you
couldn’t imagine an uglier” than her. When this old and ugly but wise lady gives the right answer
“women desire to have dominion” before the court, she “jumps and cries” in a coarse way -as
the speaker indicates- to take her reward as the knight promises. Even if the lady saves his life,
he does not want to marry the lady who is “old, loathsome” and ugly -which are “the best
bodyguards for chastity” according to the lady- because he thinks her bad appearance will lead
to an unhappy relationship and makes him unsatisfied sexually. So much so that, there is the
clash of being ugly and faithful versus being beautiful and unfaithful which is also misogynistic,
because it refers to the stereotyping that faithful women are always ugly and beautiful women
are always deceitful.

BU REKLAMI BİLDİR
All in all, the Wife of Bath in the prologue and the lady in the tale have kind of opposite
properties. The first is more free but still deceitful, greedy and oversexed, the latter one is wiser
and more obedient. Even if the tale seems to indicate the idea that women should have control
in a relation, there are indeed many references to the fact that women must be obedient to their
husbands. And also, there is the idea that women  always lack something: beautiful women lack
faith and faithful women lack beauty. In short, the tale seemingly is on behalf of women but it
actually serves to anti-feminist and misogynistic references which leads to negatively stereotype
women in readers’ minds.