Summary

- The wife shows her experiences - she follows experience over authority
- Having 5 husbands, she is an expert in marriage
- She doesn’t understand Jesus rebuking woman who had multiple woman
- Reference to king solomon - who had many wives and St Paul - better to marry than
burn
- She challenges about where did God commanded virginity
- She has sovereignty
- Jankyn once read his collection - story of eve and unfaithfulness to woman,
murderesses, prostitutes - untolerable - the wife hits jankyn , and he hits her back -
she pretended to be dead
- But she got up and hit her - she pretended to die again
- Jankyn said he will do anything if she lived - she gained sovereignty
- Lusty knight - king arthur’s court
- People repulsed by his behaviour - he begged to the queen
- The knights sees 24 young men dancing - suddenly disappears - left is an old woman
- The old woman demands to be his wife in return for helping his quests
- However her age and ugliness repulsed him
- She says gentillesse is a matter of virtue not appearance
- Her looks can be viewed as an asset
- She offers him a choice - an old and loyal hag or a beautiful and unfaithful wife
- The knight leaves the choice to her
Analysis
- The prologue is longer than the tale
- The prologue shows the theory of experience over authority - woman want
sovereignty
- With 5 husbands she has experience - upper hand
- Antifeminism of church was a controlling factor - woman seen as monsters
- They were sexually insatiable, lecherous, shrewish - patronised by church
- Woman unable to partake in church doctrine
- Middle ages - 2nd marriage was suspect which the WOB challenges
- No where in the bible does she find restrictions
- Perpetual virginity - considerable praise - some saints canonised due to preferring
death to loss of virginity
- WOB argues that reproduction can’t happen if people remained virgin - sex organs
were for pleasure
- She denies that woman should be submissive
- The wife prefers her own arguments - woman of great vitality - after hardships she
has lost her beauty and youth
- The wife of bath’s tale is an exemplum - a story told to illustrate an intellectual idea -
the tale provides an answer to “what do women desire the most “
About the Canterbury Tales
- Chaucer uses the literary device of pilgrimage - unites a diverse group of people
- His narrators shows a wide spectrum of ranks
- From the noble knight to the pious abbess, honourable clerk, rich landowner, the
crude wife, down to vulgar miller, carpenter and corrupt pardoner
- The work is a historical and sociological introduction to life in the middle ages
- People were not allowed to move up/down the aristocracy
 - Throughout chaucer’s life he was however was able to go through high and lows -
with his gifted mind
First person narrative
- Establishes a character’s perspective
- Authenticity
- Gain’s readers sympathy
- However
- The readers only knows one side to a story
- In the case of marriage shows only one half
Language
- Ranges widely in its register and references - from bawdy to the vocabulary
associated with sermons, debates, religious exegesis
- Different levels of language are woven together
- Words like ‘God’ and ‘Jerusalem’ - ecclesiastical connotations
- Oxenford - centre of learning
- ‘Quentye fantasye’ - witty play on ‘queynte’, meaning strange, and ‘queynte’ as the
word the wife previously used for her vagina
Subjectivity
- Repetition of personal pronouns - shows her views
- Uses her experience to generalise about other women
Character analysis
- Forerunner of the modern liberated woman
- She is for the unprejudiced reader
- Her doctrine on marriage is shocking
- Her prologue presents a view of marriage that no pilgrim had even conceived
- Head of the house should be woman
Form
- Rambling, conversational piece - narrative voice
- Tone of apparent freedom - created and sustained within the rhyming couplets
- The tale is written in iambic pentameter - easier for readers to understand
- Emphasis the extent of the knight’s submission
Pace
- Pace is part of the narrative
- Concerns space and time
- Description slows the pace
- Certain events are covered briefly
- One aspect may be given a large proportion of the tet