The Wife Of Bath’s

Tale
Group 1
 The Canterbury Tales
• A classic frame story written by Geoffrey Chaucer.
 A great English poet before Shakespeare.
 Born between the years 1340 and 1345, probably in
London.
 Son of a prosperous wine merchant.
 Best-known for The Canterbury Tales – one of the
greatest poetic works in English.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

 Trusted and aided by three successive kings –

Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV.
 The Canterbury Tales
• It is composed of 24 tales or stories.
• The frame of the story is a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas
Becket in Canterbury.
• It is a collection of stories by the people gathering at the Tabard
Inn in London who were preparing for their journey to the
shrine.
• The pilgrims engaged in a storytelling contest as they travel.
• Chaucer did not complete the book: the return journey from
Canterbury is not included, and some of the pilgrims do not tell
stories.
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• One of the 24 stories in The Canterbury Tale.
• Written between the years 1388 and 1396, eight to
sixteen years after the Chaumpaigne case.
• The Wife of Bath represents feminism and the belief
that women should be given power and control.
• She also represents the idea that women do not need to
conform to the norms of the time and can enjoy their
own sexuality.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• Before the Wife of Bath tells her tale, she begins with a
long prologue about herself and her various marriages
which she has had five husbands.
• She considers various people’s views of marriage but
rejects all of them, drawing on her own experience to
do so.
• She is pictured as a surprisingly spirited and
independent woman for the fourteenth century.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• She has used her sexuality to earn money, and has clearly
‘worn the trousers’ in many of her marriages, making her
husbands’ lives difficult.
• She can clearly give as good as she has got where men are
concerned, telling us that her fourth husband would lust
after other women, but she cheated on him with a friend’s
lodger.
• When the lecherous husband died, she married the lodger,
but he beat her, calling her a wicked wife and using the
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND
authority of a conduct manual about good wifely behaviour
to tell her off.
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• One day, when he struck her, she pretended to lie down
dead, as though he had killed her, and he immediately
broke down and swore to be ruled by her if she would
only recover.
• She promptly got up and made him destroy his conduct
book. Thereafter, they enjoyed the perfect marriage
together.
• Following this lengthy autobiographical preamble, the
Wife of Bath gets around to telling her tale.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• It is set at the court of King Arthur. A young knight
rapes a girl.
• Although he should be executed for his crime, the king
lets the queen decide his fate.
• The queen gives the young man a year and a day to go
and find out what it is women most desire; if he fails,
he will be beheaded.
• The knight leaves the court and travels around for a
year, but fails to discover the answer to the queen’s
question.
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• On his way back to the court, ready to submit to
his fate and accept his execution, he comes
across an old hag in a forest.
• She tells him that she can give him the answer,
but only on condition that he accepts the first
request she makes of him.
• The desperate knight agrees, and the two of them
travel back to court together.
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• The hag is presented before the king and queen, and
answers the queen’s question: that what women most
desire is to have sovereignty over their husbands and
their lovers.
• The queen reveals that this is the correct answer to the
question she posed to the knight, and his life is spared.
• But then the hag makes her request of him: that he
must agree to marry her.
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• He begs her to ask for something else, but
she is having none of it.
• So they are married, and he must go to bed
with her.
• As they prepare to consummate the
marriage, the hag lectures the knight on the
meaning of true nobility and honour.
• She then gives him a choice: he can either
have a wife who is ugly but faithful, or
beautiful but unfaithful.
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale
• He lets her make the decision, and she is
transformed into a beautiful woman who will
also be faithful to him: the best of both
worlds.
• Because he has submitted to her will and let
her have sovereignty over him, his reward is a
wife who is both beautiful and true to him.
 Moral of the Tale
• The morals in the Wife's tale are usually said to
be that:
1) women desire dominance over men, or, to use
the Old English word, women desire
"sovereintee" over men; and
2) granting women dominance over men is in
the best interest of men.
 Moral of the Tale
• Another moral could possibly be sketched from between
the lines of these two major ones:
1) that men see women who have independence of
thought and act independently on their opinions as
ugly hags who are beneath their notice; and
2) men who exert what some would call their natural
dominance over women earn themselves a
metaphysical or symbolic beheading and early
death.
Group
References:
Members:
• Jhoriz Pino • https://www.britannica.com/topic/
The-Wife-of-Baths-Tale
• Niña Joyce Alvarez
• https://www.britannica.com/biogra
• Gleecel Jane Navarroza phy/Geoffrey-Chaucer
• Mariela Velmonte • https://www.enotes.com/homewor
• Angel C. Asis k-help/what-is-the-moral-of-the-w
ife-of-bath-s-tale-does-117409
• Jassem Mae Jala
• Francis Vincent Pael
• RV James Puda