Explore your relationship with the wife of bath

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Explore your relationship with the Wife of Bath

This essay is going to explore my relationship with the Wife of Bath, bearing both critical viewpoints in mind.

Chaucer exploits the notion of the female stereotype in his creation of the Wife of Bath. The misogynist’s idea of women as a source of all trouble and evil is an important one. This idea came from the Old Testament, where Eve ate the apple and succeeded in getting herself, Adam and all their descendants expelled from paradise. This story remained influential throughout the middle ages, where women were seen as weak and unintelligent, fond of causing trouble and bound to make any man miserable who was foolish enough to marry them. During this time period, women had little status within society. However, the wife achieves her “authority” through marriage, by manipulating men to get what she wants, namely money and sex. Wives were thought to be nagging, vicious, and yet in complete subordination to their husbands. The wife knows that women are supposed to be irrational, stubborn and emotional whilst men are supposed to be calm, rational and reasonable. For example, she quotes,

 “ Oon of us two moste bowen, douteles;, And sith a man is moore reasonableThan woman is, ye moste been suffrable.” (lines 440-2)

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She makes her husbands give in to her by saying that their “superior” male nature should make them give up the fight more easily. She therefore wins by exploiting all the stereotypes about women. Of course, this argument shows the wife at her cleverest.

Like Gilbert and Gubar, my first impression of the wife is that she is a clever and independent woman, whose tricks and schemes have already got her through five marriages. She appears to be boisterous, manipulative and opinionated. It appears that in her telling of her own tale, she tries to make herself sound like ...

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