Wife of Bath’s Tale and Wife of Bath’s Prologue
When studying the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Wife of Bath’s Tale, both coming from the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, you see a common theme of feminism. Also, you get a good sense of the of the anti feminist cultural norms and ideas regarding women in the medieval era. Alisoun, The Wife of Bath, focuses most upon the common stereotypes of women. These stereotypes include the idea that women only marry into money in order to live a lavish lifestyle off of their husband’s income as well as the belief that women will never stop talking to their husbands. Stemming from this, the common belief among men was that if you were to get married, it would ruin your chances of success later in life. The Wife of Bath opposed all of these…
She has had five husbands, which is very looked down upon in her culture. She believes that this should be acceptable in her culture. She explains this in the Prologue by saying “Should father leave, and mother, and cleave to me; but no specific number mentioned he, whether bigamy or octogamy; why should men speak of it reproachfully?” (Lines 31-34). After this section of lines, she begins to bring up tales from the bible and stories of men that have more than two or three wives, her point being that if men can have more than one wife at one time, why is it so bad that some women, like herself, have been married more than two or three times? This section of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue indicates that Alisoun believes that women should be able to marry whomever, whenever they please. She doesn’t believe that men should look at it shamefully. Throughout the prologue you also get a good sense of her feminist beliefs, common to the beliefs today. She doesn’t think that living a lustful lifestyle should matter and she believes that men and women should be equal in power within the…