Marriage In The Wife Of Bath's Tale
Amina Iskandarova
Professor Mwenze
English 102 AC 71
March 19, 2015
Marriage Tales
In the middle ages, marriage represented a shift in the balance of power for both men and women. Struggling to define what constitutes the ideal marriage in medieval society, the marriage group of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales attempts to reconcile the ongoing battle for sovereignty between husband and wife. Existing hierarchies restricted women; therefore, marriage fittingly presented more obstacles for women. Chaucer creates the dynamic personalities of the Wife of Bath and the Merchant to debate marriage intelligently while citing their experiences within marriage in their prologues.
In the Prologue the Wife of Bath gives an account of her colorful …show more content…
marital life. Her experiences give her substantial authority to speak on marital troubles. She has been married five times. She cannot understand Christ’s rejection of the woman at the well for having married five times. Instead she prefers God’s command in the Bible "to increase and multiply" and that a husband must leave his family and live with his wife. The Wife of Bath then relates her marital experiences. The Wife of Bath is frank enough to confess that she married her first three husbands for their wealth and all of them died while trying to satisfy her sexual appetite. She has had an eventful life. Her fourth husband was a ladies man and she reveals how she made him fry in his own stew. Her fifth husband was the most troublesome. This is strange since this time she married for love. He ill-treated her and hit her so hard that she became quite deaf.
The theme of the Merchant’s Tale and Prologue is that marriage equals unhappiness for men because of women’s nature to be chiding, cruel or adulterous. Another perspective may be that the Merchant intended the tale as a warning to old men suddenly hastening into marriage for the wrong reasons. The Merchant calls marriage a snare (l. 1227), implying that women serve the role of warden while men are forced to suffer indefinitely for their decision to marry. His tale places a man in the position of power to select any wife he desires from the country, and the woman.
January chooses is depicted as voiceless and powerless in the matter of his decision since she does not have a voice for most of the tale; however, despite the power arrangement, neither the husband nor the wife profits from the union based upon January’s and May’s circumstances at the end of tale; January is duped by his wife, and May is forced to remain married to a man.
The Merchant has experienced marriage firsthand and has had his idealistic expectations of the perfect wife taken from him long ago. His version of marriage is as crude as the Wife of Bath’s, but from a man’s point of view; however, unlike the Wife of Bath, the Merchant includes infidelity by the wife in his tale. The Merchant demonstrates his ethos in his prologue by boasting of his experience with marriage and the pain and sorrow that has resulted, unlike the Wife of Bath, which expresses joy over the life she has lived and seems completely satisfied with all that took place. In conclusion, both of the tales ended with a happily ever after. Back in Middle Ages era women had power over their men. No matter of age and circumstances they could overcome any problems that have occurred with their husbands. I think that every woman today should be like Alyson, from Wife of Bath’s and like May, from Merchants
tales.
Work Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The Norton Anthology English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Hallissy, Margaret. "Widow-to-be: May in Chaucer's' the Merchant's Tale'." Studies in Short Fiction 26 (1989): 295-304.
Marcotte, Andrea, "Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Rhetoric and Gender in Marriage" (2007). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. Paper 591.
Professor Mwenze
English 102 AC 71
March 19, 2015
Marriage Tales
In the middle ages, marriage represented a shift in the balance of power for both men and women. Struggling to define what constitutes the ideal marriage in medieval society, the marriage group of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales attempts to reconcile the ongoing battle for sovereignty between husband and wife. Existing hierarchies restricted women; therefore, marriage fittingly presented more obstacles for women. Chaucer creates the dynamic personalities of the Wife of Bath and the Merchant to debate marriage intelligently while citing their experiences within marriage in their prologues.
In the Prologue the Wife of Bath gives an account of her colorful …show more content…
marital life. Her experiences give her substantial authority to speak on marital troubles. She has been married five times. She cannot understand Christ’s rejection of the woman at the well for having married five times. Instead she prefers God’s command in the Bible "to increase and multiply" and that a husband must leave his family and live with his wife. The Wife of Bath then relates her marital experiences. The Wife of Bath is frank enough to confess that she married her first three husbands for their wealth and all of them died while trying to satisfy her sexual appetite. She has had an eventful life. Her fourth husband was a ladies man and she reveals how she made him fry in his own stew. Her fifth husband was the most troublesome. This is strange since this time she married for love. He ill-treated her and hit her so hard that she became quite deaf.
The theme of the Merchant’s Tale and Prologue is that marriage equals unhappiness for men because of women’s nature to be chiding, cruel or adulterous. Another perspective may be that the Merchant intended the tale as a warning to old men suddenly hastening into marriage for the wrong reasons. The Merchant calls marriage a snare (l. 1227), implying that women serve the role of warden while men are forced to suffer indefinitely for their decision to marry. His tale places a man in the position of power to select any wife he desires from the country, and the woman.
January chooses is depicted as voiceless and powerless in the matter of his decision since she does not have a voice for most of the tale; however, despite the power arrangement, neither the husband nor the wife profits from the union based upon January’s and May’s circumstances at the end of tale; January is duped by his wife, and May is forced to remain married to a man.
The Merchant has experienced marriage firsthand and has had his idealistic expectations of the perfect wife taken from him long ago. His version of marriage is as crude as the Wife of Bath’s, but from a man’s point of view; however, unlike the Wife of Bath, the Merchant includes infidelity by the wife in his tale. The Merchant demonstrates his ethos in his prologue by boasting of his experience with marriage and the pain and sorrow that has resulted, unlike the Wife of Bath, which expresses joy over the life she has lived and seems completely satisfied with all that took place. In conclusion, both of the tales ended with a happily ever after. Back in Middle Ages era women had power over their men. No matter of age and circumstances they could overcome any problems that have occurred with their husbands. I think that every woman today should be like Alyson, from Wife of Bath’s and like May, from Merchants
tales.
Work Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The Norton Anthology English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Hallissy, Margaret. "Widow-to-be: May in Chaucer's' the Merchant's Tale'." Studies in Short Fiction 26 (1989): 295-304.
Marcotte, Andrea, "Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Rhetoric and Gender in Marriage" (2007). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. Paper 591.