The Wife Of Bath Feminist Analysis

When reading the Wife of Bath, by Geoffrey Chaucer, one may automatically assume that Allison, herself, is a feminist. Essentially, her façade shows this through her promiscuity and the power she has had over her five husbands. However, the Wife of Bath is anything but a feminist. She hides her anti-feministic ways through her contradiction of personality, from a sex crazed "dominant" to a dependent submissive. Her anti-feminist ways are portrayed through her ways of manipulating her husbands. Also, her true self surfaces whenever she speaks about her sexuality, mainly when quoting scripture. In a sense, her feministic mannerisms serve as proper evidence that she is clearly an anti-feminist. Feminism is defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes". Essentially, this statement attempts to cover what Allison is really about because of her
gesticulations around men.
She portrays this want for equality through her cuckold of her previous husbands. She uses her husbands through her sexuality to win over their minds and wallets. One may assume that she is merely trying to make herself equal to the numerous male landowners, but assumptions only hide the truth. The truth is that this equality is truly an imbalance that is trying to be covered through manipulation. True, she uses her men to be at par with other rich men by owning property and being in control of the income; but Allison uses manipulation as a sub sophomoric tact to find a pressure point in the dominant counterpart and essentially come out as the more domineering of the two. It is seen in history that true feminists use inconsistencies in politics to make their point known and to make equal the lives of males and females. For example, Susan B. Anthony was an advocate for women's suffrage in the early twentieth
century. She used the argument that if both men and women are citizens of the nation of the United States, and citizens are allowed the privilege of voting, then how is it considered fair if women could not vote. She also used the point that the Constitution of the United States promotes free speech and civil liberties and that both the former and the latter prove that women should be given the right to have their voices heard through voting. On the other hand, the Wife of Bath uses her looks (which feminists see as a tool for men) and her controlling mind to get whatever she desires through domination, which basically contradicts the essentials of feminism, which promotes equality, and not inequity.