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The Wife Of Bath's Tale Analysis

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The Wife Of Bath's Tale Analysis
The Wife of Bath’s tale starts off by her explaining that she is experienced with marriage and that the experience was based on the fact that she had five husbands (Chaucer 135). She continues on to express her desires of being all powerful and dominating over her husband and proceeds to tell the tale of the Knight (Chaucer 135). The disturbing story consists of the Knight raping an innocent maiden. The Wife of Bath’s Tale does not demonstrate what a typical woman in the Middle English period should be when she displays herself as being promiscuous, hypocritical, and controlling.
Promiscuousity is not a typical characteristic of a woman in the Middle English period. However Geoffrey Chaucer depicts her to be that way. She’s viewed as a “temptress and creator of sin who destroyed men by her seductive nature” ("Chaucer's The Wife of Bath: Summary, Analysis & Quiz"). It’s also said “The …show more content…
This is demonstrated when she boasts of how she controlled her first three husbands by always making them feel at fault (Chaucer 135). However her last two husbands were less cooperative. The fourth cheated on her and to make it seem like she wasn’t fazed by it she retaliated by pretending to be interested in other men. The fifth one was quite different in that she would beat her but for some reason she loved him more than the rest because “he was disdainful in his love”. The fifth husband wanted to educate her to be submissive by forcing her to listen to authoritative readings on wicked women. This control he tried to have over her infuriated her and she started a brawl and ended up burning the texts and the husband ultimately gave into her ways (Chaucer 135). This demonstrates the Wife of Bath as wanting to have control at all times and the fact that she doesn’t like when other people try to control
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