The Wife Of Bath's Tale By Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer’s work “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is one well known piece in the Canterbury Tales. This tale is a representation of the type of role a woman had in the Late Middle Ages. In the Canterbury Tales, he portrays the Wife of Bath, Alison, as a woman who does not go by the tradition of her times with her boldness and desire for authority. Chaucer presents a woman's point of view throughout this tale. Alison, the Wife of Bath, was one of the main medieval women in literature. She refused to let men control her being so strong willed and free. The main focus of this tale is to give a visual of how women can and also like being dominant in a society that was ruled by men.
Chaucer view about women was put into his work. Many may viewed
Her body was used to gain more power, and independence because she was a woman that gets what she want. Her purpose of her marriages was financial stability. According to the beginning of her prologue, Alison was very pragmatic about her relationships especially in the beginning being married at the age of twelve. The rule of being pragmatic was used for her next marriage and so on. Once she married her last husband, her pragmatic rule didn't apply anymore being she actually married him for his love. As ironic as it is, love is what she started searching for because she wasn't getting any younger. She was looking for something more deeper than what she had or could
But in truth I was told not long ago that since Christ went only once to a wedding, in Cana of Galilee, by that same example he taught me that I should be wedded only once”(Alison). When the Wife of Bath first introduced love in her prologue, love wasn’t what she was trying to get people to understand. The love that she was referring to was sex. Her lifestyle revolved around procreation and sex. Love was a way for her to get money from her husband’s. With her being married fives times, her last marriage was one that was special. Her last marriage turned out to be her good luck charm because she loved him not for his money but for who he was. Being the woman she was, marrying for money is exactly how she ended up finding true love. “You have had five husbands; and that man who has you now is not your husband.’ Thus he said, certainly”(Lo). “What he meant by it I cannot say; but I ask, why the fifth man was no husband to the Samaritan woman”(Alison). She was willing to also please him in any way he wanted. Because she loved him, she felt it was a must that he was pleased by his wife. “Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave,