What Is Chaucer's Opinion Of The Wife Of Bath

Desiderius Erasmus and Geoffrey Chaucer were both great scholars in their time. Chaucer’s best-known piece is his unfinished work “The Canterbury Tales.” He is considered to be the first great poet who wrote in English. Desiderius Erasmus was a man that became one of the intellectual people of the sixteenth century. He became an acclaimed and prominent humanist of the Northern Renaissance. Erasmus and Chaucer, both men highly influential and both wrote about their opinion of a woman’s role. The views portrayed in Erasmus’ stories could not have been more different. Chaucer’s standpoint he delivers with The Wife of Bath is scandalous.
In “The Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer portrays the Wife of Bath in a very explicit way and her character is
She advocates that a man is no match for a woman and states that the more promptly men accept this, the more blissful the marriage. She backs up her claims by the fact that she has had five husbands already that the experience alone qualifies her to make such preposterous statements. She also claims that in The Bible, the scripture says “God bad us for to wexe and multiplye; That gentil text can I wel understonde.” She relates how Solomon in the old testament had multiple wives so there wasn’t anything wrong with her having multiple husbands. She supports her stand by referencing her own experiences which make her more qualified on the subject of marriage and the role of a wife. This view goes completely against the role of a woman in this era and has no similarities to the representation of woman in Erasmus’
He also relies heavily on Bible verses throughout his work to back up his claims of what the role of a wife should be. In Erasmus’ work “Declaringe the Propertyes of Shrewde Shrewes, and Honest Wyves”, “advocated wifely submissiveness and the domesticity for both men and women—concepts that influenced the English bourgeois notion of marriage” (pg. 844) The writings of Erasmus and his philosophy follow and support the role and the worth of women in the eyes of God. During the era which he was writing and publishing his literature, you can note the sexism characteristic of this period, but his ideology does tend to support the worth of a woman in the eyes of