Who Is Transcended In The Knight's Tale

Transcending the Masses: An Examination of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Throughout human history, the majority suppresses, possesses, and oppresses the minority. This can be seen in every civilization, race, and era of human history, sex is without exception. Mahatma Gandhi once said; “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.”. As an individual Chaucer proves this to be true in his dismissal of the common sexist notion of the people at the time. Although sexism exists and in certain eras it can be far more predominant than others, individuals can and have resisted the majority view of the time and have transcended the normal thought process. Geoffrey Chaucer is an example of an individual who transcended the prevalent point of view of generalized sexism of his time. In his stories, The Knight's Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale, he proves his view on women as he presents characters such as, Emily, the Wife, and the queen. Through these characters, Chaucer presents an overall favorable view of women through his display of their intelligence, power and, position in his short stories such as The Knight’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale.
Chaucer frequently displays the superior intelligence of the female characters in the stories he writes. The Wife of Bath can be looked to for reference of this superior intelligence. She displays many qualities that only one with a great intellect would show. As she begins in the prologue, a vast amount of what she voices can present various parts of her intellect.
The Wife of Bath states; she was told not long ago, Christ went to a wedding as an example of not to be married more than once, she then goes to quote Jesus (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 9-20). In only the first few lines of speech, she gives an impressive proof of her knowledge of the bible, an impressive feat considering the lack of prints of the bible during this time. Considering her point of her being able to understand difficult text quite easily, she demonstrates her intelligence well. (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 29). She further cements her role of being a clear mentally dominant character by continuing to display large amounts of information and quotes from the bible, that could only be done if she actually read the bible.The Wife cites Solomon, Abraham, and Jacob and shows her knowledge of the bible in such great depth and also in turn provides validity to her claims of knowledge (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 35-58). Although the bulk information that the Wife shares is impressive, this gives way to little of her actual intelligence.
Her true nature is shown in the “why”, not the “what”, as the the Wife choose such quotes from the bible, yes in bulk, but more so in strategy. She chooses famous, captivating and credible tails that everyone can share such as her assertion about solomon, abraham, and jacob (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 35-58). She makes a point to do this as to appeal to the knowledge that she knows the others have, of course she could tell of less common and more cryptic tales like ruth or john, but the act of doing what she does proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has knowledge in excess. She in this way shows a deep understanding for how people work and possible experience in boasting
herself.
As the story cannot stress enough, and nor can Chaucer, the Wife’s mind spands far from just the knowledge of the bible. Chaucer continues to show off the Wife’s intellect through her wide range of comprehension of various topics. The Wife of Bath is shown to have respectable understanding of morality and envious as it pleases her to be pure in her mind, body and, soul (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 95-97). She also has a proficiency in philosophical understanding. One can see this from they way she addresses questions such as the purpose of sexual reproductive organs. From that she actually expands on the idea of the reproductive tract, she questions purpose in a different fashion and promotes the idea of sexual freedom (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 30-33). This displays her reproductive anatomy comprehension as well as the shows she is not ignorant to the idea of deep meaning in the human body. Over all her general knowledge of history and science rivals her peers and in some cases surpasses them.
The Wife continues to show her extensive knowledge again but in the case of heavy physiological comprehension. When interrupted by the other pilgrims she is polite and assures them that what she is saying is not to offend them, but to entertain them. She is intending to appease them in the most efficient way possible and still get her way in the end. In doing this she's showing signs of having adept social awareness and general social flexibility. Only after she shows that she has an obvious proficiency in cause and effect comprehension. She points out the self defeating logic in which women aren’t suppose to make themselves attractive yet this upsets the men at the time. This assertion she proclaims seems to stem from her deep cause and effect comprehension and coordination, to which she understands this actually makes no sense whatsoever (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 337-340). In the most impressive feat of intelligence, the Wife of Bath does something in particularly amazing, she creates a situation in which she corners, and checkmates her husband in the most purest of sense. Her husband had a book that he loved and read very much, the Wife noticed this and hated it. She then formed a plan so intricate that even the reader would have a difficult time fully appreciating the cleverness of it. The plan was to simply tear the book up and have any reaction to that, because whatever he does she wins. If he decides to ignore it she gains power over him to do what she wants and to further overpower him. If he hits her, he then feels bad and still ends up giving her power, in this way she creates a lose-lose situation for her husband. In this marvelous plan the Wife displays an incredibly deep understanding of planning and manipulation. All of these examples prove the Wife of Bath to be obviously equal to her male peers in intelligence or superior. Chaucer displays women in his stories as being intelligent in excess, but he also presents them as powerful individuals. The Wife of bath for an example displays power over her husband's quite frequently. Shes able to dominate her first three husbands by tricking them or strong arming them into getting the better of them (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 403-408). As if it's childs plays she's able to manipulate her husband's in this case mentally and in another case monetarily. She would not lay in bed with them, she would not go to bed with them, she would make them pay a ransom and then after they can do their bit of business (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 409-412). She is fully aware of her power and has an impressive amount of confidence in her own power (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 462-463). She does this again, calling herself a “purgatory” as if she's a divine being (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 489). To her husbands she's obviously dominant, she powerful compared to them, the difference in power is so great that only God and the husband knows of the things she puts him through, as he tells not another soul of his experiences (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 493-494). She is more similar to its owner than Wife in regard to power, she had very little interest in paying or a grave for her husband as it would be a waste in her eyes and she is the only one that matters (“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 495-500). The Wife of bath, displays intense emotional, mental, and material control over her husbands and is incredibly powerful in their relationship as in the end she always controls him. Other characters in the novel are also powerful though as well, for an example, Emily in The Knight’s Tale. Emily is one of the few characters in Chaucer’s stories that is able to directly communicate with the gods. She is depicted asking to remain a maiden and not wed later in her life. Although denied, the ability to at any given time to ask gods for assistance is unrivaled in power (“The Knight’s” 1446-1447).
As one may read the Canterbury Tales, they would read about women in positions of power and in some cases absolute power, yet this is not the last important quality women possess, women also possess the important quality of position. The queen in the Wife of Bath’s Tale was in a fairly important position in the story. In the story she has the position to save the knight and decide his fate (“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” 41-42,48). This is important to note because she is literally in a position to decide his life and this is quite the impressive feat. As the queen has a high position in the novel, so does the royal Emily. Emily has people serving her directly under her, this can be seen as one of the cousins sneaks in the country to be close to Emily and ends up being her servant (“The Knight’s Tale” 568-569,559-561). This is an impressive position for a woman to have at this time yet Chaucer still displays Emily with such a position. Emily is also a person of high interest to the cousins, as she is in a position of extremely high value to them (“The Knight's Tale” 627-629,730-732). As one who would be reading this novel could see, women are depicted in a mostly high status positions where they oversee men. Chaucer breaks away from any sexist view and shows women in a respectable light. As Chaucer defies his eras view on women, he displays them atypically. The women in the novel are given position, power, and their intellect is displayed quite often and well. Chaucer does a good job in equalizing men and women and this in turn transcends the thought process of his time. Over all, he displays women favorably, and in a lot of cases women are shown to be superior in his depiction of women in his tales, The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Knight's Tale. Chaucer display their intelligence, power and, position in his short stories such as The Knight’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale showing Chaucer’s true appreciation for women.