Wife Of Bath

Within the book domination and marriage are closely linked as well as the interrelated themes of marriage and sexuality. There was a hierarchy, which placed virgins at the top, then widows who did not remarry, and then married people at the bottom. It was felt that God must love virgins most and that married people came a very poor third in his affections, allowing the church to promote the importance of purity and virginity, “virginitee is greet perfeccion.” The Wife of Bath spends the first section of her prologue defending the married state and the other two thirds describing it. The Wife of Bath took advantage of how the medieval church was willing to permit sex within marriage, and manipulated what the church was trying to convey into
She is able to exploits them so that she can behave as she wishes, gaining her with full control over the man and the marriage. The Wife of Bath also forces her husbands to work extra hard in the bedroom, exhorting them to satisfy her, as well as straining them so their lives will be short lived. She is quite horrible to them, causing and creating great desperation to try and please her, which then in turn keeps them interested. She behaves this way due to her misandrious and independent personality providing her with all the dominance. She is a “wise woman” in the sense that she doesn’t have to make an effort as she has them in the palm of her hand. She’s an exceptional woman in all senses, being capable to defy the gender expectations, which in turn makes her a very intriguing character due to how she also cannot be tied down, as she is a free spirit. By treating the husbands how they would generally treat the wives, she is establishing power over them. The Wife of Bath is a modern woman, she doesn’t allow to have her life controlled by men, she has the power of her own life; 700 to 800 years ago it was remarkable that she even had these points and had the independence to assert this amount of dominance. Chaucer is going completely counter the stereotypical ideals men would have of women, she is a challenging, difficult woman who speaks boldly and likes to speak her mind, however she literally never gets to the point and doesn’t stop speaking, so almost immediately Chaucer gives in to the stereotypes and just amplifying them as well as suppressing them, in this confusing way at portraying how even though she is like all the other women in aspects, she is also very rare due to her controlling, sovereign