Essays on Wife of Bath
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, there are many examples of women—patient, amorous or unfaithful—but then there’s the Wife of Bath. Her very existence breaks form with modern misconceptions of medieval society and raises questions about her nature as well as the role of women in the fourteenth century. A persistent modern sentiment is that medieval women...
In the Prologue section of “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath paints a complicated picture of a medieval woman to the readers. As it explains how the Wife of Bath is not ashamed of her sexual exploits since she makes use of her sexual power to get what she wishes. In...
Context: Spending the last decade writing The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer claimed in The General Prologue that he would write approximately one hundred and twenty stories, four for each pilgrim to tell on their journey to and from Canterbury. However, Chaucer only managed to write twenty-two and had started two more, poking fun at a variety...