The Wife of Bath By Geoffrey Chaucer Canterbury Tales - Essay Example

Empowered Woman Women have gone through so many things to achieve equality in this world. They have always been d to be the weaker sex. Women should be treated and judged just like men. It is not a question of gender but of capabilities. Generation after generation women are still treated the same. Whether they are just educated and capable as men, they are still considered 2nd best. No. Women can do the things men can do. It is up to the society to accept their capabilities and not suppress their talents and intelligence. “The Wife of Bath” tells the other side of the story of women during the medieval period. The usual stories that have been written and published are about men having a handful of wives during their lifetime. But seldom would a person be able to read stories about a woman having more than one husband. Also, there were rare accounts of women who have acted heroically for their roles are often limited within the four corners of the home and even the churches. By suppressing women’s right to speak, they cannot do anything but to obey not just to their husband’s authority but also to the society which dictates what they should and should not do. Alison, the protagonist in the story, tells the story of her life. It was not an acceptable thing in the society during those ages for women was not allowed to speak, but she started telling her story that she had 5 husbands in her lifetime. She said this without any regrets and even can be interpreted that she was proud. It was an uncanny thing for a woman to say such things. She has pronounced such with first-hand experience and authority therefore, looking for a connection between the two (Carruthers, p. 209). Those who have heard her story were shocked and immediately judged her. It was not a surprise since she was the only woman in the pilgrim (Speed, p.3). There was a line where Alison stated that of her 5 husbands, 3 of them were “good” while the other 2 were “bad.” Alison had authority amongst the 3 good husbands. What was common and typical during those times were women are submissive to their husbands. This was not shown as Alison told her story. They loved Alison so much that they would do anything to please her. And that made them good (Chaucer, p. 3). She did not just have their hearts but also their wealth and lands. Alison dominated her husbands to get her needs and desires. This is not a form of equality but what is being shown could be taken metaphorically that women are also capable of doing what men are doing, thus, they deserved to be treated equally as the men for they also have the power e.g. of dominating or influencing other people specifically men. Women, hailing from different generations, are beautiful and intelligent. They may be silenced at first but when provoked, people will definitely hear her thoughts. The tale “Wife of Bath” is simply a story to show that women are just like men. They should be treated equally for they are just empowered with the skills and the intelligence just like any other men. Timeline can just go back to the early 20th century to see anti-feminism in this world. During the Medieval period though, anti-feminism was abundant. There was hardly a book written by a woman or stories of heroism of some sort. It is not just the times that denunciate women, but also culture. Women’s voices were suppressed and blocked as they are not accepted. The only thing that they are accepted to do is to follow their husbands and bear their heirs (Bloch, p.7-10). Women who made the effort to speak out and make a stand for other women of their time where burned at stake. An example that can be given is Marguerite Porete. The main basis of such punishments was the fact that the society perceive that the actions of such women were unacceptable based on norms and culture of the locality or the nation (Smith & Watson, p. 410). In contexts, women are just noted as housewives and/or slaves. Either this or women would be concubines or noted to be a sexual object. Initially, this is the story of Alison who became the wife of 5 men. It is a taboo for men taking on not-virgins. Virginity was the so-called gifts of wives to their husbands. Alison answered back and compared her actions to actions of men. An example she gave was Abraham and Jacob that though they have more than 2 wives in their lifetime, they were still considered holy. Double standards are written all throughout. Men can do things and be honored by it, but women who will do the same thing may be condemned. Woman was created from the rib of a man. Therefore what man is capable of doing, a woman can also do the same. There is also something that women can do that men cannot; women can give birth to a new life. They may experience the worst pain but they can only feel the heavenly satisfaction of feeling a child within their womb. There is a saying that behind a successful man is a loving woman. So women should be given the same respect and treatment just like men. As the tale went on, the Pardoner’s character seems to be the reflection of what other man truly feels towards women. There is that fear that women can overpower men and take control over them. To suppress this power in women, the 2 bad husbands were characterized. Some men inculcate fear in women by using force and maltreating them emotionally by having other women besides their wives. Even if there is a man who treats woman badly, the woman would still stand by her man and takes care of him and his children. (Unicef-IRC.Org, p. 7) What a woman should control though is their emotions. If they have reached their limits emotionally, women tend to open their mouths more and talk faster than the way they think. When, women talks, people usually listen. Listeners though should let them finish and state completely what they are thinking before they are judged. Just as in the context when Alison said that everything was false and people realized that everything was just a performance. Do not put a woman’s credibility because of a statement not fully understood, a statement pre-judged because a woman stated it (Bloch, p.7-10). There was this story of Arthur’s knights looking for the answer the queen has tasked them. This task is to find what the desire of a woman is. At first instance, the answer that was given to the queen was “women wish to have sovereignty as well over her husband as her love and to have mastery over him” (Chaucer, p. 10). If men would just take note of women’s capabilities regardless of their gender, then even at home equality can be achieved. When women are accepted at home, such equality can be extended to the society and become the catalyst of change. Specifically, husbands should end discrimination towards their wives and treat them equally (Vaneckova, p. 32). It cannot be generalized what a woman truly want as women, just like men, are different from each other and cannot be generalized. However, in the story when the knight specified the women’s desire is to have the same power that their husbands have over them. Summarizing everything, it all goes down to equality. Sometimes, women are the ones who save their men. Just like in the story, even a knight needed a woman to be saved from being guillotined. A woman, the queen, has her unique way of convincing her man in making his decision, in this case, the king. A powerful male entity needs a woman to be an effective ruler. Works Cited: Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Intervention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. 1991. Carruthers, Mary. The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions. PMLA. Vol. 94, No. 2 (Mar., 1979), pp. 209-222. 1979. Chaucer, Geoffrey, NeCastro, Gerard. The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath. 2007. Retrieved November 27, 2011. http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer. National Endowment for the Humanities. Chaucer's Wife of Bath. Retrieved November 27, 2011. http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/chaucers-wife-bath. Oberembt, Kenneth J. Chaucer's Anti-Misogynist Wife of Bath. The Chaucer Review. Vol. 10, No. 4. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. 1976. Speed, Dianne. Quest and Question in The Wife of Bath’s Tale. Retrieved November 29, 2007. http://escholarship.usyd.edu.au/journals/index.php/SSE/article/viewFile/510/482. Smith, Sidonie and Watson, Julia. Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. 1998. The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath and Her Tale. Retrieved November 27, 2011. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/murphy/canterbury/7wife.pdf. United Nation’s Children Fund Innocenti Research Centre. Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls. Florence, Italy. June 2000. Vaneckova, Vladislava. Women in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: Woman as a Narrator, Woman in the Narrative. MA thesis. Masaryk University. 2007. Read More