It's a Woman's World: Undermining Gender Representation in "The Wife of Bath" (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Literature and Arts The matriarch of Bath – Chaucer's feminist insights
This paper critically analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer's character Allison of his tale "The Wife of Bath" within the Canterbury Tales. The argument is made that Chaucer intentionally used this character to present his personal feminist ideals to his audience, thereby acting as an advocate for women under the guise of literary author. Evidence will be presented both from the text by analyzing her characterization, imagery, and dialog while the weight of this thesis will rest upon The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer evidence presented by scholars, particularly from the "Chaucer Review" scholarly journal, as well as research conducted on the life and times of women during the medieval era.
The Matriarch of Bath – Chaucer’s Feminist Insights
This paper critically analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer’s character Allison of his tale “The Wife of Bath” within the Canterbury Tales. The argument is made that Chaucer intentionally used this character to present his personal feminist ideals to his audience, thereby acting as an advocate for women under the guise of literary author. Evidence will be presented both from the text by analyzing her characterization, imagery, and dialog while the weight of this thesis will rest upon The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer evidence presented by scholars, particularly from the “Chaucer Review” scholarly journal, as well as research conducted on the life and times of women during the medieval era.
Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2021
Geoffrey Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales, which contains 24 stories, presents a panorama of his society through the pilgrims‘ stories. These tales engage themselves with numerous issues such as the representation of women and men, courtly love, knighthood, honor, and pious life. These stories have different sources like fabliau, romance, the courtly love tradition, and saint‘s legend. The portrayal of gender plays a highly significant role in these tales that highlight the suppression of women. This study will, in this respect, discuss the problematic depiction of gender and gender roles through the detailed discussion of the female characters in the three selected tales in Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales, namely ―The Franklin‘s Tale,‖ ―The Physician‘s Tale,‖ and ―The Man of Law‘s Tale.‖ This discussion will ultimately reveal what kind of attributes these female characters are given in line with the historical, social, and literary context through numerous specific examples from the tales and relevant secondary sources.
Geoffrey Chaucer's celebrated poem, The Canterbury Tales, deals with the pilgrimage from London to the Canterbury Cathedral embarked upon by a diverse range of individuals. This assortment of individuals decide that each of them will tell two stories as they travel, with the purpose of entertaining their fellow pilgrims. Throughout the poem we are presented with a multitude of unique narratives, all of which provide us with a degree of insight into the characters themselves. One such narrative will be focussed upon, namely 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue', in which I will explore the gendered nature of relationships, authority, and social stratification. The Wife of Bath gains a degree of autonomy and self-determination in her life through the defiance of stereotypical female behaviour, but when later reprimanded for her perceived indiscretions, she plays on the construction of these stereotypes to avoid blame for her actions. Although her intention is to share the perspective of the Medieval woman, her narrative is problematic in its unintentional and unconscious acceptance of misogynistic discourse and stereotyping.
La Femme mise à nu, or an Apocalyptic reading of the Wife of Bath's Prologue
2020
Behind such a strange and inquisitive title lies a meditation on Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath Prologue, which gives voice, on a formal standpoint, to an intriguing character. Colorful to say the least, both in her unbridled speech and in her values or experience, gap-toothed as well, the Wife of Bath embodies the gap, the difference in a general sense, as well as a different kind of woman, one that probably wasn’t very common in literary representations at the time in which the text was written and published. The goal of this essay is not to engage in any form of gender studies controversy, but rather to take a close look at how thousand-year-old representations are approached and deconstructed by an author who knows very well what he is doing. The main theme will obviously be the depiction of women that is given to the reader through the Wife of Bath’s voice. But why apocalyptic? What justifies this choice of word that doesn’t go without strong connotations? Because, as we will see in the text, it is what the Church would consider a sinner, as well as a temptress woman – one that is responsible for the Fall and the loss of the original Eden – that is depicted, illustrated and embodied in all of her iconoclast power by a character that on her own, and through her narrative, succeeds in threatening the foundation of the conservative Christian civilization of the time. The Wife of Bath, through her extreme extravagance, allows us to see the hidden side of a femininity that was commonly repressed and put aside, precisely because of the moral fear and disgust that she is, as a symbol, potentially able to spark. Chaucer’s polemic as well as raging and ironic spirit thus confronts us to a series of apocalyptic representations of faith and womanhood that are all the stronger considering the time in which they were thought and produced, a time when the Christian faith was starting to be shaken in its own foundations.
Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and the re-invention of women in the late 14th Century
Geoffrey Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language Fall 2013 English Studies University of Copenhagen Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language 16/12/2013 David Gomes zrp475 2 Chaucer's Wife of Bath and the re-invention of women in the late 14 th Century 'Who peyntede the leon, tel me who? By God, if wommen hadde writen stories, As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse Than al the mark of Adam may redresse. … The clerk, when he is oold, and may noght do Of Venus werkes worth his olde sho, Thanne sit he doun, and writ in his dotage That wommen kan nat kepe hir marriage!' (III, 693-96, 707-10) Understanding how women lived and their role in society in the late fourteenth century is an ongoing task that raises many questions to which answers can never be definite. Historical evidence and the surviving literature from that time can give us the best guidance in such endeavour, even though one should be cautious when analysing a body of literature which is mostly constituted by male authorship. One particularly relevant example is the book Le Ménagie de Paris (c. 1393), a French medieval guidebook written by a sixtyyear-old man for his fifteen-year-old wife. In it he includes references to some of Chaucer's tales and female characters, Griselda being one of them, as he cites her as a reference to Chaucer and the Politics of English as a minority language 16/12/2013 David Gomes zrp475 3
In the recent times when large of part of thinking, writing and efforts are made to change the condition of women and also to present the true picture of their position in the society, Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages (1392) wrote The Canterbury Tales. He depicted women belonging to different groups and positions and in different conditions but all of them were suffering under the male dominated society. Due to the lack of education and authority, women's role has always been confined to the four walls of the house and their rationality, independence and loyalty is questioned. Although the women have been fighting a long battle for freedom, yet their position has still not changed. This paper is an endeavour to put forward the relevance of The Canterbury Tales which was written in 1392 but has truly depicted the unchanged position of women even now. This paper presents that the work of Chaucer was ahead of its time and women's struggle to come out of the shackles of patriarchy is still not achieved.
In the construction of his authorial persona, Chaucer sought to identify himself with genres of literature that may have been associated with female readership in the medieval cultural imagination, including vernacular devotional writing (Pseudo-Origen's De Maria Magdalena), conduct literature (the Tale of Melibee), and hagiography (the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale). By exploiting the cultural resonances of these stereotypically women's genres, Chaucer positioned himself as a writer for an emerging bourgeois audience and distinguished his works as compassionate and socially productive.