They say the wife is always right, and I agree!

A Look through The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Welcome back, everyone! Its almost Thanksgiving, I hope everyone has a splendid break! Today I will be talking about one of the tales that Chaucer has written. This tale is honestly a favorite of mine just because of how confident it is when speaking of virginity and unfairness for women. In The Wife of Baths prologue, it is extremely long. Way longer than the character’s tale itself, however right now I’ll only be talking of her prologue. In the prologue Alisoun, aka The Wife Of Bath, is very upset and is speaking about why she is way more knowledge about marriage and why people of the church don’t know as much as she does due to her being married multiple times. Which during this time is not holy, especially for women, however, Alisoun makes it clear how unfair it is because many men have multiple marriages and don’t get frowned upon. Honestly, throughout this whole tale, I was very happy, because Alisoun speaks out about things she dislikes and even mentions more things that she does to her husband to get what she wants. However, I do want to mention that one of the first things Alisoun argues is whether virginity should continue being this holy thing, and how impure women get frowned upon. Because she even mentions how they need impure people to make the virgins, “And certs, if there were no seed y-sow, then whereof should it grow? ” (Chaucer 8). Her whole prologue is the reason why she is now my favorite tale, she’s a very confident woman and its rare to see women such as her self, especially throughout Chaucer’s times.

Furthermore, her tale, on the other hand, is not my favorite even though it is interesting I’ll admit I’m not happy with the ending. Also trigger warning, because this paragraph mentions rape, please skip this if it makes you uncomfortable. In The Wife of Baths tale, it begins with a soldier raping a young beautiful virgin because he just can not hold himself back. This leads him to go to the palace where the king tells his wife to go ahead and deal with the crime because she is a woman herself and knows what to do. And honestly bravo to the king giving his wife privileges we love a sharing husband. Anywho the queen decides to give this disgraceful man a chance by telling him he has a whole year and a day to figure out what a woman truly desires, if not he gets executed, “Thou standest yet,’ quod she `in such array, That of thy life yet hast thou no surety; I grant thee life, if thou canst tellen me, What thing is it that women most desiren.” (Chaucer 38). However, I believe this was supposed to be impossible because no woman desires the same thing as he soon finds, however, he doesn’t ask women what they desire he asks men. which honestly makes sense for someone with a pea brain such as himself who rapes someone. Anywho this guy is running out of time and just cannot find one answer, however, he runs into this old woman who honestly I dislike a little bit. Who says if I tell you you have to follow everything I as of you. This guy is like I understand please tell me!!! So she tells him that women desire control over their husbands, and when he tells this to the capital they’re all like, yeah that’s right you got it, bro. This means he got away with rape, but now he has to marry this old woman. And honestly, that isn’t the worst part because this old woman is like would you rather have an unfaithful wife who is very beautiful or a wife that is faithful but very ugly. He ends up telling her to decide, which she does and she becomes very beautiful and faithful. So, in the end, this guy got away with rape and gets to live happily with a beautiful wife. And I’m very upset about that, it isn’t fair, I understand what the queen wanted to do however the old lady decided to wreck it. ill express more of my opinions in the next paragraph.

the reason why I am summarizing this tale when I usually don’t do is that this tale is so complicated to read without having to reread it a hundred more times, and even the translations on the side make zero sense. So I decided to be kind and explain it to yall. However, if you want to read it please leave a comment and ill give you the pdf. Now in this taler, as I said it is one of my favorites just because I love how this female character is, which we rarely see especially in Chaucer’s time. She’s very confident as I said, she speaks her mind especially when she has an opinion. To me, that’s a sign of a strong character also, this is kind of funny to me but when her husbands get drunk she would tell them that she knows they are cheating because they told her while they were intoxicated, so she threatens to not please them in bed anymore. She’s very convincing as she is always wearing pretty clothes, but most of all I love her logic about marriage and having intercourse. She believes that it does not matter or even if they are poor or rich, as long as they can please her in bed. Anywho, Alisoun is a unique character and I enjoyed her super long prologue. However, I did not like the ending of her tale. But most of all I absolutely cannot stand the clay stop-motion video we were shown in class of her tale. It gives me the creeps, and her tale looks 100% uglier with the way they had animated it. I will leave a link in the comments but maybe skip that one if things easily make you uncomfy.