The Tale of the Wife of Bath, Book Review Example

A widely held view by literary pundits and critics is that Geoffrey Chaucer’s writing entitled the “The Canterbury Tales” is by every indication a literary masterpiece, albeit with striking amazement of a series of integrative paradigms. One of such evoking spokes in the entire rim of the narration is the story built around the “Wife of Bath.” Like the entire written account, the “Tale of the Wife of Bath” has a seamless cognition that is finitely placed within the main story line.

In the most precise terms, the Wife of Bath remains an enduring enigma of a character that belongs to a very distinctive class judging by the fact that in many ways her character has received popular attention by way of discussion and presentation highly unprecedented in the annals of medieval literature. Her character presents an embodiment of both some sort of subtle virtuousness and prominently featuring vice intersecting at different points within the grand scheme of events. Take a few illustrations and it indicates that it is not in any way difficult to spot vulgarity and lustfulness flamboyantly exhibited to the scorn of piety.

In another sense the afore mentioned personality traits in the Wife of Bath could somehow be interpreted to mean an artistic strengthening mechanism she adopts covertly or overtly to shield herself against the prevailing male dominance in an attempt to chart the cause of her fate. In any case towing such a line stood in stark contravention of the dominant mainstream socio-religious architecture of her day and age. With this in mind, it is accepted amongst some scholars that the character of the Wife of Bath had some traces of feminist rhetoric in it. There is however a lack of consensus as to the precise connotation of the feminism limits as portrayed by the character.

A major view taking by this essay is that the character of the Wife of Bath signals the advent of creeping secularization in medieval terms in mounting levels as the grand authority of the church and its dogma become subjected to fierce challenges. The prologue presents the character as a spiritually insensitive fellow whose expressions exposes her listeners to spiritual backwardness and its attendant misery to the soul of mortals.

Looked at symmetrically, the author uses the character of the Wife of Bath as a two sided allegorical message that exhorts vice on the one hand and turns around to deplore it on the other hand. The vile and pervasive use of sex and sexual language is a clear imputation of sexual glorification in its abusive utilization. By making known to the Knight details about her previous marriage to the fourth and fifth husbands points to evidence that deeply embedded in her personality is an inherent non-submissiveness to the male authority as dictated by conventional wedlock. Male authority can only be exercised over her within the limited confines of the lovemaking bed.

In summing up, it is worth stating again that the most consistent attribution to the character of the Wife of Bath lies in the inherent desire to resist the established status quo by highlighting the deviance of a woman that finds the control of masculinity over her as a yoke that must be broken at all cost.

Reference:

Bisson, Lillian. Chaucer and the Late Medieval World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Taize, Brother Anthony. ‘Chaucer and Religion’. Accessed on February 19, 2010 from Luminarium: www.luminarium.org/ 2005.