Wife of Bath It May Essay

Her prologue is like a bold challenge to the knight in her company. She anticipates Shakespeare's Katerina in the Taming of the Shrew. Just as Katerina challenges Petruchio, so too does the Wife of Bath appear to be challenging the only true man she has likely ever met: one who is in command of himself and thus able to command others. She is like the ermine in Leonardo's painting the Lady with the Ermine (1490). The ermine is a nasty, vicious animal that cannot be picked up and held -- and yet the lady in the portrait holds it with perfect composure. In other words, she has learned to control her passions. The Wife of Bath has not done so: she promotes sensuality and lust and refuses to be harnessed. Only when the man finally submits to her will does she assume that she is happy. But a man in submission to a woman loses something -- as her prologue shows: Jankin loses his life.

Thus, her tale may be said to be an open challenge to the knight: since she cannot control herself, she dares another man to control her. She is a woman against herself. She fights what she wants and wants what she fights. To say that she is a feminist would be to too easily apply a label to her and be done. To say that she is a "gargoyle" and a threat to society would likewise be to too easily dismiss her. She is the representation of a real woman, who insists on ruling and yet who is incapable of ruling herself. Her tale, for example, goes on at length before being interrupted by the Friar, who chides her for rambling on about herself for too long. She simply cannot help herself, but must focus all attention on herself. She spends more time talking about herself than in telling a tale -- which is the point of the exercise. What it shows perhaps is that subconsciously she desires to go to confession. Since she appears, however, to desire to justify herself rather than accuse herself of sin, she will not confess to a priest, as her religion binds her to do, but rather she will "confess" her justification to strangers, as no man has requested her to do. In conclusion, the Wife of Bath is a complex woman, whose nature is in a sense true to itself (at least to its "fallen" self, as the pilgrims would have identified their natures). Her obsession is with sovereignty, but she insists that a woman should rule over a man, in spite of St. Paul's admonition that women should obey their husbands. She neglects this passage in her attempt to justify herself. She is a combatant against her faith and her Age. She is like a warrior who cannot stop fighting until she has been conquered. Her insistence that woman must rule may thus be seen as a challenge to the real man in the party to do something about it. Works Cited Blake, William. "Descriptive Catalogue: Sir Geffrey Chaucer and the Nine and twenty Pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury." The Poetical Works. Bartleby. Web. 15 Nov 2012. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. UK: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2002. White, David Allen. "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." Winona, MN: St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary….....