Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales introduces a group of pilgrims who gather to tell tales as they set forward on a pilgrimage. In the instance of the Wife of Bath many would argue that the Clerk’s Tale is provoked by the Wife’s offensive statements made towards him as he interrupts her tale. She claims that he has strongly prejudices views against women and his tale will only reflect those views. Therefore, the theme of sovereignty in marriage plays a forceful role in both the Clerk’s Tale and the Wife’s prologue
During the time period in which The Canterbury Tales was written, around the fourteenth century, societal standards for men and women were much different compared to today’s society in the twenty first century. “The Wife of Bath Tale” specifically pushes these standards to the utmost degree. Women’s submissiveness and virginity were highly important during the medieval period. Though this is what was deemed socially acceptable in society, the Wife of Bath had other ideas as to what is acceptable. A
Woman: God’s second mistake? Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, who regarded ‘thirst for power’ as the sole driving force of all human actions, has many a one-liners to his credit. ‘Woman was God’s second mistake’, he declared. Unmindful of the reactionary scathing criticism and shrill abuses he invited for himself, especially from the ever-irritable feminist brigade. The fact and belief that God never ever commits a mistake, brings Nietzsche’s proclamation dashingly down into the dust bin