Chaucer: Feminist or Not Chaucer is a controversial author who lived during Europe’s Medieval Age. Best known for his work The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is now recognized for his objections to the societal norms of his time expressed through this work. Within The Canterbury Tales is a story called the “Wife of Bath’s Tale,” where Chaucer expresses his views on the treatment of women. Similar to how Chaucer made points against the medieval caste system in the same collection of stories, he also worked
its blatant anti-feminist and misogynistic themes. Women from the fifth to the fifteenth century were often looked at as unintelligent, promiscuous, money hungry creatures who served no little purpose except to please men. From epic poems such a Beowulf to even romantic writers like Shakespeare, authors of this time period are always caught throwing usually unsubtle jabs at women. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is no exception to this generalization; however, Chaucer’s sexism is somewhat
In her prologue the Wife of Bath reiterates the topics of sex, marriage and violence, framing them into a story for a primarily male audience in order to encounter three serious social issues of the Middle Ages, which exemplify severe oppression of women of the era. The first one is the sexual negativity associated with women. Wife of Bath advocates for sexual freedom, she is proud of her attractiveness, sexuality. Seeing sex as a positive thing, the woman argues that it is God given “God Bad us
an era of anti-feminists, who opposed women to prosper and excel in the community. The Middle Ages wasn’t a soothing period for women of both, higher and lower class due to the male dominated culture. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late fourteenth century, when women were restricted to express any opinions about certain religious topics. But, Geoffrey Chaucer elegantly goes against these ideologies in The Canterbury Tales through his characters such as The Wife of Bath & The Second Nun
The magnitude of characters in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales creates some very interesting relationships. An example of one of these relationships would be the connection between Alisoun of Oxenford and Alisoun of Bath and how these characters fit into the natural sex ideology. In some aspects, these women are very similar, but they also have significant differences. The natural ideology of sex is defined by Alfred David as, “being neither too obsessed with physical gratification and domination
that say that the woman’s “ desire will be for [her] husband, /and he will rule over you.” These God given laws were never to be questioned by mere mortals. Geoffrey Chaucer’s choice of setting, a religious pilgrimage,
Chaucer creates a wonderfully complex character in the Wife of Bath. The character grabs the reader’s attention immediately as she sets the stage for giving an account of her beliefs on love and life: “Housbondes at chirche dore I have had five.” Because of her blunt honesty at the very beginning of her Prologue, the reader senses that the Wife of Bath feels no shame and carries no regrets about her many marriages. This was confirmed when the Wife proclaims, “Of whiche I have piked out the beste.” She