Topic: Sept. 6 Responses (1 of 1), Read 30 times
Conf: Gender in Medieval Europe (Chaucer)
From: Amy Dembinski aadembi@ilstu.edu
Date: Monday, September 05, 2005 04:43 PM
#1
The Prioress and Wife of Bath are alike in that they want to be taken seriously in a time where women were thought to be
stupid and should be submissive in every aspect of life. These two women were very strong individuals who were very
unique for this time period. They are uniquely different in that the Prioress seems to be more lady-like and more
submissive than the Wife of Bath is or wants to be. The Prioress is never-the-less a nun, but she wants to be seen as
someone of great status. She eats very well, has good manners, but her French is not considered original since she didn’t
learn it in France. She is a modern day “wanna-be.” The Wife of Bath is extremely open about her sexuality, she married 5
husbands and cheated on most, if not all of them, yet she wanted her husbands to remain faithful to her. She is a walking
contradictory who finally fell in love due to getting into a massive fight with her fifth husband. She’s a general “hard-nosed”
broad who didn’t take any crap from anyone. The specific clothes they wore told a lot about their personalities. Wife of
Bath was a seamstress, so she always wore very nice clothing, perhaps to attract the men that she always needed in her
life. The Prioress wasn’t as much into clothing as the Wife of Bath since she was a nun. She wanted to be seen as a
respectable woman, so she didn’t go overboard on her clothing. The Wife of Bath didn’t respect men because they didn’t
respect her. She obviously didn’t care about the sanctity of marriage since she married 5 times and she thought that if all
women remained virgins, like they were thought to have supposed to be, then there wouldn’t be anymore virgins created.
The Prioress was a nun, so she valued marriage and virginity just like the bible says.
#2
The Wife of Bath sets herself up for comic relief in just the way she presents herself. I’m sure back when Chaucer wrote
this story that the certain aspects that we find funny were anything but funny for people back then. Chaucer invites us to
laugh at the Wife of Bath from everything from her having a gap-tooth in her smile and men finding her attractive, to her
wearing spur boots that make her look tougher than any biker chick could look. It’s kind of ironic for this woman to be like
this for the era. A woman who was as promiscuous as she was wasn’t given too much attention because they were liked
down upon and seen as trash, much like today. Wife of Bath misunderstands biblical scripture and traditional Church
arguments by thinking that she’s supposed to be in control of her husbands, while the Bible believes that the man is
supposed to be in control of her. Wife of Bath was generally a person who didn’t do anything by the book because she felt
she was higher than that and had the power to do so. She critiques St. Jerome by doing this, but I don’t think she had any
credibility to begin with to lose any while she critiqued St. Jerome.
#3
First of all, Freud doesn’t know anything about anything when it comes to what women want and need. In a relationship,
women want to feel loved and accepted for who they are, not what a man wants them to be. Wife of Bath was a woman
who wanted freedom, yet she didn’t want her husband to have freedom within the relationship. Wife of Bath wanted
nothing more than to feel loved and for her husband to think that she was the best, that there wasn’t any other person who
could be better than her. I think the tale is presented in such a way that it makes Wife of Bath look like a bad person for
wanting to be anything but the normal woman for the age she was living in. However, in the prologue of her tale, the tale
makes it seem as though she is this free-spirit who doesn’t mind what others think of her, or really, that no one else cares
about her because she is such an odd person.
#4
Wife of Bath was very much the seductive woman who could pretty much get any man whom she wanted to get.
However, her validity suffered because she gained this sort of reputation that was frowned upon for women back then.
Wife of Bath believed that women should be able to look at men even with the thought of sex on their mind, without living
with the guilt and fear that they could lose their virginity because of those thoughts much like what St. Jerome thought to
be true. This is where Jerome and Bath differ. Bath believed that women shouldn’t be spied on by their jealous husbands.
She also thought that women shouldn’t be considered property by their husband, and that females were to be treated like
individuals. St. Jerome pretty much didn’t like women, and that is why he believed that they should be submissive and
give in to every demand that their husband wants. Wife of Bath believe that if all women remained virgins, there would be
no more virgins left to be created. Even though St. Jerome wanted women to remain virgins, he didn’t look to the future
and realize that all women can’t remain virgins and that some sort of sin needs to be committed in order for life to
continue.
#6
I’m curious to know what others thought of Chaucer and his views on how things were back in the middle ages, or
whenever The Canterbury Tales was written. Students are forced to read stories like this without really knowing WHY it
was written or if it holds any truth to how things were back in Geoffrey Chaucer’s day. Do any well-known scholars
disagree with anything that Chaucer wrote or believed to be true? This is just something that I think about as I’m reading
something that is extremely difficult and that doesn’t exactly pertain to me or my views on life.