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The Wife of Bath AO3
- Women, femininity and misogyny
- ‘The commodification of sex within marriage allows the Wife
of Bath to retain control over her many husbands, thus
enabling her to carry out her tale’s message that in marriage,
women should have dominion.’ – Christine Tucker
- ‘Alison is an early feminist striving for
autonomy in an oppressive patriarchal
society.’ – H. Marshall
- ‘She is presented specifically as a wife and
not as an independent person.’ – Lee
Paterson
- ‘Animal imagery is in fact used almost entirely to refer to women... Women and
animals share a very close existence in this text which is not surprising when we
consider how the Middle Ages felt about both of them... Animals traditionally
symbolise lack of reason.’ – Tasioulas
- ‘Fundamentally lacking in the feminist argument.’
- The wife is a ‘strong, independent
character who stands for feminine
supremacy in a misogynistic time.’
- ‘The commodification of sex within marriage allows the Wife
of Bath to retain control over her many husbands, thus
enabling her to carry out her tale’s message that in marriage,
women should have dominion.’ – Christine Tucker
- Love and desire/lust
- ‘The brutality of rape vanishes
without a trace.’ – Laurie Fink
- ‘The Wife is an
incurable romantic.’ –
Cooper
- ‘The brutality of rape vanishes
without a trace.’ – Laurie Fink
- Order, power and social class
- ‘Throughout her prologue, the Wife celebrates female
freedom and sovereignty in marriage.’ – Christine
Tucker
- The underlying factor beneath all of the
Wife’s marital decisions is that they stem
from the desire to gain and secure control
over men. The Wife clearly states that her
greatest wish is to be free and powerful in
marriage.’ – Christine Tucker
- ‘To the Wife, the profit of land and money is
worth enduring criticism from other people
and the Church. It is also worth enduring sex
with old men.’ – Christine Tucker
- ‘The commodification of sex within marriage allows the Wife of
Bath to retain control over her many husbands, thus enabling
her to carry out her tale’s message that in marriage, women
should have dominion.’ – Christine Tucker
- ‘The Wife of Bath’s happy resolution with Jankyn echoes the happy
ending in her tale, and reinforces the moral that a successful marriage is
one in which the woman has the power.’ – Christine Tucker
- ‘Throughout her prologue, the Wife celebrates female
freedom and sovereignty in marriage.’ – Christine
Tucker
- Sinfulness and corruption
- ‘The brutality of rape vanishes without a trace.’ – Laurie Fink
- ‘The brutality of rape vanishes without a trace.’ – Laurie Fink
- Religion and the Church
- ‘The practical bourgeois wife clearly contradicted the idealized
image of the subservient wife held up as a model by ‘gentility’ and by
the church.’ – Mary Carruthers
- ‘She [Alison] utterly reverses the spirit of St. Paul’s teaching.’ – Lee Paterson
- ‘The practical bourgeois wife clearly contradicted the idealized
image of the subservient wife held up as a model by ‘gentility’ and by
the church.’ – Mary Carruthers
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