The Wife of Bath is Chaucer’s most developed female character. Often, her voice stands in for the voice of all women of the time.
As in many eras, Medieval women were judged not by their character but by their relationship-or relationships-to men. The Wife of Bath directly addresses the double standard applied to men and women in relationships.
I would like to call her The first female feminist protagonist !
The uploaded video is the basic video which discusses some of the important lines / dialogues of The Wife of Bath . It would help my students NOT ONLY to understand the character in better way, but also to quote them in examination as to fetch good marks.
Summary of the Prologue
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She begins by announcing that experience triumphs knowledge and summing up her own experience in marriage:
She has had a total of five husbands, and she is looking for her sixth.
Her first three husbands were old men, to whom she was married young and whom she outlived; they all died in old age, leaving her with considerable property.It hurts her that her fourth husband kept a mistress and refused to give her up after they married.
When the Wife of Bath’s fourth husband died ,she married Jankyn, her fifth husband . However, despite the fact that she claims to have married Jankyn for love, their relationship did not go smoothly at first.
Jankyn was fond of scolding his wife by reading to her from a book about “wicked wives” and comparing her to them.
Lastly a point comes when Jankyn promises to obey her will in their marriage .She makes him burn his book, and they live together happily from that moment on
27 июл 2024
