In The General Prologue To The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Tells Us That The Wife Of Bath ‘Koulde muchel of wandering by the weye’
What Do You Find Interesting About The Ways He Presents The Wife’s Wandering In Her Prologue. Use Lines 543-599 As A Starting Point. (Summer 2001)
In the Wife of Baths prologue we find out about her characteristics. One aspect, which is shown throughout the prologue, is that is that the Wife of Bath likes to wander. Chaucer in three ways presents this to the reader. The first way in which Chaucer does this is by using digressions. The Wife of Bath often appears to lose her thread, returning to a chosen subject with the phrase “I seye” which translates to mean as I was saying and on one occasion she thinks she has lost the thread of her story completely, when, by her own loose standards, she certainly has not done: ‘What I shal seyn? A Ha! By God, I have my tale ageyn.’
The second way in which Chaucer presents us with a wandering character is that the Wife of Bath is unfaithful to her husbands. Her first three husband were very old and at the end of the life possibly. They were less likely to fulfil the wife’s sexual needs and so consequently the wife was unfaithful to them with younger more versatile gentleman.
The final way in which Chaucer presents us with a wandering woman is by the way in which the Wife likes to go out about. The Wife of Bath likes to go gossiping between the houses in her area. The Wife also liked to go to church, whether it was for religious reasons or simply to show off in her vibrant scarlet red outfits.
The Essay on Thw Wife of Bath Chaucers Feminist Character Sketch
In the medieval period when women were viewed as property, held to sexual double standards and considered to be little more than heir-makers, Chaucer wrote a rather biting piece that draws attention to the inequalities in standards for men and women that were supported by society. This might seem ironic coming from a man in this period, but it is not so ironic when one looks at the Canturbury ...
Many times in the Wife prologue does she forget where she is with her tale, this is often due to an interesting memory she has from mentioning one thing in the tale. Many times the pilgrims hear the Wife of Bath say ‘what I shal seyn?’ Chaucer presents us with the Wife as a character who is easily distracted and can easily lose the thread of her tale. This could be used to explain her prologue. The length of her prologue shows us that she can wander from the main plot into a type of subplot. This is just one of the ways in which Chaucer presents us with the Wife as a wanderer.
The second way in which Chaucer does this is by the Wife being unfaithful to her husbands. As we know the Wife has had five husbands and is still looking for her sixth husband. Her first three were old and unable to fulfil all her needs so we take it upon ourselves to assume that she was unfaithful to them. The Wife of Bath does tell of one time when she is unfaithful to her fourth husband. It was whilst she was on a pilgrimage when she met her future husband the Clerk. This is the husband who does not allow her to go out and gossip with her friends from house to house.
The Wife of Bath likes to go out and about. This is the final way in which Chaucer presents her as a wanderer. ‘So often times’ does the wife ‘gossib wente’ this annoyed her fifth husband as he thought she was unfaithful to him. The wife would go for walks in ‘March, Averill, and May’ going from house to house to hear tales and tell her tales. This part of the prologue is also a digression for the wife because she is trying to talk about her life with the fifth husband but instead she goes into the story of how she would go gossiping. In line 350 the Wife of Bath explains how she does not want to be like a cat that stays indoors dreaming, The Wife wants to ‘goon a-caterwawed’ When the Wife attends church she dresses up for the occasion in that she wears her scarlet red dress and her spores.
In conclusion it is very easy to see why the Wife of Bath tends to wander in her prologue. The most obvious example of her wandering is the length of her prologue in that it is longer than her actual tale. Chaucer uses the three ways of showing a character to be a wanderer very successfully and frequently.
The Essay on Feminist Character in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale
... marry again. She hid nothing.The prologue of this tale showed that the pilgrim did not revere the Wife of Bath as an upstanding woman, ... gifts from them. She would conclude this by satisfying her husband's desire: love…”Yet he felt flattered in his heart because, ... The Wife of Bath's Tale features a character that seemed to resemble a feminist. But in Chaucer's time, feminism was thought to be abnormal ...
