I feel
that the Canterbury Tales presents a foreign idea to the representation of the
setting in the story. Essentially, what
we see in the Wife of Bath is that women are given power and equality, which is
a thought that is unheard of. Women fought
for years in fairly recent history to be equal, yet the equality is shown in a
time setting long before. The women in
the story are given power and equality and it is demonstrated a couple of
times. For example, the first time we
see a woman having authority is when the queen is given the decision to choose
the Knight’s punishment. In other
stories and tales, the king is the one with power and the queen serves more as
a spouse, whereas in this tale, the queen is given direct power.
In addition
to the equality of women being shown through the power of the queen, it is also
shown through the old woman. The old
woman is able to use her knowledge to overpower the knight twice. The first time, she bribes him with the
answer to his question but asks for a favor in return. The second time, she outsmarts him again and
shows why she should be his wife and what he should really want, which in turn
forces the knight to give up his decision and put it into the hands of his
wife.
All in
all, the idea of equality is a revolutionary process which begins with this
story. The decisions are put into the
hands of what is seen as the minority, and good results come from their
choices.
The Wife of Bath certainly does provide an early example of feminism. What I find interesting is the fact that women have always been 50% of the population, and yet they remained quite suppressed for so long. It's quite bad that we look at a story like this, where a woman shows some dominance, and we regard it as a rare example of equality from this time. But massive inequality has always been a trend throughout history.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Gabe. I believe that in a way, this story serves as a precursor for feminist movements in the future. Its place as another testament to gender equality urges people to buck the trend and think about what is actually right. Is it really right to have suppressed women for so long when we have testaments in literature from long ago?
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Canterbury Tales is suggesting that women were not directly aggressive in terms of power but knew how to keep order and demand respect in less direct ways.
ReplyDelete