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Gender Roles In The Wife Of Bathe

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Within the tale that the Wife of Bathe shares during the pilgrimage, the Queen, as well as the Hag, is in control of the Knight’s fate, which represents the power role that women hold over men within the text. The Wife of Bathe begins her tale with the knight, a symbol of masculinity within the text, raping a young maid. “There was a knight who was a lusty lover. One day as he came riding from the river he saw a maiden walking all forlorn ahead of him, alone as she was born. And of that maiden, spite all she said, by very force he took her maidenhead” (Chaucer 282). This passage of rape depicts to the reader that the Knight is extremely egotistical and only values what he wants in the world, which becomes pertinent later in the text. Not only …show more content…
“Alison’s romance functions on a similar level: it is a romance with all the trappings of the genre, but she switches from the play of fantasy to the utter seriousness of her curse both against husbands who could control the lives of their wives and against the male pilgrims who are complicit in the privileges of patriarchy” (Pugh 134). In acting the way that she does, Alisoun is teaching men how it feels to be in the role of the typical woman in a relationship. She is controlling, she steals, and she cheats, but most importantly the Wife of Bathe is teaching the men how not to present themselves to women. Not only is she teaching how women should be respected in society, but Alisoun is educating the men in her lives that women deserve to be treated on the same social plane as the men in the community. Representing an early feminist role, since feminism was not yet documented at the time, the Wife of Bathe presents herself not at a higher station than men, but the same. By reversing the gender roles, the Wife of Bathe expresses strong parallels to the protagonist of her tale, the Hag. Both women value the higher position of women within society, and together, in different ways, teach men how to value the same

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