How Does Chaucer Use Ethos In The Crucible

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In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath is an interesting female character who presents an aura of authority and power. Her prologue is one of the longer ones, and has two distinctive parts: in the first part she is speaking to the pilgrims, and in the second part she is recalling her marriages. Throughout the first part of her prologue, the Wife of Bath uses a combination of logos and ethos to manipulate and gain power over the pilgrims. The Wife of Bath uses logos to convince the pilgrims that marrying multiple times is not a sin. She first counters the argument that marrying more than once is a sin, as Jesus once spoke against a Samaritan women who did so, by asking, "Why was her fifth ... No lawful spouse[?] …show more content…
The complex mixture of logos and ethos in the first part of her prologue convinces the pilgrims that marrying multiple times is not a sin, she is trustworthy/credible, and that she is the greatest authority on marriage, and each of these methods is riddled with literary devices that have a big influence. And on top of that, it is almost all done at the same time. Every reference to scripture and religion uses logic to lead the pilgrims to the conclusion that she is right and her marriages are justified, which leads to her being deemed knowledgeable about something they hold in high esteem and credible as a person; the sum of those leads to them trusting her more and more and deeming her the authority on marriage. The same process is true for nearly everything she says. This repeats in a continuous cycle where the pilgrims trust her more and more until she gains an incredible amount of power and sway over them. Such a complex and convincing prologue could only come from someone incredibly clever. Even if Chaucer is saying that she is not a good person he uses her verbal struggle to convince, manipulate, and gain power while making it seem like nothing, to show how intelligent a woman like the Wife of Bath can