The Wife Of Bath's Tale

Words: 205
Pages: 1

The Wife of Bath’s tale to her majority religious, male audience is quite radical, especially for its time, in the way that it proposes that women should have the right to be the dominant marital partner, almost a heretical notion. This is founded in the wife’s own life experience, mostly in the context of her fifth marriage, in which she and her husband shared admiration for one another. Her thesis is based on the democratic idea that mutual respect in marriage, a rarity in the time of Chaucer, will eventually lead to love and happiness for both individuals involved. The Wife of Bath’s tale, a chivalric romance, accomplishes the goal of proving this by depicting how, when marital partners hold one another in high regard, and chiefly when