Gender Roles In Wife Of Bath's Tale

Battle of The Sexes

In the middle ages men and women were not looked at as equals. Once women were married to a man they were only looked at as property. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he exemplifies his view on the differences between men and women in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. In Wife of Bath’s tale men feel superiority over women, although women in the end gain the power. As an introduction to how men think of women in the middle ages, Chaucer first introduces the Wife of Bath and her husband. Her husband, Jankin, continuously reads a book with stories of horrible wives “and when [she] saw he’d never make an end” she tore three pages out and hit him into the fire (Chaucer, Wife of Bath 73). This caused problems for her because when women were disobedient men were expected to beat their wives; and Jankin did so. With a blow to her head with his book, he caused her to be deaf in one ear. This made the tables turn for these two because he felt so bad about what he had done to his wife, “he put the bridle reins within [her] hand to have the governing of house and land; and of his tongue and of his hand” (Chaucer, Wife of
The Queen makes the knight gain respect for women by making him figure out what women want. Chaucer uses this story to show that as men continued to think so highly of themselves, women were using their strengths to gain power to their gender. Throughout this story the knight comes to find that “women desire to have the sovereignty as well upon their husband as their love, and to have mastery their man above” (Chaucer, Wife of Bath’s Tale 133-135). It is obvious that the knight has grown to respect women when he gives the old lady the right to “choose which [way of life] may be the more pleasing, and bring most honour to [her]” (Chaucer, Wife of Bath’s Tale 137-138). The Wife of Bath accepts that a man can be a gentleman if they do a noble