Example Of Essay On M6 Discussion: Chaucer’s Wife Of Bath

The Wife of Bath is one of the most vividly sketched characters in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The wife of Bath is a lustful, middle-aged woman. She has married several times and has out-lived all her husband’s. She is planning to marry once again as soon as she finishes her pilgrimage. Besides her marriages to rich, old men she has had many illicit extra-marital affairs, as well, in her youth (45-47). The wife of Bath suffers from no moral qualms about her behavior as her habitual misquoting the scripture in her defense, shows (147-168). She surely is illiterate but not ignorant. She possesses no formal education but is not naive or ignorant about the ways of the world. In addition, Chaucer portrays her as a gold-digger but she certainly is not a hypocrite as are some of the other pilgrims to Canterbury, like the prioress, for instance. In literary terms Chaucer uses the character of the wife of Bath as a deliberate foil to the character of the prioress. The wife of Bath has during her life held her own in a male dominated patriarchal society of Chaucer’s time. Though, the wife of Bath possesses no admirable qualities of character but it is also a fact that she is a strong woman both physically and psychologically as her tale proves. The wife of Bath is not bogged-down by the artificial norms and the traditions of the society but lives life according to her own aspirations and whims. In the final conclusion, the wife of Bath is one of the most realistically portrayed and charming characters in The Canterbury Takes.