Well, I suppose I've been putting off my first "real" blog for long enough now. So, The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. Something that Daniel mentioned in his blog that I really picked up on was the difference in voice between the Wife of Bath's prologue and her tale. When first reading through the prologue's descriptions of the Wife of Bath's various five husbands, I have to admit I was a little taken aback. Many describe the wife as a feminist character, and I agree that many of her attributes point to this role. She describes how her "good" husbands were the ones who she could manipulate to get what she wanted, and this assertion, while somewhat exploitative, seems to point to the essence of the feminist movement itself. When I got to the description of her fifth husband, however, it seemed to contradict the rest of the prologue. Sure, the Wife of Bath could hold her own most of the time. But when it came to the one man who abused her, the one man who she truly NEEDED to stand up to, she couldn't find the strength to do so because she was so enamored of him. To me, the fact that the one man that she loved was the one man who treated her badly, controlling her and manipulating her and even abusing her, downplays her role as a feminist character. It did, however, also give her more depth and make her a more likeable character to me. Before reading this description, she seemed too callous and manipulative, but her description of this fifth husband showed her to be more human, capable of falling in love and being vulnerable.

The Wife of Bath's actual tale definitely did remind me of a sort of fairy tale. There was, of course, the setting that she chose, in which actual fairies were present, and this obviously added to that element. Her language also seems more elaborate and flowery in her telling of the tale, perhaps demonstrating the Continental influence of French literature in Chaucer's writing. The theme of feminism seems to rise yet again in this tale, in that the protagonist must set out on a mission to find out what women want most in the world, and must humble himself to multiple women as he pleads with them to share their deepest desires. In the end, I think it's fascinating how the man only triumphs by sucuumbing to the woman's wants. I'm not entirely sure if Chaucer is attempting to use this tale as a piece of feminist literature... Although a feminist character tends to be assertive and powerful, such as the Wife of Bath, her tolerance of her fifth husband's abuse, as well as her seemingly lewd behavior regarding multiple marriages and using sex as a means to aquire money and power seem somewhat contradictory to the feminist ideal of women being proud of their sexuality and making accomplishments through an assertion of their intellegence and hard work. Also, once the protagonist of the tale agrees to let the old woman make the decisions, she changes, physically, into a sort of male ideal. Her change to an appearance which men admire seems sort of contradictory to feminism in that once the power is handed over to her, her body and sexuality become what seems like no more than an object of man's sexual desire.