The Wife of duplicity
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literature
presentation
published 16/07/2008
review : Completed
level : Advanced
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The Wife of Baths Tale, from Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales, was a veiled social critique. Her tale was a treatise of social commentaries on the role of gender, the church, and nobility in society. Geoffrey Chaucer used the duplicity of his character, The Wife of Bath, and her tale, as an allegory for social inequality and the hypocrisies of the ruling classes. The Wife of Baths tale begins with her prologue which lets her companions know that she is an authority on marriage and will tell a tale to prove it. She cited her experience within the realm of marriage as grounds for her expertise. Blessed be God that I have wedded five, /Of whiche I have piked out the beste, /Bothe of hir nether purs and of hir cheste (254 Lines 44-47). As well as informing her audience of her five marriages, she crudely and happily commented on her ability of emptying her husbands wallets as well as testicles. This statement portrays the women as lustful and greedy. The Wife of Bath proudly displayed all of the requirements of being a wicked woman of the era.
