Orest VoloshchukThe Wife of BathGeoffrey Chaucer is a late medieval writer best known for his poetic fiction, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, however, did not write simply to entertain his fans, but also to speak through his characters. During the Middle Ages freedom of speech was not a conceivable concept, if someone did not agree with either the state or the church, their time on Earth would be quite limited. These were unfortunate circumstances for Chaucer as his ideas were not particularly welcome among the people in power in his country. To express his opinions and stay away from the gallows Chaucer wrote stories in which he used characters to express his philosophy. One such character is the Wife of Bath who Chaucer uses to express his egalitarian views and criticize patriarchy. The Wife is an older woman who has had five husbands in her lifetime, four of whom she married for money. She is a skilled weaver, perhaps one of the best in England, is one of the most well-traveled pilgrims having made three pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and is one of the most learned people having read and interpreted the Bible. He is also sexist, believing that women should be the dominant sex. She achieved most of her wealth and successes by marrying, manipulating, and perhaps killing old, rich men. She talks about having children despite never having had any herself, which leads to the possibility that she is guilty of abortions. He is also cherry-picking different Bible verses that support his claims instead of looking at the Bible as a whole. The complexity of the Wife's character leads to much controversy over whether the Wife should be a symbol of Chaucer's egalitarianism. .... middle of the sheet ......The Wife is perhaps the most complex character of all the Canterbury Tales. At first she seems to be the feminist superhero of the moment, but she soon turns out to be a rather controversial character. It soon becomes apparent that Chaucer is trying to expose a dark side of her by making her a hypocrite and poking holes in her arguments, for example by mentioning that she had no children but was talking about how having children justifies a lot of sex. . However, he doesn't ask for equal rights, he asks for superiority. If you looked closely enough at the text you would see that she is an exact replica of the average patriarch, simply reversed. And since Chaucer is mocking her, it is reasonable to assume that he is arguing that sexual superiority of any kind is ridiculous. Works Cited The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer