odic relief” (Gies). In one case a woman brought a man before the courts on rape charges. She conceived during the intercourse, therefor the jury acquitted the man because it ruled she must have enjoyed the sex because she conceived, which was a popular belief during the Middle Ages (Gies). These beliefs no doubt were ridiculous attempts to discredit women so the power of men could be upheld throughout the nations, in this case Great Britain. Sexual power and women“Like the Devil, women were perceived as masking their pernicious in attractive guises, and it was part of the Josh Kinman 3exemplum’s purpose to unveil their subtleties and sorceress in order to underscore the need for vigilance against them” (Gregg 85). “Women and Jews together came to be viewed not just as the spiritual inferiors of the Christian male, but more specifically and perniciously, as the embodiments of carnality and sexual peril, with all that implied for the damnation of one’s eternal soul” (Gregg 85). So does the Wife if Bath become a model of feminine virtue? She states that many Biblical characters had many wives, like Abraham and Solomon, so if she was were not to marry she could not control her lusts. (Chaucer 278). Is it better to make her a model of attainable perfection than to make her a model of unattainable perfection (Gregg 85). “The Wife of Bath’s accusation against clerical stories, then, was not hyperbole, and, after the era of courtly love, it pervade not only popular pulpit tales, but influenced secular literature as well (Gregg 86). “… It enabled a projection of male sexual guilt onto an un-empowered other, woman…” (Gregg 86). “This in turn permitted the rationalization that women’s inferiority and sexual aggressiveness requires male governance” (Gregg 86). Women became the screens upon which fleshly passions could be safely projected. ChaucerR...
