ermination. So if the Wife of Bath proves that if the wife has the authority in a marriage, both husband and wife will live happily ever after. The Wife of Bath continues to look for husband six.Her storyOf course the tale is a tale of rape and life and death. The knight is morally raped when he is forced to relinquish his power to the queen (Williams). This again shows the forcible removal of power for men and the fear that it reaches as high as nobility. We also see that a woman in the form of the Queen has been given all of the power. As the tale unfolds we see the wife is the rapist knight herself. The wife having created the knight and using rape as a thematic device becomes a perpetual self-rapist (Williams 66). Her tale thus unfolds as anti-feminist cliche: all women want to be raped (Williams 67). Throughout her Josh Kinman 6tale she fulfills her desires and resolves the oppositions that she faces (Williams). What now?While many women of the Middle Ages tended to be anonymous, the Wife of Bath gives us a clear voice of femininity through a Josh male perspective (Evans). And of course women were viewed as property and had little placed in governmental procedures until the 20th century, nearly 700 years later. "Even though women played no role in society, the fell in love, became married, became divorced and continued to cope with problems that have followed us into present day (Evans 3330). The tale is that of power and who has or should have the control in a relationship is it political, economical, governmental or sexual. The Wife of Bath clearly believes that she, and all women, should have the control in relationships and especially over husbands. Josh Kinman 7Works citedChaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin, 1977.Evans, Joan. The Flowering Middle Ages. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1966.Gies, Frances and Joseph. Daily Life in Medieval Times. New York: Gregg, Joan Young. Devils, Women and ...
