Saturday, September 13, 2008
The Wife of Bath
I don't know if it is just me but does anyone think that we are a little too forgiving of the knight? I mean he did commit rape. Maybe Chaucer is guiding our sympathies like he did with Allison and John, but I just felt that he was let off too easy. At the end of the tale we look upon him as a man who learned a lesson about woman and lives happily ever after, yet to me he still did something unforgivable, even though Chaucer doesn't demean him with words.
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I also thought that was weird....maybe that is to reinforce the idea that there are "bad" people in every class of society? Even thought Knights are of a high social rank, and the Canterbury knight is impeachable in character, there ARE other knights that aren't quite as upstanding. The Canon Yeoman says as much in his tale...he mentions that you cannot judge every canon by one unscrupulous canon. Similarly, not all knights can be thought less of because one Knight raped a woman.
This is the second tale where the woman is given more power than expected...the Old woman is pretty clear that wives should have power over their husbands. In The Miller's tale, too, Alison is a power figure.
I thought the same exact thing. I thought the knight got off way to easily, and that was one thing I was disappointed in. It could be reinforcing the bad in the world, that is true, but it also showed that the criminals are not always punished properly.
I agree. The knight did get off too easy. He ended up with someone who he thought was ugly and then transformed miraculously into someone who he can now be with. As if he is one to talk. The only thing he did right was let this woman decide what she wanted to do.
I think the Knight learned his lesson from his act, but at the same time i have to agree with you on the fact that Chaucer did not push it to the limit. The Knight did not get the punishment he deserve. Probably Chaucer want to let the freedom to us the readers.
By the way it is good to see that some classmates are pointing the fact that women are getting some powers over men.
one interesting factoid: the wife's tale is a revision of an older folk tale; in the original version, the Knight is not a rapist, just condemned to go on the quest; and he does not refuse to marry the old woman; ie in the original, the man is basically a perfect gentleman, but in the wife's version he is a cad and a rapist. Why might she make this change?
Perhaps to reinforce the double-standard in the society in which she lives? In order for men to understand how bad a man can really be, the Knight had to be painted as the worst guy - a rapist, etc.
I think she might've made this change to make the man seem unacceptable. This way we could not feel sorry for him. And a tale about a "perfect guy" would not fit in with the Wife of Bath's Prologue. The Wife of Bath is about a woman's pride and her worth and going against authority of the church, writing about a "perfect man's" journey would not give her the satisfaction or justification for her actions.
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