I think the Wife of Bath brings up many good points in her prologue. I like how she challenges society and the Church with her ideas of marriage and virginity. She works hard to prove her point, which i believe she did very well. At first i thought her forceful tone and eagerness to speak about marriage was an attempt to justify her own actions since had been married 5 times. However, i now understand that she was passionate of her ideas and wanted to get her point of 'embracing life' across, an idea i agree with to the fullest.
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and our discussion in class today really made me think about the boundaries that hold people and society back. For years, society has accepted the rules that we have created for ourselves, like the ones for marriage and sex. It's just interesting to see how we have governed ourselves against things, like sexual urges, something that is so natural and unavoidable.
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What is interesting about our governance of "natural" urges is that in Chaucer's time, the Church demanded restraint. People couldn't do what they want because the Church forbid it - and the Church was the authority. Nowadays, though, we impose similar restraints on ourselves, and I guess we don't think about the Church being the authority over us. But...isn't it religion that governs us, even today? Our parents guide us according to the way their parents guided them, but if you go back far enough, I think you'll see that it is religion that determines even modern ideas of what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable.
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