So I can say right
off the bat that I’m already a huge fan of Alisoun or, a.k.a., the Wife of
Bath. She’s had five husbands all
together. Even in our modern day culture saying you’ve had five husbands would
be viewed as kind of extreme. And not only did she have a bunch of husbands,
out of all five of them, she actually only loved one of them. The other four
husbands she exploited strictly for money, land, or whatever else she wanted at
the time. She’d even go so far as to sexually harass them or make up things
that the husbands “supposedly” said while intoxicated. Basically, she harassed
her husbands into submission, which was strongly frowned upon and even feared
of, by men. The super ridiculous idea about all of this was that she started
marrying and exploiting men at the young age of TWELVE. When I was twelve I was
still watching Scooby-Doo cartoons and eating Lucky Charms. Plus women were
often viewed as less important than men, so the fact that she had so much
control over them is impressive and I personally think she overly enjoyed the power
she held over them. In many lines when she’s describing her relationships with
her husbands, she boasts openly about it and often had the next husband lined
up by the time the last one died. I do have one question though; what lead her
to become the way she is? I know a lot of it had to do with the influence of
the Church, but there has to be another factor that helped shape her into the
person she became.
I'm curious why you said that you're a huge fan of the wife of Bath. Is it because of her actions or just because she had power? Many of the words you chose do describe her actions seemed negative despite saying you approved of her, such as "exploiting men" and "harassed her husbands."
ReplyDeleteI feel that she is referring to the idea of a woman almost blazing a path and living the way she wants to live in this time period, and not necessarily glorifying her specific actions.
DeleteI think the Wife of Bath is fantastic Katie, and I like that energy! She is a fascinating character that seems to possess the autonomy and authority that we just don't see in early British writing. Now we have to temper that excitement with the fact that this is Chaucer, a man, creating this character, and we also have to ask ourselves if she is simply a caricature or a realistically drawn out character. For example, I am not sure her motivations are really that clear (which is okay, she is a fictional character). In future posts, remember to look at specific passages or use quotes to center your discussion. This blog would be perfect if it was looking at something a bit more specific than generalizations about the text (although those generalizations are quite interesting). Good work though and I look forward to future posts!
ReplyDelete