Wife of Bathe
In the tale
The Wife of Bathe, the speaker
presents various stereotypes that were given to woman only to then subtly
squash them, which can be seen by carefully analyzing the passages. The speaker introduces these stereotypes when
the knight speaks to the various woman; however, he then contradicts them by
mentioning the tale of Midas and the Ass’s ears.
After being
given a chance to redeem himself from the queen, the knight is told that,
“woman all love riches best, / While some said honor, / others said jolly zest
(925-926). All of these attributes, which are given to woman, reinforce the
negative stereotypes that can be seen, such as: woman being greedy and
unintelligent. The knight is then told, “woman can’t keep secrets, heavens
sake!” (950). To seemingly reinforce her point the speaker tells the knight a story
where a man has ears like a donkey and when his wife finds out she can not keep
the secret to herself so she tells the water, thus reinforcing the stereotype
that woman cannot keep secrets. The knight is not told the ending of the tale;
rather, he is told to read the tale for himself if he would like to hear
more. The original story is much
different; in the actual tale it was Midas’ barber, a man, who told the tale to
the ground and buried it only for the reeds to later reveal the truth.
The
alteration of Ovid’s tale, Midas, can be interpreted to show the reader that
while woman are portrayed as gossipers it is truly men that cannot keep a
secret. This is therefore showing one of the many incorrect stereotypes given
to woman.
First off I didn’t take these page numbers from the version
that you gave us, they might be the same but this is a link to the version I
used:
My questions are
1.
Is there any other reason that you can think of
that the author would have chosen to change the tale of Midas?
2.
This is unrelated to what I wrote about but why
might the author have depicted 24 woman dancing only for there to be an old hag
when the knight got closer?
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