The Reason Why The Tale Is Interesting

The wife of bath, is another story told by one of the travelers in which for the first time on this novel we see a women talking about her way to see life. As all of them, this is a love story with a different ending. The author is showing us through this women's side, the other part of what love means. In the past tales, we have only heard what men had to say about this strange and wonderful feeling, but now it is the turn to hear the other part of what it may be the true meaning of love.

Biside a welle, Jhesus, God and man,
                Beside a well, Jesus, God and man,
16       Spak in repreeve of the Samaritan:
                Spoke in reproof of the Samaritan:
17       `Thou hast yhad fyve housbondes,' quod he,
                `Thou hast had five husbands,' he said,
18       `And that ilke man that now hath thee
                `And that same man that now has thee
19       Is noght thyn housbonde,' thus seyde he certeyn.
                Is not thy husband,' thus he said certainly.


This is how Chaucer presents our new character and one of the reasons she has bee wedded 5 times, but the significance of this story goes beyond the religious side to become a mater of equality and women's power.

Through the years, man kind has approved only one definition of this emotion with the common phrase "The love a man has for a woman", but what happened to the love a woman has for a man? is it only that way or should love be something given and received. In The Wife of Bath we see what the author may think of what the "love of a woman" may mean.

The story begins with the prologue, a small introduction to the one that is telling the story and what the others think of her.  Although she may have been with many men during the last years, she has become in what she thinks is aware of what a woman's job in this world is, and in what civilian status should a woman of her age be.

She had been married to 5 men and all of them as she said, had a debt they had to pay her. During this story we see how the author sees women as the "man of the relationship" she has become the one that manages the family, the marriage and although in this time it was not common, now a days women occupy very important positions on our society.

Women in this story is shown as a person that need to be wedded, when the husband dies the next one comes. and so on. It has to be taken into consideration that at those times women was seen as the pleasure object a man had and as a breeder, in other words a machine that produced babies. In this story women is shown like this, but with a little twist. As already said every man she married owed her a debt, every man she had, needed to please her and accompany her until the end, showing that the author broke the normal parameters of what women symbolized in that time to convert it in the only thing that can control a man.

Yes, women can be the "man in the relationship" and after years of change and development, women has raised to become equal to men.

Gabriela