Okay, so during the Wife of Bath's Tale, I was curious as to whether the storyline would turn into a story of empowerment or a story of control. I'm still on the fence as to whether the story is empowering, but I know now that it's a story of control. The Wife of Bath paints this tale almost like an expose on what women want. The knight, who we can all agree is a pretty crappy human being, rapes a woman and is sentenced to death, and has his life put in the hands of this old, unattractive woman. This is definitely an interesting shift in power since the story begins with the knight raping someone because he was "so overcome with his sense of lust." The knight is in the old woman's debt after she reveals that what women want is control. At this point in the story, I was enticed by this seemingly universal truth that what women want most is to control their spouses, and wondered how that would translate to the knight being in debt to the old woman. Obviously, at this point in the story, I dislike the knight and am alright with the old woman. She helped save the knight's life, but she did it as a power move. She's cunning, smart, and opportunistic, but I was curious as to where that would lead.
I was pretty disappointed with the ending, from the standpoint I approached it. While it (sort of) reinforced the universal truth and made the knight a slave to an old woman for a couple hours, the knight gets off the hook completely.
Granted, he gets what he wants by allowing the old woman to make her own decision, but he acts from a position of apathy rather than a position of relinquishing power. He has two options left, and the ultimatum the woman gives him is hell either way (for him). While the woman (at this point, his wife) gets to choose what to do, there doesn't seem to be a lot of empowerment going on. The message this story sends is "give your wife what she wants and your marriage will be happy," which sounds alright for the beginning of the tale, but fails to pull through the end retaining the same meaning. Perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, but I think the Wife of Bath's Tale isn't as empowering as it seems.
I agree with you completely. I thought that it would end with the knight getting what he deserved, but instead he gets a pretty, young wife because he lets her make one decision. His original punishment was death, yet all he had to do was put up with having an old, ugly wife for a few hours. Pretty sure that's not at all equal to death. It would be more of a story of empowerment had she gotten to choose something more than just her appearance. I mean truthfully she still has to be married to a man who raped and women and flipped out on another because of things she couldn't control. I could see it if she decided to make him work for it, or chose to be single, or just something else, yet she just said hey I could be pretty or I could be ugly it's your choice. Then because he says that he will leave it up to her (after some complete change of heart) he gets everything he's ever wanted and she is now with him forever. I personally wouldn't forgive someone for calling me an old, ugly, poor hag quite so fast.
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