“Forceful and vivacious,” The Wife of Bath is an ideal illustration of an unrestrained and lewd woman of the fourteenth century (Moore 2000). She has been widowed five times and she is going on the pilgrimage to Canterbury to possibly find her next husband. The Wife is opposed to the concept of chastity and plainly states her personal ideas concerning that subject within the prologue of her tale...

Tell me to what conclusion or in aid

of what were generative organs made?

Finally, the beauty practices of women of the past and the women of modern day are similar as well. “Women used cosmetics, dyed their hair, . . .and plucked their eyebrows too, although by these practices they committed the sin of vanity” (Tuchman 54). Women of today practice these beauty habits as well, without fear of being condemned. It was considered immoral to pluck eyebrows and “the demons in purgatory were said to punish the practice by sticking ‘hot burning awls and needles’ into every hole from which a hair had been plucked” (Tuchman 208).

The Wife of Bath has even been compared to Madonna by Susan K. Hagan. Hagan writes, “What I find so amazing in these two self styled performances of confession and romance, separated as they are by 600 years and phenomenological existence is that both express their individuality in terms of sexual autonomy and control. Both The Wife of Bath and Madonna know how to “play the game.” The Wife of Bath wants the free dinner as much as anyone else. She postures, she pronounces, she plays out the challenge of Host, Pardoner, Friar, and Clerk alike.” Hagan adds to the comparison by stating, “Her [The Wife of Bath] opening number might be "Express Yourself," but her method is to vogue, to strike a pose, whether it be the reprobate feminine exegete, the insatiable Venusian, the shrewish wife, the jealous wife, or the loving wife” (Hagan 2001).

Griselda is the precise example of a typical mother in that era. Some wonder why Griselda was more loyal to her husband than to her own children. The answer lies partly in the fact that some, if not most medieval women did not feel as close to their children or show as much emotion to their children as women

Some topics in this essay:
Wife Bath, Clerk’s Tale, Menagier Griselda, Barbara Tuchman, York City, Hagan Hagan, Express Yourself, Canterbury Tales, Tales Women, John Dryden, wife bath, fourteenth century, clerk’s tale, husband testing wife’s, wife bath’s, walter king, beauty practices, testing wife’s, women fourteenth, social class, women fourteenth century, husband testing,