The Wife of Bath's Tale

I sort of really enjoyed reading The Wife of Bath’s Tale due to the rhyming.  Rhymes are simply universal, they’re always fun.  However, The Canterbury Tales version was less than enjoyable…  

This story revolves around the idea of power.  How much power should a person have and who should that person be?  Classic men verse women and too much verse too little.  The story begins with rape – a knight taking advantage of whatever power he has as a knight and using it against women.  At first I didn’t understand why all the women immediately came to his defense to help save his life.  But that’s when the tables turned in this story.  The knight went from having all of the power to having none.  The women were in charge, controlling whether he lived or died. I’m not sure if they even cared whether he died or not, as long as he felt the same powerlessness that he had done to the girl he had raped.  But is that really the best way to teach someone a lesson?  You hit someone, so they can hit you back?  You could argue that it is a little hypocritical. 

However, it ends exactly the way the women want it to, of course.  He “learns his lesson” by giving his wife all the power to make decisions, since after all, the thing women want most is power over their husbands.  But how is that fair?  These women have issues with men having all the power, but only because they want it all.  In reality, nobody should have all the power. 

The topics in this story, like sex and marriage and decision making should all be mutual.

I don’t think the knight has learned his lesson of the crime he committed.  I think he learned what he has to do in order to get what he wants.  As long as he gives his wife the power, she will give him what he wants. But then who really has the power?  And does it even matter if he has learned his lesson? Either way, he’s giving his wife control, which is what she wants.  And in return, she is giving him what he wants.  So technically, they should both be happy.  But logically, it makes no sense.  By the wife having all the power, it’s really the same as her having none since she is willing to do anything for him anyway.  Everyone in this story needs to realize that too much power in any situation is just bad.