The Wife of Bath was written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The story starts with a narrator who prides herself on being able to use her beauty to control her husbands. She admits that of her 5 husbands, she was only able to charm 3 of them; it was only when they were drunk. The narrator tells a tale of how a young man must find what women truly desire or be killed. This story tells how karma can come back and give you a taste of your own medicine. Through the various literary devices, I found that the irony in the story was most common.
Walter C. Long refers to Alisoun as “Alice the master rhetorician” because of her extension of the equality of men and women under the marriage “debitum” to the whole of their relations. He gives her this name because as she was trying to make a point to the friar about how most women are no good and she begins to tell him her story. The narrator was a woman that thought because of beauty and her sexual power she could get anything she wanted from her husbands. Her first three husbands were older, rich men whom she married because of their wealth. Her last two husbands were men that most women would say are “bad” for you. The fourth husband had a mistress and she was fine with it. She always tried to make him jealous. Her last husband (Jankyn) was a man that she actually loved. From the way she described the others, she never loved them, she just wanted what they could offer her. Jankyn was a man of many things, and among these things he was a wife beater. Even though she knew he was forbidden she couldn’t stay away. She described him as being good in bed and very charming. “Women may go saufly up and doun. In every bussh or under every tree, ther is noon oother incubus but he, and he wol doon hem but dishonor.” (Chaucer, pg.234) This quote means that women should not have to fear men seeing them as objects and have to worry about being used as sex objects and have to carry the burden of an unwanted child. The irony in the story was as a young woman she could torment all of her lovers and when she got older and married a younger man her charm did not work. Instead Jankyn used that same charm to keep Alisoun from kicking him out the house.
The next part of the story starts with the tale being told from when fairies and elves lived among Britain. They were replaced by friars and others. In the tale, it was told how friars were raping women and cause them dishonor by getting them pregnant. A knight in King Arthur’s court could not control himself, and he rapes a young maiden. At the trial he is sentenced to death by decapitation, but the queen and her maidens come to “rescue”. They come up with the idea that he has one year to find out what women truly desire, and if he does not find the answer, then he will be decapitated. Over the course of a year, he asks every woman in sight, and he could get a logical answer because every woman had a different answer. Toward the end of his year, he meets an old woman who makes a bargain with him. The bargain was if she tells him the answer then he has to marry her. When they get to the court and he tells them that “what women want most is to be in charge of their husbands and lover”.
After all the women agreed that was correct, the old woman stepped forward and asks the knight to marry her. The knight tried to get the old woman to change her mind by offering all his possessions but she wanted him. After the wedding the miserable knight and the old woman are in bed about to spend their first night together, and the old woman offers the knight a choice: either be married to an old ugly woman that is good and loyal or a young and beautiful but unfaithful wife. After giving it a lot of thought, knight tells her his choice. As a reward his wife became young and beautiful, and they a long happy marriage. Within this tale I found several parts containing irony. “I grante thee lyf, if thou kanst tellen me what thing is it the women moost desiren be war and keep thy nekke-boon from iren.” (Chaucer, pg. 247) The first was when the knight thought that when the queen spoke up for him to be saved from decapitation, that their challenge would be easy. The second was when the knight came back to the court with the answer. When the queen presented the knight with the challenge, I do not think that she was expecting him to come back with the answer.