In the Wife of Bath’s Tale the young knight is ordered to find what women want most in exchange for his life. First off I am extremely confused as to why a bunch of young women beg King Arthur to spare the life of the knight when he just raped a young maiden that he came across simply because he couldn’t help it and wanted to show his power. I would think that they would want him to be punished for what he did because he had just wronged someone just like them. So that makes absolutely zero sense to me but so does the over all theme of this tale. The Knight goes on to search multiple lands in order to find the answer to the question that will save his life and ends up coming across an older women who told him that, ” Women desire to have the sovereignty, And sit in rule and government above, Their husbands, and to have their way in love.”  So basically she is saying that women just want to be the dictator of their relationships. Personally speaking I would say that in a healthy relationship no one person should have all of the power, a relationship is about making sacrifices for the other person and trying to understand the your spouses opinion in order to come to a general consensus that both people are happy with. Today I know that women don’t want all of the power, they just want their husbands to see eye to eye with them on serious topics. Also I think it is ridiculous that the Queen would want this man who raped someone to be her husband. Just because he understands what all women “want” doesn’t mean that he has changed in any way. He still has a completely flawed morality.

Also, is it truly love if one person is dictating the entire relationship? I have come to realize that The Canterbury Tales have a very idealistic view of love. In the past story we read it described it as love at first sight, where the man had never spoken a single word to the women that he had fallen so deeply in love with. In this story it seems as if the characters almost have the power to choose who the fall in love with. The queen ask the Knight to marry her and at first he is unhappy but once she becomes young and beautiful he automatically falls deeply in love with her. Its like a woman’s beauty is what a man falls in love with. Not their personality.  This book completely objectifies women in the sense that who they are doesn’t matter. It’s whats on the outside that matters. This is also seen in the prologue when the Wife of Bath goes on to tell us that she simply marries for money and pleasure. She goes on to say that it is completely okay because men in the bible had more than one wife so obviously it’s fine for her to have more than one husband. The thing that really got me was when she started talking about how she would have another husband after the one she currently has.  It’s like she had a planned end date of when she would be done with her current husband. This shows that not only do men objectify women but women in this time also objectify men.

So the consensus that I have come to is that if the women is beautiful then a man will fall madly in love with her, even if they have never spoken a word, and the wife will be completely happy as long as she has total control over the relationship. The message that this book sends is honestly a bit horrifying because to me its saying these people really were not capable of achieving real love. Their view was so flawed by their culture that they basically viewed love as an agreement to call someone you wife or husband, not the deep emotional connection that we all recognize love as today. These stories have some extremely flawed morals and are the complete opposite of what view as right and wrong in today’s society. As a girl I have always been taught to marry for love and not money where as in this book the main character is preaching that girls should marry for money, they should use their husbands to their full extent. I wonder if these were the actual views of people in this time or if they are just simply part of the story?