Wife of Bath's Tale. Yeah. I'm playing "catch up".

The Wife of Bath was a really fun and interesting story for me. The prologue portrays her as this woman who knows the ins and outs of men and relationships. I felt like the Tale sent a different message. In the beginning I think you see where the story is heading as far as the lesson that has to be learned, etcetera. I do think it is funny when she prefaces his task by talking about Midas and the asses ears, then tells everyone they have to read Ovid to figure out how it ends. I think this is Chaucer taking a jab at her social class and her actual intelligence, basically he is saying she doesn’t really know how it ends. I really want to focus on her feelings about men and how she expresses them in the story.

Line 1044-1046: “Wommen desiren to have sovereyntee
As wel over hir housbond as hir love,
And for to been in maistrie him above.”

So basically she is saying that women want to be in control of their husbands and have the freedom to make their own decisions in the relationship. Obviously here I feel like she is expressing her desire to be considered superior to men. Later when he is judging the old woman based on her looks and social status—saying she is nowhere near nobe, she responds with:

“For, God it woot, men may wel often finde
A lords sone do shame and vileinye;

So she is saying that men of nobility have definitely done wrong (HINT HINT: You raped someone and you are supposedly “noble”). Basically that nobility doesn’t come from your parents and your possessions, it comes from God and grace. To support her idea of “wearing the pants” in the relationship, she is pointing out the faults of men. Up until this point I have considered her to have a feminist point of view. Then he wins in the end. I think it is really funny (as in ironic) that he learns his lesson by giving her the final decision of her physical appearance and giving her sovereignty in the relationship. By doing this she gets what she wants—what every woman wants—and is extremely pleased. However, did he really learn the lesson? I mean I really feel like in the end he is definitely still superior because all he had to do was give her what she wanted and he is cleared of the fact that he flat out raped someone. So let’s break this down.

Man rapes women
Women puts man to the test
Man passes the test only because of a woman
Man “learns lesson” and ends up with a beautiful wife.
Man really doesn’t learn lesson, woman really isn’t in control

…there’s my humble opinion on that.
With that being said I feel like it shows that the Wife of Bath pretends she likes to be in control, but really she still likes for the man to have superiority in the relationship.