Wife of Bath Flashcards
Carruthers
The wife’s financial independence gives her the power to choose her husband, so she can choose her love: thus, wealth and autonomy are the greatest components of love
Steve Ellis
To read through rather than with the Wife makes us aware of how the repressed feminine exists within and not independently of the dominant masculine
Steve Ellis on the Knight
The Knight inhabits the position of the victim. In this sense, he is assigned the role of a rape victim
Women having maistrie
My thral
Which shal be both my dettour and my thral
Thanne have I gete of yow maistrie
Men and maistrie
For as yow liketh, it suffiseth me
His herte bathed in a bath of blisse
And she obeyed hym in every thyng
Taak al my good and let my body go
Poverte
a spectacle is
Women in court
Ful many a noble wyf, and many a mayde,/ And many a wydwe
Role of women
Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng I weep algate, and made sory cheere, As wyves mooten Pardee, we wommen konne no thyng hele She dorste telle it to no man Swere and lyen as a womman kan
Virginity
Virginitee is greet perfeccion
Sexual references x 4
Bele chose
Fruyt of marriage
Sely instrument
In wyfhood I wol use my instrument
Knowledge
I woot as wel as ye, it is no drede
Sith a man is more resonable/ Than womman is, ye moste been suffrable
Love and fire
The moore it brenneth, the moore it hath desir
Lust and desire
I shal fulfille youre worldlly appetit
I trowe I loved him best
Violence
By verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed
He smoot me once on the ear
He hadde me bete on every bone
Marcotte
In Medieval times, women were associated with the body and the senses, whereas men were associated with the mind and power
