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  • Essay / Universal Truths in Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath

    Question - The Wife of Bath tells anecdotes about her personal life. Does his story also concern universal truths? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a very famous piece of 14th century British poetry. A collection of 24 tales, it presents lively and diverse characters, linked to all classes of society, all on pilgrimage to Canterbury, a major place of pilgrimage in medieval times. Although all the characters are fictional, their stories are akin to social documents detailing the societal conditions of the time. Wife of Bath is one such fictional creation of Chaucer. The prologue of his tale is the longest of all the prologues. She is an unapologetic woman, who boasts that she has been married five times and has also had sex with strangers. She blatantly presents anecdotes from her personal life and uses everything from biblical texts to astrological symbols to justify her actions and the events that resulted from them. This article attempts to analyze and elucidate whether and how his account also concerns universal truths. Chaucer appears in medieval times, when all knowledge was held and propagated by the Church; everything was spiritual. Amusingly, Chaucer gives a contrasting picture through his characters. Wife of Bath is undoubtedly a very controversial character, who, with all her pomp and spectacle, subverts all presumptions and expectations. She is presented, contrary to the general notion of a delicate and refined woman, as a realistic and complicated woman who defends her life without trying to hide its harshness. In speaking about her life, Wife of Bath certainly addresses multiple societal issues that can be considered universal truths, particularly those regarding marriage and women. Wife of Bath, in the very first lines of the prologue, establishes that her rhetoric is largely based on experience when she says: "Experience, though noon auctoritee were in this world, is right to me" (lines 1 -2). )1. It is therefore incorrect to conclude that his words are equivalent to universal truths since experience is subjective while truth is objective. But it is this very notion of objectivity and standards that the Wife of Bath questions through her harangue. She expresses not only her opinions but also those of her husbands. She talks at length about the institution of marriage and how society thwarts women in every way. Interestingly, Wife of Bath is the only character in the book who is referred to by her filial relationship rather than her professional position. in society. It is a direct comment on the way a woman is seen and described in society. Her identity is a simple recognition of who she is as a wife, mother, sister or daughter, which is a universal truth. However, Wife of Bath emancipates itself from this social chain. She resolutely seeks her freedom as an individual, particularly financial and sexual freedom, of which women have been deprived, which again is a universal truth. Her desire to seek financial freedom is very evident in the stories of her first three husbands. They were all rich and old. The characteristic factors, rich and old, worked in her favor because, as they were old, they would die sooner and she would directly inherit all their property and money. She talks very enterprisingly about the cunning with which she would deceive them by constantly lecturing them using false arguments. She.