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Contrary to the common image of the 'damsel in distress' women often play a very active role in medieval literature. In "The Wife of Bath's Tale," the Wife tells the story of a crafty old witch who manages to break a spell that forces the sorceress to appear ugly during the day. The moral of the "Wife of Bath's Tale" is that men should show deference to their wives, and not merely strive to rule the roost alone. Even "The Miller's Tale" shows a woman happily engaging in lustful adultery, and demanding sexual satisfaction in her marriage.
In the Decameron, women are less apt to take central roles in the narratives than in "The Canterbury Tales," although they feature prominently as storytellers. When women do appear in the Decameron, women are either innocents who are seduced, as in the case of story I.4, or they act to curtail male passion and excess as in the case of I.5 and I.9. In his stories,...
Many of the stories show the triumph of people who might otherwise be thought socially powerless. This does not necessarily mean that Boccaccio was a proto-feminist, even though he was obviously sympathetic to women's plight in society. Rather, showing compassion to women and looking critically at powerful members of society (such as the Church) was part of his worldview as a writer. The fact that women are often the storytellers of the Decameron harkens back to a Thousand and One Arabian Nights, which was also told be a woman, although not every story told by the female narrators has an explicitly feminist theme. The fact that the Decameron is addressed to women, as well as the prominence of female storytellers, suggests that Boccaccio honors women's role in society as people who pass on stories from generation to generation.
Since they are blank pages, the women possess no direct say in which man will use her to write his story. The result is that men will compete over her and she will remain largely passive in this pursuit. This motif is used by Chaucer both within the Miller's and Knight's tales, and between these two pilgrims; men compete for women in both stories, just as the Knight and
Neither lust, nor greed, nor vanity, is necessary to account for betrayal: it is the simple and inevitable reflex of the changeability that is the very life of human beings."(Mann, 19) Thus, the discourse of the Wife of Bath should be seen rather in this light, than as an antifeminist one. In fact, her prologue is to be read rather like a purposeful unmasking of the many antifeminist stereotypes circulated
The Bible, he argued, cites the creation of Eve for Adam as proof that a wife is man's support, as well as many other examples of humble and devoted wives. The knight told his brother that he desired a young wife, who was no older than thirty, for she would be more pliable. Placebo cautioned that it takes great courage for an older man to marry a young woman (Classic
Thus, the notion of ruler ship in marriage is actually an orchestrated ideological shift in the hands of Chaucer the writer, as notions of marriage and change from the point-of-view of the miller, the Wife of Bath, to the Franklin. Even in the more singular voice of Marlowe, the poet acts an intrusive rather an impartial narrator of the tale of "Hero and Leander," as he utilizes a number of
They were seen as wives, mothers, daughters and usually "portrayed in relation to a man or group of man" (Klapisch-Zuber285). While they were given little freedom outside this restricted sphere, critics observe that medieval women were granted substantial autonomy within that sphere. Men "imposed a closely circumscribed domain in which women exercised a degree of autonomy... primarily the house, a space both protected and enclosed, and, within the house,
He masked himself as Philostrate as he finds his way towards Athens. His standing for righteous activities and healthy language developed so quickly that in a short span of time he turned into a beloved companion of Theseus (Hubertis, 1916). Palamon, meanwhile, has wasted seven more years in jail, and has almost gone insane. Incongruously, nevertheless, an acquaintance ultimately assisted him to getaway from his imprisonment. He took to his