Surname 1Ayush SureshDisa GamberraBUS 3920050

Surname 1
Ayush Suresh
Disa Gamberra
BUS 3920
05/05/20
Marriage, Economics and the Wife of Bath
This paper will discuss how the wife of bath views marriage and
how she changes from a
business individual with ethical considerations of her workers
to a wife who is respectful to her
husband and shares her possessions equally. The Wife of Bath
criticizes the hatred and prejudice
that is directed towards the female population. During the
Middle Ages, women's discrimination
and every form of antifeminism were not respected. She defies
the thinking of medieval ages by
being a widow that has been remarried over five times which
was not allowed during those
times. The Wife of Bath says, "For if God had commanded
maidenhood, then with that same

word had he condemned marrying" (1). In the statement, she
denies the proposition of Jerome
regarding matrimony and virginity by claiming that refuted
reproduction and marriage if He had
slammed virginity.
The Wife of Bath depicts the issue of female dominance and
sovereignty. During her
three marriages, she did not behave as was the custom
demanded by the traditions during the
medieval ages. The first three husbands of the Wife of Bath are
depicted as submissive whose
sexual urges were satisfied by the woman. She would her sexual
and a nagging nature to demand
money from these rich husbands. "And thus, I boast of one thing
for myself: in the end, I had the
better in every way, by cunning, or by force, or by some type of
device, such as continual
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
I think you mean feminism here--there was great respect for
anti-feminism in the Middle Ages because women were
considered inferior.
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093

?
Surname 2
murmuring or grumbling" (5). Though the narration of the Wife
of Bath shows that she wanted
domination, but the Wife wanted to be a form of equality in the
house. This is the view that the
Wife of Bath was trying to depict marriage.
The Wife of bath loved wealth more than how she loved sex. In
the middle ages, women
owed their men sex and in return, they offered them
punishment. Love and sex in the Wife of
Bath appear to be a form of a deal of buying and selling for the
men and women respectively.
The Wife was willing to forego her sexual urges as long as the
four husbands the Wife had
married gave her money which she later accumulated a lot of
property and lived a comfortable
life. Although the Wife was used to the habit of marrying men
with a lot of wealth her last
husband the fifth one broke this chain as he was poor but good
in bed which made the Wife love
him.

The feminist gets an antifeminists husband. The fifth husband
that the Wife acquires
appears to reserve antifeminist sentiments Despite being the
husband she loved among all the
five she had married she decides to settle for a poor clerk and
did not like to be dominated. The
wife describes that the fifth husband used to beat her and that
during their first months of
marriages he refused her authoritative rule. The dominance of
the fifth husband over the Wife
shows that the wife is vulnerable to love. One night as they sat
by the fire the husband began
reading a book of how wicked women were but before he
finished she tore three pages and
slapped and he returned and she slapped him again but they
came to an agreement and he gave
the Wife full control of the house, the property, and his tongue.
The wife describes this
experience by commenting:
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
wrong word
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093

DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
ungrammatical--a person cannot be a form of equality. They can
have equality or be equals.
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
who?
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
Surname 3
"And when I saw that he would never stop reading in this cursed
book, all over the sudden I
plucked three leaves out his book, even as he was reading and I
also struck him to the cheek with
my fist" (8).
At first, it seemed a wrong choice for the Wife to give the
young husband domino over
her property because he was abusing her. The Wife says
“And I gave him all the land and wealth that I had been given,
but afterward, I repented
myself sorely, for he would allow nothing I desired" (7).
This is a lesson to those that love wealth more than anything
else it shows that not

everyone we meet can be perfect the Wife's first four husbands
could do anything for her and
went to an extent of handing her their property but this was
different with the last husband who
was young and did not respect women. It also means that we
should not be too trusting, the Wife
was lucky to have a young man's respect but for the business
majors out their one may not have
any luck thus the need to protect his or her property.
To conclude, The Wife of Bath can be mistaken, and women are
seen to have one goal
which is to have dominance over man but this is quite opposite.
The tale of the Wife of Bath
shows the various issues that fell on women during the Middle
Ages such as the notion that
women have a debt to men of sex that is the idea of love and sex
those days was that of buying
and sell which the Wife took advantage of and gained her
wealth.
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093

what does "this" refer to? Opposite of what?
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
but he does learn to respect her--you should note this here
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
DISA GAMBERA
20000000051093
I do not understand this phrase
Surname 4
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Wife of Bath’s Tale. NeCastro, Gerard, ed.
and trans. eChaucer: 2007.
http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer
http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer
Paper 1
In a paper of approximately 750 words (3 pages, double-spaced,
10 -12 point font), respond to one of the following prompts. My
page limits are minimums not maximums so you can write more
than 3 pages without any penalty. The topics below are pretty
dense and it would not surprise me if many of you find you need
four pages rather than three to fully complete your analysis.
This paper is due to Canvas on Friday February 28 by 11:59pm.
You may request an extension of 3-4 days by emailing me no
later than the morning of the 28th. Please indicate in your email
which date you plan to hand in the paper and your paper will

then be due on that day by 11:59pm. You do not need to give
me a specific reason for a later due date, you just need to make
the request for a specific date by email. There are no penalties
for handing in your paper late as long as you request the later
due date by the 28th. Any papers which arrive late without a
request made on email will be graded down for lateness. I will
not be locking the assignment on Canvas so you will be able to
submit your papers after the 28th with no problems.
PROMPTS (pick one)
1. The highest-ranking pilgrim of the group of tale-tellers, the
Knight, tells a tale about two knights who fall in love with a
young noblewoman. His tale, which is set in ancient times and
follows the conventions of a courtly romance, demonstrates his
education and reinforces his aristocratic status and values. We
could say that the Knight is building cultural capital by
appealing to the more noble and educated members of the
pilgrimage. But then the Miller, who is from a lower class,
interrupts him by declaring he can “quit” (match) the Knight’s
tale and proceeds to tell a fabliau (a bawdy tale) about John, a
carpenter, Alison, his wife, and two clerks who are in love with
her. In this paper, develop a thesis exploring how the Miller’s
tale matches or even surpasses the Knight’s tale and what this
suggests about Chaucer’s views on class and social hierarchy.
While the Miller is not trying to re-brand himself as noble, is he
criticizing the Knight’s assumptions about story-telling and
class superiority? Can a fabliau compete with a courtly romance
(the Knight’s style of story)?
2. Analyze two of Chaucer’s women characters as a way of
examining how he shows women competing with men for power
and influence. Given the disadvantages women faced in the
Middle Ages (very little access to education or jobs, frequently
prevented from owning or inheriting property), how do
Chaucer’s female characters manage to get ahead in the world?
How do they use techniques that can be associated with
successful business practices even if their modes of competing
with men are not the norm today? Why do you think Chaucer

does not condemn his women characters even when they are
unscrupulous? Be sure to quote specific passages from two tales
to support your ideas (this can include the Wife of Bath’s
Prologue).
3. Look at the Wife of Bath in her prologue and tale. She
defines herself as a professional wife and seems to take pride in
how well she is able to shake down her first three husbands. But
by husband #5 she sounds very different on the topic of
marriage. This topic asks you to consider how the Wife moves
from a business model based on maximum profits without
regard for the happiness of her “workers” (husbands 1-3) to a
different, more ethical business model based on shared
resources along with mutual cooperation and respect. Keep in
mind that husband #5 also needs to learn some lessons in
respect for his partner. The book he constantly reads to her
promotes a view of all women as evil and dangerous, and he
uses this book as a way of controlling her. By doing so, he
ignores the fact that she has given him all her land and money
(not perhaps her best business decision). It is only after their
fight over his book that he, too, changes. Once they negotiate an
agreement that allows for mutual respect and autonomy (along
with burning his book), all seems different. Is there an ethical
lesson for Business majors in this?
4. According to any moral standard of judgment, the Pardoner is
hypocritical, corrupt, and totally sleazy. However, Chaucer’s
depiction of him does not explicitly ask us to condemn him. His
sermon and tale are among the best-told stories on the
pilgrimage and he is clearly very good at what he does, namel y,
cheat people out of their money by making them fear damnation
for greed and other assorted sins. In this respect, the Pardoner
portrays himself as a successful businessman with an almost
foolproof pitch based on provoking guilt and shame in his
audience which then moves them to give him money in order to
avoid damnation. Yet the Pardoner also acknowledges two
things: first, that greed is his own personal sin and second, that
some people actually feel true repentance for their sins when

they hear him preach. But it turns out that the Pardoner is also
religious. As he finishes his story he tells the pilgrims “That’s
how I preach, sirs, where I go./ May Christ, who is our soul’s
physician,/Forgive your sins and grant remission (forgiveness)”
(top of p. 264). For a moment here the Pardoner acknowledges
the possibility of true forgiveness and redemption. He gestures
to an ethical universe ruled by Christ and from which he himself
seems to be excluded because he remains committed to his
career of swindling people through sermons and false relics.
Following these lines, the Pardoner then asks the pilgrims to
give him money in exchange for pardons. He even picks the
Host as the one who should go first “for he’s the deepest
steeped in sin” (line 608). Yet since the Pardoner has already
exposed his own corruption and greed to the pilgrims, he can
hardly expect them to give him money now. So what is he
really asking for? Analyze this ending scene (starting at the top
of page 264) and explain how it functions to connect the
Pardoner’s own dishonest practices with a larger social world
that allows such dishonesty to thrive and multiply not only in
the Pardoner but in other pilgrims and even the institution of
the medieval Church. Another way to put this would be to look
at how the last page and a half of the story as the place where
the Pardoner’s monetizing of salvation forces us to consider
how he is part of a larger world in the Canterbury Tales where
everything seems for sale.
5. Pick one or two stories which feature the circulation of a
non-monetary form of currency. Such currency could be in the
form of honor, or sex, or status, or even the act of story-telling
and such things are also accompanied by the circulation of
actual money in some tales. Women also circulate as a kind of
currency in some of the tales and it isn’t always through sex
(think of Emilia in the Knight’s Tale and her role in Theseus’
desire to control Arcite and Palamon). Explain what we learn
from such forms of circulation. If the circulation of money is
the model for these other forms of currency, what is being
bought and sold? What is Chaucer telling us about his own

society if both people and abstract values are exchanged like
money? Is Chaucer suggesting that the early stage capitalism we
see in many of these stories tend to infect how a culture views
itself? This is a big question and please resist the temptation to
generalize. Stay focused on the story or stories you choose and
the specific messages they have about currency and exchange in
a non-monetary arena. And if you write on more than one story,
you have to connect them logically. It can’t be some random
choice—you should be developing an idea that applies to both
tales. Some examples that might work for this topic: The 100
francs and the Merchant’s wife circulating between the
Merchant and Don John; Dorigen circulating between Arveragus
and Aurelius as part of a larger discourse on honor and status in
which men’s honor depends on the exchange of a woman
(though not necessarily via sex). The Reeve and the Summoner
as tale-tellers determined to use their stories to attack another
pilgrim’s profession/identity (the two are often the same thing
in Chaucer). There are many other possibilities. I’m happy to
make more suggestions if you email me.
6. A topic that you develop yourself and describe in an email to
me. If the prompts above are not quite what you want to write
about, come up with a short paragraph explaining what
pilgrim/tale you want to focus on. You can also adapt some of
the ideas I’ve suggested above to other tales and pilgrims. Or,
you could look at how one of the pilgrims projects their own
identity and values into their tale. If you’d like to work on this
kind of topic, I want you to email me with a description of
whom you plan to focus on and what your main point is going to
be.
SOME ADVICE FOR WRITING PAPERS ON LITERATURE
Do not waste time with a general introduction, instead start with
your argument or main idea. For example, you could say
something like this: “In this paper I will discuss how the Wife
of Bath's conception of marriage is based on mutual respect.”
Then analyze her description of her 5 marriages focusing on
details that seem significant for the points you want to make.

Keep in mind that your paper should present an interpretation of
a tale or cluster of tales. This means you'll be making an
assertion about a specific tale or character in a tale using the
prompt you've chosen as a guide for arriving at your
interpretation. Assertions are statements which present a
hypothesis about the meaning behind a particular tale or
character. Because it's a hypothesis you'll need evidence to
back up your assertion. In a paper like this, your data is the
story itself so you'll need to use brief quotations to back up
your ideas. You also want to make sure that parts of the story
do not contradict the point you're making. One strategy that can
be useful in dealing with stories that present more than one
point of view is to present an interpretation that seems
convincing but turns out not to be on further investigation. For
example, you could say that the Wife of Bath's description of
her first 3 marriages leads us to think that she sees marriage
only in terms of fighting with her husbands so that she can
squeeze more money out of them. However, her description of
her fifth marriage suggests a very different idea of marriage.
Though it also involves a fight, the Wife's description of her
marriage to Jenkin eventually presents a marriage grounded in
compromise, love, and respect. This philosophy is also backed
up by the ending of her actual tale. This idea is your thesis or
main hypothesis and you'll need to look over her prologue and
the ending of her tale in order to come up with evidence for
your ideas. Remember that a thesis cannot be just a description
of something that all readers would agree about. It needs to be a
statement that has the potential for debate or disagreement. The
key element here is that you have to be confident that the
evidence for your thesis is strong enough to overcome the
disagreement. So it's always a good idea to subject your thesis
to some testing. Try to think of counter-arguments for your idea
and look for evidence for them. If you find passages that
contradict your thesis, then it may be time to do some
rethinking.
If you’re feeling confused about any of this, please email me a

short description of what you plan to write on and what your
main idea is. I’ll be able to tell you very quickly whether you
have a workable thesis or not and that can save you a lot of
trouble! ([email protected])
GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR PAPERS FOR THIS CLASS
· Papers should be double-spaced (this means no more than 3
lines per inch), in a readable font no larger than 12 point, with
one-inch margins all around. Keep a copy of the file just in
case Canvas has a glitch and your paper does not appear.
· Include a title at the top of your paper. It should indicate what
your paper is about and not just give the title of the story you’re
writing on. Here’s an example: “Ethical Business Practices and
the Pardoner”
· When you’re quoting from Chaucer, give line numbers. Note
the proper order of punctuation marks:
Chaucer describes spring as the time when people like to go on
pilgrimages:
“Then people think of holy pilgrimages/ Pilgrims dream of
setting foot in far off/ lands, or
worship at distant shrines” (11-13).
[Note the parentheses with the line numbers and the period
come after the quotation marks.]
Be sure you show line breaks by using a slash at the end of each
line as you see above. Or if you’re quoting more than 3 lines at
a time, go ahead and indent your quotation 10 spaces and type
the lines as they appear on the page. It should look like this:
“Good fortune smiles on each one here
To ride with me, a pardoner,
Who can absolve you as we go.
Death strikes us when it will, you know!” (603-606)
· If you quote from any other text or translation, you’ll need to
provide full bibliographic information (and check with me first
anyway). If your argument draws in any substantial way on
secondary material you’ve read, you’ll need to signal this with a
footnote or parenthetical citation. If you’re not sure whether

you need to acknowledge a debt, go ahead and do it. If you’re
unclear about the form, or a doubtful case arises, see me or just
attach a little note explaining the problem.
· Computer spell-checkers and thesauruses may occasionally
help you catch a typo or remember a synonym, but should never
be relied on as authoritative: you will need to proofread with
your own eyes and consult a good dictionary.
· Chaucer’s pilgrim storytellers do not have proper names so
you should capitalize the profession of each pilgrim since that
functions as their name: the Knight, the Miller, the Shipman,
the Franklin, the Wife of Bath, etc . . . However, if you’re
writing about a profession in one of the tales, then do not
capitalize the category. For example, the miller in the Reeve’s
tale is not capitalized (but he does have a name, Symkin), and
the summoner in the Friar’s tale should also be spelled with a
small “s”. So, too, the Clerk is a pilgrim/narrator, but there are
also a number of stories which feature clerks (written with a
small “c”), and the same goes for the Merchant (pilgrim) and
merchants (characters in stories such as the Shipman’s Tale).

Surname 1Ayush SureshDisa GamberraBUS 3920050

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