Alisoun's Struggling Mind in The Text and Subtext of Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale"

When one reads "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," one needs to pay special attention to Chaucer as a writing authority and as a male writer as well, to understand his twofold stance toward woman in his time: positive and negative attitudes in the characterizing of the Wife. The characterization of the Wife is, therefore, not all together negative. Modern readers could not help but recognize her warm, lovely personality. The empathy Chaucer uses to affect the audience has to do with the Wife’s rhetorical power and her actions deriving from self-defense and self-preservation. As a female character, however, she is used to warn women against what women should not be. Chaucer presents Alisoun with an antifeminist stance interwoven throughout the "Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale," for a reason: to direct our attention to the problem of it. Alisoun’s speech about women as a whole summarizes Chaucer’s dual stance on antifeminist literature. We also need to note that while the Wife criticizes men’s misogyny, she is unaware that the observations she takes for granted to argue against are also socially prejudiced against women. As a woman brought up to be culturally accustomed to such notions of women, she makes a confession revealing her guilt for some of the actions, which is why she depicts herself as a mean and cruel person instead of giving the audience an innocent picture of herself. This is, in Chaucer's adroit hand, to purge her sins and mollify the guilt she feels deep inside. Such self-portrayal is rather jarring to the modern reader - though it must have been amusing to Chaucer's audience -, which in turn underscores her warm personality. But, finally, what reveals the real intention of Chaucer is that her romance about a knight and a hag shows the fact that Chaucer has deep sympathy both for her and for women as a whole.