The Role of The Wife of Bath as a Twentieth Century Figure

According to popular culture, specifically through the use of such magazines as Glamour and Cosmopolitan, the woman of the twentieth century can still be defined by her sexual identity, although perhaps in different terms than were used when Chaucer first wrote the Canterbury Tales. "Today's woman" (to coin the popular culture term) is one who is powerful, and equal in all ways to her sexual mate, "today's man." She works outside the home, pursuing an …

…which dwarfs all the others by comparison. Chaucer's aim in writing this prologue appears to have been the presentation of a character so strong, she approached a force of nature, rather than an attack on women and their conduct in married life. That she falls in line easily with the female empowerment notions of the twentieth century allows us an easier reading of a woman caught in the gender battle almost seven hundred years ago.