Geoffrey Chaucer s The Wife Of Bath - 2255 Words

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath Prologue, we are told the story of the wife of bath Alyson and her many marriages. The role of the woman in this time period was to follow what her husband’s rules, and to obey the men in her life since a woman was considered incapable of running her own life and making decisions. When Alyson married her first husband, she was only twelve years old by the time she married her last husband she was forty. Although it was frowned upon for a woman to remarry Alyson did not see a problem with this since she was not disobeying the bible but following a section that she believed approved of the lifestyle she has had throughout the years. When Alyson first got married she was the person that had to be taken†¦show more content†¦Although they were much older than her and had much more money and power in society then she did Alyson was able to manipulate these men and make them do exactly what she wanted. She would use mind games and sex to get her way and her husbands, although they seemed to realise what she was doing, would allow for this to happen. Alyson would accuse her husbands of being unfaithful and would withhold sex from them unless they would give her money or do something that she wanted them to do. Because of the hold that she had on these men, when they all died they left her large sums on money. Soon Alyson became extremely rich and became the exact person she used to be able to manipulate. As her life continued and she married younger men the tables turned for Alyson. By the time she met her final husband, who was much younger then she was, she was unable to control him the way she was able to control the men that came before him. Since he was young he did not follow everything she said, he would want to live life in the way he believed he should and wanted Alyson to fund his ways of living. It is as though Alyson went from being the trophy wife that her older husbands once saw, to being a stere otypical cougar that this young man thought he would be able to control. Luckily for Alyson she knew what she deserved and she was not willing to let someone else control her and her ways, no matter how sexually attracted to them she was. Although Alyson does not