Women: Controversial

After I finished reading the prologue I could only think of two things. The first was how “This is a long preamble of a tale!"” (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, 831). The prologue is a tale in its self and makes me wonder why Chaucer decided to call this a prologue and not a tale. I was also impressed at how Chaucer gave women such an important role in this section. During the time period women who acted in such an unfaithful way were not respected. The prologue gives women the power over men with a certain ambiguity. As I mentioned in my previous blog the reason why Chaucer might have done this is to attract readers. Because he creates a controversial text people will feel attracted to reading it. He also relates to a set of audiences that includes gender and class.