marriage in canterbury tales
Marriage is looked at by most of societies in the world as a noble unity of one man and one woman that are sworn to be devoted to each other until death comes between them. Chaucer uses his epic work, The Canterbury Tales, to illustrate many of the imperfections within the institution of marriage. This is not as true for the majority of the characters that tell tales and the characters that are brought to life through those tales in this classic composition of literature. ... Although this set of tales was written by only one author, a plethora of ideas and comments are forwarded by the characters on many different subjects. Chaucer, therefore, uses these methods to forward many ideas into society about the bond of marriage and the problems and meanings it has taken on in his time. ... The Wife of Bath uses her ideas to gain a certain mystique that comes with the controversial things that she says in front of her companions on the pilgrimage to Canterbury. ... These thoughts in the head of the Wife of Bath may be caused by her experience of marriage and love in her life. ... She is described as such in the prologue to the tales, “A worthy woman all her life, what’s more / She’d had five husbands, all at the church door, / Apart from other company in youth;” (Chaucer The Prologue 18 LL 469-472). ... To save his life, he must promise marriage to an old woman that claims to know the answer to the Queen’s question of what women want most. ... The Knight, after being saved by the old woman, and thus being forced to fulfill his promise of marriage, screams these words, “My love? ... This fixation with personal appearance is common throughout The Canterbury Tales. Beauty is often linked in many tales of the present as the happy or right way of the world.