NOTE: The "Anonymous" Group is up again! But remember, if you miss the questions for your group's day, you can always answer later ones to make up (though I prefer you try to answer your group's questions).
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: Why do you think The Wife of Bath chooses to tell a story of King Arthur's time? She seems like the last person to tell a story of the "good old days," and the audience naturally expects a risque tale like "The Miller's Tale." Why might the tale--or its setting--be ideally suited to her purpose?
Q2: How do we know the Wife's intention, and the question at the heart of her tale ("What is the thing that women most desire?") is satirical? Why might she be trying to satirize by sending a knight on a quest to discover what all women want?
Q3: Related to Q2, the answer to the question is, "A woman wants the self-same sovereignty/Over her husband as over her lover" (286). In a sense, this sounds a lot like the Wife's catty claim that "Lies, tears, and spinning are the things God gives/By nature to a woman" (269). Is this meant to affirm the misogyny of Chaucer's age, or can it be read more charitably/subversively?
Q4: Why does the Old Woman at the end of the Tale sound uncannily like The Wife of Bath herself? How might at least one of her arguments echo what the Wife, herself, said in the Prologue?
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