The wife of bath

The object of the present text is to explain the strategy that the poet uses to characterise the wife of bath. It is irony, that is figures of speech according to say something to mean its opposite. 

The writer begins the characterization with explaining her reputation. Moreover, he refers to woman the adjective “worthy”, that means “respectable”. After that the poet explains her ability to making clothes and underlined it with the expression “she bettered those of Ypres and of Ghent”. As a consequence, the reader with reading the first line has a good image of woman. However, in the second line the writer underlines the physical problem of woman. Indeed, she is deaf and it is connoted by the alliteration of sounds “w”. 

The poet continues the characterization of woman with describing her behaviour. The writer tells that if someone dares to precede her to the offertory, she becomes furious. The poet in these lines wants to convey the woman’s aggressivity and highlights it with the expression “to be quite put out of charity” and the alliteration of sounds “d”. The intelligent reader begins to re-evaluate the woman. 

In the following lines the writer presents how the woman gets dressed. Her clothes are expensive and eye-catching, thus the reader understands that the woman wants to be noticed. It is a bad quality to associate to woman in middle age, indeed the women must be shy and humble in middle age. In addition, the poet uses the colour red to refer to passion, another bad concept in middle age, because the women must be chast.

After that the writer gives some information of her face. She is handsome and the poet gets again the using of colour red, that underlines the passion of woman, so it gives strength to her unrespectable image. Moreover, she gets married 5 times apart from other company in the youth, that reminds to passion. Indeed, the description of face creates the contrast with 24 line, where the writer explains her ugly feature.

Then the poet describes her posture. It conveys her confidence, indeed she sits high on his horse. However, her dress makes the reader understand that she is not confident, because her body is completely covered. 

Eventually, the poet makes fun of the woman, just using an ironic tone to conveys her ability in love, borned after the marriages. 

The poet with this text wants to explains the character without stereotype and uses the ironic tone to do it.