Chaucers Canterbury Tales - Wife of Bath - Feminist or Anti-feminist?

In view of the fact that the Wife of Bath herself does look to be get down in the manner women ar accused of behaving by the anti-feminist writers, it is non impossible that the Wife of Baths Prologue could be considered a vehicle for the anti-feminist message at a lower place the guise of a seeming feminist exterior, since her confession is frequently self-incriminating (e.g. her give-and-take of her husbands, her tendency to swere and lyen) and demonstrates the truth of the claims made by the anti-feminists even while she is criticise them and making them look bad -- as in her claim that anti-feminist writers (specifically the clerks, i.e. learned scholars) are revenging themselves on women because of their let sexual impotence that prevents them from enjoying Venus werkes, which is quite acute psychological analysis on her part, and extremely persuasive, until one remembers that the clerks are right about her at least, if not about other wives. Her arguments in favor of unification, though demonstrating a hearty common sense, are overly suspect -- while it is true that marriage peoples the earth and replenishes existing stocks of virginitee, her own marriages do not seem to have produced any offspring, and while it whitethorn be bet ... to be wedded than to brinne, her marriages, despite her claim that in wyfhod I wol use myn instrument, do not seem to have prevented her from goon a-caterwawing and by inference engaging in fornication (I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun / But evere folwede myn appetit, / Al were he short, or long, or blak, or whit) good, which is after all what marriage was, according to her, supposed to prevent. Moreover, from the account she gives of her marriages, it becomes increasingly obvious t... ... usual kinfolk stereotypical anti-feminism is shown to be justified in at least her case, the fatuousness of the more virulent breed of anti-feminism is made clear by Jankins hold back of wikked wives, an erudite, if rathe r motley, collection of what are mostly homicidally-inclined females (Clytemnestra, Livilla etc.) that he seems to regard, or at least claim to regard, as the norm. As a result, the Wife of Baths Prologue should not be dismissed simply as merely an attack on women and married life there is much more ambiguity involved, and it would be inadvisable to ignore the fact that it is primarily a brilliant character-study of an item-by-item rather than a didactical anti-feminist treatise in disguise. Work CitedChaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed Mack, Maynard et al. W. W. Norton and Co. New York, NY. 1992.