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Outline For The Wife Of Bath

Decent Essays

I. Introductory Paragraph -In the time of Chaucer, people had very patriarchal ideas about marriage and women. -They thought that women who remarried so many times were ‘wicked.’ -People believed that men should be in control of the relationship and women should be held in subordination to their husbands. -‘The Wife of Bath’ challenges those ideas. -Chaucer uses support from the bible and logic to make his point. Thesis: Through the Wife of Bath, in both her Prologue and her Tale, Chaucer introduces the modern-day notion that women are entitled to remarry and fulfill their intimate desires and to demand that their wants and unique wisdom be respected by men.

II. Body Paragraph # 1 Subthesis: In “The Wife of Bath,” Alison argues …show more content…

Claim Sentence: The bible makes no mention of the number of marriages a person could have. 1. In fact, she had “never…heard a designation of the number.” 2. What IS the correct number of marriages? No one has defined it in the bible. B. Claim Sentence: If people are made to procreate, then they should be able to marry or remarry. 1. She mentions that “God expressly instructed us to increase and multiply.” 2. Women have to marry in order to have more children. C. Claim Sentence: If biblical men were allowed to have more than one wife, women should be allowed to have more than one husband. 1. “No man who lives in this world now has so many.” 2. Why can’t women have more than one spouse like the men in the bible, such as Solomon? D. Claim Sentence: There is nowhere in the bible that commands chastity-therefore, it’s a women’s choice whether to marry or not. 1. She claims that God “left it to our own judgment.” 2. Women can choose if they want to remain chaste or not, E. Claim Sentence: If everyone were to stop having children and remain celibate, then new virgins wouldn’t even be born. 1. “if no seed were sown, from where then should virgins spring?” 2. Not everyone has to remain chaste. If they did, then there wouldn’t be anyone

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