Compare and contrast the ways in which Atwood in the Handmaids tale and Chaucer in the Wife of Baths Tale explore status in society.
Status: Subjugation of women
Dominance over women in Handmaids tale and dominance over men in The Wife of Baths Tale.
The use of clothing: and the connotations and denotations of them. "Everything except the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood, which defines us." The wife of bath wears red to connotes passion, lust and desirability, however Offred is forced to wear red connoting her fruitfulness.
"black, for the commander, blue, for the commanders wife, and the one assigned to me which is red": Connoting her fruitfulness and that she is a guilty women because she is committing adultery however the wife knows.
"Still, it was a message, and it was in writing, forbidden by that very fact" 62
"Waste not, want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?" the use of the auxiliary verb: the cliche that she is comparing herself too. She longs to be free and to be loved. She wants her husband and her daughter back. She is fertile and she is needed by the society of Gilead. She is the object not the subject, she is not being wasted because her fertility is being used to make wealthier families happy.
The colonies where the unwomen go: the use of the coinage it is a made up word used by.
The naming's used the possessive preposition, compounding of the two words connoting possessiveness and owning of an object.
Wife of Bath: She has gone against society by being being so upfront and out there.
She has gone against the patriarchal society of that time
She talks about her private and sexual desires which women of the 14th century would not have done.
The language The Wife uses is not appropriate "I mad hem swinke in bed"
She is talking to a bunch of men, only one women is present and she is a nun and therefore, she is not going to interested in The Wife's prologue and tale due to its explicitness. "Quonian"
Sewing and that she was in a patriarchal society
Religion to boast, used to her advantage, doesn't conform to society and what society asks of her.
In the tale the queen is domineering over the king. Women desire to be the person who is in control in the marriage they require the maistree.
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