Classroom Conversations and new discoveries of Fifty Shades

Hello Everyone,

While sitting in my English Lit class a few days ago, we began reading The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, and we began discussing the Wife of Bath's Tale. To give a brief summary of the tale, The Wife of Bath, a woman who can be seen as a feminist for the time period tells a tale of, a knight who rapes a maiden. After raping this maiden, he is put on trial, but instead of being judged by king Arthur and the knights of the round table, he is judged my Queen Guinevere and the ladies of the court. During the trial, they tell him he must find out what women really want in one years time otherwise, he would be killed. So he sets out to find what women truly want only to discover that women want different things on the surface. Shortly after he meets an old hag, who tells him she has the answer of what women really want and she will tell him, if he promises to do as she says. He agrees and the answer she gives him is, women want to be in control. They want to be in a relationship with a man who will relinquish control to them, a man who will allow them to make decisions and act upon those decisions. The knight returns to the court and the ladies all agree that he is correct. The hag tells him, that since she helped him and she was correct, he must now marry her. He keeps his word and agrees. She asks him shortly after they are wed, if he wants her to be beautiful by day and ugly at night or to be beautiful during the day and ugly at night. He answers the question simply telling to do so what she felt was right, and she give him both beauty by day and night. Therefore making the point, if you give a woman the control, she will always make her man happy. This directly linked to Fifty Shades for me, and oddly enough, my professor made the same connection. In the Fifty Shades Trilogy  the relationship between Christian and Anna works simply because the control isn't solely his. She has the control and when she isn't calling the shots, she is choosing to do what she feels she should do, versus what she is told to. On many occasions, she is makes him question his own judgement by doing what she felt best. She is the exception in every way because every other woman he spent remotely any of his time on, was the rule and followed the rules, whether they were correct or not. In my opinion, The Wife of Bath's Tale isn't completely accurate by she isn't completely wrong either. I believe that woman want a strong man, a confident man, a mature man, who knows how to do his job and be a man. However they want said, strong, confident, mature man to know that some situations are better handled with a woman's touch. Anyone agree or disagree? Comment below. :-)

XOXO