Question

About 100 lines into the tale, (beginning with the lines: Some said that women all loved best riches, /Some said, fair fame, and some said, prettiness;) the Wife of Bath digresses from the story. Why does she stray from her tale at this point? Group of answer choices The Wife of Bath is old and easily distracted. The Wife of Bath is more interested in the question of what women want than in the plot of the story The Wife of Bath thinks the story of Midas is more entertaining than the story she is telling. The Wife of Bath is more interested in proving women are unable to keep secrets than in the plot of her tale.

Answer 1

The correct answer is: The Wife of Bath is more interested in the question of what women want than in the plot of the story.

Step-by-step explanation:

Thematically speaking, the tale of the Wife of Bath (as well as her role throughout the Canterbury Tales) is mainly concerned with the question of what women want, the answer to which seems to be, in the Wife's own words, "sovereignty" over their husbands and lovers, a reversal of the typical patriarchal social order in many Western societies, particularly in Chaucer's lifetime, wherein wives were supposed to obey their husbands in all things and leave the decision-making to them. We know this is the central underlying theme of the Wife of Bath's Tale because, in addition to its being the moral of the story of the knight and the old hag, Chaucer devotes a large part of the Wife's prologue to the stories of how she was able to control her five former husbands.