Final answer:
The Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales' considers herself an expert on marriage. Her narrative subverts the gender norms of her time by exhibiting uncommon assertiveness and autonomy regarding marital relations, rather than typical domestic duties. The correct option is A.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Wife of Bath, a character from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, considers herself an expert on the subject of marriage. Throughout her prologue and tale, she discusses her experiences with her five different husbands and her views on sovereignty in marriage. While middle-class women of her time traditionally did not work for wages and were expected to tend to the home, the Wife of Bath differs from the norm in her unabashed approach to marital life. Her expertise does not lie in childbirth, raising children, or domestic tasks such as cooking and cleaning, but rather in the intricacies and governance within the institution of marriage itself.
During the historical period in which the Wife of Bath would have lived, women typically performed roles that aligned with domestic duties and child-rearing, often cultivating good manners in their children and husbands. This was part of the social expectation that dictated the private sphere as the woman's domain—a concept reinforced by the Cult of Domesticity which celebrated the ideal of the moral, domestically-skilled wife and mother. Despite these gender norms where women's authority was predominantly recognized in the home, the Wife of Bath prides herself on her ability to navigate and manipulate marital relationships to her advantage.
In contrast with her contemporary counterparts, the Wife of Bath's narrative in The Canterbury Tales subverts these norms by expressing a woman's perspective on marriage that was uncommonly assertive for the era and asserting a level of autonomy and expertise in managing her marital relations.