Post 7

Romantic love first developed during the aristocratic courts simply because everyone loves a good love story, regardless if the story is fictional or not; courtly love is described by Britannica as “the complex product of numerous factors- social, erotic, religious and philosophical. Courtship is a completely different experience compared the alternative of two people who are just dating; typically during medieval time periods a man would court a female (regardless of his economic status) as a way of proving his sole commitment to her, with the intent of marriage later in the future; it was more of a mental or spiritual connection rather than one built off of physical attraction, it allows you to have a deeper connection with someone.

The Wife of Bath didn’t have a romantic aspect to the tale. The prologue for the main character was longer than the story itself, romanticism wasn’t a part of any aspect of the tale; the wife only truly loved one of her husbands, then rest were just a means of sexual pleasure and survival. Once one of her husbands died, she was quick to move on to the next financial source.