Should Prostitution Be Prohibited Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Should Prostitution Be Prohibited - Essay Example Furthermore, it promotes the growth of an immorally-based community. Based on the above underpinning evidence, it is justifiable to strongly say that prostitution ought to be prohibited in our society. Prohibition of prostitution will reduce the high number of incidences of adultery. Prostitution gives men the opportunity to cheat on their girlfriends and wives in an easy. Therefore, if it is prohibited cheating men will suffer extremely consequences since the law will be on their toes. As a result, the number of men who take advantage of prostitutes, wives, or girlfriend will decrease dramatically. Indeed, prostitution ought to be prohibited since it gives rise to many problems in relationships and marriage as well as pave way for many other crimes. Prohibition of prostitution will create a friendly environment for all; especially the children. This is because prostitution makes it hard to explain to children the difference between money and sex, and love and sex since it make them believe that money is more worthy than self-esteem and love. Prostitution immensely affects the morale of a society or community. This is because it makes such a society ignore and become immune to graphicness of sexual images that are thrown in its members faces daily. As a result, members of a society hardly understand the significance of private and personal relationships. In fact, prostitution lowers women dignity since it makes them send the message to men that it is alright to be treated like sexual objects. Connectively, many women are subject to wrath of sexual pressure in order to measure up to hookers. Prostitution, breaking up of ethical and social barriers that many women have worked on in order to reduce sexual harassment occurs. Prohibition of prostitution will help reduce the mentality harbored by many men that women can easily be bought and sold like goods or services. Prohibition of prostitution will help avoid turning sex into a full-blown business. Prostitution has a high likelihood of making sexual services commercial; hence, making them likes any other consumer and entertainment goods. For instance, there many casinos, in Australia where prostitution is legal, which deal with sexual favor chips that, are cashed in at various local brothels (Weitzer 67). Commercialization of sex will be eliminated upon prohibition of prostitution. Prohibition of prostitution will also reduce the large number of crimes rates that are sky-rocketing. According to Weitzer (87), most prostitutes sell their bodies since they are in dire need of money to purchase illegal drugs. In connection to this, prohibition of prostitution will cut down the rate of illegal drug trafficking. Governments that have legalized prostitution on ly serve to promote street or underground prostitution to avoid paying taxes that these governments charge. These prostitutes feel fail to pay taxes since they believe that they did all the work alone; therefore, they should reap their profits and benefits alone. This, in turn, increases the number of crime and abuse against hookers since it put quite a number of them on the streets. Prohibition of prostitution will further will reduce or eliminate the number of advertisements for sexual favors that pop up on every street; even in places that families and parents strongly oppose them to be. As a result, incidences of children developing immune to the promiscuity of their society and

U.S. Intervention within the Nicaragua Contra War Essay

U.S. Intervention within the Nicaragua Contra War - Essay Example The CIA was responsible for U.S. operations involving the contras. Aid was later done covertly under the Reagan administration. Although many Nicaraguans also opposed the Sandinistas, few of them supported the contras because they focused on civilian targets and their brutality raised condemnation among the population and human rights groups (Horton 1998). The first contra groups such as the MILPAS were peasant militias formed by former Sandinista supporters. Formed in Honduras as the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), it was headed by Enrique Bermudez, a former National Guard colonel and Jaime Irving Steidel, a Honduran-born field commander. Steidel was later replaced by Oscar Sobalvarro. In 1983, a political directorate was created under Adolfo Calero, a businessman and anti-Sandinista politician (Brown 2001). The creation of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and the Sandino Revolutionary Front headed by Eden Pastora in 1982 in Costa Rica established a second front. The ARDE was composed mainly of Sandinista dissidents and those who overthrew Somoza. They were primarily opposed to the increasing Cuban influence in the Managuan government. Although Pastora clearly stated his ideological difference from the FDN, he nevertheless called his campaign as the â€Å"southern front† to emphasise a common campaign against the Sandinistas (Brown 2001). Amerindian tribes such as the Misurasata, Sumo and Rama created a third front in 1981 against what they considered the Sandinistas’ genocide campaign against them. These tribes had a number of grievances against the Sandinista regime including: exploitive natural resource policies which deprived ethnic groups access to their ancestral lands and their subsistence activities; arrest and execution of the majority of Misurasata leaders; the bombing and occupation of more than half of Miskto and Sumu villages; the forced conscription of young men into the army; the eviction and relocation of 100,000

Network Simulation With OPNET Modeler

Network Simulation With OPNET Modeler M.KAMRAN USMANI ABSTRACT Routing protocol is the key for the quality of modern communication network. EIGRP, OSPF and RIP are the dynamic routing protocols being used in the practical networks to propagate network topology information to the neighboring routers. There have been a large number of static and dynamic routing protocols available but choice of the right protocol for routing is dependent on many parameters critical being network convergence time, scalability, memory and CPU requirements, security and bandwidth requirement etc. This Assignment uses OPNET simulation tool to analyze the performance of RIP and EIGRP commonly used in IP network. Initially We have Following Network. By Examining the Network we figure out that Red line indicating the Data Rate of 44.736 Mbps between network components and only Network connection between London Office and Portsmouth office has Data Rate of 64 Kbps. The Traffic Flow between London Office and Bristol_corporate is IP_Traffic Flow having following chracteristics      RIP Protocol Over Netwrok: Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a distance vector dynamic routing protocol that employs the hop count as a routing metric. RIP is implemented on top of the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as its transport protocol. It is assigned the reserved port number 520. RIP prevents routing loops by implementing a limit on the number of hops allowed in a path from the source to a destination. The maximum number of permitted hops is 15. Hence a hop count of 16 is considered an infinite distance. This hop number limits the size of networks that RIP may support. RIP selects paths that have the smallest hop counts. However, the path may be the slowest in the network. RIP is simple and efficient in small networks. First we have to run RIP routing protocol in the network for a simulation period of 600 seconds with selecting following criteria Path Selection Time Taken for routing convergence Protocol Overhead Path Selection For path selection we get following result with RIP protocol The IP traffic Flow is from London to Bristol Corporate and due to Low Data rate between London to Portsmouth path as compare to London to Oxford path the RIP protocol follows maximum the low Data rate path which is London Office to Portsmouth, and graph displays data throughput for the links London to Portsmouth and Portsmouth to Bristol. Time Taken for routing convergence RIP is distance vector routing protocols, announces its routes in an unsynchronized and unacknowledged manner. This can lead to convergence problems. The graph is showing the time taken for routing convergence of RIP. The convergence time is high 6.975 sec that’s mean routers are finding it difficult to exchange state information. Protocol Overhead RIP is a â€Å"distance vector† based protocol selects the best routing path based on a distance metric (the distance) and an interface (the vector) , RIP protocols evaluate the best path based on distance, which can be measured in terms of hops or a combination of metrics calculated to represent a distance value. In this exercise RIP selects London to Portsmouth link and maximum utilization occurs . The utilisation and convergence data suggests there is some queuing and blocking on the link. For example, the utilisation for the London to Portsmouth link is high i.e 84.629 therefore suggesting the link is suffering from over-utilisation. Queuing/Delay In the point to point queuing graph , the London to Portsmouth Link contains queuing delay on average 3.6032 sec , therefore suggesting there is traffic blocking or queuing on the link. The link between London to Portsmouth uses a DS0 (Blue) cable with a data rate of 64Kbps compared to the other links in the network that use a DS3 cable (Red) with a data rate of 44.736Mbps; therefore the combination of the over-utilisation of the London to Portsmouth link with the low data rate cable (DS0) has caused traffic queuing or blocking to occur. -Excersise -2 - EIGRP Protocol Over Netwrok: Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol. It is based on a new route calculation algorithm called the Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL). It has features of both distance vector and link state protocols. EIGRP metrics are based on reliability, MTU, delay, load, and bandwidth. Delay and bandwidth are the basic parameters for calculating metrics First we have to run EIGRP routing protocol in the network for a simulation period of 600 seconds with selecting following criteria Path Selection Time Taken for routing convergence Protocol Overhead Path Selection For path selection we get following result with EIGRP protocol The IP traffic Flow is from London to Bristol Corporate but as contrast with RIP which selected low data rate path, EIGRP select the path from London to Oxford , Oxford to Birmingham , and Birmingham to Bristol path to achieve the traffic Flow. Time Taken for routing convergence EIGRP is more efficient as compared to RIP , Graphs are showing the convergence duration very fast 0.0074427 Sec as Compared to RIP which was 6.975 Sec with same scenario. Protocol Overhead As Compared to RIP , No over utilisation occurs in EIGRP , Utilisation graphs shown above clearly that the utilisation distributed evenly over path with value for the London to Oxford is 5.5606 , Oxford to Birmingham is 5.5783 and Birmingham to Bristol is 5.5662 EIGRP performs better in terms of network convergence, routing traffic, and Ethernet delay. EIGRP has the characteristics of both distance vector and link state protocols, has improved network convergence, reduced routing protocol traffic, and less CPU and RAM utilization compared to RIP protocol. EIGRP has very low usage of network resources during normal operation since only hello packets are transmitted. When a routing table changes, its convergence time is short and it reduces bandwidth utilization -Excersise -3 - FAILURE SCENARIO We introduced a link Failure Scenario between Bristol corporate and Porstmouth Office after 100 Seconds and its recovery at 200 Seconds and run the RIP and EIGRP protocol over network. Following are our Observations with side by side comparison of RIP and EIGRP Utilization In the RIP protocol the link failure after 100 sec prevented the traffic to flow; therefore when the link recovered after 200 sec a huge amount of traffic was bottlenecked on the link causing the utilisation of the London to Portsmouth to suddenly increase. Also it can be observed that during the time of the failure the RIP protocol began to reroute the traffic over the London to Oxford, Oxford to Birmingham, and Birmingham to Bristol links before the link recovered the graph is showing this small utilization on the links. In the EIGRP Protocol, link failure event did not affect the utilisation of the EIGRP protocol because the link was not used in the routing path; The EIGRP did not use the link Portsmouth to Bristol in its path selection, so the performance of the network will be barely affected by the failure ; hence the utilisation values doesn’t change Convergence In RIP The Convergence Duration becomes much higher as compare to old scenario before Failure , it was 6.975 before and 19.409 now , this is because routers updates their routing tables when failure occurred and recovered it takes more time period , In Contrast with EIGRP protocol the Convergence Duration becomes 0.012273 , much less than RIP this is because EIGRP only update the link failure routing table not the whole network , So EIGRP provides much efficient and faster way to achieve convergence. Time Delay of Protocol More IP packets drops in RIP as compared to EIGRP because of the failure in link of the path which RIP follows , and as contrast less IP packets drops in EIGRP because it does not follow the path of failure link. -Excersise -4 - Consider the given Network merging with another network, Picture shown below the merging Network The IP Traffic flows sending traffic from London Office to three destination North-wales Plant, Birmingham Plant and Oxford Office. We defined IP Traffic according to given table. A New Link DS_1 ( Black Line in Picture ) introduced which connects North-wales Plant to London Office via The New Manchester Office. We runs RIP as routing Protocol which gives us Following observations: Utilization From Graph it is clearly showing that utilisation is high for London office to Manchester office and Manchester Office to North Wales Both are approximately 97 % utilisation which is overutilization and cause serious problems to the network. For London to oxford office and Oxford to Birmingham Plant the utilisation is nearly 13% and 6% this is because of link using high data rate cable DS3 where we get the low utilisation and low data rate comparatively where we get lower data rate cable. DS1 cable has data rate of 1.5Mbps which DS3 has 44.736 Mbps With this Observation , we come to know that one possible solution is using EIGRP protocol , as EIGRP protocol solve the over utilisation problem from our network. Lets see by running the EIGRP protocols and compare the result of it with RIP The EIGRP protocol solves the Over utilization problem we have faced in RIP protocol and the resultant graph and comparison is showing this clearly with evenly distributed utilization over selected path by EIGRP. CONCLUSIONS : It can be seen that EIGRP compared to RIP performs better in terms of network convergence activity and Routing protocol traffic. EIGRP has the characteristics of both distance vector and link state protocols, has improved network convergence, reduced routing protocol traffic, and less CPU and RAM utilization compared to RIP References: Performance Analysis of RIP, EIGRP, and OSPF using OPNET By Don Xu and Ljiljana TrajkoviĆ¡ Dynamic Routing Protocol Implementation Decision between EIGRP, OSPF and RIP Based on Technical Background Using OPNET Modeller By Thornier, S.G.

Radio in the New Age Essay -- Writing Cyberculture Technology Essays

Radio in the New Age The essay is a popular form for writers to express their ideas. It can be found in many sources: newspapers, magazines, and journals. The essay is no longer limited to these mediums, and as communication technology develops, the essay has extended into new arenas. What was once an exclusively paper-and-ink technology is now available over the airwaves and through the phone lines. The essay has found its way to new formats through the radio and internet. We were once readers, but have now become listeners and spectators through the cyberculture revolution. The term "cyberspace" was invented by writer William Gibson to describe the interconnection of society and its technology (Tribble 162). Cyberculture implies a computer-literate segment of society. Our American culture relies heavily on the automobile industry, fast food, instant communication, and the movie industry, yet not all of these aspects of our culture make up cyberspace. Cyberculture narrows its definition to cover only those aspects of technology that instantly connect person to person or person to machine via other machines. This includes telephone, satellite, television, radio, and internet systems and allows us to uplink, download, tune in, channel surf, surf the web, dial up, and ring nearly anything, anywhere, and anyone at anytime. Steven Johnson, in his article "Links", considers two attitudes toward interactions with this technology. Comparing channel surfing to web surfing, Johnson views TV surfing as a passive act requiring only that the viewer accept what is bei ng shown. Web surfing, however, is a n interactive process that allows for inquiries and searches along a line of interest (Johnson 196-7). Similar to TV viewing, listenin... ..., a print version of the broadcast, ready for purchase or to download. The sound quality is significantly worse than the original, and sounds like the radio has de-evolved fifty years. Our advances in technology have, unpredictably, given us a sound experience of the radio medium when it was king of the airwaves. Our new is old again. Works Cited Birkerts, Sven. "Into the Electronic Millennium." Writing Material. Ed. Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman Publishers, 2003: 62-73. Johnson, Steven. "Links." Writing Material. Ed. Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman Publishers, 2003: 195-212. Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek, ed. Writing Material. New York: Longman Publishers, 2003. National Public Radio. www.npr.org/ This American Life. www.thislife.org/ All Songs Considered. www.npr.org/programs/asc/index.html

Personal Learning Managemet Essay

Abstract Kindler, E.; Krivy, I. (2011). Object-Oriented Simulation of systems with sophisticated control. International Journal of General Systems. pp. 313–343 Haas, J. (n.d.). Modular programming. Retrieved from http://www.about.com Personal Learning Management As course assignments, assigned reading, assigned and interest-based research, and other learning activities are completed, the learner may recognize the economic value of what has been learned. Knowledge gained through learning can be forgotten if concepts are not reviewed on a regular basis. It is possible to design an application to record high economic value learning tasks and insights that will allow for periodic review. This application will help solve the issue of knowledge being forgotten by allowing the information and concepts to be kept in front of the individual for regular review. The application that must be programmed will be a simple user friendly app that will allow the user to see and record progress over a given class which will give the user the ability to not only see what has been done but to have it brought back to the forefront of what they already went over in course assignments, reading and researches for a particular class. So in essence the program will help each student record each task and can, ever so many days allow the student to review what they covered and done to keep the information fresh. The information that we will be recording is assignments for the course, any assigned reading for the course, research both assigned and interest-based, and other learning activities. By getting this information from the user the program will store this information and recall it to the user on a time and scheduled output as well as show what still needs to be done in the course. The first step in creating such a program is that we need to identify the desired results we are looking for in this program which is to help the user retain course information by helping them review the material often. Next we will design the program and this will start by having the program gather the information required from the user and how often the user wants this information brought back up either every week or every 3 days. This step will be more complex as the developing of the application continues. Once we have step-by-step for designing the program to solve the problem stated in the beginning we will began to code the program. This is when we decide which programming language we will use such as C#, C ++ and more to deliver the best solution. After we program the application we will test the program to ensure that it is free of errors and that it does indeed solve the given problem. This is known as the programming development cycle which means at any given point in this cycle we may have revisit a particular step to ensure that we get the results that we need. This program will be developed as an object-oriented approach which is according to Kindler, E.; Krivy, I. (2011) â€Å"a programming paradigm that represents concepts as â€Å"objects† that have data fields (attributes that describe the object) and associated procedures known as methods. Objects, which are usually instances of classes, are used to interact with one another to design applications and computer programs.† We are taking this approach with a modular approach due to the complexity of the program and want to make many objects that will have methods and classes with in the object. We fill this is the best way to approach the problem with various strings and arrays so that our coding will not be confusing and easy to troubleshoot should we run into any issues. Modular programming emphasizes separating the functionality of a program into independent, interchangeable modules, such that each contains everything necessary to execute only one aspect of the desired functionality. (Haas, n.d.) This will improve maintainability by enforcing logical boundaries between components. The modular design will allow us to build into one executable file per module which also allows us to reduce the size of future patches for only the module that needs it. In conclusion we have discussed the problem of users forgetting knowledge gained through learning and will be creating a program that will keep the information fresh and allow periodic review of course assignments, assigned reading, assigned and interest-based research, and other learning activities. Our approach and the necessary steps outlined until the final test has been done and the application is functional.

How are gender relationships depicted in Chaucers “Wife of Bath”?

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale is one of the twenty-four stories which make up The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer towards the end of the 14th century. The premise for The Tales is that of a group of pilgrims each telling stories in order to win the prize of a free meal, the primary narrator is a naà ¯ve pilgrim who is not described. The Canterbury Tales is written in Middle English, which bears a close visual resemblance to the English written and spoken today. The Tales were unfinished as Chaucer died before their completion and the order of the stories has been disputed due to the fragmented nature of his work. This essay will be looking at gender relationships in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and in medieval Literature as a whole. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath is a middle-aged woman from the west country, who strides into The Canterbury Tales on a large horse with her spurs jangling and riding in the fashion of a man rather than the side saddle that was typical of women, ready to assert herself in the company of pilgrims made almost entirely of men. Rich and elaborate in design, the Wife’s clothes reek of extravagance, her stockings â€Å"weren of fyn scarlet reede† and â€Å"on hir feet a paire of spores sharpe† show how wealthy she has become from her conquests of men. In the General Prologue where each of the characters is described in terms of their profession she is clearly a ‘professional wife’ who has travelled more than almost all of the other pilgrims making her a bold, adventurous and sociable character. Men were the ones who travelled to distant lands in search of adventure, this challenges the accepted ideas about gender of the time. This portrait of a woman is very peculiar for a piece of medieval literature, men tend to have the starring role and women are usually featured as beautiful ladies in distress or as villainous old hags. The Wife of Bath is neither a helpless damsel in distress nor a typical old crone. She is the first of her kind in English literature. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is the life story of Alison who has married five times, this in itself is unusual for a woman in medieval literature as it is usually the rogue male who has multiple lovers. Chaucer certainly informs us of Alison’s backstory to a higher degree than he does the other pilgrims. There are many pieces of literature which condemn women, from the highest class to the lowest, Chaucer does not ignore this with his characterisation of the Wife but rather embraces it to make her who she is. The Wife is noisy and bossy, she torments her husbands and has a large enough sexual appetite to compete with the most sexual of men. But Chaucer has also made her capable of love, vulnerable, optimistic and argumentative against medieval anti-woman ideas. It is not clear whether Chaucer wants us to sympathise with the Wife and see her as the first feminist and defender of women’s rights or if we are to view her as an elaborate joke of what would happen if a women were to ever have as much freedom as a man. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is different from any literature which had been encountered, as is her Tale. The male lead is not a typical heroic knight but a rapist, the main female role is an ugly old woman and the force of good in the story is a court full of powerful women. All the standard ideas of gender relationships are both turned on their heads and brought into sharp focus. The Wife conforms to a number of anti-female stereotypes of the medieval period, stereotypes which were created by men for the purpose of a patriarchal society. She claims that she has a great sexual appetite whilst also boasting that she uses sex to gain wealth. The Wife also tells of how she controls her husbands through the use of her body, a fear which is common of villainous females in medieval literature and which males dread. The Wife points out that there are many husbands and wives in the Bible. Some of the greatest men in the Old Testament were not only married but had multiple wives. â€Å"Lo, heere the wise kyng, daun Salomon; I trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon. As wolde God it leveful were unto me To be refresshed half so ofte as he!† (35-38) This is a double standard in that these men have multiple lovers but that women apparently can’t. By calling King Solomon â€Å"wise† she is conveying that wise men have multiple marriages. The Wife successfully gives examples from the Bible of people whose marriages were blessed by God despite the polygamous nature of these marriages. The Pardoner who is shocked by the Wife’s revelations so far interrupts her story, he says that he was about to marry but is now not so sure that it is a good idea. â€Å"Now, dame,† quod he, â€Å"by God and by Seint John!†¦ I was aboute to wedde a wyf; allas!†¦ What sholde I bye it on my flessh so deere? Yet hadde I levere wedde no wyf to-yeere!† (164-168) The Wife then tells a short story about a medieval pardoner who worked for the Church collecting donations from those sorry for their sins and anxious to find forgiveness. His manhood is called into question throughout the canterbury tales and his talk of taking a wife is probably an empty boast. This is a continuation of Wife of Bath’s theme of male impotence, she regularly taunts her celibate male adversaries in this way throughout the prologue. It was unheard of for a woman to speak this way about such matters, even a man would think before directly insulting men of the Church. The first three husbands the Wife had were rich old men who were financially secure. The Wife treated each of these husbands badly and in a very dominating way. By being argumentative and eager to start trouble she ensured that they would be careful to please her. â€Å"What sholde I taken keep hem for to plese, But it were for my profit and myn ese?† (213-14) Here the Wife of Bath uses a rhetorical question, it is clear from the tone that she doesn’t think she needs to care about her husbands. The misogynists classed all women together as bad and all wives as nothing but trouble. Chaucer both confirms this stereotype here with the way the Wife treated her first three husbands but also turns it around so that the woman is in control for once and the men are indistinguishable without even a single name between them. Chaucer makes us pity the husbands but it also shows us how unfairly women are usually treated. Chaucer outlines the Wife’s general techniques on how she handles Marital trouble which are lying, cheating and accusing the opposite gender before they accuse you. Lying and cheating were the things that medieval literature always accused the villainous women in a story of doing. The Wife is therefore acting in a very stereotypically manipulative way, and comes very close to becoming the old villainous hag which was a staple of medieval literature. Chaucer makes it clear that the Wife is a complex character and that our response to her as readers should be one of uncertainty. He makes sure we see the good aswell as the bad. The Wife of Bath goes on to describe the lies she would use to keep her first three husbands in line. She’d accuse them of lecherous behaviour and of chasing after the neighbours or servants and then unfairly accusing her about her relationship with her ‘friend’. She uses powerful but offensive imagery towards woman in order to get her point across. â€Å"For as a spanyel she wol on hym lepe,†¦ But folk of wyves maken noon assay, Til they be wedded — olde dotard shrewe! And thanne, seistow, we wol oure vices shewe.† (267-292) The Wife of Bath uses simile’s to compare women first of all to animals, which should be tried by men before they are bought. They are then reduced even further being compared to ordinary objects such as basins, washbowls, spoons and stools. The men did not say these things and this paints the Wife of Bath in a very negative light for her deceit but at the same time other men during her period are guilty of thinking such things. The Wife boasts about how she lied to her husbands about what they said whilst drunk in order to make them feel guilty. This extract is some of the Wife’s most blatant deceit and if all women were to be like this in medieval times it would be surprising if men and women ever managed to live together at all. â€Å"Thou liknest eek wommenes love to helle, To bareyne lond, ther water may nat dwelle. Thou liknest it also to wilde fyr;† (371-372) The Wife doesn’t see the wickedness of her ways as is obvious when she states â€Å"Yet tikled I his herte, for that he Wende that I hadde of hym so greet chiertee!† The choice of verb is an interesting one because it is much lighter than the passage as a whole. The Wife claims that either her or her husband must give in if they are to live in peace, and she says â€Å"And sith a man is moore resonable† he should be the one to give in more easily. She then slyly puts in a comment about how she is his alone, implying that this could easily change at any moment. She is exploiting male and female stereotypes here, using a man’s image of themselves as reasonable and superior against them. She is manipulating by saying that if women are so stupid and emotional, clever men should just let them have their way in order for there to be peace. The Wife of Bath’s youth may have now passed her by but she has no regrets. Her fourth husband however was not a very happy memory for her. She even goes on to tell us about his unfaithfulness â€Å"This is to seyn, he hadde a paramour†. Her dominance and power over her first three husbands now gives way to the more melancholy story of her next husband. Old women in medieval literature quite often show bitterness and loathing when they remember their youth but the Wife has no regrets. Her optimism and her grace in the way that she accepts the passing of her youth shows a softer and more vulnerable side to this manipulative and domineering woman. With the death of her fourth husband The Wife then falls in love with a man named Jankyn who was half her age. Within a month she had married him and as an act of love she signed over all her property to him. However, Jankyn was typical of a medieval gender role. He was a dominant man who won’t be told what to do by a woman. He demands her to stop going on pilgrimages, stop gossiping and to generally stop all the mischievous behaviour from her past. He beats her for tearing pages out of a book and tells her of husbands who left their wives because the wives would not do as they were told. â€Å"And me of olde Romayn geestes teche; How he Symplicius Gallus lefte his wyf, And hire forsook for terme of al his lyf† (642-644) The Wife now has to be on the receiving end of the abuse that she has up until then caused, she is the one being dominated and controlled. She has previously been at a distance from the anti-women literature of the period, even used it to her advantage against her past husbands. Now she must endure the stereotypically male dominated household she has avoided for so long. The reason the Wife of Bath is deaf is because she was struck by Jankyn for tearing out a few pages from his favourite book. It consisted of stories by the best known authors of the middle ages which condemned women. â€Å"For trusteth wel, it is an impossible That any clerk wol speke good of wyves,† (688-689) She hated this book as Jankyn used it to cause her a great deal of grief, she stated that these men don’t understand women yet they are the ones writing these stories. What’s quite interesting is that all the literature she used to control her past husbands was now coming at her in a very real sense. The Wife of Bath asks the question â€Å"Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?† which points out that medieval women existed in a world where everything including art, religion, work, family life and literature was controlled by men. Chaucer pointing this out is well ahead of his time in terms of social gender commentary. The Wife’s ripping of the book could be seen as a symbolic gesture. The Wife used this literature against her past husbands, she had it used against her by her fifth husband. The tearing of the book is symbolic of the Wife moving away from medieval stereotypes. After finally finishing the prologue to her story the Wife of Bath moves onto her Tale. The story opens with the rape of a young maiden, the rape is described very casually as though it is somehow entirely natural that a woman is violently attacked this way. â€Å"He saugh a mayde walkynge hym biforn, Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed, By verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed;† (886-888) The word ‘raft’ means he took her ‘maydenhead’ which is not a very violent verb but it still has powerful imagery because of how casual a word it is. This can be seen as an extreme example of the way in which women are regarded as mere property. The knight’s offence was against a woman so it is therefore ironic that women should step in to save his life. They don’t do this out of compassion or mercy though, he is to be placed in a powerless position in which the fate of his body is in the hands of another, similar to when a woman is raped. After a year of searching for the answer to the question of what women want the knight rides back to the court in despair, this is when he encounters an extremely ugly old woman who agrees to give him the answer to his question if he agrees to do something for her. After answering with â€Å"†Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee† the old hag asks the knight to marry her. Because our knight did not know what the condition would be he is placed in a far more vulnerable position. He is completely under the old woman’s dominance, a reversal of the normal male female relationship. The â€Å"lusty bacheler† from the start of the story now â€Å"hidde hym as an owle†, no longer dominant and in control or a stereotype of medieval man. The old woman then gives the knight an ultimatum, she can either be beautiful and unfaithful or faithful and ugly. The knight considers for a moment but decides in the end to let her make the decision which results in her being both beautiful and faithful. With the mastery handed over to the old lady, there is a switching of gender roles with the knight also getting what he wants. The knight is no longer the misogynist monster he was at the start of The Wife of Bath’s Tale. It could be argued that the Wife of Bath is giving a voice to the excluded women of medieval society. Through her voice we hear and see all the devaluation and oppression which is always silent in medieval literature due to the authors being almost entirely male. The Wife could also be interpreted as a representation of stereotypical medieval fear by men about women as cruel, emotional and sexually deviant. It is not clear in what way Chaucer meant for her to be conveyed, it is clear however that he wanted her to become a complicated character with many different layers whose gender was a driving force for the story.