In the stories of King Lear, The Faerie Queene and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, women are represented by the roles in which they play in the British culture in which they lived in. Each tells a story of the impact they made on society though communicating the culture in which they were present. Culture, in a sense, is a set of rules or standards shared by members of a society, which when acted upon by the members, produces behavior that falls within a range of variation that the members consider acceptable. British culture in the sixteenth century, focused mainly on the actions of men while the women took a back seat. Although, not always positive, this back seat was at times influential in the decision making of the men. In addition, each back seat driver was responsible for manipulation, as presented by King Lear's daughters in King Lear, chastity, as presented by Britomart in The Faerie Queene, and sexual power by The Wife of Bath in The Wife of Bath's Prologue. Consequently, each character shines as they portray a persona of great influential capability as they begin to fascinate the audience by relating their individual tales to their cultural herstory.
             King Lear, a tale by the late William Shakespeare, "the most influential writer in all of English literature," is piece of literature filled with human cruelty and awful, seemingly meaningless disasters (Gardner context 1). Emerging from the back seat, Goneril and Regan, two of King Lear's evil daughters, have an appetite for his vast amount of land. To obtain such an entity, they are willing to go far and beyond to betray their younger sister and flatter their emotionally unstable father. The plot begins with Lear, the aging king of Britain, deciding to step down from the throne and evenly divide his kingdom among the loyalist of his daughters. He begins by asking, "Tell me, my daughters- since now we will divest us, both of rule, i...