WIFE OF BATH’S TALE
“There’s no man who can falsely swear and lie as half as boldly as a woman.”
(227-228)
WHO IS THE WIFE OF
BATH?
 The Wife of Bath is one of the two women on the
pilgrimage, her name is Alison. (804)
 Wealthy Seamstress from the town of Bath, England.
 Wears expensive clothing, has a gap between her teeth
(attractive in Chaucer’s time) and is deaf in one ear.
 She has been married five times, self proclaimed
professional wife, and uses her body as a tool to get what she
wants from her husbands. (first marriage started at 12) (4)
Alison’s fourth husband was the worst and
her fifth was the best.
• Fourth- had a mistress
• Fifth (Jankyn)- only one she married for love
• Big age gap, abusive, would read “Valrius and
Theophrastus”, the book of wicked wives, in bed
which she did not like. (stories included:
Samson/Deliliah, Adam/eve) (675/789-825)
• She ripped three pages out of the book and
punched Jankyn)in the face, he hits her back and
that is how she become deaf in one ear (636)
CHARACTERS
King Arthur
The queen
The knight
The old hag
SUMMARY
 Tale is told during King Arthur’s reign, Britain used to
have fairies and elves but friars came and wiped out the
males and rape the woman.
 The knight is riding through the woods after hawking
(hunting with a hawk as the weapon), he sees a beautiful
woman and rapes her.
 The knight is caught and King Arthur sentences him to a
beheading.
 The queen asks if she can handle the knight and King
Arthur agrees.
 She tells the knight I will give you a year and a day to find
the answer to a question, if your answer is suffice you can
live, if not you will be beheaded. The knight agrees and gives
his word to return.
 The question: What is the one thing that woman want the
most?
 The knight asks every woman he meets but cannot get a
clear answer.
 On the day before he has to return to the queen, he sees 24
woman dancing, he wants to ask them the question.
 He gets closer and all woman have disappeared except a
old hag. He asks the question.
 The hag says she will give him the answer if he gives her
something in return but will tell him at a later time what it is.
He agrees.
 She tells him that all woman want is sovereignty (power)
 The knight returns to the queen and she grants him his
freedom.
 The hag stands up and says she gave him the answer and
in return he needs to marry her.
 The queen agrees and they get married that night.
 The knight is miserable and does not want to be married
to her.
 She makes him a deal, says if he is nice for three days he
can choose for her to become either:
• Good and fair BUT possibly unfaithful
• Old and ugly BUT faithful and obedient
 He agrees but lets her choose what she to become.
 The old hag is so happy that she is given the power that
she chooses to be both young and fair AND obedient and
faithful.
 The knight sees this and is overjoyed.
The knight and “hag” live happily ever after.
THEMES
 Lust
 Poverty
 Moral poverty
 Ageism
 Rape/Entitlement
 Power
 Feminism
ALLUSIONS
 Incubus (880)- speaking about the friar who rapes, the incubus is
a evil spirit that rapes/impregnantes sleeping woman (Cook)
 Ovid (952)- A Roman poet who Alison quotes the tale of Midas
 Midas (953)- A story where Midas has long hair because of his
birth defect of “two ass’s ears” and swears his wife to secrecy, she
can’t so she tells the water in a pond. Alison relates this to woman
not being able to keep secrets.
 Jesus Christ- Biblical
 King Arthur
METAPHORS
 1203- “poverty is an eyeglass”
• Poverty helped the hag see people’s true colors
 860- “jolly little rout”
• A group of happy/free-spirited people
 888- “maidenhead”
• Virginity
 896- “spared him for at least a space”
• Nonspecific amount of time
 908- “twelvemonth and a day”
• A year and a day
MORALS OF THE TALE
Do not judge a book by its cover
Youth and beauty does not guarantee
happiness
Moral wealth is better than fiscal wealth
A label does not define you
INSIGHT INTO ALISON
 She loves love and sex, her approach to life is practice makes
perfect.
“different schools make perfect clerks, so practice that’s diverse
in sundry works,” (44A)
• “for if you’re burning, better to be wed.” (53)
•
 Uses sex as a weapon with her husbands and is open to
finding a sixth one
 Thinks woman and men should be held in the same regard.
• The wise king, lordly Solomon: I do believe his wives were more
than one” (35-36)
PERSONAL EVALUATION
 The Wife of Bath Prologue was more scandalous than her tale.
 She loves the power that sex gives to her because she can
make her husbands (and others) give her what she wants
 The tale she told was about power, female power.
 I think she chose to preface her tale with her life story/sexual
history to appeal to the men because she was one of the only
women on the pilgrimage and she is trying to find a man!
POP QUIZ!
 https://www.onlinequizcreator.com/wife-of-bathquiz/quiz-65620
WORKS CITED
 Cook, Eugene, and Ronald Ecker. "The Wife of Bath's
Tale." The Wife of Bath's Tale. Hodge & Braddock,
Publishers, 1 Oct. 1994. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.
<http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wife.html>.