The Wife Of Bath In The Canterbury Tales

In The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, the narrator introduces many characters in “The Prologue.” Twenty-nine strangers embark on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, one of them being the Wife of Bath. In “The General Prologue”, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, the Wife of Bath is described in a very critical, yet amusing way. In “The General Prologue” the narrator introduces the characters in order of who he likes the best, to who he likes the least. The Wife of Bath is in the middle of that list, somewhat near the end. She is not the prettiest woman, “Bold was her face, handsome, and red in hue (GP 468).” She is also very flashy in her clothes and attitude:
Her kerchiefs were of finely woven ground;
I dared have sworn they weighed a good ten pound,
The ones she wore on Sunday, on her head.
Her hose were of the finest scarlet red
(GP 463-466)
The Wife of Bath is full of herself, she likes to be the first woman in church to give donations, but if someone was to give before her she would rather keep her money then be second. She made pilgrimages like this one to Canterbury to find men, she
was very open about her five previous marriages and about the fact that she doesn’t want to be alone. In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” the Wife of Bath starts off by going into more detail about her five marriages. She talks about how since she was twelve she has been married, but that “marriage is a misery and a woe (WBP 4).” She talks about God and the Bible and how she doesn’t believe the rules set about marriage and sex. Then she goes on to speak of her husbands, three who were good and two who were bad. All she cares about is what they could give her, saying “The three that I call ‘good’ were rich and old… (WBP 93)” She talks about all of it as though it’s amusing and even tells the company to not judge her for her stories, “They’re really only offered to amuse (WBP 88).” In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” the Wife of Bath tells a story of a knight who rapes a woman and must deal with the consequences after.
The roles of who deals with the knight are switched. When the king declares one thing, the queen and ladies decide another. “Ceaselessly, he gave the queen the case,” and she gives the knight one year to find what women truly want (WBT 72). At the end of that year the knight meets an old hag who gives him the answer in exchange for his hand in marriage. The Wife of Bath tells a story where message is that women should be obeyed in all matters. The queen and ladies of the court decide the Knights fate instead of the men and the old hag, being everything the Knight despises, ends up being his savior. In the Wife of Bath’s life she is the old hag. She may not be beautiful or young, but she knows what she wants and gets
it. Throughout the Canterbury Tale’s, the Wife of Bath is described in “The General Prologue”, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” In those three places she is shown as a flashy, gold-digging, woman who knows what she wants and gets it no matter what others think of her.