Wife Of Bath Prologue Analysis

Based on the prologue, I believe the Wife of Bath refers to the Bible frequently to show points it makes in stories that seem to be different from what we could call the ‘societal norms’ of the time. She does this especially often in the beginning, specifically when she is defending her having five husbands. Though it was never stated, the biblical references she made indicated she was defending her position, and that it was not considered normal for a woman to have this many husbands within her lifetime.
Using the Bible as a defense for anyone’s actions at that time could have been seen as reasonable since England was very religious at the time. This first indicates why she is able to make so many references and have people comprehend what she is saying to them, since they have all read at least most of the Bible in their lifetimes. This also indicates that she believes her actions are completely justified, since the Bible backs them up.
Since the Bible was so widespread in its use back then, it seems peculiar that the ‘social norms’ we mentioned earlier are different from the views proposed by the Bible.
The reason for this becomes more apparent later in the prologue when she talks about her fifth husband, who constantly read a book on anti-feminism, and was able to see all of these examples of “wicked women.” Based on the evidence the Wife presents, it appears that society back then has adopted a sort of “see it and believe it” attitude since they were willing to take the many more ‘modern’ and ‘current’ examples of “wicked women” as how a woman should be viewed compared to the Bible’s few historical examples of “good
women.”
The most interesting part of all about her references to the Bible is that the qualities she is trying to defend are like the feminist ideas we see today, skipping over 600 years. She is trying to defend points such as the women controlling the marriage, something that society back then was extremely opposed to, as women were viewed more often than not as “wicked.” We may not be opposed to this today, but we see a similar situation going on in the current feminist movement, where women want more power, in some cases, more than men.
Chaucer proposes these Biblical references more as evidence in a trial more than anything else, where it is being used to counter a point that hasn’t even been made yet. He puts the Wife in a position where she is just preparing a shield of information to protect herself from the wild and diverse opinions people are going to develop after hearing the story. At first this seems strange because it only seems to be defending the whole ‘five husbands’ situation, but then it becomes apparent how necessary this may be as we see how she views marriages and those involved later in the prologue.