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Unit 11: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-III

Constance’s story, contribute to the way she is exchanged and re-presented as a feminine symbol Notes
within it. Writing a woman is to make her the creation of a man; an idea worth emphasizing before
the next tale–the Wife of Bath’s, which takes this idea several stages further-begins.

11.2 The Wife of Bath’s Tale

11.2.1 Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale

“Experience”, even if no written authorities existed in the world, “is right ynogh for me”. Thus begins
the voice of the Wife of Bath. She has certainly had “experience”, and is keen to justify it against
biblical authority. She has had five husbands and justifies it in scripture: Christ never taught that
people should only be married once, the Bible says “go forth and multiply”, and Solomon had more
than one wife. The Wife’s husbands, picked out by their “chestes” and “nether purs”, have all been
good men, and she is looking forward to the sixth. She also points out that Jesus never lays down a
law about virginity, and essentially states that we have the parts for sex and should use them as such:
“they were nat maad for noght”.
Scripture, the Wife points out, can be interpreted “bothe up and doun”–you can argue that genitals
are for purgation of urine, or to tell the female from the male, and for nothing else. The Wife then
states again that she will “use myn instrument” whenever her husband decides he wants to “paye
his dette”. Her husband, the Wife continues, shall be both her “dettour and my thral” (debtor and
slave) and that she would mark it on his flesh.
At this point, the Pardoner interrupts, claiming he was about to marry a wife and that the Wife has
put him off–and she advises him to listen to her tale before making a judgement, and looks like
beginning it, before going off on another tangent, silencing the Pardoner altogether.
Three of the Wife’s husbands were good, and two were bad: the three were good, rich and old (and
impotent!) and they gave the Wife all their land, which resulted in her withholding sex from them
in order to get exactly what she wanted. Women, the Wife continues, can lie and steal better than
any man. She reveals her tactic for manipulating her husbands–deliberately attacking her husband
with a whole fistful of complaints and several biblical glossing (for justification) and starting an
argument, with the result of her getting what she wants. By accusing her husband of infidelity, the
Wife disguised her own adultery–even calling her maid and Jankin in false witness to back her up.
The Wife also got money out of her husbands by claiming that, if she were to sell her “bele chose”
(sexual favours), she would make more money than they lavished on her. Thus the Wife treated her
first three husbands, the three, good, old, rich men. The Wife’s fourth husband was a reveler and
had a mistress as well as a wife. He was a match for the Wife of Bath, sharing some of her qualities,
but he soon died.
The fifth husband was the most cruel to her: kind in bed but otherwise violent, beating her viciously.
He could “glose” (gloss–persuade–flatter) her extremely well when he wanted to have sex, and she
loved him best, because he played hard to get with her. He had been a student at Oxford, and came
to be a boarder at the home of the Wife’s best friend, Alison, while she was still married to husband
number four. Soon after he died, she married Jankin (number five) who was, at twenty, exactly half
the Wife’s age.
Very regularly, Jankin read his book of “wikked wyves”, a compilation volume of anti-feminist
literature, containing works from Valerius and Theophrastus, St. Jerome, Tertullian, Solomon, and
many others. The Wife interrupts herself to express her anger at the anti-feminist portrayals of
women in books written by male clerks–and wishes that women “hadde written stories” like clerks
have, in order to redress balance. Then, her story continues: Jankin was reading aloud from his
book by the fire, and the Wife, fed up that he would never finish reading his “cursed book al nyght”,
tore out three pages, punching him in the face so that he fell backward into the fire. Jankin got up

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