Wife Of Bath In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

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Wife of Bath English, compared to other languages, is very young, beginning its evolution only in the 12th century. The first impartial piece of English literature is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories, which gives the modern reader a window into life during the Medieval Period. One of the characters that has generated great interest in the Wife of Bath, a beautiful woman who has been married five times “Not counting other youthful company” (Gen Pro). She is very showy and wears “stockings…of finest scarlet-red,” “fine kerchiefs of old-fashion air,” and “linen on her head” (Gen Pro). She also expresses opinions in the prologue to her tale about experience being more credible than scripture when it came to marriage and how having many partners is not a show of poor character. Her tale is of a knight who raped a woman and is then forced to go on a year-long journey to discover what women desire most. Her telling of such a tale is not surprising due to her appearance and expressed …show more content…
All rules of any government or ruling body were parallel to the Holy Bible. However, The Wife of Bath believed that scriptural authority was overruled by experience with a subject. For example, she begins explaining her tale by expressing that “Experience…confers on me/The right to speak of marriage, and unfold/Its woes” (Wife’s Pro). She is stating that her experience, not the Bible or any other authority, gives her the right to speak of marriage in her tale. Indeed, she does have great experience, for she has “[M]arried at a church door no less than five” (Wife’s Pro). This is extraordinary for the time period, however, is not extraordinary for her. The General Prologue shows that she is an individual and does not conform to societal norms. She’s “somewhat deaf” which symbolizes she doesn’t listen to outside influences, such as men or the Bible (Gen Pro). She instead listens to herself and her
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