The Wife of Bath; Marriage Authority.

We learn in The Wife of Bath that Alison has most definitely earned her title as she is quite willing and ready to marry all of Bath if it comes to it. What is somewhat at a loss however is where this lengthy prologue from the wife and her later tale of the knight correlate; where is the link?

Why does Chaucer make it a point to write such a lengthy prologue for the wife and then give such a short story that has so little to do with marriage. For the most part the only sense that can be made of it is that the wife was indeed as she claims an authority on marriage (over many who claim to be but have never been married as she points out) which is the fate the knight in the story is given to the old woman. It in some ways correlates with the answer the knight gives to the queen about what women want, again proving her stance as a true authority on, at least being a wife: “Women desiren to have sovereignty As well over their husband as their love, And for to be in mastery him above.” In the end the knight learns from this and gives his wife the choice to be, in simple terms, nice or beautiful, where she becomes both for him (which isn’t exactly the worst punishment for a man who raped a young girl in the beginning of the story).                

 Besides the knight and his wife making amends however, only this small part fits into the prologue as before. Most the story is a moral teaching about “gentilnesse” that the old woman gives to the knight, about how who we are as a person is what matters to God, not where we come from or who our ancestors are. Where in the prologue the wife seems to know a lot about the teachings of Jesus, but she also uses them in a somewhat negative way when people tell her she’s wrong for marrying so many times.

The question is still, where is the correlation between the lengthy back story of this Wife of Bath and her gallantly moral tale of the knight and his new wife.