Wife Of Bath In The Canterbury Tales

In the Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the most significant characters is the Wife of Bath. She has radical views about women and marriage in a time when what is expected from a woman is to be passive and submissive in a relationship. She is one of the story tellers of the book. Besides her story, there is also another part of the book where we can learn about Wife of Bath herself, the main prologue. When a comparison is made between these two parts, one can see not only some similiraties but differences, as well. The most apparent similarity that clearly depicts the comparison between the prologue and the tale are her knowledge of marriage and love, However, besides her physical appearance and character, also, due to the genre

She, however, manages to get the upper hand in the end. The Wife of Bath, seems to be only authentically happy when she has mastery over her husbands. They have to willingly hand over this power, consciously or unconsciously. She, as described in the general prologue, “knew of all the cures for love” and “ at that game she was a past mistress.” thus she was able to get the control of the relationship and be the dominant part. Another example is that the Wife of Bath convinced the Knight ,by explaining that the things, which are her being old, plain, beasly born and poor, making the knight prevent him from loving her are in fact what should make him love her, that he had to give up his power in order for her to acquire it, for if he had not given her control of the partnership, both would have been unhappy through the rest of their lives. We also know that she gives the answer, which nobody were able to argue its accuracy, to the question what women want. From that we can also deduce that she is, in fact, “a mistress in the game of