THE TALES: SUMMARIES AND NOTES

The Wife of BathÂ’s Tale: Prologue

Summary

In the Prologue the Wife of Bath gives an account of her colorful marital life. Her experiences give her substantial authority to speak on marital troubles. She has been married five times. She cannot understand ChristÂ’s rejection of the woman at the well for having married five times. Instead she prefers GodÂ’s command in the Bible "to increase and multiply" and that a husband must leave his family and live with his wife. She also notes that the Bible does not state an exact figure for the number of times one might marry. She further augments her argument by citing the example of King Solomon, Abraham and Jacob among other holy men who had more than one wife. Further she points out that St. Paul had said that it is better to marry than to burn with desire. She demands to know where is it written that God had ordained virginity. While St. Paul advises against marriage, his advice isnÂ’t a command. The decision has been left to the individualÂ’s own judgement. She agrees that virginity is a great excellence but it is meant for those who want to lead perfect lives and she is not perfect. She argues that God created the organs of generation for both function and pleasure. And she intends to make full use of her organs. She will never be difficult or demurely refuse to have sex when her husband wants to. The Pardoner who says that he was planning to get married but has now dropped the idea after hearing her on the subject interrupts the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath tells him to decide only after he has heard her tale about the joys of marriage. The Pardoner urges her to continue and to teach her technique to all the young fellows.

The Wife of Bath then relates her marital experiences. Her 1 ^st three husbands were good, very rich and old and she enjoyed absolute power over them. She advises young inexperienced and naïve wives to constantly nag their husbands to keep the upper hand in marriage and provides a long list of examples. For instance, she rebuked her husband when he criticized her extravagant spending. She railed at another husband who curbed her liberty and kept a strict vigilance on her movements. She reprimanded the husband who felt that her character was endangered every time she smiled at another man when her only intention was to be polite and courteous. She nagged the husband who employed a spy to keep track of her doings and instead beat him at his own game by getting the apprentice and her niece to testify her marital faithfulness. Ultimately by force, fraud, strategy or unending grumbling she would always gain the upper hand. She never spared her husbands and paid them back for every word that they said. It was obvious that one of them had to knuckle under and man being a more rational creature than woman, it was always her husbands who surrendered.

She then reveals that her 4th husband was a libertine and kept a mistress. She was a passionate and headstrong young woman at the time and wished to enjoy life. It troubled her that her husband took delight in another woman and decided to make him stew in his own "greece". She pretended that he had been deceived and thus made him suffer with jealousy. However he died when she returned from her pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The Wife of Bath recalls that her fifth husband whom she had married for love and not for money treated her the worst of all and beat her so hard that her bones ache even today. He was an Oxford scholar named Jankin and they had met through her best friend. She made him think that she had fallen in love with him. At her 4th husbands funeral she saw the scholar Jankin again and although she was twice his age she decided to marry him. By the monthÂ’s end they got married and she relinquished all her property to him. But she was soon sorry for doing so because Jankin was very authoritarian and hit her so hard on the ear for simply tearing a page from his book that she became quite deaf. He would constantly lecture her about what was permissible behavior and read out stories from Roman history about the sad fate of disobedient wives. The Wife of Bath then reveals why she tore a page out of his book. One night Jankin started reading out tales about treacherous women from his book. He disparaged Eve as the cause of the ruin of mankind and went on to cite a steady list of traitoresses of antiquity. He spoke at length about the modern day wives who killed their unsuspecting husbands in bed. When the Wife of Bath realized that Jankin intended to continue reading the infernal book all night long, she tore three pages out of it and hit him so hard on the cheek that he fell back into the fire. He then jumped up and furiously hit her on the head. She pretended to swoon and fell to the ground and claimed that she was dying. She railed at him for having murdered her for her property. He was filled with remorse and promised to let her do as she pleased. She thus obtained complete mastery over him. She made him burn the wretched book and remained faithful to him. She announces the she will now tell her tale.

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