The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale  – In the lengthy prologue, the Wife of Bath (Alisoun), a wealthy and outspoken seamstress, justifies her life choices and offers her views on marriage and women’s roles, grounded in her experience with five husbands. She challenges medieval church teachings on celibacy and female submissiveness, arguing that experience (“auctoritee”) is her guide. She describes using her sexual power and wit to manipulate her first three older, wealthy husbands for money and control. Her fourth husband had a mistress, and her fifth, Jankyn, a younger man she married for love despite his physical abuse, is ultimately subdued after a physical fight in which she gains control of their relationship by making him burn an anti-women book and then feigning death.