The Canterbury Tales

The Wife of Bath—whose given name is Alison—begins her tale with a prologue considerably longer than the tale itself. In it, she discusses her many marriages, and invokes Biblical precedent to ask: Why on earth shouldn’t she have had her five husbands? Sure, there’s plenty of scripture about the virtues of virginity—but “in a noble household, we are told/not every dish and vessel’s made of gold,/Some are of wood, yet earn their master’s praise,/God calls His folk to Him in many ways” (261).

She sees her own calling as (multiple) marriage and (lots of) sex and goes on to describe her matrimonial strategy. Her first three husbands—elderly and rich—she harangued until they did what she wanted; she wouldn’t let them near her in bed if they didn’t make her some little present first. If they complained, she’d sweetly say, “we’ll have to teach/You that it’s nice to have a quiet life./One of us must be master, man or wife,/And since a man’s more reasonable, he/Should be the patient one, you must agree” (270). Her fourth husband was a philanderer, so she paid him back by doing some philandering of her own.

Her fifth husband, Johnny, was half her age and dashingly handsome.