Wife Of Bath Prologue

find many progressive elements in Wife of Bath’s Tale and its Prologue. First of all, I was astounded to learn that the Wife has five husbands! The mere number is rather disturbing. Since the scene is set in the fourteenth century, women generally have little say in their marriages and most marriages are arranged in order to create mutual financial benefit. When a woman is widowed, she often acquires a husband according to another arrangement. Yet the Wife telling the story is almost free to choose whom to marry. The power that she possesses seems somewhat unreal considering the historical background. It is as if she is a leading advocate for women’s power and social status, which is very modern in itself. Another way in which the Wife shocks me is that she forgets her past husbands and moves on as rapidly as a modern girl, as she said, “no sooner than one husband’s dead and gone some other Christian man shall take me on, for then, so says the Apostle, I am free to wed, o’ God’s name, where it pleases me” (259). During medieval times when many other women take vows of celibacy after...