In her first three marriages the Wife has readily dominated her elderly husbands, comically attacking them for their supposedly unreasonable criticisms (which the Wife’s later admissions show to have been fully justified). With the fourth husband, who has evidently taken a more obliging partner, the Wife has had greater difficulty in gaining ascendancy, to do which, she has resorted to the pretence of having lovers, making him ‘of the same wode a croce’ and frying him ‘in his owene grece.’ Though she tells us that, in the end, she made his shoe pinch, it is not completely clear that she ever won mastery and control over this husband.
With Jankin, provoked by the Wife’s stubbornness to extreme misogyny, and informed by a compendium of classical examples of female evil, she has had an even bitterer struggle. But at length, by cunning, she defeats his bookish prejudice. One feels that in this case not so much willingness, as tenacity, has played a part. The Wife will not yield, so Jankin has bowed to the inevitable, and discovered, no doubt to his surprise, that the Wife has not abused her power over him, but has been a model of affection and fidelity.
Both her sexual energy and her ‘sturdy hardinesses’ are evidence of the Wife’s enormous vitality. This seems almost inversely proportional to that of the succession of husbands she has, so to speak, consumed, even now welcoming ‘the sixte, whan that ever he shall.’ She shows this vigour also in the recounting of the Prologue. Whereas for the other pilgrims this serves as a more or less brief introduction to the tales, the Wife’s Prologue is inordinately long.
There in nothing shy or retiring about the character of the Wife of Bath. She is large and noisy, partly due to her deafness, and irrepressibly bossy. In fact, she alone of all the pilgrims manages to force her way into other people’s tales. This is not surprising, as the Wife always seems to have had great power over men. Men and sex are, in fact, two of her main interests and she is not at all shy when it comes to talking about them. She is also not afraid to show us her devious nature. She is a clever woman whose tricks and schemes have got her through five marriages already and she is ready for the sixth husband whenever he happens to come along.
This cleverness together with her warmth and enthusiasm mean that the Wife is forgiven for her more outrageous tricks. She led her old husbands a merry dance and yet she ‘tikled’ their hearts. Nor was her own heart made of stone. Her fourth husband’s infidelity rouses her to fury and we see a vulnerable side to her. She had relied on her youth and her beauty to get her through life but now both of these are gone. She is not, however, bitter. Her regrets are dismissed with a cheery ‘Lat go, farewel’ and she looks to the future with optimism.
Some critics have felt that Chaucer’s description of the Wife of Bath is so detailed and lifelike that he must have had a real-life model for her.
In the end, the narrative is constructed in such a way that we do not know who we are supposed to support, or even if we are supposed to support anybody. The Wife is shown to be a likeable character with many persuasive arguments but her prologue is full of contradictions. For every argument which shows the Wife in a good light there is another one which undermines her. This ambiguity is true not just of the Wife’s arguments but also of individual words and phrases within the text.
The Wife’s style is vivid and distinctive and very much what we might have expected from a woman who is gap-toothed and wears red stockings. Her language is not that of an upper-class well spoken lady. It is homely and colloquial, full of proverbs and expressions which would have been used in familiar talk. If something is of no use to the Wife it is ‘nat worth a leek.’ If she is unhappy then she is as jolly as a magpie. And it is these everyday items which make up her world. The Wife knows long words but she tends not to use them herself. Mostly, she holds them in reserve until she is repeating what men say or arguing with them on their own terms.
There is also something very personal about the Wife’s style. This is not surprising given that she is willing to tell the reader about the intimate goings-on in her bedroom.
In conclusion, I agree that Chaucer has conveyed the Wife of Bath in an attractive light to the reader because of the way she behaves. Growing up in the days that the story was written, one would not divulge in such large secrets, but in the Wife’s point of view she does not seem to care less on what people think of her and her ways of living life. This is what makes the reader enjoy her stories. She is a fascinating woman and some men would wish there were some real-life Wife of Bath’s.
