A tale of licence and lust - Is this a fair assessment of the Wife of Bath's prologue or is it too limited?

Authors Avatar

A tale of licence and lust. Is this a fair assessment of the Wife of Bath’s prologue or is it too limited?

The wife is renown from the beginning of the prologue as a character with little regard for anything or anyone else with her carefree attitude displayed most commonly in her speeches about sex. However in regard to the entire prologue as ‘a tale of licence and lust’ would perhaps be a too restricted overview. The prologue also provides the audience with many other prominent themes such as religion, marriage and female equality in Chaucerian times.

Licence however is significant to the Wife of Bath’s prologue. Her strength of character provides the prologue with a sense of freedom and little regard for anything. This is demonstrated in particular with her lack of hesitance to challenge authority figures, in particular male and religious authority’s. In the opening lines of the prologue this behaviour is established where the wife challenges men, especially ‘the wise, daun salomon’ who she claims had ‘hadde wives mo than oon’. This in particular demonstrates her lack of care for anyone else and her self-freedom due to the fact those she is opposing (men) contribute to the pilgrimage the most; there were few women on the pilgrimage.  

Join now!

Her desire for dominance and power over her husband’s is crucial in illustrating this idea of licence, in particular in connection with Jankin. The Wife of Bath clearly doesn’t abide by society’s conventional role of women and consistently objects to Jankin’s opinions and remarks. She readily admits that with her ‘fist so took him on the cheke’ and doesn’t appear to mind informing the audience of this. It indicates her need to be in control at all times over her husbands. Her treatment of the other husbands supports these ideas too in the way in which she manipulates them and shows ...

This is a preview of the whole essay