The Wife of Bath: Analysis (The Wife of Baths Tale, G.

Chaucer)
One of two female storytellers (the other is the Prioress), the Wife has a lot of experience
under her belt. She has traveled all over the world on pilgrimages, so Canterbury is a jaunt
compared to other perilous journeys she has endured. Not only has she seen many lands, she has
lived with five husbands. She is worldly in both senses of the word: she has seen the world and
has experience in the ways of the world, that is, in love and sex.
Rich and tasteful, the Wifes clothes veer a bit toward extravagance: her face is wreathed
in heavy cloth, her stockings are a fine scarlet color, and the leather on her shoes is soft, fresh,
and brand newall of which demonstrate how wealthy she has become. Scarlet was a
particularly costly dye, since it was made from individual red beetles found only in some parts of
the world. The fact that she hails from Bath, a major English cloth-making town in the Middle
Ages, is reflected in both her talent as a seamstress and her stylish garments. Bath at this time
was fighting for a place among the great European exporters of cloth, which were mostly in the
Netherlands and Belgium. So the fact that the Wifes sewing surpasses that of the cloth makers of
Ipres and of Gaunt (Ypres and Ghent) speaks well of Baths (and Englands) attempt to outdo
its overseas competitors.
Although she is argumentative and enjoys talking, the Wife is intelligent in a
commonsense, rather than intellectual, way. Through her experiences with her husbands, she has
learned how to provide for herself in a world where women had little independence or power.
The chief manner in which she has gained control over her husbands has been in her control over
their use of her body. The Wife uses her body as a bargaining tool, withholding sexual pleasure
until her husbands give her what she demands.