17;s Wife of Bath comprehended this phenomenon clearly: Josh Kinman 4‘By God, if woman hadde writen stories/ As clerks han withinne hier oratories,/ They wolde han writen of men more wikkednesse/ Than all the mark of Adam may redresse.’” (Gregg 93).Chaucer’s Wife of Bath correctly asserts, it was clerks stories that were privileged over women’s, and for clerical stories to impart the desired object lesson. The image of women must be one that could plausibly absorb the unregenerate sexual passions of the male and manifest them in a way men could rationally accept” (Gregg 93).The Wife of BathShe is a plump, florid, jolly, bold, lusty and voluptuous woman. She is a valuable woman by any means because of her apparent wealth. She is bold in her descriptions of her sexual experiences. She is not a typical woman of the Middle Ages and therefor poses a threat to mean and the current social order. Her husband varied in personalities. Her first was rich, but unable to fulfill her demands sexually. The other husbands were sexually vigorous, but harder to control. She tamed them by accusing them of promiscuous behavior. It becomes clearer that the woman Chaucer has created is a domineering and controlling type. An Oxford clerk became her fifth husband. He beat her. As a result she punished him by throwing a book of his into a fire, revealing a nature of woman as a punisher and a lawmaker. Josh Kinman 5The wife of Bath raises many valid points throughout the prologue, but Geoffrey Chaucer voids her opinion because of her questionable background. It is as if her intelligence is over-shadowed by the fact she had five husbands thus making her discernible. Women are depicted as untrustworthy and tempter of men. The wife of Bath's theme is experience verses authority. She announces her theme as 'marriage is a misery and a woe,' but the theme she actually develops in the prologue and the tale is the power of self-det...
