of Bath’s Tale. We find out in The Prologue that the Wife of Bath is one of the most fully realized characters in the Canterbury Tales. She is very headstrong, boisterous, and she is constantly fighting to promote woman. She believes that woman have the right to do anything the wish, and the laws of the land and the church that prevent this are unmoral and unjust (Gittes 267). This is the basis for The Wife of Bath’s Tale.The Wife of Bath’s Tale starts off with a knight who comes across a maiden and rapes her. The knight was brought in front of King Arthur, and the King wished to condemn him to death for the crime that he committed. The Queen, however, had different plans. She said that she would spare the knight if he could answer one question: “what do woman most desire?” She gave the knight one year and sent him off. The knight vigorously look for an answer, but he couldn’t find the right one. One day he came upon an old woman and he asked her for the answer. She said she knew the answer, and she would tell him if he would agree to marry her. He agreed, and she told him this answer: “women desire to have the sovereignty and to rule over their husbands.” When he went to the Queen with the right answer, he was spared, but he still had to marry the old woman. She sensed that he was disturbed, and she asked him what he would like, old and humble or young and independent. When he kissed her, the woman became 8young and they lived happily ever after. The Wife of Bath ends the story with this moral: let Christ grant all women submissive husbands who sexually satisfy their wives (Chaucer 334-345).The Wife of Bath’s Tale is humorous because it centers around the Wife of Bath’s belief that woman should dominate over men. Many feminine issues are addressed, such as male dominance and marriage. The personalities of the old woman and the Wife of Bath are nearly ide...
