this point:How cruelly I made them sweat at night! And I can tell you it meant nothing to me. They’d given me their land and property; I’d no more need to be assiduous tow in theirlove, or treat them with respect. (224)She exhibits complete authority or control over her husbands:I’d gain, in every way, the upper hand by force or fraud, or by some stratagem likeeverlasting natter, endless grumbling. Bed in particular was their misfortune; that’swhen I’d scold, and see they got no fun. I wouldn’t stop a moment in the bed if I felt myhusband’s arm over my side, no, not until his ransom had been paid, and then I’d let himdo the thing he liked. (229) She would actually tease them in bed, refusing them of satisfaction until they promised hermoney. This was an obvious portrayal of misuse of marriage by a heartless younger woman. At the end of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue she moves on to her fourth and fifth husbands,both the two bad husbands of the five. The fourth husband she married when she was young hewas unwealthy and at his funeral she met the last of the five, the only man she married for loveand not for money. He was also an unwealthy man, who did not treat her like the other husbandsdid. He would torment her by reading a book about the most deceitful wives in history. Shewould rip one page out every night and he hit her with his fist, she laid on the floor and yelledtoward him:You’ve murdered, me you dirty thief. You have gone and murdered me, just for my land! But I’ll kiss you once more, before I’m dead! (239) Then the Wife of Bath gives her alternative motive away:We made it up...
