rrying and giving in marriage? (220) She talks of Apostle Paul, being of a saintly churchman his words mean its God’s word forpeople to marry. Then Abraham and Jacob have more then one wife, not following amonogamous way of life, where you have one wife. The Wife of Bath uses it to justify her fivemarriages, saying if they were not monogamous and people did not condemn them then whyshould I care. Also that without such marriages then there would be no procreation to producemore virgins. This Prologue was more her autobiography about her life and her husbands and why shemarried them. She would have been conceived at that time in the medieval Church as a badwoman, deceitful in her actions and reasons for marriage. The Wife of Bath clearly states thatshe is proud of her five marriages:Blessed be God that I have married five! Here’s to the sixth, whenever he turns up. (220) This shows that she does not have any concern for what the clergymen feel. It is explained in the Prologue that her first three husbands were good and the other twobad:Three were good husbands, two of them were bad. The three good ones were very richand old; but barely able, all the same, to hold to the term of our covenant and contract.(224) Chaucer makes it seem as if this character is simply waiting for them to die, for purposes ofproperty or other financial profi...
