weaver. More important is the fact that she has had five husbands. This tells us more about her than her profession could. In the Wife of Bath’s prologue she describes her husbands and how and when she met them. She discusses how she meets her fifth husband, Jankyn, while burying her fourth husband. She explains how she slickly gains control over her fifth husband by pretending she was dead. When he says he would do anything to get her back she awakes and gains control over him. She deceitfully tricks her husband and gains the control she always wanted.The Wife of Bath refers to her love life, as her occupation. She explains how it must be looked upon with humour and energy. The wife of Bath seems to be trying to convince others as well as herself the normality of her life. The wife is a fully credible character. Chaucer makes her one who may emerge as a real person drawn from life, not as a type of person, like most of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales are. She is attributed with common English, which supports her appearance as a real character. Chaucer clearly found her fascinating. It is significant that he gives her a lot more lines to tell about herself than he allowed the other pilgrims; her prologue is twice as long as her tale. Chaucer also gives her knowledge that a woman like her could not have had the education nor the time to read and understand everything she quotes. Even if she believes experience to be greater value and rejects the value of textual authorities, she uses these textual authorities if it suits her, and she even uses antifeminist authorities, which are in contrast with her mentality. She used authorities and turns them upside down, but this does never effect blasphemy as for example the pardoner embodies. The wife of Bath is clearly a rebel, she does not wait for the host to introduce her and invite her to tell her tale and she says that marriage is misery. Her obsession is “maistre”, no...
