Describe the role of women in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.

The Wife of Bath is an interesting character precisely because she challenges every preconception the medieval audience might have about the role of women. In her prologue, she begins by illustrating the double standard that exists between men and women in terms of the number of sexual partners they might be expected to have. She points out that "heere the wise kyng, daun Salomon/I trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon" (Solomon had more than one wife), while she has been criticized for having been married five times. Women in this era were expected to be chaste, but the Wife declares, "I will not keep myself chaste in everything" and suggests that this will make her a better wife to her sixth husband. God, she says, advised us to grow fruitful and multiply; the "advice" of men is not to be construed as binding. Virginity "is great perfection," she says, but it is also not for everyone. The wife is evidently older—"the flour of al myn age," she says, is to the benefit of the men she marries. She is also, we know from the text, not particularly beautiful, but rather red and rotund. But she refuses to feel shame about her sexuality and asserts her own right over her own body, declaring, "My husband shall have it both evenings and morning."

This proto-feminist attitude that a woman should control her own affairs and be allowed to have a choice continues into the tale the Wife tells. The tale is a variant on the "loathly lady" story that recurs throughout medieval English literature and is fairly closely related to, for example, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle." The opening of the story is fairly shocking: a knight rapes a woman in King Arthur's Court, and Arthur and his knights must decide how he should be punished. Interestingly, while the men feel he should be put to death, the women of the court have another proposition: if, over the course of the next year, the man can find the answer to the question of what women really want, he will be allowed to live.

Many scholars have contended that the "loathly lady" in the tale, the old woman whom the knight meets after some time roaming, is an avatar for the wife herself. Certainly, there are similarities—the old lady is forthright and determined and insists that the knight should marry her despite his reservations. He, however, is depressed because the old woman is so ugly, and he will not be comforted by her contention that "gentle deeds" should be more important. The woman, then, offers the knight a choice: does he want her to be beautiful and unfaithful, or chaste and ugly? It is at this point that the knight redeems himself, finally, by declaring, "I put me in youre wise governance/Cheseth yourself which may be moost plesant."

This was the correct answer. The old lady says, "Thanne have I gete of yow maistrie" (Then I have gotten mastery of you). The knight has correctly understood that what women want most of all is to be able to choose their own way. He is rewarded when the old lady turns into a beautiful young woman who is also faithful to him, the perfect bride. While, in some ways, this seems a slightly unfitting end for a knight who has committed rape, the implication is that he has learned his lesson and that all men should treat women in this way, according to the Wife of Bath, from the beginning—that is the way to lead long and happy lives together. The role of women in this tale and prologue is more autonomous than we might expect, and although it is clear that the Wife is not "the ideal woman," she argues her point of view convincingly.