Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

Introduction to The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale

Welcome to your comprehensive study guide for Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. This text is studied as part of CCEA A2 Unit 2: The Study of Poetry Pre 1900 and Unseen Poetry.

In Section A of the A2 2 examination, you will write an essay analyzing Chaucer’s work in a closed-book examination lasting 2 hours (combined with the unseen poetry section). Section A specifically assesses four core Assessment Objectives:
• AO1: Articulating informed, personal, and well-structured arguments using accurate literary terminology.
• AO2: Analyzing Chaucer’s poetic methods, form, meter, structure, and language.
• AO3: Demonstrating understanding of the historical, cultural, and theological contexts of the 14th century.
• AO4: Exploring connections across the text, themes, and literary traditions.

Don't worry if Middle English poetry feels intimidating at first. Once you understand the dramatic voice of the Wife of Bath (Alisoun), the humorous battles between the sexes, and the underlying poetic techniques, you will find this text to be one of the most vibrant and enjoyable pieces in English literature.

Key Takeaway: The text consists of two distinct but closely linked parts: an autobiographical Prologue (~856 lines) where Alisoun defends her marital career, followed by an Arthurian Tale that illustrates her central philosophical claim—that marriages work best when women have sovereignty (maistrie).

Literary Form, Poetic Structure, and Narrative Voice (AO2)

To secure top bands in AO2, you must examine how Chaucer writes, rather than simply recounting the plot.

1. Meter and Rhyme: Heroic Couplets

Chaucer writes in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets (often termed heroic couplets). Each line typically contains ten syllables with five alternating unstressed and stressed beats:
"Experience, though noon auctoritee..."
Chaucer uses this form with great flexibility. He employs enjambment (run-on lines) and caesurae (pauses mid-line) to mimic the natural, energetic rhythm of spoken dialogue.

2. Literary Genres

Chaucer blends several medieval genres:
• The Confessio (Dramatic Monologue): The Prologue mimics a literary confession, but instead of showing sorrow for her sins, Alisoun boastfully celebrates her sexual history and manipulation.
• Estates Satire: 14th-century literature typically satirized the "Three Estates" (Clergy, Nobility, Peasantry). As an affluent, cloth-making bourgeois woman, the Wife disrupts traditional social hierarchies.
• Arthurian Romance & The "Loathly Lady" Folktale: The Tale adopts the conventions of courtly romance (knights, quests, royal courts) and merges them with a folk motif where a hideous hag transforms after her partner yields to her will.

3. The Narrative Layers: Chaucer vs. Alisoun

A crucial distinction in your essays is separating Geoffrey Chaucer the author, Chaucer the pilgrim-narrator, and Alisoun the Wife of Bath. Alisoun is a dramatic persona. When she speaks, Chaucer is not necessarily endorsing her views; he is presenting a multifaceted character who simultaneously challenges and embodies medieval stereotypes.

Key Takeaway: Pay close attention to Chaucer's verse form (rhyming couplets), the hybrid genre (confession meets Arthurian romance), and the layered narrative voice.

Detailed Breakdown: The Prologue

The Prologue is an extended dramatic monologue in which Alisoun outlines her philosophy on marriage and details her five previous husbands.

Opening Argument: Experience vs. Auctoritee

Alisoun opens with a direct challenge to the patriarchal establishment:
"Experience, though noon auctoritee / Were in this world, is right ynogh for me / To speke of wo that is in mariage."
• Auctoritee (Authority): Refers to the written word of male-dominated institutions—the Bible, the Church Fathers (such as St. Jerome), and classical philosophers. Women were barred from producing official ecclesiastical scholarship.
• Experience: Refers to lived, empirical reality. Having been married five times since the age of twelve, Alisoun argues that her practical life gives her valid expertise.

The Five Husbands

Alisoun categorizes her husbands into two distinct groups:

1. Husbands 1, 2, and 3 ("Good, Rich, and Old"):
• These men were wealthy, elderly, and physically submissive.
• Alisoun controlled them through psychological warfare: scolding, withholding affection and sexual intimacy until they yielded their wealth, and falsely accusing them of uttering misogynistic insults when drunk ("Thou seist...").
• She demonstrates how women can turn anti-feminist stereotypes to their practical advantage.

2. Husband 4:
• A younger man who kept a mistress.
• Unable to control his desires directly, Alisoun made him intensely jealous by pretending to flirt with other men, making him "fry in his own grease" until his death.

3. Husband 5 (Jankin the Clerk):
• The only husband she married for love and attraction rather than money.
• Jankin was an educated, twenty-year-old former Oxford clerk who spent his evenings reading from the Book of Wicked Wives—an anthology of anti-feminist writings detailing how women ruin men (from Eve and Delilah to classical mythology).
• The Climax: Enraged by his constant recitation, Alisoun tore three pages out of his book and punched him into the fire. Jankin retaliated by striking her on the head, leaving her partially deaf.
• The Resolution: Overcome with remorse and fearing he had killed her, Jankin granted her total domestic control ("maistrie" and "soveraynetee"). Once she had governance over his land, tongue, and household, she became a loving, devoted wife, and he burned his offensive book.

Key Takeaway: The Prologue establishes the Wife's fundamental claim: domestic harmony is achieved only after the male partner surrenders control (maistrie) to the woman.

Detailed Breakdown: The Tale

The Tale serves as an exemplary story (an exemplum) designed to prove the philosophical points Alisoun raised in her Prologue.

1. The Crime and the Sentence

Set in the mythical days of King Arthur, an unnamed, lusty young knight commits an act of violence: he rapes a young maiden walking by a river.
• In Arthurian law, the penalty for rape is death by beheading.
• However, Queen Guinevere and her ladies plead for the knight's life. Arthur grants the Queen custody of the knight to decide his fate.

2. The Quest: What Women Most Desire

Queen Guinevere gives the knight an ultimatum: he will be spared if, within a year and a day, he can answer the question:
"What thyng it is that wommen moost desiren."
The knight travels throughout the kingdom collecting answers, but no two people agree. Suggestions include wealth, honor, fine clothes, pleasure in bed, flattery, and freedom from criticism.

3. The Bargain with the Loathly Lady

On the final day of his quest, as he despairs in a forest, the knight sees a circle of dancing ladies who vanish, leaving behind an elderly, hideous woman (the "loathly lady").
• The hag promises him the true answer on the condition that he grant her whatever request she makes next.
• Before the royal court, the knight delivers the correct answer: women desire sovereignty (soveraynetee) and mastery over their husbands and lovers.
• The court agrees unanimously, and the knight is acquitted.

4. The Marriage and the Pillow Sermon on Gentillesse

The hag demands her reward: marriage. The knight is horrified and forced to wed her in secret.
• On their wedding night, the knight writhes in misery over her low birth, poverty, and ugliness.
• The hag responds with an extended philosophical discourse on gentillesse (true nobility):
1. True nobility does not come from ancestral wealth or lineage; it comes from virtuous actions and living in the grace of Christ.
2. Poverty is not shameful; Christ lived in poverty, and an impoverished person who is content is truly wealthy.
3. Her ugliness and old age guarantee that she will be an entirely faithful, chaste wife.

5. The Choice and Transformation

The hag offers the knight a dilemma:
• Option A: Have her old, ugly, and entirely faithful.
• Option B: Have her young, beautiful, and risk being cuckolded by her infidelity.

Instead of choosing, the knight submits to her wisdom:
"I put me in youre wise governance..."
Because he freely surrenders sovereignty to her, the hag rewards him by transforming into a woman who is both exceptionally beautiful and completely faithful. The tale ends with the couple living in blissful harmony.

Key Takeaway: The Tale mirrors the Prologue's conclusion with Jankin: when the male figure voluntarily relinquishes power, conflict dissolves into mutual peace and happiness.

Key Thematic Concepts & Terminology

1. Auctoritee vs. Experience
This is the intellectual foundation of the entire text. Medieval scholarship held that truth resided in classical and biblical texts written by men. Alisoun subverts this by claiming that lived female experience is an equally valid source of truth.

2. Maistrie and Soveraynetee
These Middle English terms mean mastery, dominance, and ultimate decision-making power. In both the Prologue (with Jankin) and the Tale (with the Knight), true marital peace only emerges after the woman is granted soveraynetee.

3. Gentillesse
A medieval concept describing true aristocratic virtue and nobility. The loathly lady argues that nobility is moral rather than genealogical. A noble-born knight who commits rape lacks gentillesse, whereas an impoverished, humble woman who acts with virtue possesses it.

4. Anti-Feminist Literature (The Querelle des Femmes)
During the Middle Ages, an extensive body of clerical writing argued that women were inherently deceptive, insatiable, and the downfall of men (stemming from the biblical account of Eve). Alisoun directly confronts this tradition, mocking clerical celibacy and exposing how these texts were written by bitter old monks who had no real experience of women.

Historical and Social Context (AO3)

To score highly on AO3, weave these historical contexts directly into your textual analysis rather than writing a disconnected history paragraph.

1. The Medieval Church and Marriage

The 14th-century Catholic Church viewed celibacy and virginity as the highest spiritual ideals, followed by chaste widowhood, with marriage positioned as the lowest acceptable state (a remedy against sin). Alisoun openly disputes this hierarchy, referencing God's command to "increase and multiply" and arguing that marriage and sexuality are natural gifts given by God.

2. Medieval Gender and Legal Realities

Under medieval common law (specifically the principle of coverture), a woman's legal rights and property were subsumed under those of her husband upon marriage. Widows, however, gained control of their late husband's estates and acquired financial autonomy. Alisoun leverages her successive widowhoods to gain significant economic independence and wealth.

3. The Rise of the Merchant Class

Alisoun is not an aristocrat or a peasant; she is a skilled weaver from Bath, representing the emerging commercial middle class. Her ability to travel on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Cologne reflects the new social mobility and financial independence made possible by trade and commerce in late 14th-century England.

Key Takeaway: Context is not background decoration—Alisoun’s arguments directly engage with 14th-century canon law, clerical misogyny, and the growing economic power of the merchant class.

Common Pitfalls and Examiner Guidance

Pitfall 1: Treating the Wife as an Unambiguous Modern Feminist
• Mistake: Claiming Alisoun is a modern 21st-century feminist fighting for universal gender equality.
• Examiner Advice: Alisoun seeks dominance (maistrie) rather than modern democratic equality. Moreover, Chaucer deliberately constructs her using the very anti-feminist stereotypes she condemns (e.g., she is lustful, talks excessively, and manipulates men for money). Analyze her as a complex, contradictory character.

Pitfall 2: Confusing the Voice of Chaucer with the Wife of Bath
• Mistake: Writing "Chaucer argues that women should rule men."
• Examiner Advice: Maintain narrative distance. Write: "Through the dramatic persona of the Wife of Bath, Chaucer explores..."

Pitfall 3: Ignoring Poetic Methods (AO2)
• Mistake: Writing essays that merely retell the story of the five husbands and the Arthurian knight.
• Examiner Advice: Analyze specific language techniques: irony, double entendre, rhetorical questions, rhyming couplets, allusions to biblical figures, and dramatic pauses.

Pitfall 4: "Bolting-on" Context (AO3)
• Mistake: Writing a separate paragraph about the Black Death or medieval life that has no link to the essay question.
• Examiner Advice: Integrate context dynamically. For example, connect Jankin's book directly to the monastic clerical culture that produced anti-feminist anthologies.

Quick Revision Summary

Core Concepts Review:
• Experience vs. Auctoritee: Alisoun's lived reality vs. church-sanctioned male writing.
• The 5 Husbands: Husbands 1–3 (old, rich, easily manipulated); Husband 4 (kept a mistress, punished with jealousy); Husband 5 (Jankin, intellectual conflict over the Book of Wicked Wives, ended in domestic concession).
• The Tale: Arthurian knight commits rape \(\rightarrow\) Sentenced to discover what women desire \(\rightarrow\) Old hag provides the answer (soveraynetee) \(\rightarrow\) Hag delivers sermon on gentillesse \(\rightarrow\) Knight surrenders choice to hag \(\rightarrow\) Hag transforms into a beautiful, loyal wife.
• Key Formula for Success: Quote Middle English accurately \(\rightarrow\) Analyze poetic form/rhyme (AO2) \(\rightarrow\) Connect to 14th-century social/religious context (AO3) \(\rightarrow\) Maintain nuanced critical evaluation of Alisoun's persona (AO1/AO4).