The Wife of Bath Prologue

An example of changing social class and satire

The Wife of Bath’s prologue in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is an example of the changes in the perception of the female character in the late medieval and early Renaissance literature. The character of the Wife of Bath is a complex character and is a mixture of the four types of female characters; the virgin, the witch, the temptress, and the lady.
The Wife of Bath is an example of the character of a lady because she is a mixture of both the temptress and the virgin. She can claim the virgin in name only, for she must have been at one time, but is no longer. She can also claim the character of the temptress in that she met her much younger fifth husband while she is burying her fourth. She also is a temptress in the way that she openly talks about seducing her fifth husband. Some might also classify the Wife of Bath as part of the character of the witch. The Character of the Lady cannot be classified as good or evil, she is merely real. In the way that Chaucer writes about the Wife of Bath in that he has her openly admit her flaws, and be comfortable with those flaws, makes her a very realistic lady. Many of Chaucer’s time would not have thought much of the Wife of Bath during his time. After all if see was married five times, whose bed was she going to share in heaven?
The idea of the Wife of Bath and her five husbands in the prologue is Chaucer’s form of Satire. Satire, as defined by our Handbook to Literature, is “a work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity (handbook, 464).” Chaucer is using satire with the Wife of Bath. She does not represent just one woman, but many women, who claim to be pious, but have had multiple marriages and extra-marital affairs. He is making a point about the hypocrisy of the claim that a person should only marry once, because that is who will be waiting for them in heaven, and making the point that the institution of marriage is a business, how else would women like the Wife of Bath be so well off.