The wife's prologue begins with experience. Experience that she has had from the age of 12. Experience that has led her to believe that there is nothing wrong with marrying many men, as she claims that the scriptures themselves never discouraged such things. So she was glad that she was able to marry five and legally at that. The first of these marriages were good and enjoyable marriages as the men were old, rich and submissive the most important to her is sovereignty. The last two were a different tale of which the fourth was the worst for he had a concubine. To make him pay for cheating she convinced him that she was also cheating on him. He died on his journey to Jerusalem.
She had met her fourth husband while she was still married to her fifth, and had promised him that if she was widowed she would marry him. As she saw him lay her fourth husband in the ground she fell in love with him. She was forty at the time and he was twenty she thought the age difference would be fine because she was lust but she would soon come to regret the decision because she could not trick him like other men in fact he would show some trickery of his own by reading out loud a book about wicked wives every night. Eventually she becomes so angry that she rips apart the book and slams it into his face. After the scuffle they come to an agreement that he would throw out the book and she would treat him kindly The wife of Bath's story takes place in a fantasy land with elves and obese people and is about a knight who has raped a beautiful maiden and was sentenced to death, but the queen and other ladies of the court plead to sentence him instead. It was allowed he was sentenced to figure out what every woman wanted or once again be sentenced to death. So, he stumbles upon a festival with many maidens dancing about. He went and asked every one of them what they wanted but he always got different answers. He thought he was doomed until an old hag told him that she would tell him what every woman wanted if he would grant her one thing. He agreed and learned that all women want control in return the old hag asked that he married her. |