The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue Women and Femininity Quotes Page 5

This statement is reminiscent of the Wife's earlier claim that wise women are quick to go after a love they do not possess. There, this pursuit seemed strategic, a way for women to ensure they were the one with greater power in the relationship. Here, on the other hand, it seems simply emotional, a "queynte fantasye" or eccentricity in women.

Now the "queynte fantasye" to which the Wife referred above becomes again strategic: it's just economics, the Wife seems to be saying. If a man withholds himself from the market, he creates scarcity, causing the woman to out her "chaffare," or goods, to purchase him. It's no great thing for a woman to win a man that anyone could buy. The "queynte fantasye" is revealed to be a strategy that increases a woman's status the same way the purchase of an expensive hat might.

Here the Wife begins to reflect on the reasons behind the antifeminist sentiments she's been exploring in her Prologue. The Wife says that clerks, or writers, slander all women except saints. The implicit point here is that a woman has to be a saint in order to merit a good word from a male writer. Ordinary women don't stand a chance.