The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale Themes

The knight's punishment for rape is a quest in which he must discover what women most desire. This plot element is an occasion for the tale to expound upon all of the various things women desire an...

A knight deprives a maiden of power over her own body; his punishment, as decided by the women of the court, is that he must find out what women most desire, which turns out to be power. "The Wife...

At the beginning of "The Wife of Bath's Tale," a knight commits rape, and the rest of the tale is concerned with how the law punishes him for his misdeed (or not). The queen immediately asks for th...

The big principle at issue in "The Wife of Bath's Tale" is gentility. Gentility was thought to be a quality of a person that caused him to do noble deeds, keep his promises, and generally behave vi...

Since the plot of "The Wife of Bath's Tale" has at its heart a loathly lady who shape-shifts into a beautiful, young damsel, we might expect appearances to be important here. And they are, just not...

The loathly lady's old age is what makes her wise, a fact she establishes definitively when she reminds the knight that "thise olde folk kan muchel thing" (1010). The connection of age with the wis...

When her husband attacks her suitableness as a wife because she is poor, the loathly lady launches into a long speech in "The Wife of Bath's Tale" that includes a meditation on the virtues of pover...