Right Roles? "The Wife of Bath" Speaks Out: Analysis of the prologue of "The Wife of Bath" from "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Alison, the Wife of Bath, was a radical thinker of her time and was probably considered by Chaucer's readers to be promiscuous and even blasphemous. She establishes herself as an authority on all matters of marriage. Women, in the time of Chaucer, were cast into very specific roles. In her prologue, the Wife of Bath addresses the general code of conduct and other commonly accepted behaviors of women and dismisses them to justify and rationalize …

…U P, 1962. <http://jade.ccccd.edu/Andrade/BritLitI2322/WifeofBath-Augustine.html>, November 14, 2005 "Medieval Sourcebook: Geoffrey Chaucer, d.1400: Canterbury Tales: Prologue to Wife of Bath's Tale [Parallel Texts]", <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT-prolog-bathpara.html>, November 14, 2005 "The Geoffrey Chaucer Page", <http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/wbpro/>, Last modified: May, 12, 2000, Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College, November 14, 2005