The Wife of Bath

"The Wife of Bath" is the protagonist of one of "The Canterbury Tales"
written by Geoffrey Chaucer. Reading the title the reader expects to
read about a woman she who comes from Bath, a town in the south-west
of England.
The ballad has not any rhyme but in some lines the subject is at its end
because of focused the reader's attention on the action or on the
adjective ( for example at the 7^th and the 14^th
line).
The first line recalls the start of a fable which starts with "there
was..." and it makes an introduction of the character: she is a
business woman, but this is a strange thing because a wife had to
take care of the sons and daughters and she had to be an housewife.
But she could not hear, so it was too difficult to be a business
woman. She was a weaver and she was rich: the intelligent reader can
understand this at the 9^th and 28^th lines: her
head kerchiefs were very peasant and this was a symbol of the
appurtenance of the noble class, the poor men had simple kerchief and
not peasant. At the 28^th line the reader notices that she
has enormous hips so she could eat a lot: she had pounds and she was
rich!
She was very charity and this implies that she went frequently to the
Church and she follows the christian values; but then the poet
contradicts this because the Wife has to be the first everywhere and
this is not a christian value. A christian sacrament is the marriage.
She is a wife, so she received this sacrament, but she married 5
times in the Church and we do not know how many times out of it. So
she goes to the Church but she does not follow the values. She is a
strange wife: she is full of contradictions.