The wife of Bath is a character from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Right from the title the intelligent reader can understand that the woman isn't addressed
for what she is, but as someone's wife. In this case she is addressed as the
wife of the whole city. This shows us that for her is more important her social
status than her husband.

In the second line Chaucer tells us that she was an excellent weaver, and this should
make her a very good wife. From line 5 to line 8, Chaucer tells us that, when
you should give charity, she had to be the first, otherwise she became very
angry and refused to give any charity, committing the sins of pride, envy, and
wrath at the same time, in a sacred ceremony. She had no respect for religion,
but only for her social prestige. Chaucer
underlines that telling us that she went in pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Rome and
many others sacred cities "Easily on an ambling horse she sat/well wimpled up,
and on her head a hat/as broad as is a buckler or a shield" showing us that all these pilgrimages had no religious
meaning but were just a way to show how rich and how religious she was to the
rest of the city. Chaucer tells us that she was always wearing strange clothes,
that were too big, too heavy or just ridiculous and inappropriate (scarlet red
hose in the church, to make an example). As this wasn't enough, she wasn't a
beautiful woman: she had just a few teeth and couldn't hear very well. The
whole portrait is a caricature of the lady, showing u show distanced she was
from the kind of woman she tried to represent.