Exercise 1

PROFESSION: weaver.

BEHAVIOUR: wrath, wandering, in company she like to laugh and chat.

CLOTHES: kerchiefs, finely woven ground, her hose were of the finest scarlet red and gartered tight; her shoes were soft and new, well wimpled up, and on her head a hat as broad as is a buckler or a shield; she had a flowing mantle, her heels spurred sharply under that.

FACE: Bold was her face, handsome and red in hue, gap-teeth.

BUILD: large hips.

PHYSICAL PROBLEMS: deaf, gap-teeth.

PAST EXPERIENCES: she's had five husbands, all at the church door, apart from other company in youth, and she had thrice been to Jerusalem, seen many strange rivers and passed over them; she's been to Rome and also to Boulogne, St James of Compostella and Cologne, and she was skilled in wandering by the way, and knew the remedies for love's mischances, an art in which she knew the oldest dances.7

Exercise 2

1. Passion
2. Bossy and strong-willed
3. Expensive and eye-catching
4. The fact that she had 5 husbands goes against Christian moral principles
5. We don't know if she had children

Exercise 3

1. Worthy, lines 1 and 15
2. I think it take an ironic connotation
3. When she becomes furious in the Church because other women arrive before her at the altar, the wife loses charity, or benevolence towards other women. This is a contradiction because in church one must always be charitable and good.

Being good at wandering can have both a positive and a negative connotation. It depends on what meaning the reader attributes to the word "wandering”.

1. No, the poet does not criticise the woman's behaviours even if some may be wrong. The poet simply describes and lists them
2. In line 10 the writer makes an assumption about how much the woman's kerchiefs may weigh, and therefore be worth
3. Critical, ironic, informal

Exercise 4

1. Strong and emancipated
2. Feminine
3. Likes
4. Showy
5. Unconventional
6. Travelling
7. Ironic
8. Contradicts