Analysis of "The wife of Bath"

The wife of Bath is one of the characters going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury that Geoffrey Chaucer introduces into the prologue to the tales.

Right from the title, the reader understands that it refers to the woman’s status and that the characters on town is Bath, a touristic resort of England.

The characterization is organised into ryrhyming couples. The introduction of the character underlines that the woman was “worthy”. The objective “worthy” adds value to the character and this is reinforce by the alliteration of sound “w”. the narrator informs the reader that she come from Bath and that she was unfortunately deaf. There for write from the start the main price information the reader brings with him or her is that the wife of Bath is a worthy person. The insistence on the repetition of the “w” sound underlines that the introductory peculiarity of the woman is her value immediately followed by the narrator’s to her ability in “making clothes”.

The intelligent reader immediately realised the narrator likes underling her great and positive results. She is not only worthy, but she has “so great a bent”, she “bettered”. All these choices underline the narrator’s intention to make the reader understand that all she does is better than anybody else’s. The idea is reinforced even in the woman’s behavior in church. The expression “not a dame dared” highlights also the alliteration of sound “d” the ambition and arrogant attitude of the “dame”. Once again, the narrator exploids the singularity of the character resorting to superlative phrases “in all the parish”, “not a dame dared”, “in front of her”, all together contribute to create an ascending climax to bring the character in the fare front. The narrator also reports the dame’s reaction if anybody had the courage to go before her. She wasn’t ready to accept that and she became furious. This explains for her arrogant attitude.

The dame’s desperate desire to come to the fore front is well rendered by the syntactical construction of line seven, where the position of the subject “she” results peuoltal. In addition her angry reaction is well expressed by the alliteration “indeed did” and the cesura that makes “did” to be a stress word. What’s more the line (seven), communicates an indirect comparison between “they” and “she”. It sound as there were on incessant need “of the dame” always to be the first, to be superior, to be more important, more skilled than anybody else that makes her the “worthy woman” she is.

In the line fourteen, the narrator provides a personal opinion about the dame’s physical appearance, indeed the narrator thinks she is very beauty. Afterward, the narrator tells about the dame’s past. She got married with five husbands and she had lots of partners also during her life. It implies that she is an attractive woman and she is able to seduce a man. Indeed, the five marriages suggest that she is an usual wife because she has disobeyed the “Church laws”. In intelligent reader understand that she isn’t a religious woman. But, at the same time the narrator tells that she went in Rome, Boulogne, St James of Compostella and Cologne on pilgrimage.

Finally, the narrator describes dame’s behavior in the company of pilgrims, telling that she likes laughing and chatting, and in particular in love affairs, since she knows the oldest dances of love art.