Textuality » 3ALS Interacting
At line 15 the narrator tells again that the wife of Bath was a “worthy woman all her life” and begins to describe her love life and her pilgrimages. He says “she's had five husbands, all at the church door, apart from other company in youth” and has done some of the major pilgrimages even more than once, which implicates that she’s “skilled in wandering”, as the author says.
After this he says that she had gap-teeth, which were a symbol of love for traveling and sexual disposition; the author underlines this by saying that her teeth were “set widely”. This means that her frequent pilgrimages are made for her love of traveling and not for a spiritual reason.
The author finishes the description by telling more about her physical description and her behavior. He says that she “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; she had a flowing mantle that concealed large hips, her heels spurred sharply under that”. Her clothing, like her large hat, underlines the fact that she is seeking for attention, and her large hips remind to the same function of her gap teeth; also, the author underlines the fact that she’s used to traveling again by saying that she’s good at riding her horse.
The narrator ends her description by telling about her behavior with the other pilgrims, in fact she loves to chat with them and the narrator emphasizes again her knowledge of love by saying that she “knew the remedies for love's mischances, an art in which she knew the oldest dances.”