Book Review – Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales - The Wife Of Baths Tale

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Following The Wife Of Bath’s Prologue Alison, (Alis) The Wife, begins her Tale in earnest, with a few drunken interruptions from the Pardoner and the Friar. She offers a story set in Arthurian legend, when fairies still dominated the land, before Catholic Friars drove out such pagan magic to the hidden recesses of Britain. Alis laments how woman now risks rape more from a priest than from an Incubus (Chaucer offering an astonishing attack on the Church for its day). Even in the past, women were not safe from human molestation. The story begins when a Knight rapes a woman. Captured, tried and found guilty, he is sentenced to execution by King Arthur. Guinevere intervenes however to offer the Knight a last chance of freedom. She gives him a year and a day to find out the answer to the question of what women want more than anything else in the world. The Knight takes up the challenge, and travels the length and breadth of the Kingdom asking women what the answer is, but he gets so many different answers, ranging from love, to security, protection, a man’s wealth, children, etc., that he is totally confused. By the very last day of his quest, he resigns himself to the likelihood that he will not find an answer satisfactory to Guinevere. At this point, travelling back to Camelot to accept his doom, he stumbles on a fairy ring, and sees several lovely dancing girls. They quickly vanish to leave only an ugly old crone who asks him what he seeks. He tells her about his quest and she gives him an answer that he thinks will be the right one for Guinevere, but at a price. The Knight returns to Camelot and gives his answer at the appointed time. Women most want equality, and to command the same respect as their husbands and lovers. It is the right answer, and so he is granted his freedom. Now the old crone steps forward, to announce that the answer was in fact hers, and not the Knight’s. She asks Camelot to oblige the Knight to marry her and satisfy her needs despite her age and appearance. Guinevere and Arthur agree to her wishes. Reluctantly, the Knight accepts his fate, but on his wedding Knight, the crone takes on the appearance of a beautiful woman to please him better. The story ends. Redemption for a rapist and womanizer, with a mythical root, and echoes of the prologue that preceded the story, covered in detail in a previous review by me. Arthur Chappell