“Experience, though noon auctoritee,” “God bad us for to wexe and multiplie,” and “What thyng that worldly wommen loven best.” The Wife of Bath- Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe is among the most celebrated of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. With a prologue twice as long as her tale itself, this much beloved character spoke both then and now to the imbalance of power between men and women in a way that was both comic and celebratory. In a world where women were identified solely through their relations with men, The Wyf of Bath’s boldness and joyous command of her own body not only placed an emphasis on the rising individualism of the Renaissance, but alongside her unabashed materialism, her depiction of using pilgrimages to find husbands, her sartorial decisions which tended toward extravagance all challenged the authority of a church still very much dictating women’s behaviour.

Although The Canterbury Tales sees the outwardly devout Chaucer satirising worldly behaviours and writing: “now I beg all those that listen to this little treatise, or read it, that if there be anything in it that pleases them, they thank our Lord Jesus Christ for it, from whom proceeds all understanding and goodness” it is hard to see his depiction of the Wyf of Bath as condemnatory, indeed to many The Wyf of Bath is one of the most joyous characters of English Literature.