If you’ve ever sat through a high school English class, you’ve met Alisoun. She is the Wife of Bath, and she is easily the loudest, most unapologetic, and frankly most exhausting person on the pilgrimage to Canterbury. While most of Geoffrey Chaucer’s other characters are busy trying to look pious or noble, Alisoun is busy talking about her five husbands and her "experience."
Honestly, she’s a lot.
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She’s also arguably the first truly modern woman in English literature. Writing in the late 14th century, Chaucer created a character who shouldn't exist by the standards of the Middle Ages. She’s wealthy. She’s independent. She’s traveled the world. And she has a very specific, very loud opinion on who should be in charge in a marriage. Hint: it’s not the man.
Experience vs. Authority: The Wife of Bath’s Big Argument
The Wife of Bath starts her prologue with a massive flex. She basically says, "Look, I don't care what your old books say. I have experience." In the 1300s, this was a radical stance. Back then, "Authority" meant the Bible, the Church fathers, and ancient Greek philosophers. If St. Paul said women should be silent, then women were supposed to be silent.
Alisoun says "no thanks."
She uses her own life as her primary text. She’s been married five times, starting at the age of twelve. Think about that for a second. Twelve. It’s jarring to a modern reader, but Alisoun doesn’t present herself as a victim. She presents herself as a strategist. She used her youth and her "belle chose" to gain land, money, and power from her first three husbands, who she describes as old, rich, and easy to manipulate.
She’s a weaver by trade, and a damn good one. Chaucer notes that her cloth-making skills surpassed even those of Ypres and Ghent, the textile capitals of the world. This is a crucial detail people often skip. She doesn't need a man for money. She has her own. This financial independence is what allows her to be so "gat-toothed" and bold. It's why she can go on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Boulogne just because she feels like it.
What Most People Get Wrong About Her Feminism
It is tempting to call the Wife of Bath a feminist icon. It's a popular take. But if we’re being real, Chaucer was doing something much more complicated. Alisoun is a walking collection of every "anti-feminist" stereotype that existed in the Middle Ages.
Medieval monks loved writing books about how women were talkative, deceptive, greedy, and obsessed with sex. Alisoun stands up and says, "Yep, that's me!"
She leans into the stereotypes so hard that she breaks them. By owning the insults, she takes away their power. When she talks about how she used to accuse her husbands of cheating just to keep them on the defensive, she’s admitting to being "shrewish." But she’s doing it with a wink. She’s showing us the "woe that is in marriage," particularly for women who are treated like property.
Her fourth husband was a different story. He had a mistress. He was a "reveller." Alisoun didn't have the same control over him, so she made him "fry in his own grease" by making him think she was cheating on him too. It was psychological warfare.
Then came Jankyn. Husband number five.
Jankyn was a student, half her age, and he’s the only one she says she actually loved. He’s also the one who hit her so hard she went deaf in one ear. He used to sit by the fire and read her a "Book of Wicked Wives," a collection of stories about how women ruin men’s lives. Eventually, she couldn't take it anymore. She tore three pages out of the book and punched him. He hit her back.
The resolution to this fight is the core of her philosophy. After the violence, Jankyn gives her the "sovereignty." He hands over the keys to the house and tells her to manage his land and his tongue. Once she has the power, she becomes a "kind and true" wife. To Alisoun, peace in a relationship is only possible when the woman has the upper hand.
The Tale: Sovereignty and the Loathly Lady
The story the Wife of Bath tells on the road to Canterbury is a fairy tale that mirrors her own life. It starts with a knight in King Arthur’s court who rapes a young maiden. In a "normal" medieval story, he might just be executed. But the Queen intervenes. She gives him a year and a day to find out what women most desire.
If he fails, he dies.
The knight wanders the world asking everyone. He gets a million different answers. Some say riches. Some say fame. Some say "to be oft widowed and wedded." Finally, he meets a "loathly lady"—an incredibly ugly old woman—who promises him the answer if he agrees to marry her.
He’s desperate, so he agrees. The answer? Wommen desiren to have sovereintee. Women want to have power over their husbands and their lives.
The court agrees this is the truth. The knight’s life is saved, but now he has to marry the "hag." On their wedding night, he’s miserable. She gives him a choice: she can stay ugly but be a perfectly loyal and "true" wife, or she can become beautiful but leave him constantly worried that she’s cheating on him.
For the first time in his life, the knight learns his lesson. He tells her to choose. He gives her the sovereignty.
Because he grants her the power to decide, the spell is broken. She becomes both beautiful and loyal. It’s a bit of a "happily ever after" ending that feels almost too neat, but it hammers home Alisoun’s point. Men are happier when they stop trying to control women.
Why Does This 600-Year-Old Poem Still Matter?
Chaucer was a genius at ambiguity. We don't actually know if he liked the Wife of Bath. He might have been making fun of her. He might have been showing how "monstrous" a woman becomes when she’s given freedom.
But Alisoun is too vibrant to be a mere caricature.
She feels real. She feels like someone you’d meet at a dive bar who has too many rings on her fingers and a lot of advice you didn't ask for. She’s human. She’s grieving her lost youth while simultaneously celebrating the fact that she’s still standing.
"But, Lord Christ! When that it remembreth me / Upon my youth, and on my jollity, / It tickleth me about mine heart-root. / Unto this day it doth mine heart boot / That I have had my world as in my time."
That’s the heart of her character. She’s had her world in her time. She’s lived.
In 2026, we’re still arguing about the same things Alisoun was shouting about on a horse in the 1380s. Who gets to define "truth"? The people with the degrees and the religious titles, or the people living the actual lives? How do we balance power in a relationship? Can a woman be "traditionally" feminine and still hold all the cards?
How to Actually Read the Wife of Bath Without Falling Asleep
If you want to dive into the text, don't start with a dry summary. You have to hear it. Middle English is surprisingly musical once you get the hang of it.
- Listen to a professional reading in Middle English. There are plenty on YouTube. You’ll realize it sounds more like a strange dialect of Scots or German than the English we speak now.
- Look for the jokes. Chaucer is hilarious. When Alisoun talks about why God gave people "members of generation," she isn't being shy. She’s making dirty jokes to a group of pilgrims, including a nun and a priest.
- Pay attention to the interruptions. The Pardoner interrupts her because he’s terrified of getting married after hearing her talk. The Friar and the Summoner start bickering during her prologue. These interactions make the characters feel like a real, dysfunctional traveling group.
- Question the "Happy Ending." Think about the knight in her tale. Does he deserve a beautiful wife after what he did at the beginning of the story? Why did Alisoun give him a pass? It’s a great jumping-off point for a debate on whether her tale is actually "feminist" or just a revenge fantasy.
The Wife of Bath isn't just a character in a book. She’s a challenge. She challenges the other pilgrims, she challenges the Church, and she still challenges readers today to look at how we judge women who refuse to be quiet. Whether you love her or find her annoying, you can't ignore her.
She wouldn't let you, anyway.
To truly understand her impact, your next step should be comparing her prologue to the "Clerk’s Tale." The Clerk tells a story about Griselda—an impossibly patient, submissive wife. It’s the direct opposite of Alisoun’s worldview. Reading them side-by-side reveals the massive cultural war Chaucer was documenting. Go find a copy of the Canterbury Tales and flip to the "General Prologue" first to see how he describes her clothes; the "ten pounds" of fabric on her head says everything you need to know about her ego.